The first lunar soil sample ever collected (and the only Apollo sample that can be legally sold) is up for auction later this month. Estimate is $800K-1.2M. If I had the money, I would buy this for any price.

The XKCD comic yesterday was a 9-hour audio file that contains spoken coding instructions in the LOGO programming language – following them draws a picture.

Interesting essay on The Gilded Age. “Every period drama is ultimately a confection. Because to tell the truth how it really was, how it truly was, would be too much. Implicating.”

An Elegant Bamboo Structure in Vietnam

Vo Trong Nghia Architects designed this resort welcome center on Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam out of approximately 42,000 pieces of bamboo, rope, and bamboo pins. Beautiful. From Dezeen:

Skylights incorporated into the building’s thatched roof also allow daylight to illuminate the interior, while the grid system enables breezes to ventilate the space naturally.

“The light comes in beautifully and, along with the natural colour of bamboo, creates a warm and intimate atmosphere, even though the structure is very open in terms of airflow,” the studio added.

(via colossal)

• architecture
• Vietnam
• Vo Trong Nghia Architects

100 year-old National Park Service Ranger Betty Reid Soskin retires after remarkable career.

The Macrodata Refinement interface from Lumon Industries. I’m gonna win so many finger puzzles this month!

I’d missed that the Webb Telescope snapped this photo of a star taken as part of its alignment process. It’s not a scientific image, but it does include galaxies in the background that we’d previously been unable to capture.

Comic Helvetic, an Unholy Combo of Comic Sans and Helvetica

In some workplaces, people use Helvetica to conduct business because it conveys a sense of order and authority. In other workplaces, people use Comic Sans, which conveys a sense of casual chaos. Designer Alexander Pravdin decided to combine the two typefaces into one diabolical font: Comic Helvetic. You can download it here.

If you need me for the rest of the day, I’ll be over in the corner trying to decide where these three typefaces fit on the alignment chart. (via print)

Update: See also Comic Neue. (via @DirkOlbrich)

• Alexander Pravdin
• Comic Sans
• design
• Helvetica
• typography

With this iOS app, you can scan Braille and convert it to text.

Wow, an extensive guide to creating a color palette to use in data visualizations.

The Highest Resolution Photo of the Sun Ever Taken

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter recently took 25 images of the Sun from a distance of 46 million miles that, when stitched all together, form the highest resolution photo of the Sun (and its corona) ever created.

The high-resolution telescope of EUI takes pictures of such high spatial resolution that, at that close distance, a mosaic of 25 individual images is needed to cover the entire Sun. Taken one after the other, the full image was captured over a period of more than four hours because each tile takes about 10 minutes, including the time for the spacecraft to point from one segment to the next.

In total, the final image contains more than 83 million pixels in a 9148 x 9112 pixel grid. For comparison, this image has a resolution that is ten times better than what a 4K TV screen can display.

You can zoom in on the image here to see how remarkably detailed it is.

• astronomy
• ESA
• photography
• science
• space
• Sun

Oregon Trail is Changing So That We Share Less of Your Private Dysentery Information.