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Make posted this awesome video of one of the coolest water pistols we’ve ever seen.

How the heck to you make something like Sugru fun and exciting? That is a difficult task for anyone, but the geniuses managed to pull it off. They used Sugru to cobble together the most ridiculously over the top DIY squirt gun possible.

Patterned after a rotating Gatling gun, the Sugru water pistol has 6 barrels which they’ve filled with colored liquid for a nice effect in the video. It looks like they managed to get multiple shots from each barrel too! I wouldn’t want to have to go up against this in a squirt gun fight.

While the gun itself is quite impressive, what we really love about this is the fact that they put just as much effort into documenting their real process of hacking this thing together. This wasn’t some professional engineering firm it was Alex Bygrave, a tinkerer and maker who has a workshop at a makerspace called Makerversity. Alex ended up using Sugru in all types of manners here. There’s functional parts like pistons and injectors as well as more simple things like a custom molded grip.

Read more and pick up some sugru here!

If you find yourself not too busy between now and October 5, you might want to stop by the toilet exhibit at Tokyo’s science museum. I say you might want to, because sliding into a giant toilet wearing a hat that looks like poop probably isn’t for everyone, no matter how many books remind us that everyone poops. Definitely don’t skip the singing toilet choir, though.

The exhibit is intended to make people more comfortable thinking about toilets and the science behind them as less of a dirty, gross subject so that everyone can learn more about them. I mean, did you know that there’s in-flight entertainment for your poop on giant TV screens down in the pipe system? You learn something new every day.

(via Neatorama)

Previously in toilet humor

• The FDA is getting poop transplants all backed up
• Fossilized poop helps us understand early eating habits
• A vibrating pill will literally shake the poop out of you

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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First time accepted submitter FriendlySolipsist points out a story about Rhode Island Police using a dog to find hidden hard drives. The recent arrival of golden Labrador Thoreau makes Rhode Island the second state in the nation to have a police dog trained to sniff out hard drives, thumb drives and other technological gadgets that could contain child pornography. Thoreau received 22 weeks of training in how to detect devices in exchange for food at the Connecticut State Police Training Academy. Given to the state police by the Connecticut State Police, the dog assisted in its first search warrant in June pinpointing a thumb drive containing child pornography hidden four layers deep in a tin box inside a metal cabinet. That discovery led the police to secure an arrest warrant, Yelle says. “If it has a memory card, he’ll sniff it out,” Detective Adam Houston, Thoreau’s handler, says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

okkultmotionpictures:

EXCERPTS >|Journey to the Center of a Triangle (1976)

 | Hosted at: Internet Archive
 | From: Academic Film Archive of North America
 | Download: Ogg | 512Kb MPEG4 | MPEG2
 | Digital Copy: not specified

A series of Animated GIFs excerpted from Journey to the Center of a Triangle (1977): another fabulous film by the Cornwells, created on the Tektronics 4051 Graphics Terminal. Presents a series of animated constructions that determine the center of a variety of triangles, including such centers as circumcenter, incenter, centroid and orthocenter. More on the Cornwells at http://www.afana.org/cornwell.htm

According to son Eric Cornwell, here’s how the film was made: The 4051 produced only black and green vector images, not even grey scale. The film’s scenes were divided into layers in the programming, one layer for each of the colors in the scene, and each was shot separately onto high-contrast fine-grained b&w film stock. The final scene in “Journey” had 5 layers: one for each of the four colored dots, plus one for the white triangle and line. 

These five clips were then multiple-exposed onto color film on an optical printer, using colored filters to add the desired color to each black&white layer as it was copied. The resulting color was much better than a film of an RGB display would have been because the color filters on the optical printer allowed access to the full range of the color negative film, allowing much more saturated colors. All of that color is pretty much lost now, between prints fading and/or transfers to the VHS, and then viewing them on a computer screen which has a much more limited color gamut. Please imagine it all in bright, brilliant colors. (from Internet Archive)

We invite you to watch the full video HERE.

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EXCERPTS by OKKULT Motion Pictures: a collection of GIFs excerpted from out-of-copyright/historical/rare/controversial moving images. 
A digital curation project for the diffusion of open knowledge.

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Facebook these days

The US economy has changed a lot over the past four decades, and unsurprisingly, this is reflected in its equity markets.

