📻KoolTunes Boombox,The "Last" NY Payphone and Searchable Chats

Retro is so this year

Hello friends!

How are you doing this Monday?

Memorial Day has been commercialized out the wazoo, and reduced to more of a parody than an actual day of remembrance - but I think it’s important to remember the many brave men and women who have sacrificed to keep the USA a free country.

Reddit is an interesting place to find first or second hand stories - and it’s insane what people have experienced.

We’ve started looking to buy a house here in Middle Tennessee - hopefully we’ll be able to find something this Summer.

You see - National Geographic has named Nashville the number one travel destination (among like 20 million other publications) and everyone has moved here.

It’s very difficult to find something “decent” under 400K.

Heck - people submit escalating bids and cash offers of 30 - 100K over asking price.

It’s nuts.

We’re hoping to find something within an hour’s drive of Franklin (where we’ve lived for a decade) that won’t cost an arm and a leg.

Did you hear about the WINNIE THE POOH horror movie that is coming out? Haha I wondered if someone would make something like that since Pooh is now in the public domain.

It’s called Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey and it looks insane.

I can’t wait to see this - even if it’s awful.

Well, let’s dive in!

🎵Kooltunes Boombox

The 90’s are back - and so are some of the wacky accessories.

Here - watch the video.

It’s an insulated cooler from Igloo with a built-in Bluetooth boombox. - complete with those mega vibey vintage colors.

Listen up, Retro fans: We just revived the popular KoolTunes™ boombox Playmate cooler we originally released back in 1989!! This KoolTunes throwback has the same fun look as the original, but we upgraded the technology within, including Bluetooth connectivity, a weather-resistant exterior, extended audio playtime and more. It’s a blast from the past! (source)

It has a 10 hour rechargeable battery, and would be perfect for a trip to the beach, pool, or lake.

It’s a fantastic way to sell nostalgia for $150 - and would be an awesome head-turning accessory. I could see this thing selling out by the pallet at Urban Outfitters . . .

I started digging a bit on Youtube - and I honestly have to wonder if Igloo was inspired by Vintage Speedwerks who added Bluetooth to an old cooler boombox.

That’s the only vintage cooler that I can find like it on Youtube that’s been modded. Huh. Interesting . . .

Since I got on the topic of coolers - it reminded me of that crazy Bud Light console . . .

I found a Unboxing video of the Bud Light BL6 console. It’s nuts.

Anyway, go check out the Kooltunes cooler at the link!

📞The Last NY Payphone?

It’s the end of an era in NYC. The last Manhattan public payphone was removed last week.

Apparently, the internet thought this was the last NYC payphone ( i was confused too) - but apparently there’s still quite a few left.

Like this one in Penn Station

Pic of the “last” payphone.

source

When I think of Payphones - I think of The Wire, Matrix, and other media that used them as important plot points. It’s weird to think that they’re basically extinct.

Of course - there’s no real use for them anymore. Everyone has a cell phone - and in desperate straights could always acquire a new one nearby.

Heck - lots of grocery stores have prepaid android phones these days.

The only real use case for using a payphone is perhaps after a flight and your phone is out of juice - or after an international flight and there’s no service/wifi.

There’s actually a website that explores payphones in various places - trying to discover if any work. It’s an absolutely fascinating website - and has a ton of content to explore.

The site is updated with at least one post a month - and the stories are a rabbit hole of fascinating information.

like this one about the 77 Water Street Payphone. Do they work? Are they completely broken? The narrator shares his findings about the different aspects of the payphone - and it’s extremely interesting to listen to.

The Twitter is really interesting too.

Payphone Project @projectpayphone

Yet another Penn Station payphone user (dude on the right). Today. Almost every single time I pass through Penn Station I see someone using one of New York's last working public pay payphones. People will use payphones to the bitter end, as long as they can.

May 25th 2022

1 Retweet16 Likes

A post from March on the site describes the owner’s frustration with maintaining the site, and a loss of joy for continuing to post content.

I don’t like posting here anymore. I still scout out payphones and share findings on social media. But when it comes to this website I’ve had no heart in it for a long time. How can one burn out on something they still love? But after an influential-seeming advertising entity described this content as “low quality” I all but gave up. It’s true, I don’t play click-bait games, I don’t chase keywords, I don’t trick anyone into being here. By modern standards that makes me “low quality.” I’d be OK with that if it didn’t deny me an income. I used to make my entire living off this and a few other websites. Those days are gone. (source)

I’m not sure if the author will ever read my words here - but I think this website is a wealth of fascinating information, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it for over an hour. Hopefully - the author continues the search for payphones!

