When I was at ID school in the early '90s, they taught us "No one wants a toaster. What people want is toast."

The times have definitely changed, if the success of this Vaaka device is any indication. It's an analog scale designed to provide "a meditative exploration of the balance between coffee and life."

It adds several steps to your coffeemaking process, I suppose to deliver a "curated" exercise in tactility. Here's how you're meant to use it:

To paraphrase Mitch Hedberg, I don't need another step between me and coffee. But I am not the target market. This project has been successfully Kickstarted, and to me it suggests people enjoy experiencing rituals with objects, and/or they're craving tactility, the manipulation of tools to achieve an aim. Which makes sense to me, given the digital nature of modern life.

That being the case, I can't criticize the object directly. I think of objects like this not as a symptom of an ailing society, but as the antibodies that show up to reveal that there is an unseen ailment.

And more school.

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Sam’s in Town

My little grandfather Sam was such a bad driver that a couple of jokesters in his village would exaggeratedly jump out of the way when they saw him coming up Main Street in his Model A.

Connie

The Percolator

My grandparents had a prehistoric coffee percolator for decades. The thing made legendary bad coffee. My grandfather worked a really early shift for much of his life. My grandmother would get up before him every morning and brew a pot of coffee before he went off to work. He drank this foul brew (made with love) for years.

When my grandmother died of cancer my parents were visiting for the funeral. My mom noticed that my grandfather had a brand new coffee pot.

“Daddy,” my mom stated “you’ve got a new coffee pot.”

“Well,” he said sheepishly, “I never did much like your mother’s coffee.”

He spent years drinking the stuff. I like to think it was because he knew the effort she was putting forth to care for him and he returned that care. There’s a lot of things I can say about my grandfather, he was certainly a flawed man, but that story will always be emblematic of his care for and kindness to his family.

Jude Wright

Looking for a better life

In 1905 at the age of 19, my grandfather and his 16-year-old sister walked 900 miles from their town in what is now Ukraine, to Rotterdam and took a ship to the United States. Ellis Island records show he had five dollars in his pocket and the address of a cousin in the lower east side of New York.

Over the next 25 years, he brought 30 members of his family, including my grandmother, to the United States by working 6 1/2 days a week; he went to synagogue on Saturday mornings and so he couldn’t work then.

During World War II the Nazis killed almost the entire Jewish population of the town where he had immigrated from, 25,000 men women and children were murdered over a two week period. His entire life he never travel more than 100 miles away from his home in New York City. He was the kindest and sweetest man I ever knew.

Rick Brown

One Misfire Away From Non-Existence

My grandfather was a medical missionary in China. What that meant was that he went over, did the doctoring first, and then let people approach him and his wife about their faith separately. However, he was over there for the Second Sino-Japanese War, in an area of the country that was taken over by the Japanese. In 1938, an inebriated (armed) Japanese soldier had entered the medical compound, also near a primary school, and was threatening people.

Marching my grandfather towards their hospital, he shot my grandfather in the right side of his back. He went to fire again; he cleared a jam, and then tried firing again. Yet once more, it jammed. He gave up and moved on. Had either of those second pistol shots not jammed, my mother would’ve never been born, nor would I have. He was an amazing man – both my grandparents were amazing. Look up “Myra Scovel” on the Internet Archive for any of her books. I got her publishers to release into the public domain.

Molly Harris

Hey Kid…Come Here

One 1930’s morning in downtown Aurora, IL, my then-teenaged paternal grandfather was cutting through an alleyway that ran along the backside of the stores on main street. A man standing on the “Kartheiser And Sons” loading dock called out “Hey, kid.. come here.” My grandfather Emery complied, expecting to possibly to be scolded for loitering. What my grandfather didn’t know was that the man on the loading dock was the owner of that hardware and general store and had just walked out back to clear his head (and probably smoke a cigarette) after learning that his only stock boy had just quit. Grandpa was hired on the spot.

There’s a level of serendipity just in how grandpa was hired, but the importance of that event to my family is that he went inside and began working alongside the owner’s daughter who sat behind the cash register. They dated, married, had my father and three other children, and eventually took over the store from my great-grandfather. I try and remember stories like this when it feels like we must stay on our perfectly planned path to get to the “right” place.

Sure, good choices lead to better outcomes, but don’t kid yourself that you’re in control. It’s more important to be open to “Hey kid…come here” when you thought you were going THERE instead.

