Heather Cox Richardson, author of the excellent Letters from an American newsletter, has a new book out today about the health of American democracy: Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. From Virginia Heffernan's review of the book in the Washington Post: She has a … | Continue reading
You just have to admire a chart that casually purports to show every single thing in the Universe in one simple 2D plot. The chart in question is from a piece in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Physics with the understated title of "All objects and some questions … | Continue reading
There I Ruined It is fast becoming one of my favorite web delights — musician Dustin Ballard remixes and mashes beloved songs in an attempt to ruin them. The video embedded above features Eminem's Lose Yourself sung to the tune of the Super Mario Bros theme song...and it makes me … | Continue reading
I don't know about you, but the title "The Blood Collages of John Bingley Garland (ca. 1850–60)" made me click pretty damn fast to see what sort of Victorian age shenanigans this dude was up to. From the Public Domain Review: The Blood Book is handmade, folio-sized, with a handso … | Continue reading
From XKCD, the progression of people's opinions about cars & urban planning, from "I wish there wasn't so much traffic to get into the city. They should put in more lanes." to "Anything that makes a city a worse place to drive makes it a better place to live." As The War on Cars … | Continue reading
Elizabeth Spiers for the NY Times on how to apologize (given the recent spate of celebrity non-apologies): I Have a Question for the Famous People Who Have Tried to Apologize. The first step in a good apology is acknowledging harm. The second is expressing genuine regret, and whe … | Continue reading
NASA's original logo looked something like this: It was referred to, colloquially, as the meatball. In the 1970s, the meatball was switched out for the worm, a more Modernist take: This logo was done by Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn, and Danne wrote an essay about the exper … | Continue reading
European cities are transitioning to the use of cargo e-bikes and other micro-mobility solutions for package and other urban deliveries because they are safer, cleaner, and even faster in some cases than using vans or large trucks. The US isn't making that same shift right now — … | Continue reading
As a tribute to Brian Eno, visual artist Thomas Blanchard made this video of Emerald and Stone, a 2010 song that Eno collaborated on with Jon Hopkins & Leo Abrahams. According to Blanchard, he made the video with no digital visual effects — "the visual compositions have been crea … | Continue reading
Here's a fun thought experiment: can you destroy a black hole? Nuclear weapons probably won't work but what about antimatter? Or anti black holes? In this video, Kurzgesagt explores the possibilities and impossibilities. This part baked my noodle (in a good way): Contrary to wide … | Continue reading
Danny Cortes took up making patinated miniatures of familiar NYC objects during the pandemic and it turned into a full-time vocation for him. He spoke to the NY Times about how his work puts him in the flow state: "I loved that when I worked on a piece, I didn't think about my pr … | Continue reading
Using a phrase popularized by reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman, The National Network of Abortion Funds teamed up with Molly Crabapple and Padma Lakshmi to produce a video about their mission to support abortion access in the US. In order for abortion to be truly … | Continue reading
From the Bergen Public Library Norway, a collection of antique book patterns from front or end papers. The books in question are from 1890-1930. Lovely. Of course, this reminds of one of my favorite videos I've posted: a 1970 short film on how to make marbled paper. Tags: books … | Continue reading
At some point in the 1970s, Lego included the following letter to parents in its sets: The text reads: The urge to create is equally strong in all children. Boys and girls. It's imagination that counts. Not skill. You build whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. A b … | Continue reading
Every year at Burning Man (pandemic years aside), Tycho does a ~2hr DJ set around sunrise and then releases it on Soundcloud — here's the 2023 version. I've been listening to this for the past week and while I don't like it quite as much as the sets from previous years, it's def … | Continue reading
Talk to anyone who lives near the flight path of Burlington, Vermont's airport and it won't be too long until they are complaining to you about the F-35 jets that routinely disrupt their lives. The loud, expensive weaponry arrived in the state in 2019 and have upset and angered r … | Continue reading