Go check out the Payphone Project - or play the Payphone Radio (available on the homepage of the payphone-project website) in the background.

Playing the Payphone radio and some lofi at the same time is actually quite relaxing.

📲Searchable Chats

There have been many conversations on the internet about how forums are falling out of favor - and Discord/Slack is consuming everything. Heck - I wrote about it myself last September.

In a nutshell - here’s the problem. Forums are public sources of searchable content for years and years. I regularly read “tips and tricks” for games from over 10 years ago. These days - Slack and Discord tend to be insanely popular - and those are closed gardens of hard-to-search content.

2022

Oh I need to find out how to fix this issue in this Web app? Let me find the discord/slack, ask a question, wait for someone to respond . . .

2018

Oh look! Someone in 2015 had this same issue. Based on the 5 responses and fixes available, I think I’ve figured it out.

Even Reddit is starting to turn into a “stew” of low quality content - thanks to its new mobile-optimized design. Explore the fascinating conversation in this Hacker News thread.

At the current rate Reddit and Forums are trending towards - the only way to get very niche-specific information will be to ask people and hope someone has the right answer.

OK Vintage game discord - Has anyone played Twisted Metal 3. How do I beat the boss on level 3?

Of course - the issue with this is that it ends up removing information from the internet rather than making it accessible.

Well - I’m happy to offer a glimmer of hope.

There’s a new site called Linen that syncs Slack/Discord to a website to make it searchable.

Linen syncs your Slack and Discord threads to an SEO friendly website that allows your community to discover you through search engines and reduces the number of repeat questions. (source)

Of course - you’d have to proactively use the service for your Discord/Slack, but it’s a step in the right direction. The more we can make Slack/Discord accessible to Google/SEO - the easier it will be to access and find information.

For Slacks/Discords that are focused on games/products and other topics - something like this would be a game-changer.

For example this Fleet DM Slack is using Linen, and I could easily search to see if anyone had already asked a question. I can also explore the public channels too!

source

I hope more Discords/Slacks that focus on topics of interest to the public will use Linen to make their content accessible. It may just save the Open Web in some small way.

Check out Linen at the link!

🐙The Land of Random

Lets. Get. Random!

Magnetic Card Lofi

Make lofi with a obsolete Magnetic card audio recorder. This is awesome. You could make some sick retro vibes with this machine.

Little Worlds

A new little world is generated every time you open the website. It’s super cool!

Ultimate OSINT Collection

Want to get into Open Source Intelligence Gathering? Here’s a collection of a lot of the best resources to explore.

Nearby Wiki

Want to get out and explore your local area? This site will show you all the places near you that have Wikipedia articles! Ooooohhhhhhh

This is a Big Website

Don’t get me wrong - this speaker is insanely cool, but the website is very resource intensive.

Mastercard’s Smile to Pay

Looks like Mastercard is experimenting with tying your face to your payment card. Just smile to pay, eh? 1984 vibes intensify

Onyx Boox Note Air 2

OOOOH A E-INK TABLET WITH ANDROID 11? Say no more. I’m tempted. I would love to use this to take notes, read, and play Spotify on. It only has 4 gigs of ram, so I wouldn’t put much on this.

🎵TikToks You Can’t Miss

Peak of an Archaeologist’s career right there

This is the way

Well, I’ll never see a VR rig the same way again

My brave man, that looks like a giant spider’s home

Yup. That’s straight nightmare fuel

Yup - that’s a million dollar invention for sure with enough testing

🕸️The Land of Web 3

NFT

Average Creatures is a really interesting project - and I’m really surprised it hasn’t had a “run” yet. Each NFT is based on hundreds of different attributes that creator Karen Jerzyk staged IRL. That’s right! Of course, all the layers were swapped around digitally - but every image is based on real staged claymation characters, and real photographs. In the current crowded world of layered digital art - this one is really unique. I currently own the one above, and one other. Check it out at the link!

• Aol.xyz looks really interesting - like a Windows 95 emulation, but with some sort of Web 3 angle. I’m very intrigued.

• This new Soulbound Token that Vitalik Buterin is proposing looks like it’l take ETH to the next level.

• If you want a sense of how crazy the NFT market is - these goblintown.wtf NFT’s started out as a free stealth mint not long ago - and now the floor is over 2 eth. Nuts. Free mints are bizarre - most crash - others go to the moon.

That’s all for this week. See you next time!