On April 24th of last year a guy named Josh Swain challenged every other Josh Swain he could find to a fight to determine the one true Josh Swain. What started out as a meme turned into an actual event that took place on Saturday, exactly one year after the challenge was issued.

there can only be one pic.twitter.com/VPamxjJ0yL

— joshua swain (@joshswainaz) April 24, 2020

Here’s the original Josh Swain’s Reddit post organizing the event. And here’s a blog post from an attendee of the Josh fight as well as another post documenting some of the many Josh variants that showed up.

Eventually the Supreme Josh was crowned, and it was 4-year-old Little Josh (though his last name isn’t technically Swain so I don’t know how valid is claim to the throne is):

update: Lil Josh (Pequeno Josh) ganhou a #JoshFight #JoshFight2021 https://t.co/ytYSw7AW57 pic.twitter.com/Stc3HpgXXu

— PulseJhon (@PulseJhon) April 24, 2021

The event ultimately raised around $8,000 for a children’s hospital as well as a bunch of donations for a local food bank. My only complaint is that they settled the battle with pool noodles instead of having an actual fight to the death Highlander-style. Now 4-year-old Josh only has the power of a 4-year-old, instead of the power of hundreds of dead Josh’s.

Keep going for a livestream from the event.

Source: Geekologie – The Josh vs Josh vs Josh fight took place and a winner was crowned

This is a compilation of comedian Scott Seiss peeking into the mind of an IKEA employee when dealing with customer complaints. He’s specifically talking about IKEA but it’s pretty applicable to any retail job.

Part 1 of all of them pic.twitter.com/xIj9uvccYc

— Scott Seiss (@ScottSeiss) April 20, 2021

Pretty accurate, but the only thing I ever thought about when I was working retail was how much I wanted to quit and/or murder every single person I had to deal with. Turns out I wasn’t designed for face-to-face interaction and typing away in a basement suits me much better.

Keep going for Part 2.

Source: Geekologie – What an IKEA employee is thinking when dealing with customer complaints

Guitar Hero streamer CarnyJared achieved a 100% Full Combo on Soulless 6, a song that was originally made as a joke and considered impossible since its release on April 1st, 2011. That’s April Fool’s Day in case it wasn’t clear. From the streamer:

A grind in the making since August, finally complete. This is currently the undisputed best FC of all time.

The song is clearly designed to be difficult and you can tell because it doesn’t sound particularly good. I mean, just watching the streamer gave me carpal tunnel. No, wait, it was all the masturbating. Quarantine has not been treating me well…

Keep going for the full video and CarnyJared’s reaction, as well as the creator’s introduction video of Soulless 6 from April 1st, 2011.

Source: Geekologie – Guitar Hero streamer achieves 100% on a song made as a joke to be impossible

A Japanese TV show revealed the popular Twitter user @azusagakuyuki was actually a 50-year-old man named Soya and he had been using photo editing apps to swap out his face.

Soya told the TV programme Getsuyou Kara Yofukashi (Sitting Up Late From Monday) that he had wanted to increase his presence on social media and believed people would prefer to see a “younger beautiful woman” rather than an old “uncle”.

“No-one will read what a normal middle-aged man, taking care of his motorcycle and taking pictures outside, posts on his account,” he said.

Well this is awkward. *zips up pants* But, I mean… *unzips pants*

Keep going for some more pictures, some internet reactions, as well as the unmasking segment from Japanese TV show Getsuyou Kara Yofukashi.

Source: Geekologie – A Japanese biker used FaceApp to trick the internet into thinking he was a young woman

Adidas has developed a technique of merging robot-woven sneakers with 3D-printed soles to create automated custom footwear in a project they’re calling STRUNG.

This is why we developed STRUNG, an industry-first textile and creation process that allows us to input athlete data into the precision placement of each thread in any direction we choose. We can build and test different structures in the software before sending our chosen design to the STRUNG robot, which places each thread into a single composite with specific performance zones and properties. The result is a lightweight upper that’s precisely fitted for support, flex, and breathability–all within one piece of material.

The STRUNG upper provides a seamless, lightweight cocoon around the foot, achieved with minimal excess material. Precision fit and support locks the heel to help prevent heel slip using stronger red threads in the heel, midfoot, and toe-box. Meanwhile, the forefoot is flexible, with softer yellow threads. The midsole is our most radical ADIDAS 4D lattice design to date–featuring a new shape that caters to forefoot strikers. The heel has been minimized to remove weight, and the rubber outsole is specifically shaped to help support grip on these fast runs.

