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27 Products In The Museum Of Failure To Remind You That Not Every Idea Is A Good One
By Austin Harvey | Edited By Cara Johnson
From the DeLorean to New Coke, these retail products resulted in some of the biggest flops in history — and now they're on display in the traveling Museum of Failure.
“Giving up on your goal because of one setback is like slashing your other three tires because you got a flat,” reads the anonymous quote that hangs on a brick wall in the Museum of Failure. It’s a poignant quote, and one that represents the whole point of the museum — to celebrate failure.
The concept may seem strange — after all, museums usually celebrate successes — but for curator Samuel West, the world-touring museum has as much to teach visitors as any other.
“To learn from failure we need to talk about it,” he said. “The museum is a good way of creating that discussion.”
Colgate Beef Lasagna, a frozen entrée from the 1980s. Although Colgate as a brand had been around since the early 1800s, the name became — and still is — ubiquitous with toothpaste. It's little wonder why shoppers didn't latch onto the brand's microwavable lasagna.
A Collection Of Failures That Spark Conversation
In 2017, Samuel West was a clinical psychologist and innovation researcher living in Sweden when he decided to open up a museum in Helsingborg that would house his collection of failed products.
He had spent a year searching for his collection on eBay, Craigslist, and anywhere else he could find these obscure, niche flops, Sifted reported.
"I nearly killed myself with work that year," West said.
Naturally, the curator had trouble receiving funding or products from the companies whose products he wanted to feature — why would a brand want to flaunt their abject failures?
But West persevered and the museum became a massive success. After that, donations started making their way to him — and to visitors worldwide.
The Microsoft Zune, a portable digital music player released in November 2006 as a competitor to Apple's widely popular iPod. Despite a larger screen and built-in FM radio, however, the Zune never quite found the success Microsoft had hoped for. In fact, for many years, the prospect of owning a Zune instead of an iPod was largely regarded as a joke.
Though the museum found initial success in Sweden, West began traveling to cities across the world, bringing his collection of 140 failures along with him.
The Museum of Failure includes some of the most famous and infamous snafus in history, ranging from a lobotomy kit to Donald Trump's board game to Elizabeth Holmes' company Theranos.
"It's a fun and entertaining exhibit, definitely," he told the Calgary Herald. "But there's a serious message there that we need to be better at accepting and discussing our own failures, both in the workplace and even as individuals."
And West is certainly a man of his word — he declared bankruptcy in 2019, an irony he was quick to point out.
"After years of advising organizations on accepting the risk of failure, I now get to apply that on myself in an unexpected way," he told Quartz. "Once this legal hassle is over it will make a great addition to the exhibit and to my talks."
Steven Spielberg's film E.T. the Extraterrestrial was a massive success, still held in high regard to this day. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for its 1982 video game adaptation. The Atari 2600 game was so notoriously bad that unsold copies of it were buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico and left undiscovered until 2014.
The Museum Of Failure's Collection
It's hard to identify a throughline for why products fail. Failure, like success, is the result of numerous factors.
Some items in West's collection are so brazenly terrible it's a wonder how they made it to market in the first place. Some were beaten out by better alternatives. Others were simply ahead of their time.
Take, for example, the Unobrush, the now-defunct eponymous oral hygiene product that could allegedly clean your entire mouth in six seconds. The product earned over $1 million from Kickstarter backers — and it doesn't work.
"It doesn't clean your teeth, it mainly just irritates your gums," West said of the product. "It's easy to laugh; I'm holding it and I can't believe they made it... But somebody has to be first, you know? Who knows?"
The Unobrush, funded in only four hours on Kickstarter.
Other notable products on display include the Hawaii Chair, an invention that wound up on TIME magazine's "50 Worst Inventions" list in 2010.
"Imagine a chair where the seat rotates, so that to sit in it, you have to sort of make a hula hoop movement with your hips," West said. "The idea was you could just sit on your *** and get fit because, you know, you have to move with the chair."
Instead, the chair was just incredibly difficult to sit on.
In 2017, the Chinese company Taqu Ltd. decided to combine two of China's largest moneymakers — the "share economy" and the adult entertainment industry. The result was a service called Shared Girlfriend, which rented out sex dolls for $45 a day. Yes, rented out. The dolls were designed to be “for his pleasure," and came in a variety of outfits, delivered to a renter's door after being ordered through an app. When the renter was finished with the doll, the doll was then disinfected, and any broken or damaged parts were replaced. The service lasted four days before it was shutdown due to public outrage.
Then, there are two different failed Coca-Cola products: New Coke, arguably the company's biggest blunder, and Coca-Cola Blak, a coffee-flavored Coke which West described as "an absolutely vile drink."
The museum also features a few different products peddled by former president Donald Trump, including Trump: The Game, a 1989 board game which, Newsweek reported, only sold 800,000 copies of an anticipated two million.
Featured alongside Trump: The Game is Trump University, a collection of seminars from Trump himself offering prospective students a chance to gain real estate skills and knowledge. Costs for the program went as high as $35,000.