Jay Hofner

The recent devastation in western North Carolina from hurricane Helene is truly mind-boggling. There is no doubt that it will be multiple years before the roads there are back to anything resembling "normal." I'm sure the death toll will also only go up from where it is now, which is heartbreaking. Watching on the news, one can't help but to feel utterly helpless.

One aspect of this ever-changing story that will be fascinating to watch will be how the North Carolina DOT chooses to repair the collapse of I-40:

In addition to the curved section shown above, a longer, straighter section also washed out, with the adjacent river coming perilously close to the road's edge. From a logistical perspective, it's going to be very interesting to see how they choose to fix this collapse. Is it better to cut into the neighboring rock and essentially shift the road away from the river's edge? Do you try to backfill the river somehow? I can only imagine the engineering challenges that await this repair.

A terrific YouTube channel to follow for this kind of content is Casey Jones - Professional Engineer. He often digs deep into stories such as this, providing his own insights as a certified civil engineer. The video below has some good footage of the damage the highway received, along with some brief commentary about the challenges ahead.

As a kid, Jason Ploeger remembers people searching in the waters of Larder Lake for a taxi cab that sank beneath the surface decades before.

And of course, like everyone else in the small northern Ontario town near the Québec border that was once a major gold mining centre, he heard the stories.  

"Growing up in the town, we all heard the legend," said Ploeger.

"Everybody you talked to had a different story."

The version of the story Ploeger heard the most was that the taxi went through the ice of Larder Lake on the way to a Christmas party, carrying liquor and holiday bonuses for local gold miners.

But there were other stories that the cab was hauling gold bars or gold ore, or that is was a bootlegger delivering alcohol to mining camps in the Larder Lake area. 

Ploeger spent 35 years searching for the taxi and then while fishing in a local derby last year, he saw something come up on the screen of his side imager that he uses to look deep into the lake for fish. Or sunken treasure.  

"Is that what I think it is?" he said to himself, seeing the outline of the back window and tires, knowing it was "obviously a car."

"I was excited. I almost gave up fishing for the day."

But instead, he marked the spot and went back later with some fellow divers, going down 15 metres into the pitch black waters of Larder Lake.

"I had one of the other divers right beside me and I'd have to shine my light right on him to see him," Ploeger said.

"It was a spooky dive."

There was no gold, but they did spot six bottles in the back of what they now know is a 1929 REO Flying Cloud.

He says he later spoke with the daughter of one of the five men who rode in the taxi that day and learned they were heading to a Christmas party at the Martin-Bird Mine when the car started to go through the ice and everyone got out safely. 

Ploeger says they brought one bottle to the surface and it "promptly exploded on my boat from the pressure," but he dipped a finger in it and said it tasted like "very, very smooth" rye whisky.

This summer, they went back down and brought up five more bottles, two of which also blew their cork on the way to the surface. 

"I do not believe it was a good whisky when it was bought," Ploeger said of drinking from one of the bottles.

"I'm not blind yet so that's a good sign."

One of the intact bottles recovered from the bottom will be auctioned off on Sept. 28 at a steak dinner and charity auction to benefit a community group called the Friends of Larder.

"I've been thinking for a while, if I ever found it, it's not my story, it's the town's story. So I figured I would donate it back to the town," Ploeger said. 

He says the car is "too fragile to remove," so it will stay at the bottom of Larder Lake for other divers to enjoy.

"It's a weird feeling, because I've been looking, looking and looking," said Ploeger.

"And now I've seen it. I've been there. And it's over."

But he says he is still chasing down other local mysteries, including some boats sunk in the lake and a military plane that crashed in the bush nearby during the Second World War. 

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As Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States, Tampa General Hospital managed to ward off flooding using this AquaFence system. Unlike sandbags, these barrier wall systems are reusable, and can be stored flat.

The design is simple, but ingenious: The more water they're keeping out, the stronger the structure becomes. That's because each component is L-shaped, braced diagonally with steel struts, and designed to be used with the bottom of the L pointed towards the water. As floodwaters rise, they weigh down on the bottom of that L, anchoring each component in place. The upright of the L cannot collapse, because it is held fast by the high tensile strength of the steel braces.

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In this video released by the hospital, you can see how effective the 9-foot-tall barriers are: