tech@vedella

A gentleman spent nine hours stuck in a toddler/infant bucket swing at a Vallejo, California playground until firefighters rescued him. Apparently, the 21-year-old had bet $100 that he could fit into the swing. To do it, he had to lubricate his legs with liquid laundry soap. Once he got in though, he couldn't get out [...]

Prior to Occupy Wall Street, the dominant narrative in US politics was about debt and deficit reduction, and the attendant austerity measures that entailed. A study of keywords from network newscasts shows that the national policy discussion has shifted in the wake of the Occupy demonstrations, with an increased emphasis on unemployment and fairness (this [...]

Gwen Sharp of Sociological Images comments on an Economist graph that shows how spending patterns have changed in the US during the Great Recession. The results provide a good snapshot of the economic trade-offs Americans are making (i.e., we’re buying more canned veggies and eating out less), as well as which industries are taking the [...]

DJA and Dirty South Joe are the Blood Bros, dedicated curators and compilers of 1980s action movie songs. Get fired up to chop wood, take on a bully, or stage a single-handed coup. On two mixes, First Blood and the sequel Heaven 2 Hell, you'll Train! Fight! Win! to music from Rocky (all of 'em), [...]

Matthew Agostinis from Toronto made a smashing light fixture by harvesting a collection of odd, dead lightbulbs from the recycling bin at his local Ikea, and setting them amid one working light affixed to a cheap Ikea Hemma Lampcord, using a drilled out acrylic sheet. Recycled Hemma lampcord

"Aleister Crowley, "The Wickedest Man In The World," Meets His Match With The Wicked Witch Of The West, From '"The Wizard Of Oz'" Who would win? My money is on the witch. Crowley may have been pals with Aiwass, but the witch was boss of those nasty Winged Monkeys. I got a kick out of [...]

Ben Marks of Collector's Weekly says: "We published an article about Ryan Matthew Cohn's jones for bones. It's got videos from the Oddities show and lots of cool photos of goat-skull chandeliers and Beauchene skulls (skulls that have been exploded so you can see how they go back together)." “One of the things I do [...]

In the coming global food riots, keep a close eye on women who don't go barefoot: when things get grim enough that families start eating the youngest children, it's the mother who wears shoes who will eat her babies in secret so she don't have to share. Deuteronomy 28: 56-57: 56 The tender and delicate [...]

Over at CRAFT, Becky Stern has a video showing how to make glowing kryptonite candy.

Shape Type is a new HTML5 typography game from the creator of Kern Type; this time around, you have to drag curve-adjustment tools to perfect letterforms. Shape Type (via Waxy)

@AdsofYore is a twitter feed that republishes unusual liner ads from the archives of local newspapers.

At Gawker, Brooklyn-based journalist Caitlin Curran explains how you could quickly go from being part of the downtrodden 99% to being part of the "no, really, unemployed and utterly fucked" contingent: your boss could see a photo of you holding up a sign at a protest and fire you the next day. Ms. Curran is [...]

“My sense is the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing,” he said. “I don’t think there was adequate command and control.” The NYT Lede blog digs into what happened in Oakland Tuesday night. Also at the NYT, outrage grows over veteran Scott Olsen's injury by police.

Today, the statue of Liberty is 125 years old. Above, from the Smithsonian Institution archives, a Harpers Magazine cover: Wilbur Wright flying his Wright Flyer around her in 1909. Sarah Taylor Sulick of the Smithsonian Institution tells Boing Boing, This was one of the earliest public demonstrations of powered flight, an iconic moment in front [...]

In Esquire, Richard Dorment writes about growing his red hair our after spending years buzzing it to avoid "hearing shit about it" from others. "For the first time in a long time — years, maybe — I feel good about my hair. Scratch that: I feel great about my hair."

Hyperbole and a Half, the brilliant, frenetic, illustrated memoir, tackles sudden depression, its effects and eventual cure in the long awaited new installment. I spent months shut in my house, surfing the internet on top of a pile of my own dirty laundry which I set on the couch for "just a second" because I [...]

As they vowed earlier this week to do, Egyptian pro-democracy protesters marched from Tahrir square to the U.S. Embassy today to march in support of Occupy Oakland—and against the type of police brutality witnessed in Oakland on Tuesday night, and commonly experienced in Egypt. In this post, photos from Egyptian blogger Mohammed Maree, who is [...]

Shirky and Rosen respond: "Lefty journalism professor tries to discredit the Tea Party by passing along sensational footage to his buddies at the Times!!!" Really, if this "sting" is the best that Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe can gin up, they might want to find another line of work. Occasionally I will hear someone exasperated [...]

The dead tyrant's smartest son intends to hand himself over to the Hague to face prosecution. [NYT]

Did British newspapers fabricate a story about the Occupy London protest camp being left unoccupied at night? The answer is "yes", when seen through the lens of a specific model of re-rented thermal imaging camera. Earlier this week, U.K. tabloids such as The Times and The Daily Mail suggested that London's Occupy LSX protest was [...]