The Bit Player

The Bit Player is a documentary film about Claude Shannon, the underrated "Father of Information Theory", whose work, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

I am here for any metaphor linking the internet and Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem trilogy. Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickle | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Philip Glass on Soul Train

It turns out that the fourth track off of Philip Glass' soundtrack for Koyaanisqatsi matches up pretty well to the dancers in this | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Explore Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus Online

An 1119-page collection of papers known as the Codex Atlanticus has been completely digitized and put online to explore. The | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The World Building Bureaucracy of Sequels

An intriguing insight from Khoi Vinh in his short review of the third John Wick movie:This is what usually happens: a film creat | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Solitary Garden

In 1960, David Latimer put some compost, water, and plant seeds into a large glass jar and sealed it up. And it's been growing lik | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Trailer for the Downton Abbey Movie

The Downton Abbey movie is nearly upon us (it's out in Sept) and the first full-length trailer is here. The action picks up a co | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Classic Airline Logos

Reagan Ray has collected a bunch of classic logos from American airlines, from the big ones (Delta, United) to small regional ai | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Extreme Babysitting from Danny MacAskill

Remember trials rider Danny MacAskill, who I've been covering on kottke.org for over ten years somehow?! In his newest video, he | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Crumbling Abe Lincoln

Liberty Crumbling is sand sculptor Damon Langlois' version of the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, which won f | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

My Dad, the Facebook Addict

Meet Vincent LeVine. He's the subject of "My Dad, the Facebook Addict", a short documentary by his son Dylan. He start | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Hollywood Dream Machines: an Exhibition of Vehicles from Sci-Fi Movies

An exhibition called Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Science Fiction and Fantasy just opened at the Petersen Automot | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A New Old Vermeer

The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden is restoring a painting by Johannes Vermeer after it was "conclusively determined" | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Folding a Piece of Paper More than Seven Times

If you could somehow fold a piece of paper in half 103 times, the paper would be as thick as the observable universe.Such is t | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Why Do Birds Fly in a V-Formation?

Many species of migratory birds, like the Canada goose in North America, fly in a v-formation. Scientists have long suspected that | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

An Inverted World Map

Frans Blok has created an incredibly detailed inverse map of the world, where all the current landmasses have been turned into | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Freezing Executive Salaries to Pay Entry-Level Workers a Better Wage

John Driscoll is the CEO of a healthcare company called CareCentrix. In an opinion piece in The Guardian, he wrote about the succe | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

MIT Robot Solves Rubik’s Cube in 0.38 Seconds

A robot built by a pair of engineering students at MIT can solve a Rubik's Cube in 0.38 seconds (which happens to be 19 minutes an | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Nichelle Nichols’ 1977 NASA Recruitment Film for Space Shuttle Astronauts

In this NASA promotional film from 1977, Star Trek star Nichelle Nichols takes a tour of the Johnson Space Center with Apollo 12 a | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Motorbikes of Taiwan

From Hiroshi Kondo, a mesmerizing short film called Multiverse of the motorbike-jammed streets of Taiwan. Right around the 50 se | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Giannis Antetokounmpo and Milwaukee’s Refugee Population

24-year-old NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo has led the Milwaukee Bucks to the Eastern Conference Finals this year, but as a c | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

What Illegal Abortion Was Like in the 1960s

Diane Munday, an 86-year-old women's rights activist, recalls what illegal abortion had been like in the UK in the 1960s."W | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Trailer for Season 5 of Black Mirror

Black Mirror is back for a fifth season on Netflix starting June 5. The season will consist only of three episodes and will star, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

One-Word Book Titles

Merriam-Webster asked 11 authors how they came up with their single-word book titles. Here's A.S. Byatt talking about Possession: | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Meet Aerospace Engineer Judith Love Cohen

Judith Love Cohen was, at various times in her fascinating life, an engineer who worked on the Pioneer, Apollo, and Hubble mission | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Persistent Myth of the Empty American Frontier

The author and popular historian David McCullough has a new book out called The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Bro | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Sweet Little Rain, a Coffee Drink Built for Instagram

This drink from Chinese coffee chain Mellower Coffee is called Sweet Little Rain. A puff of cotton candy is suspended over a ste | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Crafting Eight Large Rafters for a Church Spire Using Medieval Tools & Techniques

In the spire of a Swedish church built around the end of the 12th century, eight large rafters (that are in spectacularly good sha | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

On the Safety of Vaccines and the Low Risk of Side Effects

The development of vaccines against infectious diseases is among the greatest of human accomplishments and has saved ten of millio | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans

This past weekend I was in Boston for some cultcha and went to The Museum of Fine Arts. Among several paintings, pastels, and draw | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Running From COPS

Running From COPS is a new podcast that examines the cultural influence of the long-running TV show COPS. Vox did a short video on | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Cooking As A Service

Alex Danco looks at some short-term and long-term trends and concludes that we may be on our way to a future where most of our coo | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Rob Walker’s Exercises for Noticing New Things

Rob Walker's new book The Art of Noticing is out now. The book is structured as a series of 131 exercises, and in an interview con | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Emotional Charge of What We Throw Away

Adam Minter has a new book, Secondhand, about the global trade in secondhand and discarded goods. In an interview, he notes that | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Identical Twins Who Look Nothing Alike

Adam and Neil Pearson are identical twins who have neurofibromatosis, a rare genetic disorder that affected the two of them quit | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Database of Measured Stuff

Dimensions.Guide is a database containing dozens of dimensioned drawings of objects ranging from Ikea furniture to pandas to wheel | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Lifespans of Ancient Civilizations

As part of an examination of the potential collapse of our own civilization, Luke Kemp produced this graphic that shows the lifesp | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Martian Base in the Gobi Desert

A Chinese company called C-Space has built a simulation of a Mars base in the Gobi desert. Currently used for educational purpos | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Design Manual of the 1972 Munich Olympics

For the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, a team led by Otl Aicher designed the iconic identity for the event. The guidelines for th | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The DIY Astronaut

Ever since he was a kid, Cameron Smith has wanted to go into space. This desire persisted into adulthood, and the Portland State | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

An Animated Version of The Giving Tree Narrated by Shel Silverstein

From 1973, this is an animated short film version of the classic children's book The Giving Tree, narrated by author Shel Silver | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Barack Obama’s Spring 2019 Book Recommendations

In a recent Facebook post, President Obama 1 shared a few books that he's been reading recently. At the tippy top is Melinda Ga | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Micromobility Will Transform Cities

In the latest issue of Why is this interesting?, Noah Brier writes about the potential of dockless electric scooters and e-bikes ( | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Ecological Footprint of Fish

Artist duo Chow and Lin have produced a visual representation of the amount of small fish it takes to produce large farm-raised | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Painting Infinity

In 1965, French-born Polish painter Roman Opalka began work on his series of paintings OPALKA 1965/1 - ∞. Starting in th | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Beautiful Emergent Architecture of Crystals

Arctic is a new video from the Beauty of Science crew (previously featured here) that reveals the beauty of crystal formation. | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Limitations of Language Apps

For the NY Times, Eric Ravenscraft writes about the limitations of language apps like Duolingo in teaching you how to speak a fore | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Talking Chewbacca: “Where the Hell Have You Been?”

This is neat: Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca speaking English to Harrison Ford's Han Solo in a scene from Empire Strikes Back:Mayhe | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago