Category: True Stories

Random Mug Shots Arkansas State Prison 1915-1935

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[Found here, via Hanuman.]

My WebEx Meeting Notes 13 April – 26 July 2022

9AM daily. Pen on paper, 8-1/2 x 11, approx. 2 square inches per day.

Elephractals

SHANGHAI, June 8 2021 (Reuters) – A roaming herd of 15 wild elephants is on the move again after resting for a day in a patch of forest on the outskirts of the city of Kunming in southwest China, resuming a year-long, 500-kilometre trek that has captured the public’s imagination.

Drone photographs taken on Monday by the provincial forest fire brigade showed members of the herd sleeping in a clearing in the middle of a forest in the district of Jinning, which has been hit by heavy rain and thunderstorms.

[Found here, story with video here.]

James A. Williams’ Contribution To The World: Automatic Varmint Killer & Burglar Alarm

[h/t L. Dez D.]

The Electrical Wonders of 1919

Electrical Experimenter, December 1919 issue.

1.  Electric Vase Light Attachment [turns a collectable into a lamp]
2.  Dishwashing Machine
3.  Rug Washer
4.  Vacuum Cleaner

5.  Electric Cooking Utensils [coffee pot, blender, etc.]
6.  Electric Stove [radiant heater]
7.  Electric Washing Machine & Motor Driven Wringer
8.  Electric Light Bath [tanning bed]

9.  Dental X-Ray
10. Radio Direction Finder
11. Electric Dairy [milking machine]
12. Coin Slot Sales Machine [vending machine]

13.  Electric Siren
14. Cloth Cutting Machine
15. Wireless Telephone
16. Electric Trucks

 

Meet Krystal

An example of good workplace presentation.

A 1960s Krystal fast food training film included instructions such as:

– Keep your teeth clean and white. Anybody can have a pretty smile.
– Naturally, you don’t want to get too familiar with the customers, just be really pleasant and friendly. Let your personality show through.
– The customers aren’t interested in your private jokes. That kind of horseplay just won’t go.
– Keep your fingers off the food and don’t put the butter on top of the waffle.

[Found here. Unfortunately there’s no link to the video.]

Night Fishing in Hawaii 1948

The colorization of this photo shows you exactly what it was like to go night fishing in Hawaii years before it became an official state of the Union. At the time, Hawaiians used spears to catch fish in the shallow part of the ocean or along the more rocky terrain. The kukui-nut torch that this man is using isn’t just to light up his evening, it draws in fish to the his position.

In order to get a bright enough torch fishermen would wrap the kukui nut in leaves and attach them to a pole and light them on fire. To make them brighter they wrapped more leaves around the nut and then they would add roasted kukui nuts to a hollow sheath of bamboo and light those on fire as well. Even in the middle of the 20th century this was a way to remain close to nature while taking from the sea.

[Image and caption found in this great collection. h/t Eaglesoars.]

Hugo Gernsback’s Contribution To The World: The 1925 Isolator

"The greatest difficulty that the human mind has to contend with is lack of concentration, mainly due to outside influences.

If, by one stroke, we can do away with these influences, we will not only be benefitted greatly thereby, but our work would be accomplished more quickly and the results would be vastly better.

[...]

It will be noted that the glass windows directly in front of the eyes are black. The construction involved the use of ordinary window glass, the outer glass being painted entirely black. Two small white lines were scratched into the paint, as shown. The idea of this is as follows:

The writer thought that shutting out the noises was not sufficient. The eye would still wander around, thereby distracting attention. By having the two white lines scratched on the glass, the field through which the eye can move is comparatively small."

Prescient satirical concept… or perhaps he was serious:

According to [Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, 2015] Gernsback himself may have been “an undiagnosed Aspergian”: “His peers regarded him as an unsociable figure who remained coolly distant from the communities he created. The people he counted as friends tended to be prominent scientists, influential politicians, and other notable figures with whom he corresponded by mail; historian James Gunn observed in Alternate Worlds that he was ‘a strange mixture of personal reserve and aggressive salesmanship’.

Silberman refers to the Isolator in particular as Gernsback’s “most blatantly autistic creation”.

Read the full description of The Isolator from the July 1925 edition of Science and Invention.

The Hugo Awards were named after Hugo Gernsback, who is regarded as “The Father of Science Fiction”.

[Found here.]

My Marimo Toshi

Bunkarina sent me a present last year – a Japanese moss ball. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I knew it needed a better home than a glass pentagon cage, so I put it in something a bit more respectful and named it Tosh.

I didn’t think much about Tosh until he “birthed” a baby and they became Toshi and Toshita. We became friends, and every two weeks they get fresh water to keep them happy.

More recently I learned that they’re sold as Japanese Lake Moss (or Marimo Moss  Balls) but they’re not moss at all. They’re algae, Aegagropila linnaei, and they grow very slowly. They don’t like chlorinated water much, but they like a little salt. They turn bright green and blow bubbles when they’re content. The water changes coincide with something I’ve been going through for two years now, and I began taking photos every two weeks to mark time and progress. The moss give me a bit of inner peace, a zen tranquility of sorts.

And no, I don’t talk to them, smartass. You know who you are.

Nothing Much Happened Today.

Best I can figure is it happened on or before 6 February 2013 and the photos are from NBC7 San Diego.

[Found here.]