Timmy the Tooth

1. I will abolish the IRS!
2. I will abolish homework!
3. I will sign a full repeal of Obamacare!
4. I will put an ice cream sundae machine in the cafeteria with all the toppings!
5. I will never apologize!
6. I will make Fridays pizza party days!
7. I will kill terrorists!
8. I will bring dodgeball back to P.E.!
9. I will carpet bomb!
10. I will eliminate the Department of Education!
11. I will build a fence around the kickball field!
12. I will apologize if I make a mistake!
13. I will put America first!
14. I will build a fence!
15. I will put French fries back on the lunch menu!

Ted Cruz: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14
4th Grade: 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12
Both: 15

[ By WebUrbanist in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

Toy-maker Mattel has announced a 3D printer with a novel application: a way for children to make their own custom toys using a simple digital interface. The app, designed by Autodesk, is easy to learn, fast to use and simple enough even younger kids can use it. The gadget itself is priced at $300.

The ThingMaker program comes with a number of templates and basic characters that can be customized in terms of color and texture, but also allows for from-scratch designs. Each design can be saved for future editing and printing as well, in standard formats that work with or beyond the printer.

Finished objects are only one piece of the puzzle, however: the idea is to also allow for printing, connecting and assembling larger creations from smaller parts. Ball-and-socket joints can be easily included for attachment purposes, helping facilitate complex dolls and action figures. Eventually, Mattel may also facilitate combinations and accessories associated with existing branded toy lines, like Barbie and Hot Wheels.

Various safety measures have been included to keep kids safe, from an automatically-locking door to a retractable print head. For liability reasons they are listing it as a device for kids ages 13 or older.

“In today’s digital age, it’s more important than ever for families to transcend the digital world and make their ideas real,” said Aslan Appleman, senior director, at Mattel. “ThingMaker pushes the boundaries of imaginative play, giving families countless ways to customize their toys and let their creativity run wild.”

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[ By WebUrbanist in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

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[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Fed up with his fast-paced life in New York City, Foster Huntington quit his job, hopped into a Volkswagen van and traveled around the country before settling in Washington state to build his dream treehouse dwelling complete with a skate bowl and wood-fired soaking tub. The photos alone are enough to make anyone daydream about doing the same. Set against a hazy landscape just across the Columbia River from the Oregon border, two compact structures are nestled high up in the fir trees, connected by a meandering bridge.

The 27-year-old adventurer and photographer gathered a group of friends to help him make his dream into a reality. It took them about a year to complete ‘the Cinder Cone,’ as he calls it, with one building functioning as a sleeping cabin and the other a workshop. Each measures about 200 square feet, and the sleeping cabin has bunk beds and hammocks to fit a group.

The getaway feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but it’s close to Portland. The spacious hot tub on a deck further down the hillside keeps things cozy in cold weather, and Huntington and his guests have their own private skate park just a few steps down from the workshop. The friends involved in the building process referred to the Cinder Cone as “big-boys camp” and “Neverland.” It’s all very Portlandia, and The New York Times called it ‘Bro-topia,’ which sounds about right, but it’s hard to deny that the place is incredibly dreamy.

 

Huntington has produced both a short film and a photo book documenting the building process, and lots of photos – from the very beginning of the project to its enviable usage today – can be seen on his Instagram. 

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[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Manchester United are on track to become the first British club to earn more than £500m in one year despite lack of success.

Carly Fiorina dropped out of the presidential race this afternoon, via Facebook message, a day after her seventh-place finish, with just 4 percent of the vote, in the New Hampshire primary. The “And Then There Were None”-esque winnowing of the GOP presidential field continues.

Fiorina entered the campaign in May of last year, the only female Republican candidate, touting her leadership experience as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. If there was a lane for Fiorina in what was once a 17-lane autobahn-style highway of a GOP race, then it was one for a hybrid vehicle: She was the outsider-establishment candidate, running largely on her businesswoman bona fides and having never held elected office, and a gender warrior to boot.

Fiorina garnered attention early in the primary season for her debate performances, particularly in response to personal attacks launched by Donald Trump. “Look at that face,” he said of Fiorina, according to a September Rolling Stone article. “Would anyone vote for that?” In a Sept. 16 debate, Fiorina fired back: “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.” Her performance was also notable for her claims about undercover videos of a Planned Parenthood clinic, which Fiorina wrongly said showed “a fully formed fetus” kicking on the table.

Not coincidentally, Fiorina’s support in the polls reached its all-time high in September:

But heading into the late fall, winter and the voting contests of 2016, Fiorina had all but disappeared from the conversation. Her ground game was virtually non-existent; in Iowa, she had no field offices and only two paid staff members. Her most notable moments in the campaign remained in debates, where she took on an attack-dog role against Hillary Clinton in particular.

Fiorina’s parting message for supporters contained a message directed at women in particular: “To young girls and women across the country, I say: do not let others define you. Do not listen to anyone who says you have to vote a certain way or for a certain candidate because you’re a woman. That is not feminism. Feminism doesn’t shut down conversations or threaten women. It is not about ideology. It is not a weapon to wield against your political opponent. A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses and uses all her God-given gifts. And always remember that a leader is not born, but made. Choose leadership.”