The robot can place 2,000 threads from up to 10 different sneaker yarns in one upper section of the shoe. It sounds great, but so far the resulting shoes do not look durable at all. It seems like you might get better results by just gluing a sole onto a sock. It wouldn’t look nearly as cool, but it probably also wouldn’t fall apart after a walk down the block.

Keep going for some more shots as well as the promo video.

Source: Geekologie – Adidas is creating robot-woven sneakers with 3D-printed soles

Animal welfare officers in Krakow were called after an unusual animal was spotted lurking in a tree. It turned out to be a croissant:

“People aren’t opening their windows because they’re afraid it will go into their house,” the woman reportedly said.

But a visit to the area showed the creature in question was not a bird, or even a reptile – but a croissant.

To be fair, it does look like an animal. An animal in the shape of a flaky European pastry. You know, those kinds of animals. You see them all the time at the zoo. In the food court. Where bread and pastries are sold. Because it looks like a croissant.

Source: Geekologie – Mystery tree beast turns out to be croissant

This guy a bought a green morph suit so he wouldn’t show up in his fiancé’s Zoom meetings. It worked about as well as would be expected which is to say not at all. Personally I just wear full camouflage. It not only makes me invisible to people in Zoom meetings, it also makes me invisible to women in person too.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Guy buys green morph suit so he won’t show up in girlfriend’s Zoom meetings

Mechanical engineer Yuto Kuroki of Meiji University and colleagues hacked a 3D printer head to use as a 3-axis robotic manipulator to enable more advanced fabrication techniques like assembling and actuating parts as opposed to merely printing them. They call it the Functgraph and to demonstrate it’s abilities they did what all serious researchers do: they used it to make a bologna sandwich.

To achieve these manipulations, we customize a low-cost fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer that can attach/detach printed end-effectors which change the function of the 3D printer head (e.g. grab, break, and rotate printed objects). These techniques afford the 3D printer to fabricate and assemble complete kinetic objects such as automatons without manual processing (i.e. removing support materials and assembling objects). We conclude that a small modification to a standard 3D printer, allows us to fabricate and assemble objects without human intervention.

Not only does it make the sandwich, it makes the thing that makes the sandwich. The next logical step is to get the 3D printer to print and assemble another 3D printer and then convert that 3D printer into a sandwich-making machine.

Keep going for videos of the Functgraph in action; including making a sandwich, folding clothes, and assembling a toy car.

Source: Geekologie – Researchers convert a 3D printer into a sandwich making machine

A bear entered a Pasadena home on Saturday but was chased off by two small terriers.

Young bear visited our Pasadena hillside home and ventured into the house through open kitchen door. Our two small terriers Squirt and Mei Mei said NO.

I can only imagine the kind of teasing this bear is going to get after its friends see this video. Being chased off by a dog is bad enough, but two tiny terriers named Squirt and Mei Mei? I mean, better get used to wedgies, buddy.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Bear enters Pasadena home and is chased off by two small terriers

Michael Reeves took one of the most advanced robots ever designed and taught it to pee beer. Or, more specifically, he programmed it to locate cups and fill them up with beer. From a tube. Where it’s genitals would be. So, yeah, he taught a Boston Dynamics Spot robot to pee into a cup. Something I personally know maybe a little too much about.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Teaching a Boston Dynamics Spot robot to pee beer

Elon Musk’s Neuralink startup has released this video of a nine year old macaque playing “MindPong” with his Neuralink.

Today we are pleased to reveal the Link’s capability to enable a macaque monkey, named Pager, to move a cursor on a computer screen with neural activity using a 1,024 electrode fully-implanted neural recording and data transmission device, termed the N1 Link. We have implanted the Link in the hand and arm areas of the motor cortex, a part of the brain that is involved in planning and executing movements. We placed Links bilaterally: one in the left motor cortex (which controls movements of the right side of the body) and another in the right motor cortex (which controls the left side of the body).

Neurons in somatosensory cortex respond to touch, and neurons in the visual cortex respond to visual cues. Analogously, neurons in motor cortex modulate their activity prior to and during movement, and are thought to be involved in planning, initiating and controlling voluntary movements. Many neurons in motor cortex are directionally tuned, that is, more active for particular movement directions than others. Different neurons are tuned to different movement directions. An example of this directional modulation can be seen in the raster plot to the right (Fig. 2).