When you start something new, how do you know where you're going to end up? Most of the time, you don't — you stumble around for awhile, exploring uncertainly until, slowly, things start to make sense. That messy journey is all part of the process. Designer Damien Newman and I ha … | Continue reading
On their current US tour commemorating the 20th anniversaries of their two seminal albums (Give Up and Transatlanticism), The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie have been coming together to perform an encore rendition of Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence. The video above is th … | Continue reading
In this ASMR stop motion cooking video, a chef butchers a huge Lego salmon and prepares a salmon and rice bowl. This video is surprisingly visceral, what with the sound effects and the (Lego) blood. This reminds me more than a little of the sushi scene in Isle of Dogs. (thx, caro … | Continue reading
The Royal Observatory Greenwich in London has announced the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023 competition and as you can see from the selection above, there were some amazing shots. From top to bottom: Runwei Xu and Binyu Wang for their photo of The Running C … | Continue reading
I don't think I've ever seen the animation style Gabriel Gabriel Garble uses in his short film Well Wishes My Love, Your Love — it's so cool and unique. Everything in the film has this sort of radiating energy that interacts with everything else. (via it's nice that) Tags: anima … | Continue reading
Deadline's Robert Lang compiled a bunch of short films (that you can watch for free online) that were later developed into feature-length films like Reservoir Dogs, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Boogie Nights, Bottle Rocket, Napoleon Dynamite, and District 9. For instance, her … | Continue reading
For a recent XKCD, Randall Munroe celebrates the the magical brassica oleracea plant. Brassica oleracea is a species of plant that, like the apple, has a number of different cultivars. But these cultivars differ widely from each other: cabbage, kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, k … | Continue reading
Ok, this is a little bit bonkers: HeyGen's Video Translate tool will convert videos of people speaking into videos of them speaking one of several different languages (incl. English, Spanish, Hindi, and French) with matching mouth movements. Check out their brief demo of Marques … | Continue reading
If you expand the default iPhone alarm into a piano ballad, it sounds quiet lovely actually. The sheet music is available here. See also Steve Reich Is Calling, two iPhones ringing at slightly different tempos. Tags: iPhone · music · remix · telephony · video | Continue reading
Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould is a new book documenting the work of early 19th century naturalist artist Elizabeth Gould. Artist and illustrator Elizabeth Gould is finally given the recognition she deserves in this gorgeous volume that includes hundreds of her st … | Continue reading
The first teaser trailer for season four of the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind takes the form of a recruitment video encouraging people to join the burgeoning workforce in space. It doesn't give us much in the way of plot or character updates, but here's the season synopsis (sp … | Continue reading
This is pretty clever actually: Disney+ and ESPN+ will air a real-time, Toy Story-ified version of the Oct 1st Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons NFL game. From Deadline: Using the NFL's Next Gen Stats and on-field tracking data, every player and play will be presented in " … | Continue reading
I really enjoyed this piece by Tom Vanderbilt on how time is kept, coordinated, calculated, and forecast. It's full of interested tidbits throughout, like: Care to gawk at one of the world's last surviving original radium standards, a glass ampoule filled with 20.28 milligrams of … | Continue reading
I love reading about speedrunning, specifically Super Mario Bros speedrunning, so this piece in Ars Technica about a new world record by Niftski is right up my alley. Here's the run if you want to watch it: Four particular things caught my eye about this run: Niftski's new recor … | Continue reading
Well, it is that time of year again when the leaves in the northern hemisphere change colors. As usual, SmokyMountains.com has published their best guess as to when the leaves will be changing in various parts of the country. At the end of September and beginning of October here … | Continue reading
A group of students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts recently set a record for the fastest 0-62mph time with their hand-built electric car: 0.956 seconds. The 309-lb car got up to 62mph in just 40.3 feet, which is ~10 feet shorter than the width … | Continue reading