The above pair of charts released by Goldman Sachs last week paint a nice picture of some of these transformations. One is the dramatic rise, decline and subsequent recovery of the financial sector. In terms of both earnings and market value it was a negligible part of the S&P 500 in the 1970s (when the predecessors of many of today’s top-tier investment banks were still private partnerships), but expanded steadily until the shocks of the recent global crisis.

Another is the technology sector, which at its peak during the dotcom bubble accounted for 32% of the S&P 500′s value, despite only contributing 16% of its net income. (Notice that during the financial-services bubble, the relationship was reversed; net income was a bigger share than market cap.) Now, despite lingering concerns about another bubble, tech accounts for a more reasonable 18% of the S&P’s total market value, while contributing 19% of its total earnings.

Health care has grown in both market value and earnings, a product of the US’s notorious inflation of medical costs. Finally, the energy sector has shrunk from the levels it contributed in the late 1970s and early 80s, though it’s a fair bit bigger than it was at the turn of the millennium—a sign of the fracking boom.

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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“As far as we can tell, Hobby Lobby is “Christian” because it’s closed on Sundays…and now they don’t have to pay for birth control. And that’s it. It’s not their purchasing practices. It’s not their corporate structure. Hobby Lobby does not define itself as “Christian” because of some broad international humanitarian work that everyone knows about. Like a certain fast-food chain, we are witness to a national corporation representing our faith in the thinnest of terms.”

- The Supreme Court, “Religious Freedom,” and Why No One Should Be Celebrating (via azspot)

Independence Day celebrations were marred by multiple shootings in Chicago that reportedly left at least nine dead and 60 injured.

NBC Southern California

Newport Beach lifeguard drowns in rescue try Los Angeles Times Lifeguards search for Ben Carlson, a 15-year veteran lifeguard, at Newport Beach on Sunday. (Nicole / @LadyNC). Catherine Saillant contact the reporter · Swimming. A Newport Beach lifeguard drowned Sunday during a rescue attempt near the city's pier. Lifeguard drowns in the water off S. CaliforniaHelena Independent Record Lifeguard drowns during rescue off S. CaliforniaPost-Bulletin all 110 news articles »

Gizmodo has a gif laden post about the making of Chrome Industries sneakers and it’s definitely worth checking out.

Cycling outfitter Chrome Industries makes solid gear that’s designed to last even the hardest rider for the long haul. To make its super tough new sneakers, it picked up 86 World War II boot making machines from Slovakia. The $85 Forged Rubber shoes they make will kick the crap out of your Chucks.

The 70-year-old machines use 300 degrees of heat and extreme pressure to “forge” a molten rubber sole to the canvas shoe during a 15 minute process. Usually, classic shoes like Converse All Stars or Vans have their soles essentially glued on, which leads to the soles eventually falling apart. If you’ve ever worn through your Chucks in a season, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The sweat, heat, and friction just kills the work of the cheaper, faster, gluing manufacturing process.

The Forged Rubber process, combined with much higher grade canvas materials, make Chrome’s new sneaks a lot tougher. They’ll last way longer than your Slip Ons, even if they also they’ll take you longer to break in. But like all sneakers, these too will go the way of the dumpster eventually. Even though they’re are made using old boot making machines, they’re not going to hold up as well as a contemporary stitched sole boot that’ll last you years and years.

Read more and see more gifs of the machine in action here.

(via Set-1-Giant-Weasel | Dyson’s Dodecahedron)

submitted by Julianhyde88
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Dating Tip # 421: Show her how modest you are by always assuming that she’s complimenting you. 

In his defense, he would make a lovely cat. 

So erictrautmann pointed me to this tumblr. I don’t think it’s been updated in a bit.

For the record, kellysue was a little imprecise. We were playing a Call of Cthulhu campaign, but that fizzled. We have since played a couple sessions of Fiasco, all of which have been excellent, and in which each session at least one of us (by us I mean jenvanmeter, Matthew Clark, mattfractionblog, and the afore-mentioned Kelly Sue) dies. Fraction sometimes manages to do it twice.

We played Ticket to Ride a couple weeks ago. Kelly Sue destroyed us. No joke. Won by somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 points.

Looking at trying the Fantasy Flight Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG next. Hopefully in the next week or so, actually. If it goes well, I’d like to move from the beginner set to rolling up original characters and seeing if we can’t get a campaign running (Kelly Sue has already called dibs on the Wookiee in the beginner set scenario).

