What’s the Weather Like on Mars Right Now?

Now that the InSight lander is up and running on Mars, NASA is using the probe's weather instrumentation to provide a daily weathe | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Mega-Trailer for the Whole 10-Film Star Wars Franchise

In 2012, actor and budding film editor Topher Grace took all three Star Wars prequels and condensed them into an 85-minute movie | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Movie Color Palettes

A site called The Colors of Motion makes single image timelines of the use of colors in movies. They sample frames at regular inte | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Wind Speeds Hit 171 MPH Atop Mount Washington Yesterday

As you can see on the US wind map, it's been blustery in New England for the past couple of days. Yesterday the observatory atop M | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Celebrity Name Spelling Test

Last month, I wrote about Colin Morris' flow diagrams that show how people most frequently misspell difficult words. The crew over | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Flat-Earther Proves in Simple Experiment that the Earth Is Round

Behind the Curve, now available on Netflix, is a 2018 documentary about the global community of people who believe that the Earth | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Where the $&%@# Did Grawlixes Come From?

A grawlix is a string of typographic characters that represent obscene language, often found in comics. In this video Phil Edwards | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Earth’s Atmosphere Stretches Out Past the Moon

A recent analysis of data collected by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory shows that the Earth's atmosphere is a lo | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Cheap TVs and Exorbitant Education, Modern America in One Chart

Economist Mark Perry has updated for 2018 his chart of price changes of selected goods over the past two decades.This graphic | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Life-Changing Magic of the $15 Minimum Wage

For the NY Times, Matthew Desmond writes about how raising the minimum wage makes a huge difference in people's lives.A $15 mini | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Your Favorite Makeup Tip Was Probably Invented By A Drag Queen

I missed this essay when it came out in December, but I'm reading it now, after Lauren M. Jackson (congratulations on the Northw | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Best Thing Ever Written About Politics and Art

Tomorrow, February 23, is William Edward Burghardt Du Bois's birthday. Du Bois was born in 1868 and died in 1963. In fact, Du Bo | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Best Movie Soundtracks Ever

Pitchfork, the once-insurgent, now-venerable music site known for provoking endless debates with its "Best Of" lists, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Japanese Illustrated History of the United States from 1861

With the 1853 arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry on the shores of Japan, the isolationist country was introduced to the United | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Trailer for Fleabag Season Two

After a nearly three-year wait, the second season of the excellent Fleabag is coming soon (March 4 in the UK, May 17 in the US on | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Crowd Goes Nuts for Extremely Satisfying DVD Logo Bounce

Popping bubble wrap, sharpening a new pencil, catching a falling glass in the knick of time, waking up before your alarm. Some thi | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Confessions of an Adventurous Picky Eater

Amanda Mull on How to Stop Hating Your Least Favorite Food:I've never had a traumatic barf experience with cucumbers, so my aver | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Leaving Neverland

Set to air on HBO starting March 3rd, Leaving Neverland is a two-part documentary film about the experiences of two men who were b | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Augmented Reality Sandbox

Inspired by a Czech project, a team at UC Davis is building an Augmented Reality Sandbox that lets you create & study differen | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

How People Spent Sudden Financial Windfalls

Topic asked more than a dozen people how they spent sudden windfalls of money. Among those queried were two MacArthur grant winner | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Neighborhood Golf Association

Street photographer Patrick Barr has been out photographing NYC since the 1990s. Barr also goes by the name of Tiger Hood (or Na | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

What Is Intersectionality?

Maybe you've heard the term "intersectionality" used on social media -- in the context of feminism or racism -- and you | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Detailed Map of Medieval Trade Routes in Europe, Asia, and Africa

Grad student Martin Jan Månsson has created this incredibly detailed map of trade route networks in Europe, Asia, an | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

We're All Lonely Together

We're living in an age of unprecedented connectedness, but more and more people report being lonely on a regular basis. Like our a | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

My Recent Media Diet, the “Please God Let Winter Be Over Soon” Edition

I've been keeping track of every media thing I "consume", so here are quick reviews of some things I've read, seen, hear | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

We’re All Lonely Together

We're living in an age of unprecedented connectedness, but more and more people report being lonely on a regular basis. Like our a | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

“The Age of Climate Panic Is Here”

David Wallace-Wells, who you may remember from his 2017 New York magazine piece, has written an opinion piece about climate change | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Steven Soderbergh’s Theories on the History and Future of Movies

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh had a very interesting interview with The Atlantic's David Sims. Here are some excerpts.The first | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

What Is It Like To Turn On A Light?

So I am something of a philosophy nerd, with a particular affection for late 19th/early 20th century European philosophers, who | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Official Archive of Prince GIFs

GIPHY, in collaboration with Paisley Park and Prince's estate, has done a truly remarkable thing. It's created an official archi | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

“Star Ribbon”, a USPS Stamp by Aaron James Draplin

It was not my intention to turn kottke.org into a stamp blog (recently: Ellsworth Kelly, Leonardo da Vinci) but you know what th | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Stamps Featuring Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci

The Royal Mail in the UK have released a set of stamps that feature drawings done by Leonardo da Vinci.The Royal Collectio | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Secret History of Women in Coding

In an excerpt of his forthcoming book Coders, Clive Thompson writes about The Secret History of Women in Coding for the NY Times. | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Leaving Room for the Beautiful Flowers

In his newsletter Life Is So Beautiful, Hugh Hollowell shares a story of doomsday, neighbors, and goodwill.I met a prepper the o | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

1969 in Pictures

1969 was quite a year that saw the founding of Sesame Street, PBS, Monty Python, and the Internet as well as Woodstock and my favo | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Goodbye Opportunity, the Little Mars Rover that Could

Yesterday, NASA declared the official end to the Opportunity rover mission on Mars.One of the most successful and enduring feats | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Photos of the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia

As part of his The World in Faces project, Alexander Khimushin has been making portraits of the indigenous people of Siberia wear | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

W.E.B. Du Bois’ Data Portraits of Black American Circa 1900

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the hand-drawn infographics of W.E.B. Du Bois, noting that the great African American author, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Celebrity Then & Now

Ard Gelinck photoshops celebrities posing with their younger selves and posts the results on Instagram. | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Hoover Dam’s “Hidden” 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument

There's a little-known monument located at the site of the Hoover Dam that shows the progression of "North Stars" as the | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Water Dancer, a Forthcoming Novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Having thoroughly conquered the world of nonfiction, Ta-Nehisi Coates now has his sights set on fiction. His first novel, The Wate | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Fan Ho’s Street Photography of 50s & 60s Hong Kong

When he was a teenager, Fan Ho grabbed his father's camera and started documenting street scenes in Hong Kong. From there, he | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Lego Prosthetic Arms

19-year-old bioengineering major David Aguilar, aka Hand Solo, has built himself a series of prosthetic arms out of Lego. In this | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

The Evidence Mounts: Uber/Lyft Are Bad for Our Cities

At Streetsblog, Angie Schmitt has compiled a handy list of all the ways in which ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft are havi | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

On the Health Benefits of Sleep

In this piece for The Guardian, Matthew Walker says that sleeping well is the best thing you can do for your health. Here are just | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

Paper Mario Bros

I love the aesthetic of Paper Mario Bros, a hand-drawn stop motion animation of World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. The artist, @Kisa | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Gesture-Controlled Touchscreen Calculator Watch from 1984

In 1984, Casio released their AT-552 Janus watch, which had a feature that seems years ahead of its time to these modern eyes: a c | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago

A Flyover of Europa

Using recently processed data from the Galileo probe, NASA-JPL software engineer Kevin Gill created this low-altitude flyover of E | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 5 years ago