London artist Nick Gentry takes old recording media (VHS tapes, cassette tapes, floppy disks) and turns them into portraits (Instagram). Gentry gets his materials from members of the public: Made from floppy disks contributed by members of the public. As a social art project, the … | Continue reading
Love this recent JWST shot of the M51 spiral galaxy. The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike the menagerie of weird and wonderful spiral galaxies with ragged or disrupted sp … | Continue reading
About once a year, boat owners on Wisconsin's Lake Chippewa gather to move a small floating island from blocking access under a bridge. It's a simple application of Newtonian physics: the boats all just nose into the island, gun their motors, and slowly shove the island out of th … | Continue reading
People ask me why I ski.1 A: Because sometimes it's as insanely fun as this guy makes it look. He. Skis. THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN. Also, if you can, pause it right after he jumps off the lift platform...the kid on the lift with his dad is like ( ﾟoﾟ). No one has ever asked me this. … | Continue reading
Nature does its thing so quickly sometimes that you have to slow it down to appreciate the beauty and power of it. This is a video of a kingfisher plucking fish out of the water, with views from both above the water (which catches the dive and takeoff) and below the water (which … | Continue reading
Going to the movies used to be a somewhat different experience than it is today: people wandered into a theater at any point in a film and would just watch until it looped back around when they came in. From a piece in the Hollywood Reporter: Throughout the classical Hollywood er … | Continue reading
Really interesting video from Moth Light Media about how hummingbirds evolved into the unusual little creatures they are today. The story of hummingbird evolution is how they have reaped the advantages of drinking a natural energy drink and then have had to evolve alien features … | Continue reading
In this short video essay, Evan Puschak explores the typical life cycle of superhero storytelling, where things move from standalone stories to crossovers and interconnections, the stakes continually rise, and things get so complicated that entertainment becomes homework. Marvel … | Continue reading
It is with the appropriate feelings of melancholy and excitement that I share with you the teaser trailer for The Boy and the Heron, the legendary Hayao Miyazaki's final animated feature film for Studio Ghibli. A young boy named Mahito, yearning for his mother, ventures into a wo … | Continue reading
Somehow I'd never heard of this before watching this video (nor it seems, had much of anyone else outside of the participants), but the building located at 368 Broadway in Manhattan was, in the years after 9/11, the creative home for a surprising number of filmmakers: Greta Gerwi … | Continue reading
Have you noticed there are a lot of different license plates you can choose for your car these days? So did Jon Keegan; he scraped the DMV websites of all 50 states and DC and came up with over 8,200 different plate combinations you might see out on the road. By my count, there a … | Continue reading
Ryan Broderick on this year's Burning Man shitshow as a metaphor for the climate crisis, America's fraying social fabric, or our crumbling national infrastructure (pick two all three): If you want to see what the next 25 years are going to be like, Burning Man is it. Millionaires … | Continue reading
For the role of a teacher/coach in her new film Bottoms (about a pair of queer girls who start a fight club in their high school in order to get laid), director Emma Seligman made the unorthodox decision to cast former NFL player Marshawn Lynch. It turned out to be an inspired ch … | Continue reading
The Pronunciation Book channel on YouTube shows you how to say various words in American English in a straightforward fashion. Here's how to say Zegna, the men's clothing brand: This is not to be confused with the Pronunciation Manual channel, which does the same thing in the sa … | Continue reading
From 1971, here's Jessie Jackson on Sesame Street doing a call-and-response with the children of the poem I Am - Somebody. I Am Somebody I Am Somebody I May Be Poor But I Am Somebody I May Be Young But I Am Somebody I May Be On Welfare But I Am Somebody It's difficult to imagine … | Continue reading
When most people think of bees, they picture the honeybee. But the honeybee is a domesticated animal — essentially livestock — and are well taken care of. The thousands of species of wild bee are paid less attention and are no less important to maintaining healthy ecosystems (and … | Continue reading