It was also hit with several lawsuits for "deceptive practices" among other claims, resulting in Trump paying a $25 million settlement to anyone who attended Trump University between 2007 and 2010.
Other items in the museum had much less severe consequences, though, such as the Microsoft Zune, BOO.com, HD DVD, the Segway, Harley-Davidson perfume, and the Sony Minidisc, to name a few.
In 2006, the German Institute for Condom Consultancy aimed to make a condom that would fit every man, no matter his size. All a man had to do was stick his ***** into an apparatus that would coat it with melted latex. Three minutes later, the latex would dry, and he'd be ready to go. Understandably, though, the men asked to test the product were hesitant to jam their more sensitive bits into a container that was going to spray them with melted latex. The product died before it even went to market, but in 2015, an art student reimagined the product in a friendlier looking spray can.
The one thing they all have in common, though, is that they all failed for one reason or another.
"Learning is the only process that turns failure into success," West said. "So if you don't learn from your f— ups, then you've really f—ed up."
Samuel West with some of the museum's displays including a plastic bicycle, a DeLorean, and a Segway.
An undated image of women DJs staffing a Shyvers Multiphone studio in the Seattle-Tacoma area.
LORETTA SHEPARD WAS STILL A teenager when she started using an alias and talking to strangers in the middle of the night. It was 1953 and Shepard, who called herself Joyce, worked past midnight in an undisclosed studio, operating what was, for its time, state-of-the-art technology. “We were told to give no information of ourselves, so we had to work under a different name,” recalls Shepard, who chose to go by her middle name. “I remember they were real strict about having someone know where you were at all times. It was for our own protection.”“Joyce” was no Cold War spy, however. She was one of a small army of women in Washington State who worked as DJs for Multiphones, telephone-based jukeboxes. The devices were the Spotify of their day, providing what some might consider to be the earliest form of commercial streaming. Shepard, who worked in Tacoma, says she also on occasion played the role of therapist—especially with lonely servicemen who’d call in as much to hear another human voice as their favorite song.
“If we weren’t too busy, we talked with them,” says Shepard, who still lives in the Tacoma area. “They just needed someone to talk to. We would just listen, you know, [and] be kind to whoever was on the other end.”
The brainchild of Seattle inventor Ken Shyvers, Multiphones came onto the scene in 1939. At the time, jukeboxes were only spinning 20 or so records, at most. Shyvers wanted to expand the playlist, so he created the Shyvers Multiphone: a mini-jukebox, with an Art Deco aesthetic. It stood about 20 inches tall and, during its mid-century heyday, could be found anywhere from diner counters and bars to drive-in theaters.
A trio of Shyvers Multiphones from John Bennett’s collection.
The machine had over 170 songs to choose from, each one assigned a different number. Customers would use its built-in telephone to connect with the local Multiphone station, filled with records and turntables. A DJ with a friendly voice would be waiting on the other end to answer the call and play the requested record. The stations, located in Seattle, Tacoma, Bremerton, and Spokane, were staffed entirely by women.
“You’d put your nickel [into the Multiphone] and you would hear a hostess from the central station ask through the speaker, ‘what number, please?’ And you’d say, I want number 202, ‘Fools Such As I.’ And then they’d grab the record from the rack, put it on the turntable associated with the location you were at, play it, and that was it,” says Seattle historian John Bennett, author of the upcoming book The Shyvers Multiphone Story. Bennett, who runs Jukebox City, a vintage jukebox business in the Georgetown neighborhood, is a Multiphone collector himself. A self-proclaimed antique hoarder, Bennett bought around 500 Multiphones in the 1980s, which he sold at an antique shop he owned at the time. Back then Multiphones only sold for $100 a pop—today, they’re much rarer, and can go for over $2,000.
While Shyvers certainly enhanced the technique, listening to live music over the telephone was nothing new. The first live streaming system, the theatrophone, was invented in France in 1881. The coin-operated wall phone was set up in hotels, cafes, and clubs, among other locations across Paris, and broadcasted live opera, theater, and news programs at five-minute intervals. Sounds were transmitted via cable wires running through the sewer system. The so-called wired music fizzled in the early 20th century as record-playing jukeboxes and radio became more widespread. However, it had a resurgence in the late 1930s.
“Sound quality on phone lines was better at that point and in 1940 the big jukebox manufacturers were pretty much thinking well, phonograph jukeboxes are obsolete, and if I don’t get on board with this wired music, then I am going to be left behind. So basically, everyone jumped on board and made their version of it,” says Bennett. “The difference with Shyvers was that he invented the Multiphones, and he produced and ran them himself, so he was the total proprietor of everything. But since he was kind of a small-time guy, he just operated in the Northwest.”
Shyvers Multiphones not only brought a wider music selection to Washington’s business establishments; it also brought employment for the scores of women who took phone requests at the stations. Like Shepard, many of them were young. “It was actually my first job. I was a senior in high school and worked there for a year,” says Shepard. She adds nonchalantly, “It was a job. It kept money in my pocket.”
