Procrastinaut: Ten things to waste your time with this weekend

Rob Walker, Yahoo News
·Rob Walker

In a totally Hollywood move, Congress is doing a reboot of one of its classic spectacles: a threatened government shutdown.

Ignore it, and focus on this barrage of exemplary tomfoolery from the Procrastinaut Tumblr — where @gilbertjasono, @danielwbean, and I gather the very best divisionary wonders and amusements (follow the Tumblr here) all week long, plus a few bonus items. Enjoy.

1. Paranoid Style


Etsy sellers Filez Doux make cardboard sculptures in the shapes of security cameras. Crafty!


2. All Gold Everything



Forget the gold iPhone. Head over to the Walkman Archive and wallow in the many examples of gold Walkman variations. I would love to rock one of these on a subway commute. Via Coudal.

3. Moving Music


Is this the “the perfect music hack”? Paul Lamere of The Echo Nest argues that ‘Johnny Cash has been Everywhere’ (which basically plays the song and plots the many locations mentioned on a map) is just that, and in making his case offers some great thinking about what makes a music hack good.

4. 0_0

Did you know the emoticon turned 31 this week? Well it did.

5. Log and Noggin

Every morning, Procrastinaut starts your day with an excellent GIF. In our extensive GIF research, we’ve been noticing a surge in the popularity of really creepy, surreal, black-and-white GIFs, like the work we have featured a couple of times in the past week or two, from Bill Domonkos. (More recently, Fast Company interviewed Domonkos, here.) Check out more of his work here. And if you’re hungry for more creepy, surreal black-and-white GIFs? Try Kevin Weir’s Flux Machine Tumblr. More here.

6. Street Creatures

Meanwhile, out in the real world: A round of applause to Aiden Glynn for his street art projects that turn mundane city-environment details into charming monsters, among other things.

7. Extremely Vintage Technology


The fine people of Radiolab call him Monkbot: “A mechanical man commissioned by King Philip II of Spain almost 450 years ago,” featured in the show’s Ghost Stories episode. Plenty of pictures and a short, silent video of Monkbot in action at Meet Monkbot - Radiolab.

8. Building Code

"1,053,713 buildings in New York City, shaded by year of construction." Fun interactive map tool of the week.

 9. School Daze


We don’t normally recommend reading material here at Procrastinaut, but you nostalgia junkies will enjoy in this surprisingly epic history of Trapper Keepers on Mental Floss. Notable: “There is robust business in vintage Trapper Keepers on eBay, where unused binders can go for $50 or more.” And I got a kick out of this vintage ad, in which it’s pretty clear these hormone-addled teens are only talking about binders to keep from ripping each other’s clothes off right there in the library. (Via BoingBoing.)

10. Chill Out


And finally, here’s what we’ll be up to this weekend. (Via io9.) Hope you enjoy yours, too.

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