The Biden administration is imposing new regulations on coal burning power plants. “Taken together, the regulations could deliver a death blow in the United States to coal, the fuel that…has caused global environmental damage.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I didn’t know (or had somehow forgotten) that Marlo Thomas’s seminal children’s album Free to Be… You and Me (Spotify, Apple Music) was turned into a TV special that aired in 1974. The basic concept was to encourage post-1960s gender neutrality, saluting values such as individual … | Continue reading
Dew Point I is a mesmerizing water sculpture piece by Lily Clark — water droplets seem to appear from nowhere and bead up on a surface made of superhydrophobic ceramic. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I’ve always been a little fascinated by the list of the largest cities throughout history, so this animated version from Ollie Bye is right up my alley. While watching, it’s interesting to think about what makes cities grow large at specific times: a mixture of economics, demogra … | Continue reading
I love a good movie poster and Dawn Baillie designed one of the best ones ever: the iconic poster for The Silence of the Lambs. Her other work includes posters for Dirty Dancing, Little Miss Sunshine, Zoolander, The Truman Show, and The Royal Tenenbaums. A show of her work opens … | Continue reading
From Taschen, The Book of Colour Concepts. Man, I am just a total sucker for palettes and spectrums. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Chiroptera is a dance performance from artist & photographer JR, choreographer Damien Jalet, Thomas Bangalter (Daft Punk), dancer Amandine Albisson, and 153 “pixel” dancers (you’ll see what I mean). Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I recently discovered the “pile of fruit”-themed art of Stephen D’Onofrio. The strawberries are a preliminary sketch, but they’re what drew me in, and the rest are paintings. He’s represented by Dallas’s Galleri Urbane. I also like his “trees fitting exactly in the canvas” painti … | Continue reading
The winners of the Underwater Photographer of the Year competition for 2024. “Whale Bones was photographed in the toughest conditions, as a breath-hold diver descends below the Greenland ice sheet to bear witness to the carcasses.” Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
On trimming the silence from our lives. “One of the more distressing qualities of humanity, in my mind, is the emphasis we collectively put on efficiency.” Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
This is a fun ad for the 2024 AICP Awards about the pitfalls of focus-grouping & corporatizing art, featuring an annoyed van Gogh (“How can a painting fail?”) and an even more annoyed Frida Kahlo. (via noah kalina) Tags: advertising · art · Frida Kahlo · video · Vincent van Gogh … | Continue reading
I like these small scale pen plotted artworks from Adam Fuhrer. You can see his larger scale work, buy work from his shop, and more of his generative art projects. Tags: Adam Fuhrer · art Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Jim Martini, a short story by Michael Bible. “He wasn’t one of us. He didn’t understand team culture. He didn’t have our warrior mindset.” Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
For Ars Technica, science writer Jennifer Ouellette and theoretical physicist Sean Carroll review time travel used in 20 popular movies, ranging from The Terminator to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to Interstellar. Each movie is rated on scientific accuracy and how entertain … | Continue reading
A look at the cool new toilets out there. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Zach Seward on appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI and machine learning in journalism. AI/ML can be powerful tools for journalists do more with vast quantities of data. But shady employers see shoddy AI-written copy as a way to replace humans. Join the discussion on kottk … | Continue reading
I didn’t know what to expect from this 1937 video explanation of how wire photos were transmitted to newspapers, but a double stunt sequence featuring an airplane and a death-defying photographer was not anywhere on my bingo card. This starts kinda slow but it picks up once they … | Continue reading
A list of rejected Icelandic female names. (“Edith” is okay, “Judith” is not.) Elsewhere: The Mystery of the Icelandic Naming Committee. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
For the last few weeks, I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Brian Merchant’s history of the Luddite movement, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. In it, Merchant argues the Luddites were at their core a labor movement against capitalism and co … | Continue reading
I grew up near Menomonie, WI in the freezing cold north, but this year was too warm for the lake ice to form to hold their “when will this old junker car fall through” raffle. They stopped a similar tradition a few years ago in my VT town — too warm. Join the discussion on kot … | Continue reading
Out today from Dr. Lisa Mosconi: The Menopause Brain. It’s a reexamination of menopause and perimenopause through the lens of neuroscience. Mosconi calls it “a scientist’s love letter to womanhood”. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest won’t let us look away — from the present, from ourselves. “It turns the audience’s gaze on the perpetrators, but it also implicitly asks us to examine our own roles.” Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Winter is winding down here in the northern hemisphere (though you wouldn’t know it from the foot of new snow outside my window), but for practitioners of wild ice skating, spring can bring favorable conditions. But the problem with Nordic skating or any kind of wild skating — wh … | Continue reading
From The Monacelli Press, Contemporary Art Underground: MTA Arts & Design New York is a forthcoming book about the art projects the MTA has completed in the last decade in the NYC transit system. Of special interest is the discussion of fabricating and transposing the artist’s re … | Continue reading
