Avengers: Infinity War - Wizards vs. The Prophet

Last week, I was under the rock that everyone talks about and didn't get to see Avengers: Infinity War until a couple of days ago. | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

The Summer of ‘78, NYC in photos

In the summer of 1978, eight NY Times staff photographers, who had some time on their hands because of a newspaper strike, s | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

“I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye”

Kanye West has a new solo album coming out soon (as well as a collaborative album with Kid Cudi) and so has been out in the world | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

This Is America

Over the weekend, Childish Gambino (aka Donald Glover) released a video for his new song, This is America. If you watch it -- an | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

This Is America

Over the weekend, Childish Gambino (aka Donald Glover) released a video for his new song, This is America. If you watch it -- an | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Why humans need stories

There's a tendency these days to disregard the idea of "storytelling." Like so many terms it's been overused, its mean | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Stories are taking over

The inimitable Ian Bogost with some thinking on how stories are overtaking social media and how they are perhaps the first true | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Multiplicity

This is beautiful and fascinating, a representation of Paris through the photos shared online. The creator, Moritz Stefaner, use | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Athanasius Kircher, “the master of hundred arts”

I'm always up for a good polymath bio but I didn't know about Athanasius Kircher. The Public Domain Review takes us through John G | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Gang Drones swarm FBI hostage raid

Criminals are often at the forefront of new technologies, early adopters at the very least. This piece at Defense One, A Criminal | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Connecticut silk

Did you know Connecticut nearly had a silk production industry? Atlas Obscura has a short history of that silk adventure, from mul | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Divine Discontent

The always pertinent Ben Thompson considers Apple and Amazon (plus Facebook and Google) and how they each focus on customers. He s | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Unknown twisted blood-red squid

Sometimes we must realize that what we know is that we don't know that much. Earlier in April, the Okeanos Explorer crew, a rese | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

New Science from Jupiter

Since Juno's 2016 arrival in orbit of Jupiter, we've been marvelling at the pictures of the astonishing cloud formations and col | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Humble, it means humble!

This won't turn into another GIF (hard G) vs GIF (soft G) battle but it comes as a big surprise to me, just like the soft G did wh | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

The Bering Sea’s ice is falling off a cliff

After a much warmer than usual winter, the ice in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia, is at less than 10% of what is cons | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Jeff Bezos sees space as the “only” option to spend his money on

Jeff Bezos is super rich, $131 billion kind of rich. Business wise, an admirable drive, some incredible ideas, and a very forwar | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Facebook announced some things, including Clear history

People at The Verge have taken the time to attend Facebook's F8 and selected the five biggest announcements. Like more Instagram | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Animated sketches to teach drawing

I'm not specifically learning to draw right now but I do love how Ralph Ammer builds his lessons. Split into short exercises, th | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Charging speed is no longer an obstacle for electric cars

There's a lot to learn about and ponder in this thread by Bloomberg Senior Reporter Tom Randall. He talks about how fast upcomin | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Pure CSS Francine

This is kind of nuts. Diana Smith creates CSS-only hand coded "paintings." Here are the rules she sets for herself. | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Awaken Akira

Awaken Akira was created by two friends, Ash Thorp and Zaoeyo (XiaoLin Zeng), who wanted to collaborate on a tribute to the icon | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Eternal text-cities

Sometimes, cities are not only the places where stories happen but characters in and of themselves. Here Tyler Malone explores t | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

On Margins 005 with Jason

Jason is a humble guy so I'm not sure he'd post this. Good timing then that he's on vacation and I'm writing here because I will | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Luxurious irony

Apple has been making a number of moves towards becoming more of a luxury and lifestyle brand (including hires from fashion mainst | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

City Everywhere by Liam Young

I had the chance to see this "lecture performance" live a couple of weeks ago and it's a great way to catch up on some | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

15 Patents That Changed the World

Popular Mechanics has a quick look at 15 Patents That Changed the World, including the maglev train from back in 1967, the 3d pr | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

A Mobile Tabletop Shape Display for Tangible and Haptic Interaction

We've seen this before with the MIT Media Lab's Tangible Media Group inFORM but that was a (super impressive) table, this one is | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

AIs, predictions and judgment

This Mckinsey piece summarizes some of Ajay Agrawal thinking (and book) on the economics of artificial intelligence. It starts wit | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Cities flowing like liquids or organized like crystals

File this story at Citylab adjacent to concepts like complexity, scale, and fractals. It turns out--according to this research pap | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Twitter history walk threads

One of my favourite Twitter thread style or topic in recent months has been the "history walk." People picking somethi | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Studio Ghibli-style art prints

Dutch art gallery Cook & Becker is releasing a series of high quality art prints taken from the very Studio Ghibli-like game | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Guest editing this week: Patrick Tanguay

[Hello there, everyone. I am off this week (taking two kids to The Wizarding World in Orlando, pray for me, the butterbeer is alco | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Fan of the opera

Your periodic reminder that Christoph Niemann is an unimaginatively imaginative visual storyteller. This image is one of a serie | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

DNA sites show why we need a Hippocratic Oath for data science

A suspect in the Golden State Killer murders has been arrested, based largely on DNA evidence that was apparently obtained in part | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Burn the monster, steal his jokes

Wesley Morris unsurprisingly has written a very good essay about Bill Cosby -- specifically, the ways in which Cosby created and b | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

The culinary wonders of MSG

Helen Rosner writes in praise of monosodium glutamate, an umami-rich flavor additive that's been vilified for all the wrong reason | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

The Finkbeiner test for gender bias in science writing

In a 2013 piece, Christie Aschwanden suggested a test in the spirit of the Bechdel test for avoiding gender bias in profiles writt | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

A side-by-side comparison of the new “unrestored” 2001 with a restored Blu-ray version

This summer for the 50th anniversary of the film, Warner Bros. is releasing a 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey made from the or | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

A list of must-read books you don’t have to read

The editors of GQ have compiled a list of 20 notable books that you don't actually have to read, despite their inclusion on variou | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

The Face of Distracted Driving

Filmmaker Errol Morris has made a pair of videos for AT&T's It Can Wait campaign against distracted driving, which "kills | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

David Foster Wallace on John McCain’s 2000 Presidential campaign

As I said recently in the newsletter and in my media diet post for March, I've been listening to the audiobook of Consider the Lob | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

An AI can realistically “paint in” missing areas of photographs

This video, and the paper it's based on, is called "Image Inpainting for Irregular Holes Using Partial Convolutions" b | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Tuileries, a short film about Paris by the Coen brothers

As part of a larger anthology film called Paris Je T'aime, the Coen brothers directed a short film about a character played by S | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

The best title sequences of 2017

I know it's almost May of 2018, but I missed Art of the Title's Top 10 Title Sequences of 2017 when it came out back in January, s | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Self-portraits drawn by David Bowie

From a collection of drawings and paintings done by David Bowie, here are a couple of self-portraits...there are more if you c | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

True facts about frogfish

Proto-YouTuber Ze Frank momentarily steps down from his executive perch at Buzzfeed to get back on the mic for the humorous natu | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago

Four seasons in the life of a Finnish island

Nestled amongst hundreds of stunning shots of the aurora borealis taken by Finnish photographer Jani Ylinampa is a series of fou | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 6 years ago