Since most of the music requests came from bars and restaurants, hours ran late. On Fridays and Saturdays, Shepard’s shift would typically finish at 1 a.m. “My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, would come pick me up,” she says. Though the women were instructed not to engage in phone conversations with patrons, it happened more often than not. To keep their identity protected, Shyvers had them choose a microphone name and made sure to keep the station locations a secret. Still, this didn’t stop some male admirers, mostly sailors on shore leave, from leaving roses and boxes of candy outside the studio door. Sometimes they’d even propose marriage to the women over the Multiphone.
Loretta Shepard worked as a Shyvers Multiphone DJ in the early 1950s.
At the height of their popularity, Multiphones could be found at 120 locations throughout Washington. Then, says Bennett, other companies “came out with these really great stereo jukeboxes and Shyvers just couldn’t compete with them.” By 1959, Multiphones were obsolete and Shyvers pulled them off the market. Most surviving machines are in private collections, though there is a Multiphone on display at Seattle’s Connections Museum, which showcases antique telephones and related equipment.
“The Multiphone really was an early version of streaming music,” says Peter Amstein, president of the nonprofit Telecommunication History Group, which runs the museum. Amstein plans to eventually make the Multiphone light up and play music again, like it did in its heyday. “It’s a really nice artifact to be able to display at the museum,” he says. “It was a pretty crazy invention for its time.”
In late October, a Swedish software engineer named Linus Åkesson unveiled a playable accordion—called "The Commodordion"—he crafted out of two vintage Commodore 64 computers connected with a bellows made of floppy disks taped together. A demo of the hack debuted in an 11-minute YouTube video where Åkesson plays a Scott Joplin ragtime song and details the instrument's creation.
Åkesson—a versatile musician himself—can actually play the Commodordion in real time like a real accordion. He plays a melody with his right hand on one C64 keyboard and controls the chord of a rhythm and bass line loop (that he can pre-record using the flip of a switch) using his left hand on the other keyboard.
A fair amount of custom software engineering and hardware hackery went into making the Commodordion possible, as Åkesson lays out in a post on his website. It builds off of earlier projects (that he says were intentionally leading up to this one), such as the Sixtyforgan (a C64 with spring reverb and a chromatic accordion key layout) and Qwertuoso, a program that allows live playing of the C64's famous SID sound chip.
So how does the Commodordion work? Åkesson wired up a custom power supply, and when he flips the unit on, both Commodore 64 machines boot (no display necessary). Next, he loads custom music software he wrote from a Commodore Datasette emulator board into each machine.
A custom mixer circuit board brings together the audio signals from the two units and measures input from the bellows to control the volume level of the sound output. The bellows, composed of many 5.25-inch floppy disks cut and taped into shape, emit air through a hole when squeezed. A microphone mounted just outside that hole translates the noise it hears into an audio envelope that manipulates the sound output to match. The Commodordion itself does not have speakers but instead outputs its electronic audio through a jack.
The back side of the Commodordion.
The Commodordion does have one huge flaw, writes Åkesson: ergonomics. When playing, the unit puts strain on his left wrist, arm, and shoulder due to the position of the keys on the left-hand side of the instrument—and the fact that his left arm also needs to bear the weight of the unit. "This rather undermines the potential for the Commodordion as a viable musical instrument," he writes.
Still, for a one-of-a-kind homemade hack, the resulting music—especially when played adeptly by Åkesson—sounds like the perfect soundtrack to a 1980s computer game. It's an 8-bit love letter to a bygone era.
From the DeLorean to New Coke, these retail products resulted in some of the biggest flops in history — and now they're on display in the traveling Museum of Failure.
New Coke was actually a "fool all of the people some of the time" stroke of genius.
At the time, the price of sugar was skyrocketing and the Coca-Cola Company was looking to cut costs. Right about that same time, the FDA had implemented ingredient labels on food and drink products. Coke executives wanted to start using high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), but were afraid that even if they perfectly imitated the original recipe's taste using HFCS, Coke afficianados would never accept it as being the same. They could lose lots of customers, and revenue.
They enacted a brilliant plan. They created New Coke, which tasted like Pepsi. It also had a similar mouth feel. I remember all the grocery stores having blind taste tests, but never New Coke vs Original Coke. Coke's Pepsi-tasting Coke was purported to taste better than Pepsi's Pepsi-tasting Pepsi. They sold New Coke for as long as they thought it would take to deplete all the existing stocks of the original. Then, they did a worldwide mea culpa, begged for forgiveness, and brought back the Coke we all knew and loved. But they really didn't. Original Coke used sugar in the recipe. The Coke they brought back--Coke Classic--used HFCS.
,
The company did not change the original recipe. They created a new recipe that tasted like the old recipe. Everyone embraced the return of the taste we loved--screw that Pepsi-tasting nonsense. Other folks (besides me) must have noticed, but I don't remember anyone making a stink about the use of HFCS in Coke Classic, and the company certainly did not point it out.
They made a big deal about firing some exec for causing so much pain around the globe, but I'd bet the guy that came up with the plan was handsomely rewarded.
