This is the announcement trailer for Nintendo’s Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit , an augmented reality Mario Kart game that uses actual physical Karts with cameras attached to them to turn your physical living space into a Mario Kart track. According to Nintendo:

Created in partnership with Velan Studios, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit brings the fun of the Mario Kart series into the real world by using a Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch Lite** system to race against opponents using a physical Kart. The physical Kart responds to boosts in-game and in the real world, stops when hit with an item and can be affected in different ways depending on the race. Players place gates to create a custom course layout in their home, where the only limit is their imagination. Race against Koopalings in Grand Prix, unlock a variety of course customizations and costumes for Mario or Luigi, and play with up to four players in local multiplayer mode.*** Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, which is available in a Mario Set or Luigi Set, launches on Oct. 16 at a suggested retail price of $99.99.

Assuming it works as advertised, this might be the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen. Sure, the iPhone is great and this whole “internet” thing is pretty interesting, but combining Mario Kart with physical remote control cars might be the pinnacle of human achievement. The only problem is most of us don’t live in mansions so I don’t know how fun a racing game can be when each lap only takes four seconds.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – ‘Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit’ turns your living room into a Mario Kart level

Simon Berger is a Swiss street artist who makes portraits by shattering glass. I mean the dude literally just squats over a piece of glass with a hammer and then keeps hitting it until a portrait appears. And obviously now that I know this is a thing, I’m going to be keeping his videos saved to my phone to explain to any authorities or concerned citizens when they see me smashing things on the street with a hammer. I’m just making art. Don’t even worry that your car’s windshield is my canvas.

Keep going for some of his portraits as well as a timelapse of him literally hammering out a piece. You can check out his official site here.

Source: Geekologie – Street artist makes portraits by hitting windows with hammers

Photographer Arjun Menon shot this incredible image on his Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra using household objects and action figures. From Arjun:

The theme for this image was time travel, I wanted to show an ancient abandoned landscape, imagine Mad-max with an Indian twist. We see Batman, looking at himself in the past, entering the time portal. I have always been fascinated by time travel, this scene was inspired by the OG “Back to the Future” scene where Morty sees himself using the DeLorean as a time machine and disappearing.

BTS (video coming up on my instagram) The whole idea came about when I realised my photography ring lights could actually pull of looking like a time portal. I used a mist spray for the smoke and a bunch of other props. Used bedsheets with flour on it to recreate a desert look. Used a lot of decorative props at home to give a ancient abandoned civilization look. Had to rack focus from 3 exposures to make one final image 🙂

I’ve been finding creative uses for the random things I find around my home as well. And by creative uses I mean I’ve been smashing them with a hammer. That’s sort of like what this guy did, right? I think it’s safe to say we’ve both been equally creative and productive in quarantine.

Keep going for one more behind the scenes shot and check out more of Arjun’s work on his Instagram.

Source: Geekologie – Incredible Batman landscape shot using action figures and a phone

Earlier today, magician David Blaine completed his latest endeavor called Ascension, where he held 52 helium balloons and floated off into the sky until he reached 24,900 feet before skydiving back to the ground. The stunt was originally planned for NYC, but was moved to Arizona due to the apparent complexity. For reference, normal skydiving altitude is 10,000 feet. Tom Cruise’s HALO jump in Mission Impossible: Fallout was at 25,000 feet, but that was done with an oxygen mask and helmet.

Honestly, this might be the most visually appealing but least physically impressive stunt that David Blaine has done. He’s harnessed to the balloons so there’s little risk of him falling, so the most challenging aspect would be avoiding hypoxia due to the altitude and passing out. And even then he was using an oxygen tank as needed. I’m not saying I could do it, but I think everybody is in agreement that we wish he was literally just holding onto the balloons with his hands like he was in Up. Also, it diminishes it a little since we just saw a little girl fly off into the sky for real on a kite and she did it without a harness or parachute.

Keep going for the full livestream. It’s three hours long though so bring a snack.

Source: Geekologie – David Blaine floats away holding a bunch of helium balloons

Andrew Christensen got up at a Lincoln, Nebraska city council meeting to make a stand for a pressing issue we’re all aware of but nobody has had the guts to address. No longer content to sit idly by as kids are indoctrinated, Christensen made an impassioned plea on behalf of society’s greatest menace: boneless chicken wings.

“I propose that we as a city remove the name boneless wings from our menus and from our hearts. These are our reasons why: Number one, nothing about boneless chicken wings actually come from the wing of a chicken. We would be disgusted if a butcher was mislabeling their cuts of meats, but then we go around pretending as though the breast of a chicken is its wing?” said Christensen.

“Number two, boneless chicken wings are just chicken tenders, which are already boneless,” Christensen continued. “I don’t go to order boneless tacos. I don’t go and order boneless club sandwiches. I don’t ask for boneless auto repair. It’s just what’s expected.”

“Number three, we need to raise our children better. Our children are being raised to be afraid of having bones attached to their meat. That’s where meat comes from, it grows on bones. We need to teach them that the wing of a chicken is from a chicken, and it’s delicious,” Christensen said.

The man’s not wrong. Sure, the world is currently on fire, but these are the little changes we can actually do to make a difference. Boneless chicken wings are just chicken tenders, which are already boneless. I don’t go to order boneless tacos. I don’t go and order boneless club sandwiches. I do, however, ask for my auto repair to be boned. It’s made for some awkward interactions but I want what I want.

