Welcome to the latest installment of my bi-weekly newsletter, covering some of my favorite new developments in the fields of biotech, data science, engineering, and more. If this is your first issue, it's great to have you! For everyone else, thanks for coming back!
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Notes
This edition's font is called One-Fold Silhouette and it's one of the many mathematical fonts created by the duo of Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine.
Hardware, Prototyping, and Fabrication
👁 This is far and away the creepiest webcam ever.
🧱🔠 This new LEGO typewriter model looks like an impressive bit of blocky construction, even featuring working keys. While it can't actually type anything out, I give it like a week before someone figures out a design mod that makes it into a fully-fledged working typewriter.
Via The Prepared's June 21st edition by Kane Hsieh: "Duct tape is really important in space—among other things it was used by the crew of Apollo 13 to build their improvised carbon monoxide scrubber (called “gray tape” in the transcript). Amazingly, up until 2021 astronauts on the ISS just stuck it to the wall and had to remember where it was; SpaceX Crew-1 finally brought a duct tape dispenser which can be operated with one hand, allowing an astronaut to stabilize themselves with the other. Even more amazingly, the dispenser was designed by high school students as part of NASA HUNCH, a program that farms out tactical engineering problems to high schoolers."
🚢🥖 In the French navy, being at sea doesn't mean being without classic French baking. (I feel like leading with fresh baked goods at sea is probably a decent recruiting tool.)
🔫 In what might be a law enforcement first, two 3D printers were seized by Pennsylvania police in connection with the fabrication of untraceable ghost guns. As I've written before, and as you might imagine if you know anything about 3D printing, that was a pretty silly thing to do.
Software and Programming
⚠ Use this website to make sure your new startup's name isn't offensive in a foreign language. (Or to make sure that it is, I suppose.)
🕹 PSX Party lets you play classic PS1 and PS2 games in your browser with friends. (Just in time for it to be okay to have your friends over to do this in person, instead.)
🏙🏘🏡 None of these places exist.
💘 Tired of trying to find romantic partners by swiping on their pictures on apps? Try swiping on their memes instead.
Science, Engineering, and Biomedicine
🌲 When you want really, really straight trees, this Japanese method from the 15th century is the way to go. (Laser cutter operators rejoice!)
🚗💭 Now that we're addressing the coronavirus pandemic, maybe it's time to address another one that kills over a thousand people in NYC alone each year?
🛑 If you find yourself in a self-driving car, try to avoid driving behind a truck transporting stop signs. (Although, as the link above this outlines, you should try to avoiding finding yourself in a car at all.)
Mapping, History, and Data Science
🏘 Where are the “places to be” in the US?
🚔 If policing in the US was an exam, most departments would be failing with pretty bad grades.
🗺 Here's a bunch of wild maps from around the internet.
⚽🥅 In honor of the Euro 2020 tournament, here is a visualization of over 800,000 passes in soccer (football) matches from leagues around the world and tournaments over time. I don't know what the big takeaway messages are from this dataset, but it sure looks nice.
Events and Opportunities
Wednesday, 7/14 The Secret Science Club: Wild Movement in the Animal Kingdom. Walking on water or climbing up walls may be the stuff of superheroes for us, but for many animals it's just another day as usual. At the next Secret Science Club, mechanical engineering and animal locomotion expert David Hu will give an overview of just how these amazing forms of movement are made possible.
Thursday, 7/15 NY Hardware Startup Meetup. Virtual event formats can have their advantages and the next Hardware Startup meetup is a great example, bringing together the New York and San Francisco communities for a bi-coastal mega meetup. The format will be open mic, so expect a wide array of projects, technologies, and participants to be on display.
Thursday, 7/15 The Future of Food & Nutrition. BioLabs is back with an in-person event offering a glimpse into what the future of food and nutrition look like from a life science perspective, plus the opportunity to snack on some insects. The event will begin with a panel exploring the future of food and nutrition from the perspective of four life science start ups developing their own innovative contributions to our health, and will be followed by a networking happy hour complete with futuristic snack. (Note: This event is currently at capacity, but is maintaining a waitlist)
Map of the Month
🌐 This isn't technically a map, but it's definitely map-adjacent: The Confluence Project is on a mission to photograph the intersections of all the globe's latitude and longitude lines.
Odds & Ends
⌨🌈 This is one of the more hypnotic key-mashing sites I've encountered.