Science communicator Kurtis Baute set up a 300 meter long row of dominoes to represent a timeline of history from the Big Bang to now, with each domino representing 1 million years. It’s pretty incredible that he managed to make each domino, set the whole thing up, and successfully film and narrate the whole thing himself. It’s not the kind of thing you want to do multiple takes of and the fact it worked and he did it all himself is super impressive. Also, when I say he made each domino I mean he physically made each domino. Like he bought a bunch of lumber and cut each individual piece. The only thing I’ve ever been this committed to is an asylum, and that was against my will.

Keep going for the full video, along with the behind the scenes of him making each piece and setting it up.

Source: Geekologie – Visualizing the history of The Universe using 13,799 dominoes

This is a mesmerizing time-lapse of a pea being planted in a see-through container and growing over 37 days. The movement of the tendrils is so alien, and at this speed feels almost conscious. Watching it reach for the support post is like something out of War of the Worlds.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Time-lapse of a growing pea in a see-through container

Quarantine does weird things to people, and in the case of engineer Ethan Rosenthal it made him develop a system for optimizing a peanut butter and banana sandwich using computer vision and machine learning.

So, how do we make optimal peanut butter and banana sandwiches? It’s really quite simple. You take a picture of your banana and bread, pass the image through a deep learning model to locate said items, do some nonlinear curve fitting to the banana, transform to polar coordinates and “slice” the banana along the fitted curve, turn those slices into elliptical polygons, and feed the polygons and bread “box” into a 2D nesting algorithm.

You may have noticed that I supposedly started this project in the Spring, and it’s now August. Like most idiot engineers, I had no idea how complicated this stupid project was going to be, but time’s meaningless in quarantine, so here we are.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing people spend insane amounts of work on things that are absolutely pointless. It’s just a shame that all of his work was for nothing, because obviously the perfect peanut butter and banana sandwich is when you cover a banana in peanut butter and then wrap a slice of bread around it like a hot dog. The only downside is it kind of feels like you’re eating a big mushy penis but that’s a small price to pay to enter flavor country.

You can check out the computer science-heavy explanation for how Ethan’s system works on his site. It’s obviously the work of a lunatic. A brilliant, beautiful lunatic.

Source: Geekologie – Creating the optimal peanut butter and banana sandwich using computer vision and machine learning

IKEA Taiwan recreated their 2021 catalog in Animal Crossing and the results are pretty good considering the game’s limitations. The cleverest is probably this one, where they used a character to stand in for a hanging light and pillow:

It sort of reminds me of when I tried to recreate an IKEA catalog in The Sims. And by recreate, I mean trap each of my Sims in an empty doorless room where they would end up just peeing themselves and crying. What’s that? I should see a therapist? You sound just like my parents.

Keep going for more of the recreations.

Source: Geekologie – IKEA recreates their 2021 catalog in Animal Crossing

A 33-year-old artist from Kyoto, Japan known as Ipnot has been creating insanely realistic embroidery artwork for the past five years.

Ipnot says some designs take just sevens day to complete whereas others can take over one month.

All the pieces are amazing, but the “cheese pull” of the pizza at 0:35 is jaw dropping. It’s hard to believe the entire thing is just embroidery. If I didn’t see them actually sewing it, I would’ve assumed it was a trick or maybe they just glued an actual pizza to their embroidery backing.

Keep going for the video or check out their Instagram page here. Skip to 0:35 for the amazement or just watch the embedded Instagram post.

Source: Geekologie – Incredibly realistic food embroidery with a mind boggling pizza “cheese pull”

This is a video of YouTuber The Hacksmith learning to pilot a giant Furrion Exo-Bionic Prosthesis mech. If you’re wondering what the purpose of this mech is, there is no purpose. The company literally built them with the idea of starting a mech racing league. From their Kickstarter:

Fourteen years ago our team had a grand vision for a global racing league that would pit multiple world-class athletes in head-to-head competitions, through complex, technical obstacle courses, wearing giant, powered mech suits. The technology did not exist. The sport did not exist. Many thought it was impossible. Our team, however, was determined to bring this dream to life!

