bookofjoe

Radiooooo — 'Musical time machine'

Wrote Emma Beddington in the Guardian:

Pick a country from the world map, pick a decade and Radiooooo plays you music from that time and place (refined to slow, fast or "weird," if you want to be more specific).

I am writing this to a soundtrack of 1960s Morocco and feeling more cosmopolitan than I have any right to: "Oh, you're not familiar with Abdelwahab Agoumi? You should check him out."

More seriously, Radiooooo gives you that expansive feeling that the world is vast, various and infinitely creative.

That's nice.

Electric Blue Tarantula

News of the finding appeared in Phys.org earlier this week with the headline "Jewel of the forest: New electric blue tarantula species discovered in Thailand."

Said a member of the research team: "The first specimen we found was on a tree in the mangrove forest. These tarantulas inhabit hollow trees, and the difficulty of catching an electric-blue tarantula lies in the need to climb a tree and lure it out of a complex of hollows amid humid and slippery conditions."

More: "The secret behind the vivid blue coloration of our tarantula lies not in the presence of blue pigments, but rather in the unique structure of their hair, which incorporates nanostructures that manipulate light to create this striking blue appearance."

Blue is one of the rarest colors to appear in nature, which makes blue coloration in animals particularly fascinating.

Read the original scientific paper, "A new electric-blue tarantula species of the genus Chilobrachys Karsh, 1892 from Thailand (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Theraphosidae)," here.

Lie Down Laptop Stand

Finally.

From Core77:

Strange Thing for Sale: It's Like an Unfinished ID Student Project

This looks like an ID student's initial mockup of a thing they're going to refine.

Shockingly, it's the finished object: A Lie Down Laptop Stand.

Actual quote from the product copy: "If you have a wireless mouse, we recommend leaving it on the floor beside you for easy access."

I don't even know where to begin with this.

The stability?

The ingress and egress procedure, for both the laptop and your body?

The $120 asking price?

At least that $120 will help save the environment; the seller makes the incredible claim that "100 trees are planted with each purchase."

$120 (laptop included with purchases from Atlanta's southern suburbs: please specify Razer, Alienware, or ASUS).