By modeling the relationship between different patterns of neural activity and intended movement directions, we can build a model (i.e., “calibrate a decoder”) that can predict the direction and speed of an upcoming or intended movement. We can go further than simply predicting the most likely intended movement given the current pattern of brain activity: we can use these predictions to control, in real time, the movements of a computer cursor, or in the video below, a MindPong paddle. The neurons with upward preferred directions clearly increase their firing rates as the monkey moves his MindPong paddle upward, and the ones with downward preferred directions increase their firing rates as Pager moves his paddle downward.

There are a lot of words here. A lot of them big. As far as I can tell they put a bunch of stuff in a monkey, made the monkey move a ball around, analyzed how the movements matched up with its neural activity, and then created a pong game that was controlled by said neural activity. Assuming what we’re seeing is real, this is pretty remarkable. I’m talking, of course, about this macaque’s ability to operate a joystick while drinking a banana smoothie.

Keep going for the full video. The first couple minutes are the “training” and then the MindPong game starts around 2:15.

Source: Geekologie – Monkey plays ‘MindPong’ with his Neuralink.

This is a compilation of footage from inside the cockpit of Blue Angels planes as they perform the following maneuvers:

The Blue Angels Diamond pilots perform the Double Farvel over Fort Lauderdale Beach at the 2019 Fort Lauderdale Air Show.

The U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, Diamond pilots perform the Diamond 360 over Lake Washington during the 2019 Boeing Seafair Air Show.

U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform over Seattle at the 2019 Boeing Seafair Air Show.

I was already impressed before just watching them but now I’m truly astounded. Maybe it’s just a trick of the camera, but it’s unbelievable how close they’re flying to each other. It’s crazy to imagine this level of skill and courage is being wasted to basically put on airplane dance shows.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Incredible cockpit view of the US Navy Blue Angels Team

A Soviet TV version of Lord of the Rings has been rediscovered after 30 years and abruptly posted on YouTube.

The 1991 made-for-TV film, Khraniteli, based on Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, is the only adaptation of his Lord of the Rings trilogy believed to have been made in the Soviet Union.

Aired 10 years before the release of the first instalment of Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy, the low-budget film appears ripped from another age: the costumes and sets are rudimentary, the special effects are ludicrous, and many of the scenes look more like a theatre production than a feature-length film.

In case you’re wondering, yes, of course this is better than Peter Jackson’s adaptation. How could it not be with a fraction of the budget and the might of 90’s Soviet filmmaking? Hollywood should be thankful it never got a full international release because it would’ve swept the Academy Awards and Peter Jackson probably would’ve quit the business entirely when he realized he could never come close to this achievement.

Keep going for the full “movie” which was broken into two parts because obviously its epic scale couldn’t be contained in a single video. There aren’t any subtitles, but you can use YouTube’s auto-translated subtitles which sort of get the job done.

Source: Geekologie – Soviet TV version of ‘Lord of the Rings’ rediscovered after 30 years

This is a clip of the time Michael went on The Price is Right and his years of autistic-like dedication to the show paid off. And, yes, I’m referring to him simply as Michael as if everybody knows him because everybody should know him. According to a commenter on Reddit:

I was there for this live. Micheal knew every price of every item on the show that day. My friend (also named Micheal) beat him on the wheel spin only because it’s the one thing this amazing dude couldn’t win through his intellect. He was shouting out the exact prices for both the showcase showdown from the audience but my buddy couldn’t hear him and overbid. Being in the audience that day represents one of the best days of my life, on vacation in Cali, endless laughter, entertainment and seeing Micheal do this remarkable feat of memorization.

If you told me this was a Zach Galifianakis sketch I would’ve believed you, because it’s hard to believe Michael is a real person and that this actually happened. I mean, I just watched it and I’m still not entirely sure Michael is a real person.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Michael the Wizard goes on ‘The Price is Right’

An unopened copy of the oldest sealed hangtab Super Mario Bros. smashed the previous record (a pathetic $114,000) for the most ever paid for a video game when it sold at auction last Friday for $660,000.

The classic Nintendo video game was purchased in late 1986 as a Christmas gift, but ended up being placed inside a desk drawer, where it remained untouched for 35 years, before being discovered earlier this year.

“It stayed in the bottom of my office desk this whole time since the day I bought it,” said the seller, who asked not to be identified. “I never thought anything about it.”

The story is fine and all, but my favorite part is how The New York Times covered it and their attempts to explain Super Mario Bros.:

It features two brothers, Mario and Luigi, who live in the Mushroom Kingdom and are charged with rescuing Princess Toadstool, who has been kidnapped by Bowser, the king of the Koopa.

