Pneumatic tubes, some index cards, and an owl.

• Wired testing shoes that make you walk 250% faster is somehow in-depth and surface level at the same time. Yes, it covers a lot of things! The shoes look dorky and people walking fast looks weird! But I want to know more about the stuff inside them: how are the wheels set up? how do they balance? What's with the nebulous "machine learning" stuff?
   
• The Lego cake factory is a surprisingly pleasing bit of stop-motion animation. (Thanks to Heather for sending this over!)
   
• A corporate video from 1984 doesn't sound interesting: until you learn Operation Smash Hit is about staging a full-scale rail crash, slamming a diesel train directly into a (placebo) nuclear-fuel container to see if it'll break.

• Would you like to know about that time a balloon nuked a blimp?
   
• Turns out the US has "Dial-A-Buoy", which lets mariners (or you!) call a phone number for a weather forecast 'direct' from any navigation buoy. (It took an effort of will for me to not have the text of this paragraph just be "yeah buuuuuuoooooy".)
   
• Here's something that'd almost impossible to comprehend, but I still found interesting: science fiction author Greg Egan has a playable version of Quantum Soccer on his web site. It turns the impenetrability of quantum physics into an equally impenetrable game.
   
• Andy Baio tracks down lost media: when Bill Clinton was asked whether he wore boxers or briefs. Even if you don't remember the incident itself, it's a good story.

And finally: bad news, one of our owls is missing. Good news, said owl is having a great time.

All the best,

— Tom