Prosthesis has no joysticks, no steering wheel, no foot pedals. Just 100% limb-for-limb pilot control. That’s right. Prosthesis has no automation, no giros, no ability to walk or balance by itself. It relies solely on the pilot for all its movement. Your arm and leg movements are amplified to control the mech’s four giant, steel legs, move for move. That’s what makes it a sport.

The Prosthesis mech stands 15 feet tall, 18 feet wide, and weighs 8,000 lbs. Seeing it in motion is actually pretty impressive. It’s just a shame the only thing they could think to do with the mechs was to race them. I have zero interest in watching people trying to walk giant lumbering machines across a finish line, but attach some chainsaws and blow torches and make them fight and I’ll be the first person to sign up for whatever stupid network it’ll be airing on.

Keep going for the full video, along with Furrion’s promo video for their racing league.

Source: Geekologie – Learning to pilot a giant Furrion Exo-Bionic Prosthesis mech

An AI “pilot” developed by Heron Systems beat a graduate from the Air Force’s highly selective USAF Weapons School 5 to 0 in DARPA’s simulated aerial dogfight contest last week.

Heron Systems’ AI was extremely aggressive in the games, with its AI pilot consistently able to turn and score killing hits on the simulated F-16 piloted by an unnamed Air Force pilot, with the call sign “Banger,” a graduate of the Air Force’s highly selective Weapons School at Nellis AFB. The AI exhibited “superhuman aiming ability” during the simulation, Mock said.

While the trials were not in anyway “definitive” of an AI pilot’s future capabilities or even its viability, Mock said, at the same time “what we saw was that in this limited area, in this specific scenario, we’ve got AI that works.”

DARPA intends to take the simulator used in the trials, and the simulations, to Nellis, where other Air Force pilots can take a stab at trying to beat AI pilots. Next steps will be to move on to testing AI pilots’ capabilities to perform other types of aerial combat missions.

Am I the only one who thinks it’s not a great idea to be training AI to be better at killing humans? The inevitable next step is for them to test the AI in an actual physical F-16, and the inevitable next step after that is the plot to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I hope DARPA is also working on time machines, because it really seems like we’re going to need them to undo the coming AI apocalypse.

Source: Geekologie – AI destroys top F-16 pilot In DARPA dogfight simulation

Because Microsoft Flight Simulator pulls data from Bing Maps and OpenStreetMap to create its usually photo-realistic landscapes, the occasional glitch occurs when the data is missing or incorrect. Apparently a typo in OpenStreetMap put a Sydney building at 212 floors instead of 2 and the result is this beautiful monolith.

The error was later corrected by another @openstreetmap user, BUT, in the interim, Microsoft took an export of the data and used it to build Flight Simulator 2020. The result… this incredible monolith (2/2) pic.twitter.com/wXKBK03Gcd

— Liam O 🦆 (@liamosaur) August 20, 2020

In Microsoft Flight Simulator a bizarrely eldritch, impossibly narrow skyscraper pierces the skies of Melbourne’s North like a suburban Australian version of Half-Life 2’s Citadel, and I am -all for it- pic.twitter.com/6AH4xgIAWg

— Alexander Muscat (@alexandermuscat) August 19, 2020

I learned my lesson about trusting user-editable data after I turned in my college essay on Thomas Edison and got an F-. Turns out he wasn’t a “poo-poo pee-pee butt” as I was informed by Wikipedia.

Keep going for a few more of the oddities users have found in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Source: Geekologie – Glitches and weird buildings in Microsoft Flight Simulator

Sushi Singularity is a restaurant concept from Open Meals that sends diners a DNA kit prior to visiting to create hyper-personlized 3D-printed sushi to fit their nutritional needs. Sites are reporting that this will be an actual restaurant opening in Tokyo in 2020, but it’s so ludicrous I’m honestly still not sure if it’s real or a proof of concept.

I don’t know what things are like in Japan, but in what world are people okay just sending their DNA and urine samples to a random restaurant just to eat a meal? I mean, it’s weird enough that my accountant always asks me to masturbate into a cup for him every time I do my taxes. Wait, what? That’s not normal? Hold on, I need to make some phone calls.

Keep going for some more shots of their 3D printed “sushi” and a video of their concept. I don’t know anything about the state of 3D printed food, but I can’t imagine the actual product will or can look anything like what they’re showing.

Source: Geekologie – Sushi resturant uses biometric data to create personalized 3D-printed sushi

This is a video of, well, I’m not sure. The title is “sharpest egg kitchen knife in the world” but that doesn’t quite capture what the video is about. Nothing quite captures what the video is about. Yes, it’s a Japanese man making a kitchen knife out of eggs, but it’s somehow even weirder than that sounds. Everything the guy does makes sense, he just does it in the weirdest way possible. It’s like if a scientist made an experimental art video for a tutorial site and was also maybe a serial killer.

Keep going for the video. It’s twelve glorious minutes and I watched every insane second.

Source: Geekologie – Surreal video of a Japanese man making a kitchen knife out of eggs

Two parks in Tokyo have installed transparent public toilets so users can inspect their cleanliness before using them. The restrooms use “smart glass” which turns opaque when the stalls are locked.

The bathrooms have been installed in two of the city’s parks so far: the Haru-no-Ogawa Community Park and the Yoyogi Fukamachi Mini Park.

The installations are part of The Tokyo Toilet project, which is redesigning 17 of the city’s public bathrooms with different designers.

According to the designer Shigeru Ban:

“There are two things we worry about when entering a public restroom, especially those located at a park. The first is cleanliness, and the second is whether anyone is inside. Using the latest technology, the exterior glass turns opaque when locked. This allows users to check the cleanliness and whether anyone is using the toilet from the outside. At night, the facility lights up the park like a beautiful lantern.”

This is the kind of thing that would only work in Japan. Have you seen the public bathrooms in the United States? You install transparent bathrooms here and the only thing you’ll be doing is showing people poop-covered walls and floors so dirty even cockroaches give pause before entering.

Keep going for some more pictures and what the restrooms look like lit up at night.

Source: Geekologie – Tokyo installed see-through public toilets in a park to let people inspect their cleanliness before using them

Artist Daniel Voshart has taken it upon himself to create photorealistic portraits of Roman Emperors using machine learning applied to images of their busts.

Using the neural-net tool Artbreeder, Photoshop and historical references, I have created photoreal portraits of Roman Emperors. For this project, I have transformed, or restored (cracks, noses, ears etc.) 800 images of busts to make the 54 emperors of The Principate (27 BC to 285 AD).

Artistic interpretations are, by their nature, more art than science but I’ve made an effort to cross-reference their appearance (hair, eyes, ethnicity etc.) to historical texts and coinage. I’ve striven to age them according to the year of death — their appearance prior to any major illness.

My goal was not to romanticize emperors or make them seem heroic. In choosing bust / sculptures, my approach was to favor the bust that was made when the emperor was alive. Otherwise, I favored the bust made with the greatest craftsmanship and where the emperor was stereotypically uglier — my pet theory being that artists were likely trying to flatter their subjects.

You can buy a print with all the portraits on Voshart’s Etsy page. Obviously some artistic liberties were taken, but it’d be cool to apply the same methodology to, say, the Venus de Milo. No, you’re the pervert. I’m just an appreciator of art. Sexy, naked, art.

Source: Geekologie – Creating photorealistic portraits of Roman Emperors using their sculptures

A 7-year-old from New Zealand stuffed a LEGO piece up his nose in 2018 and his doctor and parents assumed it either disappeared or would move through his digestive tract when they couldn’t find it. Two years later, the boy went to sniff a cupcake and the missing LEGO piece fell out of his nose.

