Relax to the Sounds of Tibetan Singing Bowl Music

I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you're in need of some relaxing sounds, a meditative moment, or a chill work soundtrac | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Green Screen Tattoos

In order to create the illusion of motion, tattoo artists are creating tattoos with large green areas to use them as green screens | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Demonstration of 16 Levels of Piano Playing Complexity

Watch, listen, and learn as pianist and composer Nahre Sol plays what you might think of as a very simple song, Happy Birthday, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Rating vs Ranking and the Forced Scarcity of American Excellence

In an expanded version of his NY Times' piece Why Can't Everyone Get A's?, Alfie Kohn asks Can Everyone Be Excellent? In the piece | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

19th Century Chart of Cities’ Distances from Washington DC

As you should know by now, I am a sucker for 19th century infographics. This "compendious chart" from the Library of C | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

25 Essential Artworks of the Past 50 Years

The NY Times convened a group of curators and artists to decide on a list of the 25 artworks made since 1970 "that define the | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Character Routing Maps of Famous Films

Illustrator Andrew DeGraff makes what he calls Cinemaps, maps of movies and their plots in the style of the dotted-line wanderings | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Highest Resolution MRI Scan of a Human Brain

A team of researchers at the Laboratory for NeuroImaging of Coma and Consciousness have done an ultra-high resolution MRI scan o | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Shining Starring Jim Carrey

Taking advantage of inexpensive and easy-to-use software, deepfake artist Ctrl Shift Face has replaced Jack Nicholson's face wit | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Want to Buy a Bob Ross Painting? You Can’t. (And Here’s Why.)

During the course of his television career, Bob Ross painted more than 1000 paintings. But you never see them for sale. You can | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Reading Krazy Kat in the Public Domain

Krazy Kat is a legendary comic strip by cartoonist George Herriman. It was published from 1913 to 1944. This means that some of | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Only One of the World Cup-winning US Women’s National Team Is a Mom. That’s Not An Accident.

It's pretty well-known now that the US Women's National Team for soccer is wildly underpaid, particularly relative to their male | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Deflating the Black Director Boom of the 1990s

In the early 1990s, there was a mini-boom of films made by black filmmakers. Spike Lee and John Singleton led the way, but there | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Favorite NYC Spots Lovingly Illustrated

The Downtown Collective is a project by illustrator Kelli Ercolano in which she is drawing & painting all of the NYC cafes | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Possible Link Between Seasonal Allergies and Anxiety & Depression

Olga Khazan on The Reason Anxious People Often Have Allergies:"There is good circumstantial evidence that's growing that a | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Small, Simple Hive Designed for Urban Beekeeping

B-box is a beehive designed for use in close proximity to humans, like near your house or in an urban environment. It does this by | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Posters of STEM Role Models

The folks behind the Nevertheless podcast commissioned a set of seven posters of STEM role models, people who have made signif | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Climate Stripes

Using temperature data from around the world, climate scientist Ed Hawkins has built a tool for viewing the "climate stripes& | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Atlas of Moons

From National Geographic comes The Atlas of Moons, an interactive reference to all of the major moons in our solar system, from | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Most Influential Black Americans in History

The Undefeated has complied a list of some of the most influential black Americans -- 44 African Americans Who Shook Up the Worl | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai

One of the world's great art masterpieces is Katsushika Hokusai's woodblock print Kanagawa oki nami ura, popularly known as | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Conversation with Greta Thunberg

Late last month, US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and climate activist Greta Thunberg had a lengthy conversation over v | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Photo Requests from Solitary Confinement

Photo Requests from Solitary is a project that takes photo requests from prisoners being held in solitary confinement and invites | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Korean Invention of the Printing Press, Almost 200 Years Before Gutenberg

M. Sophia Newman writing for Literary Hub: So, Gutenberg Didn't Actually Invent the Printing Press.It is important to recogniz | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Christopher Walken Can Dance

This is an older clip so maybe you've seen it before, but if you need something a little bit fun & joyful today, you can't d | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Simpsons Intro Reimagined as a Russian Art Film

The Simpsons has never exactly portrayed its characters in a flattering light, but this version of the show's title sequence rei | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Forgotten Women Pioneers of Rock & Roll

Women in Rock & Roll's First Wave is a project by Leah Branstetter that uncovers and highlights the women who pioneered rock & | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

America’s Cars Are Heavily Subsidized, Dangerous, and Mandatory

This is a fascinating & provocative article from law professor Gregory Shill: Americans Shouldn't Have to Drive, but the Law I | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

“Sir Duke” Deconstructed: Stevie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz

In the latest episode of Earworm, Estelle Caswell and Jacob Collier break down Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke, in which he pays tribut | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Strangest Person in the World

I bet this resonates with more than a few of you.I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought ther | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Is Your Phone’s Electromagnetic Pollution Making You Ill?

According this video by Kurzgesagt (and their extensive list of sources), the answer to that question for now is: no, our electron | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki

Japanese public broadcaster NHK has produced a four-part documentary on legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki called 10 Years with Hay | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Art and Science of Tripping Up the Stairs

This is a short video of a set of subway stairs in Brooklyn where one of the steps is juuuust a bit taller than the rest, which ma | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Forgotten Power of Government

David Remnick recently interviewed Robert Caro and if you've read Caro's book, Working, or the New Yorker article based on the boo | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Hoi Toider, an American Dialect that Doesn’t Sound American

Hoi Toider is a dialect spoken by long-time residents of Ocracoke, North Carolina. It sometimes sounds more Australian, Scottish, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

How to Watch the South American Solar Eclipse

Today, July 2, 2019, just after 4:30pm ET, a total solar eclipse will be visible in parts of Chile and Argentina. Because most of | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Building Belonging at Summer Camp

My kids are lucky enough to be at sleep-away summer camp this year. It's their fourth year, and I was a little skeptical about t | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Otherworldly Sounds of a Giant Gong

Listen in as "Gong Master Sven" plays a gong that's 7 feet across. (No seriously, listen...it's wild. Headphones recomme | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Three Feet of Hail Buries Guadalajara, Mexico

The high temperature on Saturday in Guadalajara, Mexico was 86 °F. On Sunday morning, up to three feet of hail fell on the | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

How The Shawshank Redemption Humanized Prisoners

The Shawshank Redemption came out in 1994. Although crime rates had already started falling across the country, the media (with sh | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Urbano Monte’s Massive Map of the Earth (1587)

In 1587, Urbano Monte made the largest known early map of Earth. The map consists of 60 panels that were meant to be assembled i | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Rock Skipping Robot

Mark Rober built a rock skipping robot and by adjusting a bunch of different parameters, he figured out the best way to skip roc | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

An Interview with a Contemporary Russian Spy

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Deniss Metsavas served for many years with the Estonian Defense Forces and was, at the same | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

My Recent Media Diet, Summer Solstice 2019 Edition

I keep track of every media thing I "consume", so here are quick reviews of some things I've read, seen, heard, and expe | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Three Takes on Jony Ive Leaving Apple

The first is by John Gruber at Daring Fireball:Ive is, to state the obvious, preternaturally talented. But in the post-Jobs era, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Hayflick Limit

Biology is one field I don't know supremely well, having had a couple of college courses and then mostly just public television | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Origin of Everything (The Bagel)

Dan Nosowitz digs into the genealogies of bagel-making to find and define the true (i.e., disputed) origin of the everything bag | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Daft Punk Live DJ Sets from the 90s

From the Flow State newsletter -- "every weekday, we send out two hours of music that's perfect for working" -- comes a | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago