Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine

Terrific Japanese Stop Motion Car Chases

The AV Club brings to attention these awesome videos made by YouTube user LUXE37, featuring some pretty incredible Japanese-styled stop-motion animated car chases. The scenery is insanely realistic and I love the 70s style Japanese vehicles used. Yes, that's a dead Japanese school-girl after a hit and run.

While the chases are more exciting than they have any right to be, with squealing tires, crashes, and the occasional explosion, the thing that makes the whole enterprise work is the smaller, quiet moments—a police car pulling into a gas station before peeling out in hot pursuit, or fire trucks lined up at the station, just waiting for the call. That, my friends, is acting.

Where Roads End, As Captured by Google Maps

On The Atlantic, a stunning gallery of images taken from Google Maps featuring the end of roads, an area where "one might be allowed to travel, whether blocked by geographic features, international borders, or simply the lack of any further road." The screenshot above is explained in the caption below:

Sha Tau Kok crossing, New Territories, Hong Kong. This crossing marks the entry into the Frontier Closed Area, a tightly controlled buffer zone between Hong Kong and mainland China.

Paper BBQ

Zim and Zou, who we had featured for creating retro electronics made out of paper are at it again with this incredible collection of barbecue paraphernalia.

Illustration for Factum's barbecue 2013.

Vespalogy

Featuring the awesome music of Supercarburant, this short video by Normoon titled Vespalogy, will take you on a tour of all the Vespa models that existed between yesterday and today. Some pretty futuristic ones in the 50s.

A graphic & groovy retrospective of Vespas from 1943 to 2013.
This is our tribute to Vespa. Just because we love Vespa.
Enjoy it! ;)

"Typography is one ingredient in a pretty complicated presentation." Why Everyone Hates Comic Sans MS

On The Week, an amusing look at how "typography is the detail and the presentation of a story" and can either make or break it. Above, the discovery of the Higgs Boson, announced in "glorious MS Comic Sans Font."

Part one was an ordinary article about a scientific study concerning optimism versus pessimism. In part two, with the help of Cornell psychologist David Dunning, Morris designed a quiz to evaluate whether the Times' readers found the study's conclusions believable.

Here's the catch. When readers came to the site, the story was presented in different typefaces: Baskerville, Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, Comic Sans, and Trebuchet. Roughly 40,000 people responded to the quiz, and the results were weighted to evaluate which fonts inspired more confidence in the research, and which fonts made the information appear less believable. Here's what Morris found:

The conscious awareness of Comic Sans promotes — at least among some people — contempt and summary dismissal. But is there a typeface that promotes, engenders a belief that a sentence is true? Or at least nudges us in that direction? And indeed there is.

It is Baskerville.

Cow: a Wooden Machine That Demonstrates the Cow's Digestive System

Simply titled Cow and created by the talented Nova Jiang, the Arduino-powered cow demonstrates the animal's digestive system.

Cow is an attempt to model the digestive system’s complex mysteries with wooden mechanisms. It was created during the Tough Art Residency at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

Hell is Other People: Anti-Social Media That Helps You Avoid Your "Friends"

The Hell is Other People website connects with your "friends" on FourSquare and carefully plans your travels to distance yourself as optimally as possible from them all. The project was created by designer, developer and craftsman Scott Garner.

This project is partially a satire, partially a commentary on my disdain for “sxsocial media”, and partially an exploration of my own difficulties with social anxiety.

The title comes from an existentialist play by Jean-Paul Sartre entitled No Exit.

Japanese Mother Cooks Foods of the World for Her Children to Try

Really loving this Rino & Yuuma show, featuring two adorable little Japanese kids eating the various foods of the world their mother prepapres. Above, a video on the fabulously homemade clubhouse sandwich where even the tomatoes are carefully sliced and placed on the bread in that typical detail-driven Japanese fashion.

The mom prepared the clubhouse sandwich into Rino & Yuuma.
They usually eat sandwiches, but, as for them, the sandwich with the volume such as the clubhouse sandwich is the first time.
Because the volume was great, she had a hard fight in eating. Ha-ha
However, she opens a mouth widely as always, and she fights against clubhouse sandwich. lol
In addition, the mom cooked even bread using the graham flour, but she seems to be weak in it.

Finding Bessarion #TTC

"Hey," said my sister, "did you see the video of that guy about finding Bessarion station?"

"Bessarion station?" I asked, the name not ringing a bell. "Is that a subway stop in New York?"

"No, it's in Toronto, on the purple line!"

Ah, the purple line. The most pointless, least useful line hardly anyone takes. And that, my friends, proving the point of this short film, that's where Bessarion station lies.

In this short documentary, TTC Enthusiast and Urban Explorer Jeremy Woodcock travels to Bessarion Station, the least used Subway Station on the Toronto Transit Map, to find out if it really does exist and why it would be built in the first place.

U.S. Court Rules Human Genes Cannot Be Patented, Artificial DNA Can

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the human gene code cannot be patented because it is not an invention. This comes after Utah-based company Myriad Genetics tried to patent the genes that "increased risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer." These patents were challenged by scientists and doctors since these genes were not created by the company.

After the ruling, at least three companies and two university labs said that they would begin offering genetic testing in the field of breast cancer.

“Myriad did not create anything,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court. “To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.”

The course of scientific research and medical testing in other fields will also be shaped by the court’s ruling, which drew a sharp distinction between DNA that appears in nature and synthetic DNA created in the laboratory. That distinction may alter the sort of research and development conducted by the businesses that invest in the expensive work of understanding genetic material.