5 results found for “stipple”

Imperfection, Embraced

More on gloriously imperfect photographs.

Last week, I shared my philosophy of embracing our hilarious imperfections. I continue to urge you to have photographic fun with your IDs, your address book, and anywhere else you can.

As part of that post, I included a wonderful photo from my pal Merlin’s Costco card. When I spoke to Merlin to clear the use of my photograph of his photograph, he was able to find the card, and take a much higher-resolution photo of the terrible photo. Presented in high-resolution, here is Merlin’s bonkers ID photo:

It’s like they’re producing these cards on an Easy-Bake Printer. Viewed at this level of zoom, it’s practically a stipple portrait, though much lower quality.

While chatting, Merlin also pointed me to one of his favorite Twitter avatars, for someone who is truly leaning in to the imperfection. Society judges women on their appearance much more than it does men, so Emmy-nominated writer Megan Amram’s Twitter avatar is truly a brave stand.

My god. It’s awful, and in its awfulness, amazing. She is a loathsome, offensive brute, yet I can’t look away. Gloriously well done, Megan!

A Thesis on Pants 

Recently, the Wall Street Journal had a fairly ridiculous article about cargo shorts, which sadly did not feature a stipple portrait of the clothing in question. While that article is amusing enough, Harry Cheadle’s review of the article is even better.


Update (August 4th, 2016): Friend-of-the-site Drew Shelton alerted me to what appears to be an addition to the article, wherein the Wall Street Journal added a delightful stipple portrait of cargo shorts.

ALT NAME
Stipple cargo shorts look far better than normal cargo shorts.

Grumpy Cat Has a Stipple Portrait 

Border collies aren’t the only household pet with a stipple portrait. Now, the Internet’s own Grumpy Cat has one too, to go along with her new book and movie deal.

Grumpy Cat's Stipple Portrait
Grumpy Cat, Immortalized in the Wall Street Journal

Hilarious stipple portrait or no, I can’t imagine how this becomes a movie.

Don’t Miss The Stipple Hoodie 

Start-ups in Silicon Valley are adding ever more ridiculous perks, as detailed in this Wall Street Journal article.

Border Collies Love Busywork

After discussing the poor design of Giant Pandas, it’s time to examine another cute black and white animal – the border collie.

Border collies are very smart, one of the smartest breeds of dog in the world. “Betsy”, a dog so smart she actually needs a pseudonym, knows over 340 different words. She was featured in a fascinating National Geographic article back in 2008:

Each image depicted a dog’s toy against a white background—toys Betsy had never seen before. They weren’t actual toys; they were only images of toys. Could Betsy connect a two-dimensional picture to a three-dimensional object?

Schaefer held up a picture of a fuzzy, rainbow-colored Frisbee and urged Betsy to find it. Betsy studied the photograph and Schaefer’s face, then ran into the kitchen, where the Frisbee was placed among three other toys and photographs of each toy. Betsy brought either the Frisbee or the photograph of the Frisbee to Schaefer every time.

If you think that’s impressive, you’ll be amazed by video of the experiment, which reveals that Betsy actually knows German! Most people don’t even know German. Do you know German? I don’t know German!

Border collies have been used on farms for over 100 years to assist in herding livestock. More recently, they’ve also worked as search and rescue dogs. However, when kept simply as pets, the collies’ intelligence often causes them to become bored and destructive.

According to this Wall Street Journal article, more than a few people are now paying to give their border collies work to do, by renting sheep. For $15 per dog at Fido’s Farm, owners can set their dogs free to practice on a flock of 200 sheep. Of course, these sheep don’t actually need to be herded. Despite their obvious intelligence, the dogs aren’t quite smart enough to understand just how pointless their work actually is.

The best item from the Journal’s article isn’t actually the fact that people are renting sheep. Nor is it the fact that some folks have even gone so far as to purchase their own sheep, just to amuse their dogs. It’s not even the fact that if the dogs get bored with the rented sheep on Fido’s Farm, they can herd ducks for an extra fee. No, the best thing has to be this stipple portrait of a border collie:

Border Collie stipple portrait
It’s labeled simply “Border Collie”