13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 714)

1. Meet one of the world’s most prolific chair collectors: How Noritsugu Oda found himself sitting on 1,400 chairs. Over 50 years, the Japanese illustrator has accumulated a world-class archive. Now he has to decide what to do with it. “He still remembers the day in 1972 when he spotted a 4 Chaise Longue (then…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 713)

1. An antique railway car miniature made by a retired French postman A wooden-framed railway car is finished with tinted straw in decorative manner to create wall murals, carpets, inlay furnishings, and walls in the interior, and slatted boards and window frames on the exterior. When opened, the interior room has built-in furnishings including table,…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 712)

1. Photographing the Williamsburg Bridge Riders A few of my favourite shots from the Instagram account of Adam DiCarlo found via Kottke. 2. How Kodak invented the “snapshot” 3. Taking Baths, Drinking Alcohol & Other Strange Ways Famous Writers Got Inspiration Journalist Blythe Roberson copied her favorite writers’ schedules to see if they would offer the…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 711)

1. Just a Female Street fight duel with sand-filled socks Published in “Le Petit Journal” November 1st 1902: There are Apaches of both sexes as seen recently in the rue du Général-Morin. Louise Henin, a beautiful girl of twenty, became mortally angered by Andrée Merle, twenty-three years, for reasons difficult to specify. They resolved to meet in a…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 710)

1. This delightful collector of tiny things Jane Housham is a collector, sorter, cutter-outer, writer, artist. 2. This charming 1950s menu When French restaurateur Andre Frelier and his wife Yvonne opened L’Omelette bistro in 1932, it quickly became a favorite spot for Stanford University students because of its cozy lounge, open fireplace, reasonably priced drinks…

The Ocean is Full of Wonders We Barely Understand. Sponges are one of them.

Did you know that a glass sponge could live as long as 15,000 years? They could probably live up to 40,000 years if changing sea levels weren’t a factor, and are thought by many to have the longest life span of any animal on Earth, in fact, sponges are probably the closest to what the…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 709)

1. The Making of Alex Chinneck’s new looping barge He’s the same guy who made the famous sliding houses & more. More of the “how it was made” on his Instagram. Found via Present & Correct. 2. This great little place, in Hatcher Pass, Alaska Photographs by Kelsey Hayden. How to stay here. 3. Inside…

The Flickering Portal to a Forgotten World of Personal Screens

It appears we’ve come full circle. Picture a time before smartphones, Youtube, Tik Tok, streaming services, or even the modern movie theater as we know it — a time when a few moments of visual entertainment involved peeking into a mysterious, boxy machine and cranking a handle. Back in the late 19th and early 20th…

Mostly, this Secret Masonic Order Just Wants to Have Fun

We do love a good plunge into worlds apart – filled with secret society conspiracies and folks living off-grid or on the fringes of society. The latest curious collective to pique my interest is perhaps the quirkiest of masonic orders, called “The Shriners”, formally known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 708)

1. This excellent Twitter (X) thread about a labyrinthine magical bookstore in Syracuse, NY And then a hero of the labyrinthine magical bookstores of the world put all the bookstores that people listed in the replies on a map! Link to the first tweet in the thread. But a reader informed us that the bookstore…