Seven-year-old Sameer Anwar of Dunedin, in the south of New Zealand, inserted a tiny piece of Lego up his nose in 2018. Sameer’s father, Mudassir, and his wife became alarmed when their son told them he had lost a piece of Lego up his nose, and couldn’t find it.

With Sameer showing no signs of pain or distress, his parents soon forgot about the ordeal. “Since then he’s never complained or anything,” Anwar said, telling the Guardian his son was “quite playful and a mischievous character”.

Anwar believes the piece was part of a Lego character’s arm.

Then last night, the “unbelievable” happened Anwar said. A plate of pink cupcakes prompted his son to lean down and take a great big sniff of them.

Immediately, his nose began to hurt. Thinking he’d sniffed up some cake crumbs, his mother helped him blow his nose, hoping to thoroughly clear his nostrils.

But instead of pink cake crumbs, out dropped a tiny piece of black Lego, covered in fungus.

It was not the first time Sameer has put something up his nose. When he was three he pushed an imitation pearl up his nostril, but in that instance, his father was able to retrieve it.

Covered in…fungus? Do they mean boogers or was the thing actually covered in fungus? I guess considering this kid can’t stop stuffing things up his nose they should be thankful it didn’t come out with its own Sea Monkeys colony.

Source: Geekologie – LEGO piece falls out of boy after being stuck up nose for two years

In arguably the best use of the technology yet, YouTuber Shamook deepfaked Harrison Ford into Solo: A Star Wars Story, replacing Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo. I don’t think anybody would be upset if Disney/Lucasfilm released an official special edition of the entire movie like this. I mean, besides Alden. I guess he might be upset that audiences would want to completely replace his face with a face they actually want to see. But hey, that’s his fault for not being born with Harrison Ford’s face and voice and trying to play Han Solo.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Harrison deepfaked into ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ as Han Solo

Remember that guy who built his own mechanical prosthetic hand? Well apparently he wasn’t satisfied with mechanical fingers, and now he’s fashioning functional prosthetic hand tools like this 1/4″ impact driver. At this rate, by the end of the pandemic he’ll have a full Mega Man collection of swappable attachments. Who needs fingers when you’ve got hand that can shoot saw blades out of it?

Keep going for the video of the hand drill prosthetic in action.

Source: Geekologie – Man with missing fingers creates impact driver prosthetic device

Apple removed the insanely popular game Fortnite from the App Store last week after the game developer Epic created their own in-app payment system to avoid paying Apple’s fees. In response, Epic is suing Apple and also created this Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite video mocking Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial.

As of this post, Google has also pulled Fortnite from the Google Play Store. Both Apple and Google’s app stores take a 30% cut from every app, meaning Epic has already paid over $500 million to Apple and Google just to be listed. It’s hard to feel sorry for Epic since they’re also a billion dollar company, but their lawsuit could have a huge impact for indie developers and the future of apps as a whole. Hopefully after the dust has settled I can convince Epic to pay me $500 million to be listed in my app store instead. And sure, my app store is less of a store and more of a notepad where I write down the names of apps I like, but for that price I’d be willing to highlight the listing with a highlighter.

Keep going for Epic’s Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite video as well as Apple’s original 1984 commercial.

Source: Geekologie – Epic mocks Apple’s iconic ad in their ‘Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite’ video

Over the course of two months, designer Lydia Cambron did a shot for shot reenactment of the iconic ending scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey in her apartment.

2020: an isolation odyssey is a reenactment of the iconic finale of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968). Restaged in the context of home quarantine, the journey through time adapts to the mundane dramas of self-isolation-poking fun at the navel-gazing saga of life alone and indoors.

This project began in late March and was completed in late May, spanning the height of the pandemic in New York City. Staged in a one bedroom Brooklyn apartment, 2020 presents an obvious similarity to the domestic setting of 2001. The stacked videos and synced movements also reveal parallels in emotion. The narrowness of daily life in a single space, transitioning from confusion to acceptance, a distorted sense of time, and ‘returning’ after a transformational event-all experiences analogous to quarantine.

