This is apparently extremely old news (like almost 20 years old), but I ran across the cover that Chris Ware did for Voltaire's Candide in the bookstore yesterday and it still slaps. P.S. The book covers tag is pretty good if you want to get distracted/inspired by fantastic desig … | Continue reading
The creepy twins. Jack feverish at the typewriter. Danny riding his Big Wheel through carpeted hallways. The elevators of blood. These familiar scenes from Stanley Kubrick's horror classic The Shining (and several more) have been recreated in this Lego stop-motion animation. The … | Continue reading
I loved Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem trilogy (read it twice!) and was excited/apprehensive when Netflix announced they'd partnered with Game of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff to adapt the books into a TV series. Well, the first trailer is here and has tipp … | Continue reading
Using the metaphor of a cancerous tumor as an unruly village, Kurzgesagt explains how cancer develops in the human body, how the body fights against it, and how, sometimes, the cancer develops into something unmanageable. In a sense this tiny tumor is like a rogue town. Imagine a … | Continue reading
On his YouTube channel this week, Phil Edwards explores the question of why all pop music radio stations in the US sound the same. The short answer is consolidation caused by deregulation but the longer answer is worth watching. And if you want more information, Edwards' list of … | Continue reading
Kurt Vonnegut is just the bee's knees, isn't he? Here's a letter he wrote in 1973 to the head of the school board at Drake High School in North Dakota after the school burned all of its copies of Slaughterhouse-Five in the school's furnace. If you were to bother to read my books, … | Continue reading
For some reason, a chap calling himself Mr. Doodle has covered his entire house, like every single inch, with black and white illustrations. As a top commenter says on YouTube, "I would 100% go insane after my 2nd day living in that house but the props I give this man for his wor … | Continue reading
Heidi Gustafson is the curator of Ochre Sanctuary, a collection of iron-based earths that are the oldest natural pigments used by humans. In her new Book of Earth, Gustafson details where these pigments come from and how to use them to create art. Here are a few images from the b … | Continue reading
The immense scale of the factory and the intense temperatures involved (along with a musical soundtrack that sounds like Interstellar by way of Philip Glass) makes this video about how rebar is made compelling viewing. There are several scenes from this video that would not be ou … | Continue reading
This conversation with musician Perfume Genius about his creative process is interesting throughout. This is something I relate to 1000%: I'm good at making things, but not talking about why. I made them because I don't know how to talk about why. The explanation is the thing I m … | Continue reading
In the 60s and 70s, Howard Johnson's was the largest restaurant chain in the US — the restaurants and their associated hotels were ubiquitous while travelling America's roadways. So it made sense that when Stanley Kubrick needed a hospitality brand for the Earthlight Room on the … | Continue reading
Mario Wienerroither takes music videos, strips out all the sound, and then foleys back in sound effects based on what people are doing in the video. You'll get the gist after about 6 seconds of this Jamiroquai video: Great stuff. He's also done Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, … | Continue reading
Using data from the ESA's Mars Express probe, the German Aerospace Center has released an enhanced color image of Mars that shows off the planet's geology and mineral content better than the usual dusty red photos do. Here's part of what you're seeing: It is well known that most … | Continue reading
According to recent research from linguists Phillip Carter and Kristen D'Alessandro Merii, a new dialect of English is forming in South Florida. The dialect, distinct from Spanglish, is spoken English that borrows lexical and semantic rules translated from Spanish. Carter writes: … | Continue reading
This short video from Vox takes a look at the recent Supreme Court decision that struck down a gerrymandered congressional map in Alabama. In 2013, a divided Supreme Court gutted one of the major pillars of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In the 10 years since then, the court has mo … | Continue reading
In roughly the time it took you to read this sentence, Max Park solved a Rubik's Cube. With his time of 3.13 seconds, Park bested Yusheng Du's 2018 mark of 3.47 seconds. Just watch the video above...it's ridiculous. I love how the judge comes in to preserve the scene as everyone … | Continue reading
