In honor of the anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s first successful telephone call, The Atlantic has an awesome slideshow of some of the best images from his lab notebooks, which have been loving preserved by the Library of Congress. While it’s almost impossible to make out his handwriting, his illustrations of scientific principles and crazy invention ideas are like miniature works of art. The one above is believed to be the first sketch of his telephone system, which was originally only intended as an improvement on the existing telegraph. Science!
For 15 years, Mark A. Thomas has been collecting phone numbers from payphones around the world for what he calls The Payphone Project. On his website, he states the purpose of this venture: “To promote random contacts among complete strangers.” In other words, Thomas hopes that by listing numbers from public payphones on the internet, someone will give a random number a call and a complete stranger who happens to walk by will pick up on the other end. If that doesn’t sound like it’s for you, we have a slightly less adventurous task for you: Can you correctly identify which country each of the following 10 payphones come from? Don’t worry — we’ve picked images containing some clues to help you out.
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We’re fascinated by Lady Gaga. But despite her numerous collaborations, leotards and intellectual pursuits, she remains a rather divisive celebrity. There are some major Gaga haters out there — including the newest member of the tribe, Grace Jones. (Not that we’re judging Grace; Gaga totally ripped off her shtick.) But there are plenty of other famous people mouthing off about the pop star who we’re surprised even know her name. After the jump, a roundup of our favorite random disses.
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“Telephone,” the latest video drama from Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce — with the help of Gaga’s prized directorial auteur Jonas Akerlund — unfurls at an epic nine minutes, thirty-two seconds. If you don’t have the time, bandwidth, or firewall clearance to sit through 9:32 of NSFW ass-shaking, mass murder, conceptual hairdos and product placement, click on through to our screencapped guide. (Yeah, we know, it’s kind of our beat.) As always, if there’s anything we missed, school us in the comments.
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