Haha, Hank Green discovers the automobile industry’s wet putty paint job and, dare I say it, gets a little unhinged about it. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I’m pleased that The Zone of Interest won the Oscar for Best Sound — the sound design was really remarkable. Listen to the film’s sound designer and mixer talk about how they created the soundscape. “You can shut your eyes, but you can’t shut your ears.” Join the discussion on … | Continue reading
“Struggling in front of my classmates wasn’t something I looked forward to.” Fitness writer Danielle Friedman on whether the Presidential Fitness Tests might have backfired for some people. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing.” Well, I can’t resist the kerfuffle around what’s going on with Princess Catherine. Yesterday she posted a photo of herself with her family that turned out to have been edited, and today she apologized f … | Continue reading
I love when my friend Matt Haughey does these nerdy product recommendation posts about the stuff he’s super into. This one is about cycling gear: 3-D printed bike seats and cycling apparel that won’t break the bank. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The artist Laurie Anderson built a AI chatbot of her late husband Lou Reed. “I’m totally 100%, sadly addicted to this. I still am, after all this time.” Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Always a good day to highlight the creative work of designer/illustrator Christoph Niemann: a collection of map-based work, including a cheeky metaphorical recipe for an omelet. That intersection isn’t actually that outlandish: see A Bonkers Highway Interchange and Crazy Whirlpoo … | Continue reading
Real book designer Catherine Casalino designed the real covers for the fake books in American Fiction. Michael Bierut says, “If these covers aren’t convincing, the whole movie falls apart.” Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
25 Oscar snubs and unjust losses, including Do The Right Thing losing to Driving Miss Daisy, Crash beating Brokeback Mountain, and 2001 losing Best Picture to Oliver! ((Um, what is Hitchcock doing with his hand??)) Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Wes Anderson has finally won an Oscar. Not Best Director though… Best Live Action Short for his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” (which was great). Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Just a short note of appreciation of the opening credits to Halt and Catch Fire (dir: Patrick Clair, music: Trentemøller). Definitely a member of the Unskippable Intros Hall of Fame. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
This is mesmerizing and cool and even soothing: a “vanishing clock” that’s made using a brush dipped in water, special “magic cloth” calligraphy paper that’s used for practicing, and a 3D printer. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
A video review of some of the typefaces on signs around Toronto — there are five of these so far. Love how these are done — a neat little production technique. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I saw this quote the other day and haven’t stopped thinking about it since: “Dystopian fiction is when you take things that happen in real life to marginalized populations and apply them to people with privilege.” Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Today I learned that you can make wine from Mountain Dew. Seeing the Mt Dew label on a wine bottle is breaking my brain a little. “Like most fine wines, these will be sealed with corks and labeled appropriately.” Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
A graph with data stretching back to 812 AD of the dates of peak cherry tree blossom in Kyoto, Japan. The Earth’s warming trend is unmistakable — spring has been arriving sooner and sooner since ~1840 and the drop since the ’30s is, ooof. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
If a genie granted me the ability to bring one artist back from the dead to create a portrait of myself or a loved one, without thinking too hard about what it might mean for the artist (“you brought me back for what?!”), I’d pick John Singer Sargent. I’m curious about which arti … | Continue reading
A friend texted this morning to ask if I had any recommendations for toddler hiking backpacks (for carrying the toddler in), and I was pleased to offer a concrete answer: the BityBean Baby Carrier. I bought one on a recommendation from parenting writer and economist Emily Oster, … | Continue reading
A couple weeks ago, music writer Hank Shteamer tweeted a link to Tracy Chapman’s 1988 song “Behind the Wall,” from her self-titled debut album, writing: “Fast Car,” yes, for all eternity, but can we make some room for “Behind the Wall”? Made a huge impression back then and I’ve … | Continue reading
Very moving article about Trikafta, the “miracle” cystic fibrosis drug, and some of the lives it has affected. Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
To celebrate their 20th birthday, n+1 un-paywalled their 20 most popular stories. Interesting to see what those are! Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
It’s time for another Thursday Afternoon With Edith! I’m still sharing these journal comics. Here’s one from the day I started guest-editing here, back in the fall. Tags: comics Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Lol. In another 6 months, the only thing that will be displayed is the view count and you’ll have to tap through to see the tweet and who posted it. So much cleaner that way! Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
This is so highbrow that it’s looped back around to being lowbrow: a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit sung in classical Latin. Sine lúce, angor minus Oblectáte, nunc híc sumus Mé sentió aeger, stultus Oblectáte, nunc híc sumus Barbarus, albínus, culex et, mea libídó Hei! Hae, ha … | Continue reading