Jigar Patel uses 3D modelling software to imagine factory production lines that "build" logos and app icons for brands like Instagram, Netflix, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and many others. He's also posted a bunch of behind-the-scenes videos about how he does it — love it when artist … | Continue reading
NASA keeps the original film negatives from the Apollo program sealed in a frozen vault in Houston, TX and rarely grants access to them. As a result, nearly all of the photos we see of those historic missions were made decades ago or are copies of copies. Recently, the film was c … | Continue reading
I was totally fascinated by this look at the absurd logistics of concert tours and now have a newfound appreciation for all the people involved who collaborate to make the magic happen (and perhaps also a little bit more forgiving about the high price of tickets (but Ticketmaster … | Continue reading
After 14-year-old Preston Mutanga's Lego version of the trailer for Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (embedded above) went viral, the team hired him to animate a short Lego sequence for the actual film. In the brief scene, we see a Lego version of Peter Parker as he observes a … | Continue reading
In 1979, just a few short years before she hit it big as a pop artist, Madonna was in a post-punk rock band called The Breakfast Club — she sang and played the drums. In the video above, the band rips through four demo songs in just over 8 minutes. From Dangerous Minds, some cont … | Continue reading
The Atlas of the United States Printed for the Use of the Blind, published in 1837 before Braille was widely used, used embossed printing of lines, words, and symbols to be finger-readable. Without a drop of ink in the book, the text and maps in this extraordinary atlas were emb … | Continue reading
Icelandic filmmaker Jón Karl Helgason has made a film called Sundlaugasögur (Swimming Pool Stories) about the central role of the swimming pool in Icelandic life. The trailer is above. From Fatherly: The swimming pool is first and foremost a communal space. "The swimming pool is … | Continue reading
Using imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Bruce Murray Laboratory for Planetary Visualization at Caltech has created a 5.7 terapixel mosaic image that covers 99.5% of the surface of Mars. The whole image is available to navigate with a 3D viewer in your browser. Ta … | Continue reading
Astronomers believe that there's a black hole at the center of almost every large galaxy in the universe. Some of those black holes are particularly energetic, chewing up the galaxies in which they reside and releasing massive amounts of energy out into the cosmos. Those black ho … | Continue reading
FotoAutomat restores vintage analog photo booths and redeploys them around Europe, mostly in Paris. There are less than fifty working analog photo booths remaining in the world now. Since 2007, FotoAutomat has been working to preserve this photographic heritage by restoring and m … | Continue reading
For the New Yorker, Louisa Thomas on major league pitcher Daniel Bard, who has struggled with the yips on and off during his career. Many baseball players have minor control issues at one point or another. Sometimes it happens after an injury, when a player is relearning how to t … | Continue reading
Hey folks. I'm been struggling with some things recently and I need to take some time to try to recalibrate instead of sitting in front of a computer. I'll see you back here on Monday. | Continue reading
Noh is a classical Japanese art of dramatic dance that's been performed since the 14th century. The masks worn by characters are an art form in themselves, and in this video, an expert craftsperson carves a noh mask out of a single block of Japanese cypress and then paints it wit … | Continue reading
Kane Hsieh, proprietor of the excellent MachinePix, has collected a bunch of photos of infrastructure that looks like science fiction. Tags: Kane Hsieh | Continue reading
Totally loving this Chinese movie poster for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (perhaps designed by Huang Hai). And while we're on the subject, I watched the movie the other day and loved it. In fact, it might be the most visually inventive movie I've ever seen...it's just one … | Continue reading
If you watch the video above of a front-facing camera on a moving train, the train appears to move much faster in the zoomed out view than in the zoomed in view. Here's what's going on: The illusion that speed decreases when zoomed is "because when one focuses on an inner portion … | Continue reading
