Procrastinaut: Ten things to waste your time with this weekend

Rob Walker, Yahoo News
·Rob Walker

Reports say Edward Snowden got a job, but no word on whether it includes health-care benefits. Kill time waiting for details to emerge with the help of the Procrastinaut Tumblr, where @gilbertjasono, @danielwbean, and I leak the latest divisionary wonders and amusements in the virtual world, all week long. Here are this week’s highlights, plus a few bonus items. Enjoy. (Oh, and follow the Tumblr here).

1. Smooch 2.0

Artist Patrick Camut brings you The Kissing Machine, an “interactive sculpture” that enables a “mechanically assisted kiss.” With the look of a torture device, the contraption involves an electric motor that pulls kissers together when a switch is thrown. Via Tumblr Open Arts.

2. Suspicious Verse

The NSA Haiku Generator draws on the agency’s list of terms “that can turn you into a suspect and target of spying if they’re used in electronic communication,” and makes haiku out of them. More about the project here and here.

3. R.I.P Lou Pop


Etsy troll? But aren't they usually the sweetest, folksiest artisans on the Internet? Either way, we tend to think this Lou Reed memorial t-shirt featuring a picture of Iggy Pop is a fail, but you can pick one up at the link here if you want. Iggy Pop is still alive and well, by the way...as far as we know.

4. Fab Photos

Give Ringo credit for this cool idea: Reuniting some then-teenage Beatlemaniacs he snapped 50 years ago for an excellent then-and-now photo pairing. Would Pete Best have come up with this? I think not. Via: Metafilter.

5. Throwback Upgrade

For the tech nostalgic who would rather not think about the Mavericks OS, Yahoo Tech reports that, thanks to developer James Friend, “you can now fire up a working version of Apple's old Mac OS System 7 — from 1991!) right in your web browser.”

6. Snappy Dispenser

Here we have Polaroll: a toilet-paper dispenser that looks like a Polaroid camera. Via Bem Legaus. (Part of our unstoppable collection of Things That Look Like Other Things.)

7. Hang It Up

Now’s your chance to display your digital artwork in “a real gallery room.” Actually it’s a digital representation of a gallery room, created by F.A.T. But it’s pretty fun. Upload your creations here, or go browsing here. Via Prosthetic Knowledge.

8. Synesthesia? There’s An App For That!

For advanced Procrastinauts, “Sadly By Your Side” is a multimedia doozy: book, music, app, and “interactive experience.” First the app absorbs colors from the book; then you walk around pointing the app at the real world, where it picks up appropriate colors, tweaking both your screen view and a related, malleable musical piece, all in accord with what it sees. Phew! Anyway the demo video is super-neat. More here.

9. States of Mind

Take a short quiz that will (allegedly!) determine which state you should live in, based on your personality.

10. Ye Olde GIFs

The Richard Balzer Collection presents an amazing cavalcade of vintage optical toy creations repurposed as GIFs. Fantastic.

Follow Procrastinaut.Tumblr.com for breaking news of the weirdest and the coolest collisions of technology with design, art, robots, hacks, science, games, music, pop culture, animation, current events, illustration, lulz, ye olde GIFs, and other stuff I can’t think of right now. Every day.