Source: Geekologie – Hero proposes renaming ‘boneless chicken wings’ at city council meeting

The circulating seal enclosure is cool and all, but is nobody going to address the fact that this guy seems to have a pet seal in his pool? Is that a thing that’s allowed now? Because the last time I asked about it I ended up on a list.

Keep going for the weirdly mesmerizing video.

Source: Geekologie – This guy built a circulating seal enclosure

YouTuber Jez Burrows put together this 30 minute video of rain compiled from 30 different games. The video is exactly what it sounds like. No fluff, no narration, just 30 minutes of video game rain. Is it the most important thing you’ll see today? Obviously. Considering how the year’s been going, I’ve decided to put this video on loop for the next three months.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Thirty minutes of rain from thirty different video games

Sandra is a zoo-born, Borneo and Sumatra hybrid orangutan currently living in the Center for Great Apes in Florida and this is a video of her washing her hands and scrubbing her enclosure after seeing her caretakers doing the same thing. It’s always eerie when primates act like humans. Like that one time I saw a chimpanzee throwing its poo at a passerby. It threw its poo in exactly the same way as I throw my poo! Uncanny!

Keep going for the full video of an orangutan that’s more hygienic than most other primates I know.

Source: Geekologie – Sandra the Orangutan washes her hands and enclosure after observing zookeepers do it

This is an insane video of a 3-year-old girl being lifted into the air after getting tangled in some kite strings at a kite festival in Taiwan:

Footage shows a girl, 3, in Taiwan being lifted high into the air after becoming entangled in the strings of a kite. The unidentified girl was taking part in a kite festival on Sunday in the seaside town of Nanliao when she was hoisted several metres into the air by the giant, long-tailed orange kite. News reports said the girl was frightened but suffered no physical injuries in the incident.

The footage is so crazy it looks fake. Like it’s behind-the-scenes footage of a live-action Up adaptation or something. The only way it could look more cartoony is if when people tried to hold her down they each got picked up as well, until some really fat person in the crowd finally managed to grab a hold and anchor it down. Now I kind of wish that happened.

Keep going for the full video. Nobody gets hurt, but it’s still a little disturbing seeing a little girl fly through the air like that.

Source: Geekologie – A 3-year-old girl lifted super high into the air by a kite

In addition to Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk is also running Neuralink, a company working on developing high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces. In layman’s terms, he’s making a device that implants into the brain to theoretically help with things like paralysis and blindness. It’s been a bit of mystery so far, but yesterday Neuralink had a live demo of where they’re currently at.

If you don’t feel like watching the entire hour, the most interesting things happen at at 15:35 where they demo detecting the neurons firing when a pig sniffs something with its snout, and at 18:20 where the Neuralink is predicting where the limbs of a pig will be based on the neuron readings. Assuming they aren’t cheating their demo, the results are pretty impressive considering they aren’t even at version 1.0 yet. And kudos to the first lunatic to actually purchase and get this thing implanted. Sure, it doesn’t appear to kill a pig, but best of luck letting the guy who named his kid X Æ A-12 put a machine in your brain.

Keep going for yesterday’s full livestream of the Neuralink progress update.

Source: Geekologie – Livestreamed progress update on Elon Musk’s Neuralink

Architecture firm ​GómezPlatero​ has designed and will build the first monument for victims of the pandemic to be located in Uruguay.

The massive circular structure will serve as an affecting sensory experience that bridges the gap between the urban and natural worlds, creating an ideal environment for introspection. It will sit on the edge of an untamed section of urban waterfront located in Uruguay, accessible only by a long pedestrian walkway that draws the visitor gradually away from the sounds and sights of urban life until they are fully immersed in the presence of nature.

At the center of the platform, an open void to the rolling ocean beneath allows people to observe nature in its most majestic, purest state, reminding us of our own fragility. At 40 meters in diameter, with an open center that is 10 meters in diameter, the memorial can welcome up to 300 visitors at a time (while obeying current social distancing guidelines), allowing for moments of shared grief and solidarity in addition to solitude.

And this is why architecture firms get paid the big bucks. If they had gone with my idea they would’ve ended up with a big frowny-face made out of used N95 masks, which I guess is less of a memorial and more of a, uh, literal pile of garbage.

Keep going for more photos of the design as well as the promo video released by the firm.

Source: Geekologie – The first large-scale COVID-19 pandemic memorial

Last year LEGO announced a collaboration with IKEA to create a set that would appeal to both grown-ups and children in the hopes of getting parents to play more with their kids. This week they finally unveiled the result of that collaboration:

In tidying up and reorganizing children’s creative space during playtime, we not only disrupt their play but also their creative expression and growth. Therefore, we wanted to create a storage solution that itself offers a fun playful experience. As the BYGGLEK boxes are equipped with LEGO studs on the top and the front, kids can integrate the storage boxes as part of their LEGO builds. They can store their stories inside them, and proudly display their creations on top of them.

So what all of that mumbo jumbo means in practical terms is they built a storage box with LEGO studs on the top and a few pieces inside. It’s honestly a bit underwhelming for a product that came out of so many uppercase letters.

The prices of the sets are:

• Bygglek Box with lid (large): $14.99 / €14.99

• Bygglek Box with lid (smaller): $12.99 / €12.99

• Bygglek Boxes with lids (set of 3): $9.99 / €9.99

• Bygglek 201-piece Lego brick set: $14.99 / €14.99

Keep going for a few more pictures of the actual BYGGLEK set at an IKEA Germany.

Source: Geekologie – LEGO and IKEA team up to create BYGGLEK LEGO set

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