Liverpool's owners scrap their planed £77 ticket and apologise for the "distress caused" by last week's announcement.

[ By WebUrbanist in Culture & History & Travel. ]

Driving along a straight highway in the American countryside, you may find yourself forced to turn right or left, then turn again just to keep moving ahead, all to compensate for a rectilinear planning system imposed on a spherical planet.

Picture running two fingers along a globe from the equator to the North Pole, starting an inch apart but following parallel lines. Eventually, they will converge and ultimately they will touch. At smaller scales, the effect is all but invisible, but when tens of miles are involved, and as seen from the sky, it becomes quite pronounced.

Dutch artist and photographer Gerco de Ruijter dug into the history of this phenomena after noticing these periodic “grid corrections” strange during an artist residency at the Ulrich Museum in Wichita, Kansas, that appeared to happen for no immediately apparent reason. They take various shapes and forms, including zigzags, angles and curves, and some are less obvious than others (except from above).

The cause dates back centuries, to the egalitarian Jefferson Grid, designed to ensure equal and fair land distribution by carving up rectangular townships the undeveloped country west of the original 13 states. Each was six square miles, and framed by borders and roads running in straight lines, parceled for sale and development in part to pay off debts following the Revolutionary War.

Those implementing Thomas Jefferson’s plan stumbled upon a flaw in its perfectly geometrical approach, analogous to the classic dilemma of fitting a square peg in a round hole.

“It did not take long for legislators to understand that a township could not be exactly six miles on each side if the north-south lines were to follow the lines of longitude, which converged, or narrowed, to the north,” explains landscape architect James Corner in Taking Measures Across the American Landscape. “The grid was, therefore, corrected every four townships to maintain equal allocations of land.”

“This added up to a detour every 24 miles, from sea to shining sea,” writes Geoff Manaugh. “These particular doglegs are most clearly seen far from urban centers, in the agricultural countryside, where the regular, quilted appearance of rural land use makes them more visible.” There are perhaps larger lessons to be found in this geometric anomaly, about the best-laid plans and how they intersect with an imperfectly-aligned reality.

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[ By WebUrbanist in Culture & History & Travel. ]

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In the latest from his series of cartoons, David Squires looks at the current issues facing Premier League bigwigs. And you can find David’s archive of cartoons here

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I had everything I needed to shoot a brand new chicken wing video, except for one key ingredient; a working oven. Yes, my oven decided to take the rest of Super Bowl week off, as did my oven repairman, but these bacon jalapeno popper puffs came out so well, I decided to designate this as an official blessing in disguise.

I used to be of the mindset that if cooking a stew for a long time is a good idea, then cooking it even longer is a better idea. Long story short, you definitely can overcook beef stew. But how do you know when it's done? What sort of changes in the meat should you look for? I set up an experiment to figure this out. Read More

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

Jewelry for urbanists has taken a new turn with these silver, gold and platinum cityscapes, each featuring iconic buildings, monuments and landmarks from major metropolitan centers around the world.

Ola Shekhtman, a goldsmith from North Carolina, has crafted rings around cities including San Francisco, Boston, New York City, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin and Hong Kong, selling them online via Etsy.

Growing up in Siberia, Ola wanted to travel the world, eventually visiting London and San Francisco before moving to New York.

With the help of 3D-modeling software, she created this series to capture the spirit of places she has been and those she yet wishes to visit. Buyers can likewise decide whether to pick places they live, favorite past points of travel or goal-oriented rings for desired future destinations.

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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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I am seeking people out here to see if anyone has any information about who may have taken a gigantic shit on the windshield of my brand new Tesla Model X.:

“What’s more, the CPD ‘absolutely refused’ to help me, a tax paying citizen, clean the shit off of my car. But they obviously didn’t hesitate to tell me I could not drive with the poop on my windshield because it would obstruct my visibility.”

“This is not a joke.”

[ By Steph in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

What’s behind the giant Oreo-shaped vault door mounted to a bright blue garage in midtown Manhattan? Curious passersby who decide to approach and find out for themselves will have the most authentic and rewarding answer to that question, but the rest of us can live vicariously through photos and video of this clever interactive ad installation promoting the cookie brand’s new flavor.

Once you open that portal-like door, a sign greets you with this message: ‘Welcome to the Oreo Wonder Vault – Pull the lever to begin.’ Follow the directions and a box of free cookies will come sliding down a conveyer belt, delivered directly to you via slide. This time, it’s ‘Filled Cupcake’ flavor.

Oreo tells Ad Week that as many as 50 prototype flavors and over 100 additional ideas can be in the Wonder Vault at any time, and it can take up to 18 months to perfect each one before it’s ready for release. “The limited edition process never stops; we have lot of flavor ideas just waiting to make their way to the world.”

The fun installation is located somewhere near 18th street between 7th and 8th Avenues, and appears to have already delivered all the free cookies it had to offer. The new flavor will be in stores on February 8th.

