I'm Thankful For... Robotic Monster Wolves, Candy, and Beat-Boxing Monks
It's thanksgiving weekend in the US. What are YOU thankful for?
Welcome back, dear pilgrim.
It's Thanksgiving weekend here in North America. Which means everything pretty much shuts down. Including a lot of common sense. The SF Bay Area is back to lockdown mode with curfews and no more outdoor dining just take out and delivery. And the cold seeping in under the garage door is enough to cramp your feet.
But still, I'm thankful for life, health, family around me, a job, and that you are reading this right now.
Which brings me to this week's crop of the strange and the interesting.
**Real Life, Stranger Than Fiction**
Japan is apparently seeing a lot of bears this year. So one northern town in Hokkaido is using a robotic MONSTER WOLF to scare the bears away. How it works: the bears trip a motion sensor, then the monster wolf starts glowing red LED eyes and howling. This has the markings of either a horribly wonky monster film franchise or a "so bad it's good" B-movie.
Meanwhile, in the UK, a 23-year old is doing the one job that no one else ever thought would need doing: he's rating and reviewing every public bench he can find, and publishing his reviews on Instagram. Props to him for thinking of taking both a photo of him on the bench, and a shot of the view from where he sits.
For all those trying to create art while caring for your family, here's an inspiration. Ray Bradbury wrote his novel, Fahrenheit 451 on rented typewriters at his public library, for 10 cents an hour. The cost of the endeavor forced him to hammer it out as quickly as he could, turning what was originally a short story into the first draft of a novella in just 49 hours. How's that for pressure?
If you like candy, then this video is for you. This is Katee Sackhoff, actor from Battlestar Galactica and The Mandalorian who basically compares several different kinds of US candy with its Canadian candy counterpart. She's 25 different types of hilarious. And now I want a Caramilk bar.
Did you know "catfishing" as a service exists? This is where hired writers take over your dating app profile to communicate with potential dates. When a phone number is given or a date is made, the control is given back to the customer who paid for the service. Fake much?
**Privacy**
Surveillance will be abused. The tech is there. And hackers will be hackers.
For example: a group showed how you can use built-in lasers in a robot vacuum to eavesdrop. Though, admittedly, it's not easy to set up. But hey, give them time, my friend, and your entire home is their oyster.
Then there's the news about surveillance startup Verkada, which had some male employees using its own tech to harass women colleagues. That sort of inhuman behavior just does not bode well. Note to self: never work for Verkada.
Finally, Mashable has a great piece on how the coronavirus has led to a whopping increase in surveillance and tracking... because there's a pandemic, right? Of course, what then happens to all these invasions of privacy? "It's all for your safety."
**Eye Candy**
An artist took photos of famous statues in France and painstakingly used CGI to replace them with pop culture superheroes and video game characters.
Although, of course, nothing beats a real Batman statue — like the one recently unveiled at Burbank, CA, designed from a Jim Lee illustration. I have to admit, he looks grumpy here.
Meanwhile Google released a cool tool called Chimera Painter, which takes your MS Paint-looking drawing and uses AI to render more realistic textures on top of your outline. Instant monster maker.
Have you ever seen this cave in Thailand that looks like a scene straight out of an adventure movie? At just the right time of day, the sun comes through a massive hole in the ceiling and lights up a small pavilion inside the huge cavern.
** Ear Candy **
On the music front, there's a Buddhist monk named Yogetsu Akasaka, who uses a live looper to record himself -- from breakbeats to chants. And it is delightful ear candy. A cross between soothing and funky.
Gotta love doctors with hobbies. This one is an oncologist by day, and a synth music record label owner by night. His record label initially started as a way to reissue outdated synth records, but now is also a label that releases new materials as well. The label's name, of course, is Medical Records. Here’s one of their releases, a really cool romp through retrowave fields by Geneva Jacuzzi.
Stumbled upon vaporwave/synthwave musician George Clanton, who in this video performs as ESPRIT 空想. This Kenyon Horn at Home Performance also features a Q&A with questions from the audience. His live set is all done from a single device, a sampler.
For more of his stuff, check out his collaboration with Nick Hexum of 311.
You've probably heard the Levan Polkka in its various forms over the years — as a meme called "Leekspin" in the early 2000s, as a song by a live percussionist in a park with a cat vibing to the beat... Well, apparently the song is much older. And so I fell down a rabbit hole to hear its evolution through the years, from an early filmed version in 1952 to its current state as evergreen meme material.
I have to say though that I find this live version the best and the most captivating.
And that's it from me.
Thanks for reading the Rambunctious Roundup! And have a great weekend ahead.
~ Lionel
Your best one so far! From Ray Bradbury to pop culture statues (they actually look amazing) to Levan Polkka (I'm hooked to the song and the meme 😅), I was hooked! Kudos! And keep it up 👍🏽