During the second world war, B. F. Skinner, an American professor of psychology, developed and tested a rather unique new innovation in guided missile technology.
Wait... a psychologist developing a bomb?
Well, yes.
The US Navy was in need of a weapon capable of countering the formidable German Bismarck class battleships. Missile technology did already exist at the time; the problem was that the guidance systems were too large and too primitive for the missiles to be considered effective. While the military desperately worked on rudimentary electronic guidance systems, Skinner, keen to be of service, sought government funding for a top secret project to overcome the problem.
Skinner devised a guidance package for the Navy's ASM-N-2 glide bomb, which consisted of a nose cone fitted with three lenses, which projected an image onto three screens which were fitted with sensors to measure force applied to them.
Facing each screen on the opposite side was a pigeon.
Specifically, a pigeon which had been trained by operant conditioning to recognize a specific target, and peck at its image on the screen. As the image of the target shifted away from the center of the screen, the force of the pigeon pecking at it would be registered by the sensors and translated into control-surface commands, thus adjusting the course of the bomb and bringing the target back into the center of the screen.
Although skeptical of the idea, the National Defense Research Committee nevertheless contributed $25,000 to the research. Test runs were successful; the pigeons pecked reliably, holding the missiles on course even when falling at a rapid pace, undaunted by the terrifying noise of war. In fact, the pigeons achieved a 55% hit rate, greater than the accuracy of other missile-guidance systems of the time.
Despite this, Skinner struggled to be taken seriously. And so, on 8 October 1944, the program was discontinued. The military were of the opinion that ‘further prosecution of this project would seriously delay others which in the minds of the Division have more immediate promise of combat application’. Namely, (although unbeknownst to Skinner), Radar.
The following letter is a prime example of bureaucracy at its best. It was written and sent in 1942 by the CO of the USS Skipjack in an effort to get re-supply of a most important commodity. It did, however, ultimately result in the desired delivery.
USS Skipjack (SS-184) near Mare Island in 1942USS SKIPJACK
June 11, 1942
From: Commanding Officer
To: Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, California
Via: Commander Submarines, Southwest Pacific
Subject: Toilet Paper
Reference: (a) USS HOLLAND (5148) USS SKIPJACK req. 70-42 of 30 July 1941.
(b) SO NYMI Canceled invoice No. 272836
Enclosure: (1) Copy of cancelled Invoice (2) Sample of material requested.
1. This vessel submitted a requisition for 150 rolls of toilet paper on July 30, 1941, to USS HOLLAND. The material was ordered by HOLLAND from the Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, for delivery to USS SKIPJACK.
2. The Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, on November 26, 1941, cancelled Mare Island Invoice No. 272836 with the stamped notation "Cancelled---cannot identify." This cancelled invoice was received by SKIPJACK on June 10, 1942.
3. During the 11 ¾ months elapsing from the time of ordering the toilet paper and the present date, the SKIPJACK personnel, despite their best efforts to await delivery of subject material, have been unable to wait on numerous occasions, and the situation is now quite acute, especially during depth charge attack by the "back-stabbers."
4. Enclosure (2) is a sample of the desired material provided for the information of the Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island. The Commanding Officer, USS SKIPJACK cannot help but wonder what is being used in Mare Island in place of this unidentifiable material, once well known to this command.
5. SKIPJACK personnel during this period have become accustomed to use of "ersatz," i.e., the vast amount of incoming non-essential paper work, and in so doing feel that the wish of the Bureau of Ships for the reduction of paper work is being complied with, thus effectively killing two birds with one stone.
6. It is believed by this command that the stamped notation "cannot identify" was possible error, and that this is simply a case of shortage of strategic war material, the SKIPJACK probably being low on the priority list.
7. In order to cooperate in our war effort at a small local sacrifice, the SKIPJACK desires no further action be taken until the end of the current war, which has created a situation aptly described as "war is hell."
J.W. Coe
Here is the rest of the story:The letter was given to the Yeoman, telling him to type it up. Once typed and upon reflection, the Yeoman went looking for help in the form of the XO. The XO shared it with the OD and they proceeded to the CO's cabin and asked if he really wanted it sent. His reply, "I wrote it, didn't I?"
As a side note, twelve days later, on June 22, 1942 J.W. Coe was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on the S-39.
The "toilet paper" letter reached Mare Island Supply Depot. A member of that office remembers that all officers in the Supply Department "had to stand at attention for three days because of that letter." By then, the letter had been copied and was spreading throughout the fleet and even to the President's son who was aboard the USS Wasp.
As the boat came in from her next patrol, Jim and crew saw toilet-paper streamers blowing from the lights along the pier and pyramids of toilet paper stacked seven feet high on the dock. Two men were carrying a long dowel with toilet paper rolls on it with yards of paper streaming behind them as a band played coming up after the roll holders. Band members wore toilet paper neckties in place of their Navy neckerchiefs. The wind-section had toilet paper pushed up inside their instruments and when they blew, white streamers unfurled from trumpets and horns.
As was the custom for returning boats to be greeted at the pier with cases of fresh fruit/veggies and ice cream, the Skipjack was first greeted thereafter with her own distinctive tribute-cartons and cartons of toilet paper.
