The Haunted Mansion Backstage tumblr has outdone itself with a set of photos from about 2002 showing the control-room at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. These are the photos I've dreamed of seeing all my life.

Photos of the Disneyland Mansion’s control room and corridors.

Litographs takes public domain (and otherwise shareable) books and turns them into word-art posters that both illustrate the text and are comprised of it. They are also doing tees and have plans for more. It's kind of cool to think of wearing an Alice in Wonderland shirt with a picture of Alice made up of the entire text of the book!

Litographs

LibraryBox is a library-oriented version of the PirateBox project -- a little, self-contained wireless router with on-board storage that you fill up with freely usable library materials and bring with you so that wherever you go, you can share with the people you meet. Jason Griffey, the librarian who created it, is Kickstarting a version 2.0 that is much easier to set up and run. A $150 contribution gets you a fully assembled unit. Jason was kind enough to give me a box this weekend with all my books on it, to bring with me to talks and such.

LibraryBox 2.0

Andy Deemer discovered that India was about to decommission its telegram service on July 15, so he ran around Bangalore until he located the telegram office and sent one to a friend, just to document a procedure that is about to vanish forever:

He handed over an old slip of paper, wanted more details than should be necessary, copied everything into a massive bound ledger, spent ten minutes tallying up the bill, and charged only pennies for the experience. And that was it. I have no idea what happened next. Was there furious tapping of dots and dashes, or did he pop open Outlook 95 and send it via email? I don’t even know.

I guess the story isn’t exciting. Not one bit. But receiving the telegrams a week later?

Now that was grand.

The interesting thing is that the telegram system still sees a surprising amount of use; the Bangalore office alone handles 150 telegrams a day. However, that's down from a peak of 25,000-30,000 -- the decline started with the introduction of SMS.

Goodbye Telegram / Hello Telegram

The smallest shop in London - a shoe salesman with a 1.2 square meter shoe store, 1900. (via Kadrey)

Jake Evill is hoping that someday 3D printed casts will replace the bulky, stinky plaster casts we are all familiar with. De Zeen shares the story...

A patient would have the bones x-rayed and the outside of the limb 3D-scanned. Computer software would then determine the optimum bespoke shape, with denser support focussed around the fracture itself.

Pork Shop's EAT ME shirt features "the grossest burger ever." It's a cookbook illustration from a Wolvertonian alternate universe. $18.

"EAT ME!" T-SHIRT

An article in Der Speigel expands on the descriptions we've had of the Snowden/NSA leaks, and claims that the US planted bugs in the EU's Washington offices and took over their internal computer network, intercepting its traffic.

One year ago today
You're Not Doing It Right: Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other Humiliations, by Michael Ian Black: Ruben and I are both fans of Little Lulu and Uncle Scrooge, so I figured if he liked this book, so would I. And I was right!

Five years ago today
HOWTO make a Disney Jungle Cruise playhouse: Instructables user madhatter1138 meticulously interpreted the 'Jungle Cruise' ride at Disneyland into a backyard playhouse for his lucky daughters.

Ten years ago today
Bloggers, email list moderators gain libel protection: An appeals court ruled last Tuesday that bloggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish.

I don't think I ever saw a Paul Bunyan pinball table in the wild, but it's a beaut.

June 28~Paul Bunyan Day

A six-year-old girl named Aaralyn and her nine-year-old brother performed their original song "Zombie Skin" on America's Got Talent. As you may have inferred from the song-title, the gag here is that these adorable youngsters' composition is a delightfully monstrous number. But really, you have to see it to get the full, amazing impact. Start in around the 5 second mark, watch to about 1:50, and you'll get it.

6-Year-Old Aaralyn Scream Her Original Song, "Zombie Skin" - America's Got Talent (via Kottke)

Zack sez, "Why is Jack Kirby so often called 'The King' of comics? This Flickr page, compiling dozens and dozens of his double-page splashes from the 1970s, including sequences from 2001, the New Gods books, Kamandi, the Demon and more, provide a pretty compelling argument -- pop art masterpieces, one after the other."

His current read is my novel Homeland: "It’s a starkly honest view of what happens in a surveillance state. The main character is the leader of this band of technologically clued-in teenagers fighting the tyrannical security state. People start shadowing him. I can relate to that. I was charged under the Espionage Act and was under surveillance both physical and electronic."

Illustrator Al Feldstein was divinely inspired to paint this piece of pastafarian religious artwork for the cover of the July, 1951 issue of Weird Tales, decades before the Flying Spaghetti Monster was revealed to the rest of humanity. Truly, he is a prophet! A 2005 artist's replica of the painting sold at auction in 2008. (via Bonniegrrl)

Here's a mouth-watering set of photos from La caverne aux livres, a bookshop in Auvers-Sur-Oise, north of Paris. The store is in a converted train-car, and appears to be a magical wonderland. The pics were taken by the Gallifreyan Detective, and the whole set is wonderful.

An old train transformed into a book shop in Auvers-sur-Oise (via That Book Smell)

Bruce Schneier's latest Google talk expands -- very productively -- on his recent theme of "security feudalism" (roughly, the idea that we end up trusting companies like Facebook, Apple and Google to serve as our feudal lords, securing us from marauders in exchange for being locked into them and subject to their whims). This is a lot more unfinished and unformed that the usual talks I've heard from Bruce, but that's really because he's exploring some new ways of thinking about important issues. It's an hour's watch (or listen -- there's not really any reason to tune into the video; I just ripped it to an MP3 and put it on my phone while I was walking around) but it's an hour well spent.

Bruce Schneier: Talks at Google

Andy from the Royal Institution made a large, suspended Möbius strip out of rare-earth magnets, then cooled down an object until it became a superconductor, and set it levitating and running around the track. The result is amazing, plus Andy's explanation is cogent and fascinating. Plus, gravity-defying levitation!

Levitating Superconductor on a Möbius strip (Thanks, Ed!)