Welcome to my Friday cabinet of curiosities, a roundup of stuff I enjoyed this week! Today’s links feature rebel birds, touchable cartography, human-sized 3D printers and more
Absurdist streamers roleplay as NPCs, performing exaggerated looping movements and repeating catchphrases
“They’re picking up on all the ‘uncanny valley’ things about how NPCs behave in video games" ... NPCs “don’t behave like ordinary people do, they’re not offended if you make them repeat themselves over and over. They don’t expect you to cooperate in conversation.”
In 1835, a school for blind students began printing embossed learning materials, including an atlas of the United States. There are only four surviving copies, and one can now be browsed online