This letter became famous in submarine history books and found its way to the movie ("Operation Petticoat"), and eventually coming to rest (copy) at the Navy Supply School at Pensacola, Florida. There, it still hangs on the wall under a banner that reads, "Don't let this happen to you!" Even John Roosevelt insured his father got a copy of the letter.
I debated posting this over on the politics thread, because that's where the lesson it has to teach is most desperately needed. But I think it will live a better life here, in a thread which is about knowledge and learning, not a race to out-meme the next guy. Because, despite the subject matter, it's not actually about Ron DeSantis, or the indoctrination of kindergarteners into deviant lifestyles, or any of the other things which it appears to be.
It's about the difference between Reality and The Law.
That's a distinction which I feel is often overlooked in the race to pass judgement on controversial topics about how "that's not fair" or "this is clearly biased." And I grant you, it often isn't fair, and it often is biased. But when discussing matters which are actually before the court, fairness and bias are typically¹ not relevant to the outcome. Interpretation of The Law is.
I love watching this guy. Some of his videos delve into really obscure or bizzare cases which, as a former law student and amateur law nerd, I find both educational and entertaining. This specific video is an especially informative one.
The short version is that the Walt Disney company, which for some reason has decided to become a political activist organization, took on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and, despite receiving an apparently fatal gut-punch, actually turned around and won by using some incredibly novel and creative legal tactics, one of which involves King Charles III of England.
And not in some obscure, roundabout way. They literally call him out by name.
Yes, the King of England is relevant to a legal battle in Florida. That specific punch-line is delivered starting at 19:17, but believe me when I say that unless you are comfortably familiar with the Rule Against Perpetuities, then simply jumping to that point will not make sense.
I mean, you gotta assume that a company which has managed to keep a cartoon drawing of a mouse out of the public domain for almost a hundred years employs some pretty clever attorneys.
It really is worth giving this 23 minutes of your full attention, if this sort of thing interests you:
He is hard to follow, but a fascinating story to tell! I had to laugh, it was the funniest legal comedy since 'the vibe' in The Castle, but this one is (it seems) real. That story line involved a suburban solicitor of dubious talent taking a compulsory acquisition case of a family home to the High Court (equivalent to US Supreme Court), and winning - when asked the basis of his case, he said 'it's the vibe, Your Honour'. At one level that line is just good comedy scripting (and that is how it was played IIRC), but at another it goes deeper - it is the question of what is just.
Clearly the Floridian (this is a real word, or did you get that from The Princess Bride?) authorities required more than 'a vibe' for Disney to hold them off, but maybe this is a case of the means justifying the end, which is just another way of saying 'it's the vibe Your Honour'.
Charlton Heston was right — blood makes poor mortar (compared to potatoes, anyway).
Artist's illustration of a crewed Mars base. (Image credit: Pat Rawlings/NASA)Engineers have created an intriguing concrete alternative using simulated Martian or lunar soil, potato starch and salt.
The "space concrete" is twice as strong as conventional concrete, the researchers say. They hope the new material will eventually facilitate construction efforts on the moon and Mars.
In a new study published in the journal Open Engineering, two researchers from the University of Manchester in England demonstrate the effectiveness of potato starch as a binder to create the novel "StarCrete."
StarCrete, a material made of potato starch, salt and simulated Mars or moon dirt, is twice as strong as conventional concrete, its creators say. (Image credit: Aled Roberts/University of Manchester)
In their study, concrete mixtures using simulated Martian and lunar soils featured strengths more than double that of ordinary concrete, which has a comprehensive strength measuring around 32 Megapascals (MPa). The StarCrete mixed with faux-Martian soil clocked in at 72 MPa, while the mixture using simulated lunar regolith came in even stronger, at 91 MPa.
Stronger concretes typically last longer, but that isn't StarCrete's major advantage as a potential building material on the moon or Mars. The scientists estimate that just 55 pounds (25 kilograms) of dehydrated potatoes could be used to produce nearly half a ton of StarCrete, which is enough to sculpt over 200 bricks. For context, you need about 7,500 bricks to construct a three-bedroom house here on Earth.
Typical materials needed to mix concrete come with considerable weight. For future lunar and Martian constructions, as with any space mission, weight reduction is a big priority. Whether it be a satellite, cargo to the International Space Station or materials to build a house on the moon, the heavier a payload, the more cost-prohibitive it is to launch into space. So, the less weight, the better.
Capitalizing on the resources available at an astronaut's destination to supplement supplies that are difficult or expensive to send from Earth, known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), has long been the strategy when researching how humans might create sustainable outposts on other planetary bodies. So, the strength and durability made possible by a lightweight potato starch-based concrete mix holds high potential over conventional materials when it comes to otherworldly construction, the study team says.
Potato starch wasn't the first medium that University of Manchester scientists tested in their search for ISRU building supplies. In a previous study, the same team explored the possibility of using human blood and urine as binding agents for their extraterrestrial concrete. The blood and urine of astronauts, after all, are renewable resources, and they're available wherever an astronaut's mission might take them.
