This Photo of Farmers Contains No Farmers

This is a photo taken in Germany in 1914 by August Sander:It's called Young Farmers and it depicts three young men on their wa | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Quid Pro Quo: The Three-Act Structure of a Thrilling Scene from The Silence of the Lambs

Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs is one of the finest psychological thrillers ever made. In the episode of the always-ill | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Creatures of Habit

Ron and Diana Watson have been eating dinner at the same restaurant in Wichita 6 nights a week for 15 years. It's their only meal | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Pi, the Infinite Doorway to Calculus

Happy Pi Day! In celebration of this gloriously nerdy event, mathematician Steven Strogatz wrote about how pi was humanity's first | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Most Influential Academic Books in the Last 20 Years

The Chronicle of Higher Education has assembled The New Canon, a list of the most influential books written by academics in the pa | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Bauhaus-Style Logos of Famous Brands

To commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus design movement, 99designs challenged their community | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Last Lesson: Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s Return Home To Vietnam

Thich Nhat Hanh became a Buddhist monk in Vietnam in 1942 and became known over the next few decades as a teacher and peace activi | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Hiking Interactions

Comedian Miel Bredouw packed every single type of interaction you're ever going to have with another human being on a hiking tra | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Float

Float is a feature-length documentary film directed by Phil Kibbe about "the ultra-competitive sport of elite, stunningly-d | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Archaeologists Discover Mayan Chamber Untouched for 1000 Years

While exploring the ground underneath the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico, archaeologists found | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Pegasus by Jean-Michel Basquiat, “the Most Beautiful Drawing Ever”

The drawing above is Pegasus by Jean-Michel Basquiat. His first art dealer, Annina Nosei, once called it "the most beautifu | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Photos of the Women Clearing One of the Largest Minefields in the World

Photographer Allison Joyce has been in Sri Lanka photographing the women clearing one of the biggest minefields in the world. | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

How to Play Pac-Man

The highest score a player can get in Pac-Man is 3,333,360. In a fascinating recent article on the game, Cat DeSpira doesn't tell | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Robots Are Coming for Our Jobs (Thank God)

At SXSW, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked by an audience member about the economic challenge of a significant perc | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Day in the Life at a Bell Labs Datacenter in the Late 60s

Larry Luckham was a manager at a Bell Labs data center in Oakland in the late 60s and early 70s. One day, he captured daily life a | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Tiny Private Mind-Motions

Prompted by a line from a poem by Tracy K. Smith, Sam Anderson writes about the thoughts that come unbidden to our minds during th | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

My Favorite Secret Social Network

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Remaking the Servant Economy

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Stacey Abrams, Star Trek Superfan

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

100-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Helen Fagin on How Books Save Lives

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Partisan States of America

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Fred Rogers Was Attracted to Both Men and Women

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Van Gogh’s The Night Café Was Among His “Ugliest Pictures”

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Let’s Talk About Hagfish and Their Wondrously Soft Slime

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Clouds in Unexpected Places

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Light Installation in a Scottish Coastal Town Vividly Shows Future Sea Level Rise

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Regarding the Thoughtful Cultivation of the Archived Internet

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Case of the 500-Mile Email

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Crack Pie, Girly Drinks, and Problematic Food Language

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Video of a Japanese Space Probe Touching Down on an Asteroid

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Some Observations on Leaving Neverland

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Clam Gardens, an Ancient Sea Farming Technique

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Stone Age Cave Symbols May All Be Part of a Single Prehistoric Proto-Writing System

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

When They See Us, a Series on the Central Park Five by Ava DuVernay

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Fox News: Unfair and Unbalanced Propaganda

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Contemporary Pop Stars on 80s-Style Album Covers

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@kottke.org | 5 years ago

De La Soul’s Fight with Tommy Boy Over Copyright and Streaming Revenues

This week, music fans were rejoicing. The legendary hip-hop group De La Soul's catalog was finally coming to music streaming ser | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The European Parenthesis

There's an idea in media history and media theory called "The Gutenberg Parenthesis." The basic idea of it is simple: | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Tupac Shakur’s Break-Up Letter to Madonna

Tupac Shakur and Madonna dated briefly in 1994. According to Tupac's brother Mopreme, the relationship began when Madonna passed | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Heart of the Grand Canyon Map

Over a period of 8 years, explorer and photographer Bradford Washburn worked with a small team and National Geographic to produce | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Mapping the Odyssey Isn’t Easy

We've looked before at maps of Odysseus's travels in The Odyssey (as Jason wrote in 2018, "that dude was LOST"). But i | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

What Is a Vegetable? Do They Even Exist?

Last night at dinner, we were talking about our favorite vegetables1 and when my daughter said tomatoes might be her pick, my 11-y | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Rembrandtness and the Art of Art Authentication

Russell Shorto has a piece in this weekend's NY Times Magazine about two previously undiscovered Rembrandt paintings, the man who | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Our World Is Built for Men

In her new book, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez argues that the data that scientist | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Freddie Mercury’s Vocal Doppelganger

Whatever your opinion of the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody,1 you gotta admit the music was pretty great. After all, Mer | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Camera Lens Made from an Iceberg

Mathieu Stern had an idea. He thought that if you could sculpt a piece of ultra-clear ice into the correct shape, it would functio | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

How the KGB Weaponized Fake News (and How It’s Still Hurting Us Today)

The US government created HIV. The CIA killed Kennedy. The KGB deliberately spread disinformation designed to hurt the US and its | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago