The Odd & Curious

Turntable Lab, the trusted Brooklyn-based digital retailer and tastemaker for DJs, audio heads, and music fans for over 20 years — announces an officially licensed collaboration with PEANUTS just in time for the holiday season. Available to pre-order beginning today (11/12) exclusively on TurntableLab.com and due out December 8th, the Turntable Lab x PEANUTS collection features a special edition pressing of A Boy Named Charlie Brown on yellow wax, plus record mats, tote bags, and t-shirts, all being offered in multiple colors.

A new species of conodonts has just been discovered by a Danish/Swedish team of paleontologists. The fossil is around 469 million years old and was recovered from a succession of limestone in western Russia, rocks that once formed the seafloor sediments during the Ordovician Period. Because the species proved to be new to science, it had to be formally baptized with a unique Latin moniker. As all study authors are passionate hobby musicians and have long love affairs with the history of heavy rock music, they decided to honor one of heavy metal’s true pioneers — guitar legend Tony Iommi of BLACK SABBATH.

Folks you might be seeing quite a lot of Squid Games costumes out for Halloween this year. The psychologically thrilling Korean drama — which premiered on September 17 is catching the world by surprise. Amazon and Etsy are selling non-sanctioned costumes. Most of the costumes are unisex, I am sure some sicko will come out with a sexy version of the Squid Games costume. Netflix fell asleep behind the wheel with this one. Better get one before Halloween gets here, shipping could be a problem if you do not watch out from where you are getting the costume.

Keep home closer with Astro, the household robot for home monitoring, with Alexa. When you’re away, use the Astro app to see a live view of your home, check in on specific rooms and viewpoints, and get activity alerts. When you’re home, Astro can follow you from room to room playing your favorite music, podcasts, or shows, and find you to deliver calls, reminders, alarms, and timers set with Alexa.

An inventive pair of advertising pros who were part of the group of geniuses at the agency behind the Burger King, Dominos, Microsoft and VW campaigns, has created a customized “selfie” wrapping paper company that is loved and used by Oprah, Khloe Kardashian and boasting sales that would make Hallmark jealous. Featuring maskless face photos of people and pets, Gift Wrap My Face, #GiftWrapMyFace adds them to the body of elves, snowmen, superheroes, astronauts, iconic statues, lamas or dancing with dreidels or menorahs. Gift Wrap My Face even created two Smart Wrapping Papers: one using augmented reality to enliven a face making a snow angel, a dancing elf and a Video Paper that uses a personalized and private QR code for gift-givers to share a video message with loved ones.

Usually, I do not do desktop reviews. As a creative individual, the HP ENVY 34-inch All-in-One Desktop caught my attention. The web camera is very unique. It can capture digital scans of hand-drawn art or text on your desk. The webcam supports a 16-megapixel resolution with an IR sensor and dual-array digital microphones. You can move it all around the screen’s outer frame. You will love working with this system, you will never leave your post.

Estelle Peacock Couture, a New Zealand-based fashion designer of Stellar Stage Apparel created this cheeky The Sexy Burger lingerie set. The all-dressed burger will have him go wild in bed. Just hold the ketchup, please.

Tapedeck.org is a project of neckcns.com, built to showcase the amazing beauty and (sometimes) weirdness found in the designs of the common audio tape cassette. There’s an amazing range of designs, starting from the early 60’s functional cassette designs, moving through the colorful playfulness of the 70’s audio tapes to amazing shape variations during the ’80s and ’90s.

Kick it, throw it, hit it. Made to be used anywhere, the Remember Leisure Ball is a volleyball-sized design that’s made from robust and resistant neoprene and features vivid and dynamic color-blocking. Made to get wet, this ball is ready for the beach, in your garden or backyard, in or by the pool or sea, and trips to the park. Use it to play volleyball, kickball, catch and more. The Remember Leisure Ball measures 8.5″ diam. and arrives deflated. 

YouTuber Burls Art built an insane bass out of 2,000 LEGO pieces with an epoxy resin fingerboard and bridge-concealed piezo pickup.

DuckDuckGo has been growing bigger in the past 12 months. The search engine emphasizes protecting searchers’ privacy. You can get seamless privacy protection on your browser for free with one download. DuckDuckGo has become the #2 search engine on mobile devices, they are above Yahoo, Bing, and Firefox. This is huge news for the company.

These states colored in blue have more cattle than humans. South Dakota has the most cattle per person in the United States followed by Nebraska and Montana.