Concrete from the researchers' trials using blood and urine also produced strengths above traditional mixtures, measuring around 40 MPa. These bricks' construction, however, would require that astronauts repeatedly drain their own bodily fluids, which was viewed as a drawback.
Aled Roberts, the lead researcher for the StarCrete project and research fellow for the Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub at the University of Manchester, concedes that using potato flakes is preferable to blood and pee.
"Astronauts probably don't want to be living in houses made from scabs and urine," he said in a statement.
If that disappoints any current or future space travelers, fret not. The opportunity to contribute literal parts of yourself into the construction of your Martian home isn't completely lost. The specific salt compound used in the potato-based StarCrete mixture is magnesium chloride, which can be abstracted from Martian soils, or, luckily for you, human tears.
My granddaughter was visiting and I had my wife pick up one of these. I had the same planes as a kid six decades ago, BUT... I swear I remember the slot for the wing being curved to actually make the shape of an airplane wing, SO THE FRICKIN' THING COULD FLY. This one didn't fly worth crap. It's not a mistake. That's how they're made now.
My granddaughter and I were watching her favorite animated show, Paw Patrol (not my fav, I prefer Bluey), and I suggested we watch some stuff I watched as a kid. She was not receptive at first, but ultimatums even work with four-and-a-half year olds. I put on the first episode of Ultraman. It was in Japanese with English subtitles, which really wasn't what I was going for, so I put Paw Patrol back on the TV while I searched You Tube on my computer. Astroboy came to mind.
In the first episode of Astroboy, young ten-year-old "Aster" is racing a self driving car "which should have been perfectly safe", until it wasn't, and a construction vehicle pulled in front of him and the consequent wreck killed him. His father (never any mention of a mother), a genius roboticist, vows to recreate his son as a robot in one year, with a 100,000 horsepower engine. A minute or so is spent on that year of development. They're successful. Then "Astroboy" learns everything over the next several years, but he doesn't grow like a normal boy. No time is spent on why he doesn't grow, but the "father" creator douchebag confronts him about it, and decides to sell him to a circus since he's not growing. It's more a Roman circus where he battles other robots to the death. A ******* gynormous fire starts as a result of one of Astroboy's battles, a fire so big it seems to consume cities. Astroboy actually rescues the guy that bought him. There's a good guy that tries to save Astroboy from life in the circus, and a political resolution that frees 100,000 robots essentially sets Astroboy free. That's Episode One.
And I'm sitting on the couch next to my granddaughter remembering I really loved Astroboy when I was a kid. Still do. WTFuck.
Actually WTFuck your granddaughter prefering paw patrol over bluey.
I should have said "current" favorite. It appears she binges certain shows for a while, then moves on to something else. A while back it was Spidey Kids. She had a thing for Peppa Pig for a time. Me, I watched Looney Toons, Popeye, Astroboy, etc. I've been searching myself for a single word to describe today's animated offerings, and I keep coming up with "gay"...
The electrifying rise and fall of Ultimate Tazer Ball
For a brief moment in 2012, it looked like Ultimate Tazer Ball was the next big thing.
Maybe it was the pure outlandishness of the concept, or maybe the internet just loved “shocking” headlines packaged with sharable, bite-sized videos. Either way, Tazer Ball — a freakish amalgamation of soccer and rugby in which players could shock each other with stun guns — dominatedthe press cyclefor several months.
But the attention didn’t last. America had had its fill of ultimatized versions of everyday sports, like the XFL and Slamball.
Nevertheless, three friends — Leif Kellenberger, Erik Wunsch and Eric Prumm — had a dream. The wider American public had moved on from its brief infatuation with alternative sports, and the three realized the sport they’d bet on — professional paintball — wasn’t going to expand beyond its niche market anytime soon.They needed to branch out, to swing for the fences with a new sport that could, at the very least, land them a lucrative TV deal. And during a paintball conference in Chicago in 2011, Ultimate Tazer Ball was born.
From a Google search, you might think Ultimate Tazer Ball dominated the early ’10s. There is no shortage of Ultimate Tazer Ball clips and headlines and interviews. But for the most part, all the clips and headlines and interviews feature the same highlights, the same grabby puns and the same quotes from Kellenberger, Wunsch and Prumm. It’s like the sport lived and died in the lifetime of its initial PR push. It made headlines, circulated highlights, grabbed a ton of attention and even made it to Stephen Colbert.
But what about the guys who actually played the game? The professional paintballers who ran around tazing and tackling each other in the hope that the sport — and thus the players — would hit it big?
About a year after that fateful night in Chicago, Kellenberger, Wunsch and Prumm had recruited around 20 paintballers for an all-expenses-paid trip to California and the opportunity to “try out a new sport.” Exactly what that new sport was, they didn’t say, and that’s where we’ll let Derrick Weltz — former star of the Toronto Terror team — take over.
It was around 2012, so I would’ve been 25, somewhere around there. I think it was Eric [Prumm] who called me in December. He was like, “Hey, I wanna fly you down to California, give you $500 for the weekend, come try this sport we’re developing.”
