Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter. Boring. Ancient Japan had 72 microseasons each lasting about five days. They each have wonderfully evocative names like “Spring Winds Thaw the Ice” and “The Maple and Ivy Turn Yellow.” We just finished “The Bear Retreats to its Den,” and this microseason 64, falling immediately after the solstice, is called “The Common Heal-All Sprouts. (more…)
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Why just four seasons? Ancient Japan had 72 microseasons
If you end up at some fancy event this month where gold leaf decorates the food, that gold leaf will be far thicker than traditional Japanese hand-pounded gold leaf, which can be as thin as 0.0001 millimeters. See how it’s made in the fascinating video. (more…)
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Watch how incredibly delicate Japanese gold leaf is made and applied
Ghost sharks, aka chimaeras, are elusive relatives of sharks and rays that live in the black depths of the ocean, as far down as 2,600 meters. The Ghost Shark was captured on video by a remotely operated vehicle deployed on a geology expedition by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in waters off Hawaii and California. The scientists who analyzed the video think that it’s a pointy-nosed blue chimaera (Hydrolagus trolli) that usually calls the waters off Australia and New Zealand home. This is the first time researchers have known this species to swim in the Northern Hemisphere. From National Geographic : Unlike those more well-known sharks, chimaeras don’t have rows of ragged teeth, but instead munch up their prey—mollusks, worms, and other bottom-dwellers—with mineralized tooth plates. A pattern of open channels on their heads and faces, called lateral line canals, contain sensory cells that sense movement in the water and help the ghost sharks locate lunch. And perhaps most fascinating, male chimaeras sport retractable sex organs on their foreheads.
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First ever video of Ghost Shark, with sex organ on its head, alive in the ocean
I’ve had these beautiful antique glasses for well over a decade. Retrospecs & Co. , the folks who sold them to me, have also taken fantastic care of getting me lenses, and an upgrade, over the many years. (more…)
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Authentic early American eyewear
An “authorized” reproduction of the legendary Voynich Manuscript is finally available in print form , published by Yale University from new photographs taken for the purpose. Yale’s Beinecke Library owns the document and has taken its sweet time putting out a decent art book. The quality is better than the popular “unauthorized” edition published last year; that one uses older scans widely available on the web, but I suppose was good enough to force the university’s hand. The first authorized copy of this mysterious, much-speculated-upon, one-of-a-kind, centuries-old puzzle. The Voynich Manuscript is produced from new photographs of the entire original and accompanied by expert essays that invite anyone to understand and explore the enigma. Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. The book’s language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful. For the first time, this facsimile, complete with elaborate folding sections, allows readers to explore this enigma in all its stunning detail, from its one-of-a-kind “Voynichese” text to its illustrations of otherworldly plants, unfamiliar constellations, and naked women swimming though fantastical tubes and green baths. The Voynich Manuscript [Amazon]
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New Voynich Manuscript reproduction uses new photos, looks great
reMarkable ‘s 10.3″ tablet has an e-ink display with a paper-like texture, a digital pencil with 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, and promises to finally replace all that paper in your workspace. The pitch: read, write and sketch, all on one gadget . Unlike traditional paper, reMarkable connects to the digital world when you need it to. Your thoughts, whether they’re words or sketches, are instantly synced to reMarkable’s cloud service and made available on all your devices. Documents and ebooks are easily transferred for reading and reviewing with pen in hand. reMarkable connects to the internet for easy sharing and collaboration across devices. You can even take notes on one device and have it appear on a second device, in real time. It’s 10.2″ by 6.9″ and a quarter inch thick. It weighs less than a pound, and the 1872 x 1404 pixel display works out at 225 pixels per inch. It runs a Linux and has an ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, 512MB of RAM and WiFi. It claims a latency of 55ms and the demo video shows performance similar to the iPad Pro, which they say has 60ms latency. Wacom tablet hardware polls at
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ReMarkable e-Ink sketching slate pitched at "paper people"
Using Japanese sharpening stones of various grits and considerable prices, Junskitchen set out to try and make an edge of a $1 kitchen knife. The results are impressive—but how long will they last? [1,000 and 6,000] grits would be enough for a normal household knife. I used grits 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 8,000, and 12,000 in this video. The higher the number, the finer the sanding and the sharper the knife will be.
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Man attempts to sharpen a dollar-store kitchen knife
Last week, the San Francisco Municipal Light Rail system (the Muni) had to stop charging passengers to ride because a ransomware hacker had taken over its network and encrypted the drives of all of its servers. (more…)
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The hacker who took over San Francisco’s Muni got hacked
The Mirai worm — first seen attacking security journalist Brian Krebs with 620gbps floods, then taking down Level 3, Dyn and other hardened, well-provisioned internet giants , then spreading to every developed nation on Earth (and being used to take down some of those less-developed nations ) despite being revealed as clumsy and amateurish (a situation remedied shortly after by hybridizing it with another IoT worm ) — is now bigger than ever, and you can rent time on it to punish journalists, knock countries offline, or take down chunks of the core internet. (more…)
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Two hackers are selling DDoS attacks from 400,000 IoT devices infected with the Mirai worm
Jimmy DiResta kept passing by a 1911 Chandler & Price letterpress sitting out in the rain. After buying it from the neglectful owner, he spent several years lovingly restoring it , eventually learning how to print with it. (more…)
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Guy restores a century-old letterpress to perfect condition