Printmaking with Legos, How Whales Sing (Possibly), The Late Great Richard Lewis, etc.
In which we also still don’t think it’s a good idea to elect somebody with knowledge and skill.
😢 Rest in peace, Richard Lewis, who I loved as a kid because of Mel Brooks and David Letterman, and continued to love because of Larry David. There are countless Curb videos you should be watching right now, but this video of him talking about his childhood with David before segueing into a story about an encounter with Shaquille O’Neal in a men’s locker room is so much better than you can even imagine.
🚫 Was hoping to listen to some classic Richard Lewis on Spotify but was sadly reminded that most stand-up classics were removed from the streaming service.
🗳️ The Onion, but likely still true: Polls find only 19% of Americans Believe Country Ready for Competent President. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to elect somebody with knowledge and skill. By 2070, 2080, maybe. But for now, we should just stay the course and keep sending total blithering assholes to the White House.”
🇺🇸 Speaking of the U.S.A., its entire history has unfolded in the time it’s taken for Pluto to orbit the sun once.
🐕 If ya know, ya know: “my dog looks like Falcor sleeping.”
🤳 Older people like TikTok, too. “Even crazier, according to Pew's survey, people aged 35-49 are more likely to actually upload videos than people aged 18-34. And, perhaps most damning of all, TikTok’s 30-49 demographic is actually growing faster than the 18-34 cohort.”
👀 See what the world looks like thru the eyes of different animals. “A system that uses two cameras and some software can produce videos showing people how a scene appears to different species.
‘We went outdoors to film the birds in the trees, and only then it sunk in how bright the skies are in UV colours,’ says Vera Vasas at the University of Sussex in the UK. ‘The sky is a different colour to most of the animals than it is to us.’”
📬 I’m no philatelist (thankfully, I need less hobbies, not more) but I might have to purchase these Ansel Adams stamps when they’re available this May.
🚶Why now why humans don’t have tails. “Researchers discover a potential genetic connection between humans' tail loss and a type of birth defect.”
⚕️ If you think certain products are going to fix your “gut health,” have to tell ya it ain’t happening. “There is no clear definition of a healthy gut microbiome, and surely what balances the gut will differ from person to person. To sell a product because it promotes ‘gut health’ is to sell snake oil.”
📚 If you’re looking for something to read, author and punk legend Patti Smith recently made some recommendations, including works by Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus and Virginia Woolf.
🎨 As a printmaker myself, printing with Lego tiles is my new favorite thing.
🐋 How do whales sing? A paper published this week by Coen Elemans of the University of Southern Denmark suggests their voice boxes have a unique feature. “Unlike humans and other mammals, baleen whales don’t have teeth or vocal chords. Instead, in their voice boxes, they have a U-shaped tissue that allows them to breathe in massive amounts of air and a large ‘cushion’ of fat and muscle not seen in other animal species. Whales sing by pushing the tissue against the fat and muscle cushion, Elemans said.
😘 Remember to keep the Hope Machine running.
Love,
Luke