And I was like, “Okay, what is it?”
“It’s just a mixture of American Gladiators and dodgeball, something like that.”
He wouldn’t say more than that. He was just really vague about it. But I went anyway. I’d known those guys for a couple years and considered them friends. Basically everybody knows everybody in paintball — you fly around and go to different tournaments and you end up seeing the same people and becoming friends. So since pretty much everybody involved was from the paintball industry, I went.
Plus I was young. It was something new and a paid trip to California. I didn’t really even hesitate.
“WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT WE WERE DOING UNTIL THE NIGHT BEFORE.”
Soon enough, there were about 20 of us in the hotel in California. But it was still all hush-hush. No one really knew what the sport was, besides the vague explanation that it was “American Gladiators meets dodgeball.”
Turns out, they didn’t want to tell us until we signed a non-disclosure the night before we were supposed to go out and play this new sport. We had no idea what we were doing until the night before.
Upon handing out the non-disclosures, they finally told us what we were in for, but they didn’t force anyone to do it. They were like, “You guys are here, it’s paid for. But if you don’t want to play, that’s fine, we understand.”
I think all 20-ish guys who were there ended up playing. We were all friends, including Eric, Erik and Leif, so it was just like, we’re here for a fun all-expenses-paid weekend to hang out with all the other paintball guys… and then go and taser each other.
Their original plan was to have it be a little mini-tournament where the winning team would get a cash prize. But once we all found out what it was, we decided that instead of killing ourselves doing this, we would just split that prize money among everybody.
I’ll admit I was kind of freaked out by the tasers at first, so the first thing I did to make sure I could handle it was to just taser my leg and get it over with. Because if it was something I couldn’t handle or if I were afraid of it, it just wouldn’t have been a good thing.
But the tasers were turned down a lot, so it wasn’t too bad. I mean, after we all signed the contracts, everyone had the tasers and we were all tasering each other in the hotel. It was a good time.
I mean, by no means was it enjoyable. You definitely didn’t want to be tasered. It hurt, but it wasn’t awful. It was more discomfort, like a bee sting. But it was turned down enough that it wouldn’t affect your cardiovascular system or anything, or if I tased my forearm my hand wouldn’t cramp up.
Half of it was the sound it made. It just made this really loud sting noise. It’s hard to describe; it just sounded like it would hurt. But that combined with the sting led to an overall sort of shock factor — no pun intended. It was snappy and intimidating. Like, you’d be running and get focused on scoring, then all of a sudden you hear the shock noise coming at you…
You’ll see the videos. Some guys get shocked and just run right through it, continuing on, but other guys would try to dive or slide around it. There were a couple guys who stood above the rest; they just had an extra gear. They were able to fight through it.
“THEY WANTED IT TO BE BIG, THEY WANTED IT TO BE FLASHY ANDTHEY WANTED TO SELL IT TO TV.”
The next morning we went to a nearby indoor soccer field. They’d rented it for the day and put UTB logos and marketing material all over the place. You wouldn’t know where it was, the place was covered in UTB everything —
Because that’s all it really was. It was all about brand imaging — they wanted it to be big, they wanted it to be flashy… maybe kinda gimmicky, and they wanted to sell it to TV.
So they had put lights in the jerseys so they’d flash, a bunch of crazy over-the-top stuff beyond the tasers. We also played outdoors one day so they could get different lighting.
And since it was mostly bent around making a pitch video, the game was never 100 percent finalized. Like we didn’t really know what to do, especially those first couple games, because nothing was very crazily developed. [We knew] you didn’t have to give up the ball, you’re supposed to score the ball, and if you have the ball you’re open to being tasered. It was just all about your willpower. If you could fight through it and keep running with the ball, then you could keep going.
But then the rules kept fluctuating. I mean, the game was in its infancy, so it was kind of expected. The first day, we played with three different-sized ***** because they didn’t know the size of the ***** they wanted to use. Eventually, there was a basketball key in front of the net called the Shock Zone.
So if you were in that area, whether you had the ball or not, you could be shocked. Outside of that you could only be shocked if you had the ball. There were also rules around not shocking each other in the junk, I think, but we also avoided doing that since we were all friends. Plus the areas like your ribcage, where your skin is a bit softer, getting shocked there actually sucked, so we’d try to avoid that too.
But I think that was really it for rules.
“WE’D JUST GO OUT THERE AND HAVE FUN AND TRY TO MAKE A MILLION BUCKS AT SOME POINT.”
It was basically full-body contact, which a lot of people didn’t realize. [That] was probably, honestly, the worst part of it. Forget the tasers, it was basically rugby. Guys just laying their shoulders into each other with no padding. And we were all just paintballers. There were athletic guys and we’re used to pain to a degree, but we weren’t used to full-body contact sports.
Everybody had their strengths. A couple guys come to mind: Thomas Taylor, Damian Ryan, Jerry Desvarieux. At least Thomas and Jerry, like if they were football players, they’d be running backs. They were tanks. If you got in front of them, they’d just run you over. It was such a short-lived sport, but it would’ve been fun to see who would’ve risen above the rest and become the Michael Jordan of Tazer Ball.