All this to say that no, we’re not actually playing D&D.

But if you, unknown tumblr author, ever make it to Portland, give us a heads up. We’ll make room for you at the table.

I mean that sincerely.

The 0.9.0 update for Minecraft Pocket Edition is just around the corner, and Mojang says that when it arrives on July 10, it will be the game's biggest update yet. We suppose that's true, as the update adds infinite worlds, and it's impossible to go...

In case you ever felt proud about the paint job you gave your controllers or something, Swedish craftsman Love Hulten has created the R-Kaid-R, a portable homage to arcades that manages to look sleek and old fashioned at the same time. The...

New York Daily News

Blaze at Brooklyn high-rise that killed firefighter caused by pinched cord: FDNY New York Daily News The "beloved" and “battle-hardened” firefighter who died in a Brooklyn blaze was mourned by heartbroken family and friends Sunday as the FDNY said the fire was caused by a pinched air conditioner cord inside an apartment cluttered with junk. and more »

Would LeBron really head back to Cleveland after leaving the Cavs just four years ago?

The prevailing thought heading into the offseason has been that the Miami Heat's Big Three would remain in Miami, but there has been some speculation that a break-up could happen. And on Sunday night, we get this:

Cleveland has replaced Miami as my frontrunner to land LeBron James...

— Chris Broussard (@Chris_Broussard) July 7, 2014

Then there's this:

In pursuit of max slot for LeBron James, Cavs searching for team to take Nets' Marcus Thornton in deal to unload Jarrett Jack, sources say.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 7, 2014

This all comes on a day when people freaked out over Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert flying down to Florida. So could this actually happen?

Why this makes sense

After winning his two championships in Miami, James may want to right the wrong of "The Decision" and go back home to try and bring a title to Cleveland. It would certainly earn him back a lot of the goodwill he lost.

A move back to Cleveland would make plenty of basketball sense because of all of the young talent in place. Kyrie Irving is a stud point guard who has plenty of room to grow. Andrew Wiggins, while raw, has star potential. Not to mention all the other highly drafted talent in place.

The Cavs don't currently have max cap space, but they can clear that room by moving Jack. Clearly, that move is trying to be made.

Why this doesn't make sense

Cleveland going after James makes all the sense in the world, but Broussard was rather vague with his initial tweet, and he followed up with this:

I'm not saying LJ to Cavs is done deal or I know 4 a fact; just my gut feeling based on many conversations I've had around this story...

— Chris Broussard (@Chris_Broussard) July 7, 2014

These convos aren't sourced enough 4 me to report as fact. But I've heard enough to believe "the wind is blowing" LJ back home. We'll see...

— Chris Broussard (@Chris_Broussard) July 7, 2014

Also, while James going back to Cleveland would be a great story, is the four-time MVP willing to go back and play under Gilbert after the Cavs owner lambasted him for taking his talents to South Beach? Can James really trust a man who used Comic Sans in a letter to rip him? These are important questions here.

Finally, while there's a lot of young talent in place in Cleveland, it's talent that might not be ready to win a championship in the next year or two. James has familiarity with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, and the Heat would likely be favorites in the Eastern Conference yet again next year if they all returned, especially if there's another key addition or two.

Likelihood

Perhaps some of this information getting out is just the James camp trying to gain more leverage, but there's quite a bit of smoke here. I'd still peg the Heat as the favorites, but I'm giving this a 4/10 chance of happening.

Scientists and engineers at BAE Systems have lifted the lid on some futuristic technologies that could be incorporated in military and civil aircraft of 2040 or even earlier.

Smaller unmanned aircraft — or UAVs — are created by super high-tech on-board 3D printers, via Additive Layer Manufacturing and robotic assembly techniques. The 3D printers respond to data fed to them by a remote control room where a human commander decides what should be produced.

The UAVs are best suited to each scenario — be it a group of wide-winged aircraft for protracted or enduring surveillance — or rotary-winged UAVs to rescue single civilians or soldiers from dangerous situations. After use the UAVs could render themselves useless through dissolving circuit boards or they might safely land in a recoverable position if re-use was required.

This creates the ultimate adaptable taskforce, with a lead aircraft able to enter any unknown scenario and quickly manufacture an effective toolset for any task.