How are people so productive in quarantine? The only thing I’ve done the past few months is eat cereal and master Fortnite and even that is an exaggeration because I’ve nowhere near mastered Fortnite. Why are 8-year-old kids shooting me in the face and then making fun of my mom? Just let me build my fort in peace!

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Designer reenacts ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ in quarantine

Researchers from the Seoul National University Biorobotics Laboratory have developed a lightweight and low-profile crawling phone case robot. The legs retract flat when not in use, keeping the form factor as small as possible. According to IEEE Spectrum:

To move the robot forward, a linkage (attached to a motor through a gearbox) pushes the leg back against the ground, as the knee joint keeps the leg straight. On the return stroke, the joint allows the leg to fold, making it compliant so that it doesn’t exert force on the ground. The transmission that sends power from the gearbox to the legs is just 1.5-millimeter thick, but this incredibly thin and lightweight mechanical structure is quite powerful. A non-phone case version of the robot, weighing about 23 g, is able to crawl at 21 centimeters per second while carrying a payload of just over 300 g. That’s more than 13 times its body weight.

Okay, so it can’t technically choose where to crawl, it can sort of just vibrate itself in a relative forward motion. However, it’s not hard to imagine this thing with enough sensors to actually make it functional enough to crawl to a charging pad or, better yet, into your hand. Sure, right now it looks like a disgusting vibrating phone monster, but imagine if that disgusting vibrating phone monster could also think. No matter where you go, you look over your shoulder and there’s your phone. Sitting. Waiting. Plotting.

Keep going for video of the case in action.

Source: Geekologie – A smartphone case that can crawl to a wireless charger

The last Blockbuster Video on the planet is now available for rent on AirBnb at the whopping price of $4/night. Located in Bend, Oregon, the rental sleeps four and is described as a 1 bed half-bath studio. According to their description on AirBnb:

When you call dibs on this stay, you’re booking a night back in the 90s, but this time you won’t have to beg your parents to rent the latest horror flick-we’ll give you the keys to the entire store!

On 8/17 at 1PM PT, we’re inviting movie lovers from the area to request to book one of these three, one-night stays that will take place on 9/18, 9/19 and 9/20 for up to four people.

So what’s the 411? As the last standing location in the world, our BLOCKBUSTER store is an ode to movie magic, simpler times and the sense of community that could once be found in BLOCKBUSTER locations around the world. Over the past few months, we’ve been missing the regular visits from friends, neighbors and tourists from around the world. So, we’re opening our store to three quarantine pods of Deschutes County guests for a socially-distanced movie night, just like those of decades past!

Keeping our customers (and now our guests!) comfortable and feeling at home is our priority. You’ll have the store to yourself from check-in to check-out, and it will be cleaned prior to your arrival in accordance to Airbnb’s Enhanced Cleaning Protocol which is informed by recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Plus we’ll provide you with a pack of face coverings, disinfectant wipes, and endless hand sanitizer!

I’m honestly a little confused as to why they made it so cheap. They could’ve doubled or tripled the price and people would still pay just to say they had se– I mean were able to sleep and not have sex in a Blockbuster Video.

Keep going for a few more shots of the converted Blockbuster Video.

Source: Geekologie – You can spend the night at the last Blockbuster Video for /night

13 were injured Monday afternoon when a gas station in Volgograd, Russia exploded. Apparently a fire had broken out at the gas station and firefighters were unable to prevent it from getting out of control and turning into a scene from a Michael Bay movie. If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if a gas station exploded, it is exactly what you expect. My favorite part is how everybody driving just casually makes a U-turn and nopes out of there. It’s Russia, so I half expected them to continue about their business and drive towards the comically large explosion like nothing had happened.

Keep going for some videos of the explosion. Nobody died, so you can appreciate it for all its fiery glory.

Source: Geekologie – A gas station exploded in Volgograd, Russia