In the game, players guide Mario on a quest to free the princess and save the kingdom of the Mushroom People. He navigates eight levels filled with giant mushrooms, menacing turtles and other strange obstacles.

The sad thing is I’m not sure if the people at The New York Times are insane or if I’m just so old that I can’t comprehend that people exist who don’t know what Super Mario Bros. is.

Source: Geekologie – Unopened Super Mario Bros. sells for 0,000 at auction and sets new world record

This is a video putting Skydio’s Skydio 2 autonomous tracking drone to the test and it works frighteningly well. First they track a person running through the woods, then a car driving under a bridge, then test out it’s electromagnetic shielding. And the results? Well turns out this is the perfect stalking tool because it was able to keep up with everything they were doing.

The Skydio 2 uses six 200 degree 4k color cameras to get 45 megapixels of visual sensing which it computes with AI to help navigate. Obviously the intended use case is for personal filming of sports and activities, but if you decided to just aim it on a subject I’m not entirely sure what they could do to escape aside from shooting it down. The good news is that it’s still as loud as every other drone so I’d like to see a stalker actually try and use it. It’s hard to be creepy and stealthy when there’s a flying vacuum cleaner following you around.

Keep going for the full test video as well as Skydio’s own promo video. The Skydio 2 costs $999 and you can reserve them here.

Source: Geekologie – This autonomous tracking drone is frighteningly capable

A man was shopping at Albertsons and when he got back to his car it had been invaded by 15,000 bees:

He had just finished grocery shopping, but a New Mexico man got much more than he bargained for when he returned to his car in the store’s parking lot: A swarm of 15,000 honey bees had taken over the back seat.

The man, whose name was not released, had left a window down in a Buick while he made a 10-minute stop at an Albertsons supermarket on Sunday afternoon in Las Cruces, N.M., the authorities said.

That isn’t a stock image of a beehive superimposed onto a stock image of a car. That’s the guy’s actual car after he finished shopping. That’s what he came back to. He ended up calling 911 and an off-duty firefighter relocated the hive, though I personally would’ve skipped the phone call and just accepted my new life as a bee chauffeur.

Source: Geekologie – Man finds 15,000 bees in car after grocery shopping for 10 minutes

YouTuber thomas is insane made this side-by-side comparison of the theatrical and Snyder cut of Justice League of the scene where Superman fights the Justice League. Not only is the color grading totally different, but Joss Whedon added in a bunch of “comedic” inserts with his reshoots. The biggest difference is probably that Superman doesn’t say a single word in the Snyder cut whereas Whedon decided to treat us to a bunch of reshoots so we could see their attempts at digitally removing Henry Cavill’s facial hair which, honestly, might be the funniest parts of the whole movie.

Anyways, if you haven’t watched the four hour Snyder cut what are you even doing? Having a life? Doing things? No thanks. I’d rather spend four hours watching Zack Snyder indulge himself followed by another four hours of him doing it again in black and white. That’s right, if you weren’t aware there’s also a black and white version of the Snyder cut that’s the exact same movie but in black and white and called Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Justice Is Gray. Really rolls off the tongue.

Keep going for the full side-by-side comparison.

Source: Geekologie – Side-by-side comparison of Whedon and Snyder cut of Superman fighting the Justice League

YouTuber Simone Giertz designed and built a chair for needy pets.

My dog would really prefer it if I turned myself into a dog bed. Since I’m not too keen on that project, I built her a chair instead.

It’s basically a normal chair but with steps built in and some drawers for treats. And it’s longer. And there’s a rail. Okay so it’s not a normal chair at all. Although I’ve found a better solution for myself: don’t have a pet that loves me so I can sit in my chair all by myself. All by my lonesome, lonesome, self.

Keep going for the full build.

Source: Geekologie – Simone Giertz designed a chair for needy pets

This is a video by CGP Grey using the proportions of A4 metric paper to explain everything in the Universe. Seriously. It’s clearly inspired by the classic Eames video Powers of Ten (which also zoomed in and out but using powers of ten instead of, uh, paper) but it stands on its own. It’s inspiring and informative and premised on the fact that metric paper folds in half to the same ratio. He basically tries to explain the entire Universe but the paper thing might actually be the most impressive fact presented.

Keep going for the full video as well as the original Powers of Ten.

Source: Geekologie – Using A4 metric paper to explain everything in the Universe