Blog Blender

Sea otters stealing surfboards

A very real alliteration: sea otters stealing surfboards.

On Wednesday, Isabella Orduna was catching some waves at Steamer Lane, a popular surf spot off Santa Cruz, Calif., when she felt a small nip on her foot.

Startled, Ms. Orduna, a 21-year-old college student, rolled into the water. The moment she surfaced, she saw a “big, fuzzy, chunky bear of an otter” sitting on her board, she said. “I was like, wow, what do I do now?”

The hijacking of Ms. Orduna’s surfboard was the first of two such incidents reported this week at Steamer Lane. On Thursday, another surfer had their board commandeered by a sea otter.

PJH Studios artwork, Portrait of a sun

PJH Studios

Movies, music, books, whiskey, and culture in a blog blender

  • Sea otters stealing surfboards

    A very real alliteration: sea otters stealing surfboards. On Wednesday, Isabella Orduna was catching some waves at Steamer Lane, a popular surf spot off Santa Cruz, Calif., when she felt a small nip on her foot. Startled, Ms. Orduna, a 21-year-old college student, rolled into the water. The moment she surfaced, she saw a “big,…

  • AI is gonna drink your milkshake

    Not only are AI data centers hungry for electricity, they are thirsty for water. So much that towns and cities are experiencing water shortages. Nearly 60 percent of the 1,244 largest data centers in the world were outside the United States as of the end of June, according to an analysis by Synergy Research Group,…

  • Tactical frivolity

    The current administration deemed protesters violent and menacing. You know what isn’t? A person in an inflatable chicken costume, a protest tactic called tactical frivolity. This humorous form of protest, known as tactical frivolity, shows the absurdity of the charge that all the protesters are armed militants. In contravention of the Trump administration’s claims that…

  • Sleep is a spectrum

    We’ve known that sleep has cycles, but more research is showing that how we sleep is more nuanced and may exist as a spectrum. It’s still largely mysterious how the brain manages to move between these states safely and efficiently. But studies targeting transitions both into and out of sleep are starting to unravel the…

  • Being social alone on the rise

    In the UK, there is a rise in people going to social events solo. “If I go to an event with someone else, I can very much spend the night doing their night, as they would want it,” says Anaïs Espinosa, a 26-year-old from London. “When I’m alone, I get to do whatever I want…

  • 80-year-old grandmother becomes oldest woman to finish the Ironman World Championship

    80-year-old grandmother becomes oldest woman to finish the Ironman World Championship Grabow, who lives in Mountain Lakes, N.J., plunged into the ocean water of Kailua Bay on Saturday morning. She swam 2.4 miles and then hopped on her bike to cycle 112 miles on a highway twisting through lava fields and notorious coastal crosswinds. She…

  • David Hockney Xerox prints

    For a period of time, David Hockney created collages using Xerox machines. In 1986 Hockney produced Home Made Prints,a series created entirely with the Xerox copier. As the title of the series would suggest, the Xerox machine allowed Hockney to create his prints in the comfort of his own home, rather than the often constrictive…

  • Chasing auras

    Dennis Lehtonen has dedicated his life to photographing auras. One night in 2018, I was viewing the international space station through a telescope in the observatory of Helsinki. Suddenly, I looked into the opposite direction and there, for the first time ever, I would see the northern lights dancing over the city below. The experience…

  • The Oatmeal on AI art

    The Oatmeal on AI art. Astute and poignant.

  • The craze of 6 7

    most previous Internet meme trends were based in some grounding of logic. 6 7, however, has become a prime example of how brain rot can ascend into pop culture. Now teachers avoid breaking kids into groups of six or seven, or asking them to turn to page 67, or instructing them to take six or…