On the field, we were just putting on a show, but off the field it was a lot like wrestling. Behind closed doors, we were a close group. We were all buddy-buddy.
The whole idea behind it was to just entertain and put on a good show to capture attention. I don’t want to say it was staged by any means, because it wasn’t. We didn’t plot who’d win or lose or anything. We’d just go out there and have fun and try to make a million bucks at some point.
“IT WAS ALMOST LIKE A STARTUP.”
Despite all the videos, we really only played it maybe five or six times, getting flown around to different spots to play. We went to Thailand, which made sense because at the same time there was a paintball tournament [there].
A lot of people in the industry were already there, and we could draw from the paintball market for audiences as well. Because in the paintball world, the pro players are basically celebrities. Jerry, Damian and everyone — we’d help pull that initial audience.
And it did end up receiving a lot of local attention in Thailand too. Anybody that was at the facility but had no idea that we were going to be there would stop and watch the whole thing, because it had that wow factor. Like, Are these guys really doing this?
Eventually we [signed] a one-year deal. I don’t remember exactly which TV company it was. But for that year, we didn’t do anything for it, nor could we if we wanted to. It felt like they’d done it just to get us to sign over the rights so that they owned it even though they had no intention of doing anything with it. They just didn’t want anyone else to have the rights to it.
I think it was just a bad deal, and you don’t really know anyone’s intentions with that, so it was disappointing.
I also remember other conversations happened where TV companies wanted to bring in their own players, like the American Gladiators — I don’t know if it was the actual American Gladiators, but that’s the idea they had. Like massive guys, your prime athletes or whatever. But Eric, Erik and Leif didn’t want to do that. They wanted to stay true to the guys who were there that first night in the hotel. They wanted to get the contract and pay us.
In hindsight, we’ve always said it probably would’ve been better for them to take a deal and do whatever they could’ve with it. Instead we just kinda had our 15 minutes of fame and burned out. But those guys wanted to see us all be successful. If one of us was going to make it, all of us were going to make it.
Luckily I don’t think anyone was banking on it to be the next huge thing. No one was basing their retirement on it as far as I know. But at the same time, we were all like, It would be cool if it happens.
But then it just fizzled out.
I just see it as a fun moment of my life. Sometimes we’ll talk about it when I run into the other guys. It was something crazy and wild. We were young. I don’t regret it. Hell, I’d do it again.
Walter Chandoha's Cat Photography: A 70-Year Love Story
It was a cat named Loco that got him started. Walter Chandoha, a World War II battle photographer who had transitioned into advertising, picked up a gray kitten on the streets of New York City one cold night in 1949. Inspired by the cat's late-night antics, Chandoha and his wife Maria named him Loco—and it was by photographing Loco that Chandoha began a 70-year career as one of the world's most famous cat photographers.
This month Taschen released Walter Chandoha Cats: 1948-2018, "a career-spanning retrospective of the greatest cat photographer." (Chandoha died earlier this year at the age of 98) In the photographs his daughters grow old, cities evolve, and the individual cats change—but the unknowable, endlessly fascinating character of cats remains, captured better by Chandoha than anyone before or since.
“Eye level is the best level.” To put his subjects, like this stray, at ease, Chandoha met them at their level. Strays were prevalent in the Fulton Street Fish Market area, which provided plenty of willing subjects for the photographer. New York City, 1959.
Chandoha’s very last feline companion, Maddie, a rescue American shorthair, photographed in New Jersey in 2018. The Chandoha family had dozens of cats over the years, as Chandoha wrote in the introduction to his book. "Sometimes they were the sole spoiled potentate, but more commonly there were as many as four in the house and a number in the barn. Every one of these cats had their own distinct manner and set of characteristics —whether it be engaging or enigmatic, active or lethargic — but they were always part of the family."
Chandoha writes in the book's introduction, "I relished the challenge of making photographs of cats and quickly saw the potential of attempting to capture their naturally expressive personalities. The photographic possibilities and challenges seemed endless"
Over the course of Chandoha's career his work was featured on over 300 magazine covers, in thousands of pet food packages and advertisements, and in 33 books about his work.
Chandoha's children Chiara, Paula, Maria, Fernanda, Enrico, and Sam were frequent subjects in his photographs alongside their feline companions. This photograph features Chiara and a Persian cat, in New Jersey in 1961.
In addition to the studio shots that made him the most successful commercial cat photographer in the country, Chandoha frequently captured everyday life, including this shot on the streets of New York City in 1982.
Daughter Maria and son Sam with a family cat, American shorthair, New Jersey, 1960. "In all these years I’ve spent making thousands of images of every kind of cat, I’m still surprised to find yet another who is completely different from their peers," Chandoha writes in the book's introduction.
American shorthair, New Jersey, 1976. "You’d never get the same expressions with dogs,," Chandoha said in a 2015 interview. "Cats are just naturally expressive. They get in such a variety of situations.”
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