Blackstar is a relaxing and meditative 45-minute video of the Sun made by Seán Doran using footage from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Instead of the familiar yellow, Doran has chosen to outfit our star in vivid blue and black, which lends the video a sort of alien familiarity. … | Continue reading
The Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year awards have been announced for 2023 and there is lots of good work in more than a dozen categories. As usual, I've included a few of my favorites above (photographers from top to bottom: Zhonghua Yang, Md. Asker Ibne Firoz, Mouneb Taim, … | Continue reading
Yesterday I posted a link to a Twitter thread by Stanley Kubrick scholar Filippo Ulivieri about a previously overlooked (*ahem*) aspect of The Shining: Jack Nicholson breaks the fourth wall by micro-glancing at the camera dozens of times during the film. It turns out that Ulivier … | Continue reading
Father's Day here in the US is coming up in about 3 weeks (June 18) and I thought I'd throw together a list of gift ideas for the occasion. I used to do December holiday gift guides and really enjoyed the process, so this is me dipping my toe back into the gift guide water after … | Continue reading
If you watch TV for more than a couple of minutes, you start to notice that certain successful plots/ensembles for shows are repeated over and over. Rohita Kadambi recently categorized dozens of shows into a few archetypes; for example: Golden Girls = Elderly Sex and the City Ins … | Continue reading
The mind-boggling winners of the Best Illusion of the Year Contest for 2023 have been announced. The entries for each the ten finalists include a video that demonstrates each illusion and then shows how it works. The top prize winner is this working model of Platform 9 3/4 from t … | Continue reading
To effectively combat the climate crisis, we're going to need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. But what's the best way to do it? Two of the main solutions being considered are direct carbon capture technology and growing trees and each approach has its pros and cons. Carbon … | Continue reading
Times New Bastard is a free font based on a Tumblr thread: "It's Times New Roman but every seventh letter is jarringly sans serif." Tags: remix · typography | Continue reading
Artist and filmmaker Paul Trillo made Thank You For Not Answering, an artful experimental short film, using a suite of AI tools. The end credits of the film read: Written and "Directed" by Paul Trillo. Kyle Chayka talked to Trillo about his process for the New Yorker: Trillo demo … | Continue reading
Oh no. It's June? Where what how?!? I did not mean to let this much time elapse since the last installment of my media diet, all the way back on Dec 2 in a completely different calendar year. But there's nothing to be done about it, we're all here now, so tuck your arms inside th … | Continue reading
In this short video from the BBC narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, activist and actor George Takei talks about his imprisonment in an American concentration camp during WWII because he was of Japanese descent. I began school in Rohwer, a real school, in a black tar paper barrack. … | Continue reading
Capture the Atlas have announced their picks for the 2023 Milky Way Photographer of the Year competition. As usual, I've included a few of my favorites here — from top to bottom: Jakob Sahner's photo from the Canary Islands, Mihail Minkov's composite shot of the Milky Way as it l … | Continue reading
Ok this is kind of incredible: Brick Technology built a solar-powered Lego clock that will keep time for a billion years. It's got various displays in the style of an astronomical clock so you can keep track of seconds, hours, months, centuries, and even galactical years (the amo … | Continue reading
Richard Swarbrick makes these great impressionist animations of sports events, mostly soccer but also cricket and basketball. Here's one to get you started...the 5-0 drubbing FC Barcelona handed to Real Madrid during a 2010 Clasico: It's amazing how much Swarbrick's illustration … | Continue reading
In 2015, artist Olafur Eliasson designed the Circle Bridge (Cirkelbroen) to span a canal in central Copenhagen. The pedestrian bridge was designed to slow people down a bit: The bridge is made of five circular platforms, and it contributes to a larger circle that will form a pede … | Continue reading
In a Memorial Day reflection, historian Heather Cox Richardson highlights a pamphlet distributed by the US War Department to Army soldiers during World War II on the topic of fascism: what it is and how to combat it. The War Department thought it was important for Americans to un … | Continue reading