made an enormous table for all of you who wish you could have been the Commissar of the State Ministry of Railroads

☀️😃

Another great example of the ticking time bomb that is concrete and steel.

The most insanely beautiful prairie style bank, designed by Sullivan acolyte George Grant Elmslie, who designed much of Sullivan’s famous ornamentation before his own career, which included Old Second National Bank in Aurora, took off

Microgames have always fascinated me. I'm a huge fan of minimalism in design and these small games with a limited countermix, small map, and short rulebooks are a great example of this. The tiny nature of the design necessitates a tight focus on what matters (in all aspects) and because of this a lot of fat ends up being trimmed; something often neglected in larger games. Born in the late '70s and continuing in popularity into the early '80s, microgames were definitely a product of their times. Today it would be nearly impossible to replicate the true microgames from a cost perspective. The average microgame sold for around $2.95 USD, a great price for anyone, but especially students with little spare money to spend. Today, that $2.95 would be $32, which may still be inexpensive in the overall scheme of things but is high enough to put it out of impulse purchase range. Speaking of students, the small size of these games made them perfect for a quick battle in the library or dining hall without drawing attention. Their portability also helped, allowing gaming on the go long before smartphones or tablets. Well, to an extent. Trying to keep counters from moving around on a bus where one hard brake would scatter your forces to a sticky floor is not an ideal location. Nor is on the back of a horse during show jumping. Over the next few weeks I will be discussing some of the titles that did something interesting or were unique in some way. I'll also be looking at how I think they have managed to continue throughout the decades, if they still exist today, and if so what form? Some guidelines. First, the term “microgame” came about from Metagaming Concepts and referred to their series of small games. Over time it has morphed into a catch all term for small games, which is how I will use it so this will be more than just those early titles. Likewise, sometimes it may be adjacent, like the Series 120 game pictured in the photo. Second, most titles will be wargames or strategy games, with a maybe a RPG or two thrown in. I'm not looking at generalist games (such as titles from Cheapass Games) nor is this meant to be an exhaustive list. And that last point is important. This is not meant to be a history of small wargames, just a look back at what, for a lot of people, may be unknown games—and why they mattered in some way.

people are scared to acknowledge he used to possess far more vaguely nonbinary swag than Bowie simply because he did so while balding…But a real one can recognize that balding is #PartOfIt

Right before you fall asleep, your hands and feet get warmer. That warming is the real trigger that switches your brain into sleep mode. A 1999 Nature paper tested it against melatonin, core body temperature, heart rate, and how sleepy people felt. The hand and foot warming won. The drawing in the tweet works on this exact trigger. The pose has a name in Japan: Mōkan Undō, or "capillary exercise." Katsuzō Nishi designed it in 1927. He was the chief technical engineer on the Tokyo subway, Japan's first. It became one of six daily exercises in his system, still done in Japan today. You lie on your back, point your arms and legs straight up, and shake them for thirty seconds. While the limbs are up, gravity drains the blood from them. When you lower them, the blood floods back into your hands and feet, warming them in seconds. Your brain reads that warming as a green light to sleep. The shaking activates a separate reflex, the kind most mammals use after a scare. Dogs and rabbits shake themselves off after a fright for the same reason. Dr. David Berceli, a trauma therapist, built a whole method around it, with certified instructors now in 40 countries. The shaking flips your nervous system out of "I'm wired" mode and into "I'm safe to sleep" mode. Nishi got the biology wrong. He believed capillaries, the tiny blood vessels at the ends of your veins, did the pumping. William Harvey, an English doctor, had shown the heart did the work, three centuries earlier, in 1628. The exercise still works, for entirely different reasons than Nishi thought. The drained limbs come back warm. The body reads that as a sleep cue, and the shaking calms the nervous system on top of it. A drawing on X with millions of views just rediscovered a 100-year-old Japanese sleep exercise. A subway engineer designed it first, decades before sleep scientists figured out why it would work.

This paper got a few million views across various RTs two weeks ago: EMF remote-controlled mice... Look carefully at the saline & control images from the paper -- can you see how the two images are flipped and re-cropped? h/t @AndrewGYork and friends for the close read

Pre-Code Aviation uniforms in 'Flying Down To Rio" (1933)

it’s very important to have a phase in your life where you find an absolute shit hole dive bar and become a regular there and talk to strangers

Without saying anything, how long have you been playing video games?

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Dragon cargo ship CRS-33 undocked from IDA-2 at 1705 UTC Feb 26. Splashdown off the California coast is expected around 0744 UTC Feb 27.

One of my most treasured memories is when I had 3 pints of beer with David Harvey - and he promptly gave a 90 minute lecture straight after. Won’t lie, I was a little light headed! 🤣 Can’t wait to read this!