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[ By Steph in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

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If you're anything like us, you've spent the last few days (or weeks) plotting out your Super Bowl spread: your nachos, your queso, your chili, your wings. But, just in case you haven't tackled the beverage side of the menu, we wanted to offer a few suggestions. Read More

It's safe to say that what constitutes the "best" chili will remain a contentious subject for all time. But here at Serious Eats, we believe that with the right technique, any kind of chili can be a winner. We can't promise that the version you end up making will fit all your Super Bowl party guests' individual visions of The One True Chili, but we can assure you that each of these 15 recipes is a delicious argument for its kind. Read More

$1 out of every $16 Donald Trump spent in the past three months was spent on hats

(h/t colinacurtis)

I’ve been exploring Neapolitan pizzas in NYC, but I haven’t had a better one than I did yesterday at Citizen Pie, a new addition to the Cleveland food scene, in a once gritty neighborhood directly across from Beachland Ballroom, one of the most cutting-edge/eclectic music venues in the state. Chef Vytauras Sasnauskas, Chef V, a native of Lithuania who arrived here in … No, stop … That was how I intended to begin this post, until now, having returned home from my second consecutive meal there. You see, on this night (last night) I’d brought my 16 y.o. son, James, and his friend there on the pretext that they would eat the best pizza they’d ever had. These boys like their pizza so much that they once actually bought a pizza at Brothers pizza on Coventry in Cleveland Heights, Read On »

Liam Doyle, who refers to himself as 'Shakespeare's Understudy', shares his musical talent while at the FA People's Cup.

Leeds United sign Brentford midfielder Toumani Diagouraga for an undisclosed fee on a two-and-a-half-year deal.

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

Designed to address the visual processing problems associated with dyslexia, this font uses a set of tailored strategies to make reading easier for those with the disability.

Christian Boer developed Dyslexie from first-hand knowledge of its effects. “When they’re reading, people with dyslexia often unconsciously switch, rotate and mirror letters in their minds,” he explains.

“Traditional typefaces make this worse, because they base some letter designs on others, inadvertently creating ‘twin letters’ for people with dyslexia.”

For simplicity, clarity and consistency, most typefaces involve numerous mirrored letters, such as an ‘m’ that is a doubled ‘n’ which in turn is an upside-down ‘u’, or ‘b’ flipped to become ‘p’s and ‘q’s.

To address this, Boer thickened the bottom portions of letters, making it more clear which end is up and creating clearer distinctions between different characters in the process. Larger spaces and punctuation are also made to make everything more legible.

“By changing the shape of the characters so that each is distinctly unique, the letters will no longer match one another when rotated, flipped or mirrored,” Boer said. “Bolder capitals and punctuation will ensure that users don’t accidentally read into the beginning of the next sentence.”

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[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

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dabneycoleperson:

this is still one of the best

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is covering the 2016 presidential campaign for Hulu

In the latest from his series of cartoons, David Squires looks back at the past round of Premier League games. And you can find David’s archive of cartoons here

Continue reading...

Most of the time, my goal is to make the best-tasting food in the least amount of time possible, and if I can use a convenient supermarket product to help me get there, all the better. The problem is, using some of those products means you end up sacrificing on quality. Here's my list of 22 common supermarket ingredients that you should never put in your cart, along with suggestions on what to look for instead. Read More

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

If you’re old enough to remember making quarter calls on pay phones, you might also be old enough to recall an edgier, grittier, graffiti-covered New York City, when the streets were lined with mom and pop shops and punk legends vomited on the sidewalk outside CBGB. Whether you mourn those days or celebrate the city’s evolution, slick corporate facades and general gentrification have swept most of that away, but somehow, the fossil-like remains of half-functional phone booths still stand on many corners. Soon, that will change, too.

In an age in which just about everybody has a cell phone and people under 25 barely even know what a landline is, the need for these booths has vastly diminished, and they tend to just take up valuable sidewalk space. Soon, most of them will be replaced with something the city could actually use: a system of free, super-fast wi-fi hubs via a project called LinkNYC. These hubs transmit ‘gigabit wi-fi,’ which is up to 100 times faster than average public wi-fi and mobile LTE networks.

In addition to offering wi-fi to anyone nearby equipped with their own device, the kiosks will feature built-in tablets that enable web browsing, maps, directions and access to city services like transit. Lest you worry that marginalized people who can’t afford gadgets won’t be able to make calls, the kiosks also offer free phone calls to anywhere in the U.S. using either the Vonage app on the tablet or the tactile keypad and microphone. You can plug in your own headphones for privacy, and there’s a dedicated red 911 button for emergencies. Oh, yeah: you can charge your gadgets here, too.

The streamlined design of the hubs takes up less public space, and illuminated ads on the sides fund the whole shebang. The city is in the process of replacing over 7,500 pay phones across five boroughs with the kiosks. LinkNYC is currently in beta phase, with trial kiosks going up around the city and at least 500 more set to be installed by summer 2016.

top image via: runs with scissors/Flickr Creative Commons

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[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

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