The Weekly Thingdown: Sparkly jets, bulletproof school desk, Ken, etc.

Rob Walker
1 min readMar 20, 2021

7 Objects that mattered this week

Thingdown is a weekly roundup of things — objects, products, stuff — that are lately in the news or otherwise of interest right now.

Lego microtonal guitar
  1. The crisp and shiny optimism of the Breeze Airways A220 jet — and why this might be the perfect time to launch a new airline. (My latest Object of the Week for Marker.)
  2. School desk made of “ballistic material” to project students during potential shooting incident. Via.
  3. Lego microtonal guitar.

4. The functionality of the black stripes on school buses, explained.

5. Ode to “himbo icon” Ken. (The doll.)

6. New developments in understanding the Antikythera mechanism

7. And in closing: A clock that writes the time once a minute. (See also: Counterfunctionality.)

Follow me on Medium here; follow Marker, where I write about design, brands, and other matters, all in the company of many terrific fellow contributors, here. More about me here; the newsletter associated with my latest book, The Art of Noticing, is here.

Leave your object-related tips in the comments — and have a nice weekend!

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Rob Walker
Rob Walker

Written by Rob Walker

Author The Art of Noticing. Related newsletter at https://robwalker.substack.com

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