1. Funk band Vulfpeck tries to fund its tour by fans stream a silent album on Spotify.

"Last week, they uploaded a 10-track album of complete silence called Sleepify to Spotify. As frontman Jack Stratton explains, if someones put Sleepify on repeat before they go to bed, just 800 listens will generate $4. While that doesn’t sound like much, if enough people stream the album, eventually, the band’s tour will be completely funded. What’s more, if this crazy idea actually does work the band will use Spotify’s data to pinpoint where they should tour. The band plans promises each concert will be free."

2. Before 3D printing, there was the Mold-a-Rama.

"Sometime in 1955, Miller’s company moved away from plaster and started using plastic injection molding. The process melted polyethylene pellets at about 225 degrees and then injected the resulting liquid into a two-piece mold. Before the plastic could completely cool, a blast of high-pressure air would push any remaining liquid out a drainage hole in the bottom of the mold, leaving the sculpture hollow. Next, antifreeze was pumped inside and then drained to cool and harden the waxy plastic shell. The mold separated and the finished figure was ready. The whole process took less than a minute to complete. The new method was cheaper than plaster casting, which gave Miller the freedom to experiment and expand his line of figurines. He created a series of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals, jungle animals, and the popular 'Earth Invaders,' now known as the 'Miller Aliens,' which include the Purple People Eater, inspired by the hit novelty song."

3. The sulphur-crested cockatoo that changed the world, or at least the world's understanding of the world. 

"Dalton said there is no other evidence of cockatoos in Europe at this time, although other parrots were venerated at the time as being second only to humans in the animal kingdom due to their ability to talk. The cockatoo could have been transported from Australia or eastern Indonesia via China, altering what was previously known of trading routes to Europe. 'We know sea cucumbers were traded from the 17th century from Arnhem land but not the area where these cockatoos were,' said Dalton. 'The Ming dynasty in China in the 1430s curtailed trade, which forced traders marooned in Indonesia to look to trade into India and the Middle East, which could then go onto Venice.

'This could explain why the cockatoo got to Venice. Whether it’s from Australia or Timor, it still challenges everything we know. I think lots of people will be looking at these paintings more closely now.'"

4. "What is focus and who has the right to say what focus is the legitimate focus?"

"The pictorial effects and use of focus are among the most discussed aspects of the photography of Julia Margaret Cameron. Cameron made prints from collodion negatives and her images typically have an out of focus quality. She was criticised by some of her contemporaries for what they considered the technical failure of her work given that the collodian negative could produce images of great clarity and detail... ''My first successes in my out-of-focus pictures were a fluke. That is to say, that when focussing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon.'"

5. Scaling Occupy-style consensus decisionmaking with a new app.

"But now, a small collective in New Zealand has developed a digital platform through which any group — large or small, local or global — can take a page from the Occupier’s handbook. It’s called Loomio, and it’s already being used by civic activists in Ukraine, thousands of direct democracy advocates in Greece, municipalities in England, foundations, and credit unions. It’s all based on what the Occupy movement called the General Assembly, an alternative to parliamentary procedure, borrowed from the Ancient Greek senate. It’s a deceptively simple (and easily satirized) process where the crowd waves their hands to indicate their approval or level of objection to a proposal. It may look a little silly, but it proved a valid or even superior method for forging consensus than traditional debate, where one side wins and the other, well, loses."

Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip:

AVOIDANCE OF THE OBVIOUS is very well, provided that it is not itself obvious; but if it is, all is spoiled. Expel eager or greedy from your sentence in favor of avid, & your reader wants to know why you have done it. If he can fidn no better answer than that you are attitudinizing as an epicure of words for whom nothing but the rare is good enough, or yet worse, that you are painfully endeavoring to impart some much needed unfamiliarity to a platitude, his feeling toward you will be something that is not admiration. The obvious is better than obvious avoidance of it.

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