Jeff Steck

Super? You decide.

Not being depressed is exhausting.

If they ever want to do a sing-along for Bleak Week, this is the way to go.

It's not the biggest or most important part of all this but: The Trump Organization continues to use the #ScheduleA litigation model to extract settlements & default judgments from defendants who are allegedly foreign. E.g., The Trump Organization v. Schedule A, No. 8:25-cv-03053 (M.D. Fla.).

Tejo (sport) - Wikipedia

Oh, wow it is. (The patent requires a few extra features like a "strike plate" so it might still be valid.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tejo_(s...

Patent drawing of a man tossing a bean bag onto a panel, which then explodes with a flame effect. Per the patent, it "complies with most all fire safety regulations."

Pyrotechnic cornhole.
US Patent 12533570

Patent drawings of a lanyard and ID tag worn in twelve different positions.

Advanced lanyard technology. Patented this week.
US 12532956

Screenshot showing that CIA files include a 1989 paper about "Consciousness Related Anomalies in Random Physical Systems"

There's lots of crazy ideas in old Foundations of Physics papers and I'd love to know why the CIA was collecting them

Unsettling patent drawing of a man staring out of the page and into your soul, as if in preparation for a feast

US Patent No. 12527495

US Patent No. 223,898 for an "Electric Lamp".

Thomas Edison was an American inventor and businessman.

1/3 On this day in 1880, Thomas Edison received US Patent No. 223,898 for an “Electric Lamp”.
This was not “the first light bulb”. Howeever, it was the set of design choices that made incandescent lighting practical at scale.
#OnThisDay #OTD #PatentHistory #Patents #Edison

Watched Gimme Shelter (1970) today and it was unsettling to hear people say basically 'the Hells Angels were just trying to keep order'

That’s Minneapolis hip-hop artist, queer icon, and all around wonderful human being Nur-D.

And he ended up at the hospital after this assault.

During a commercial, I pressed the usual button to pause the TV, but instead it added Tampax to my shopping cart. Yay technology.

Patent drawings of a test-tube-like capsule holding a rolled-up $50 bill.

A glass tube that you break open to get emergency cash. Patented this week by, apparently, the former chancellor of UW-Madison.
US 12527383

Everyone welcome
Mazeppa, MN

I used to do more posts about sinister new technologies buried in patent filings, but now companies are like "we're excited to announce our sinister new technology."

Patent drawing of a person rubbing lotion on their back using a long hand-like wand.

Patent drawing of the palm side of the motorized hand, a trypophobic nightmare of bumps and pores.

A motorized hand that oozes lotion from its pores, patented today.
US 12520926

And it's such an absurd assertion. People are not being injured at epidemic levels by off-brand Labubus and unlicensed Bulls jerseys.

Today in design patents:

D479105 issued in 2003 for an ice removal tool.

#DesignPatents

U.S. Patent 1,655,114 for an "Apparatus for Aerial Transportation".

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American engineer, futurist, and inventor.

1/2 #OnThisDay in 1928, Nikola Tesla received U.S. #Patent 1,655,114 for an “Apparatus for Aerial Transportation”. A “helicopter-plane” concept for vertical takeoff, then forward flight.
#OTD #PatentHistory #Tesla #AviationHistory

stocking with a lump of coal in the toe

D375,915 - issued in 1996 for a design for a "lump of coal Christmas stocking." #DesignPatents

Patent drawing of an Elf on the Shelf but, you guessed it, he's wearing shoes.

Elf on a Shelf, but with shoes.
US Patent 11986748

Patent drawings of a child, rendered as a stick figure, shooting a gun almost their size at a Christmas tree ornament. The ornament is displaying a reindeer fleeing in terror.

Use Christmas tree ornaments as targets for an electronic shooting game.
US Patent 11918133

The outtakes from Emmet Otter go hard

U.S. Patent No. 121,992 "Improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments".

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist.

#OnThisDay in 1871, Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, received U.S. #Patent No. 121,992 for an “Improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for Garments”.
Even literary legends file patent applications.
#OTD #PatentHistory #USPTO

Patent drawing of a bin for holding used cloth wipes as they steep in five quarts of liquid.

"Reusable toilet paper system"
US Patent 12274399

Mostly it's not that patents are issued carelessly (though that can happen), but rather that the law requires inventions to be "novel" and "non-obvious" but not necessarily ... good

Patent drawing of two artificial Christmas trees joined into an hourglass shape with fish swimming alongside.

Turn old artificial Christmas trees into underwater reefs.
US Patent 12495775, issued today

U.S. Patent No. X-6490 "Fire Ladder".

Blodget's Hotel, built 1793.

Ruins of the Patent Office.

1/4 #OnThisDay in 1836, the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., burned in what became known as the Great Patent Fire. The blaze destroyed all 9,957 patent records and roughly 7,000 patent models, wiping out much of the early U.S. patent archive.
#OTD #PatentHistory #Patents #USPTO

U.S. Patent No. 2,455,992 "Cathode-ray tube amusement device".

U.S. Patent No. 2,455,992 "Cathode-ray tube amusement device".

1/4 #OnThisDay in 1948, U.S. #Patent No. 2,455,992 was granted to Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann for the “Cathode-ray tube amusement device”, often considered the first video game.
#OTD #PatentHistory #VideoGameHistory #GamingHistory