The Inouye Solar Telescope is the largest and most powerful solar telescope in the world. The telescope is still in a "learning and transitioning period" and not up to full operational speed, but scientists at the National Solar Observatory recently released a batch of images tha … | Continue reading
Mosfilm, one of the largest film studios in the USSR during the Soviet era, has put full-length versions of many of its most acclaimed and influential films on YouTube for free, including six of Andrei Tarkovsky's films: Stalker, Solaris, Ivan's Childhood, The Mirror, Andrei Rubl … | Continue reading
Oh this is so nerdy and great: Veritasium introduces us to Micromouse, a maze-solving competition in which robotic mice compete to see which one is the fastest through a maze. The competitions have been held since the late 70s and today's mice are marvels of engineering and softw … | Continue reading
The length of a human life is around 80 years. You might get 100 if you're lucky. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. The vast difference between a human lifespan and the age of the universe can be difficult to grasp — even the words we use in attempting to describe it … | Continue reading
Last week, popular YouTuber, author, and science communicator Hank Green announced that he had cancer (very treatable Hodgkin's lymphoma). His video announcement was part of a series of back-and-forth videos he does with his brother John Green, popular YouTuber and novelist. John … | Continue reading
Based on data from a 2021 survey, FlowingData made these cool infographics of all of the different types of households in the United States. Here are the ten most common: Single homeowners are the most common but look at #9: inmate. Shameful. Tags: infoviz · prison · USA | Continue reading
Whenever I hear someone say "it's just business" in order to magically justify some decision to ignore the humanity of individual people, I remember that it's adapted from a line in The Godfather spoken by Michael Corleone at the precise moment when he decides to become a murdero … | Continue reading
Hand Talk sign language has been used by indigenous communities for thousands of years as a lingua franca between groups and tribes that didn't share a common spoken language. Hand Talk is an endangered endangered — the US government tried to eradicate indigenous languages starti … | Continue reading
As part of his True Facts series about the natural world, Ze Frank explains all about slime molds, which are super interesting! Slime molds can efficiently solve mazes, plan efficient train routes, adapt to changing conditions, and learn from each other. See also many beautiful p … | Continue reading
Relying on the choices of 177 book experts from 56 different countries, BBC Culture recently chose the 100 greatest children's books of all time. The top five are: 1. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak 2. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 3. Pippi Longsto … | Continue reading
Crazy article from the Smithsonian about a Russian family that disappeared into the Siberian wilderness in 1936 and had no contact with other people for more than 40 years. In the process, they missed World War II, the Moon landing, and the start of the Cold War. ...beside a stre … | Continue reading
Back in 1991, a man bought a painting at a flea market for $4 because he liked the frame. Hidden behind the painting was an envelope containing a copy of the Declaration of Independence. It turned out to be one of approximately 200 copies of the Dunlap broadside, the first publis … | Continue reading
A high school here in Vermont is located (temporarily) in an abandoned Macy's department store. A crew from the BBC recently made a short video tour, where you can see books on shelves designed to display fine china, an absence of windows, escalators, a lack of floor-to-ceiling w … | Continue reading
In the finals of the Classic Tetris Mega Masters Championship held at the end of last month, two of the top Tetris players in the world played what is probably the greatest 1-vs-1 Classic Tetris game of all time. And then they did it again... Even if you only have a passing inter … | Continue reading
This is sobering: in an ad for the United Nations Global Compact, the words of Carl Sagan from nearly 40 years ago warn us of the necessity for urgent action on climate change, deforestation, and extinction. Life is something rare and precious. There is something extraordinary ab … | Continue reading
Polyphonic's videos on music are always worth a watch and in this latest one, they explore the history of the concept album, from its proto-origins in the Romantic era to the 70s rock opera heyday to the modern era, where a large percentage of all album releases are conceptual in … | Continue reading
Writing for The Atlantic, Sarah Zhang details how some people taking Ozempic for weight loss are reporting that the drug has also curbed their addictive impulses (to drink, to shop, to smoke). Earlier this year, she began taking semaglutide, also known as Wegovy, after being pres … | Continue reading
For the NY Times, Jamelle Bouie takes a look at the legislation that Republicans around the country are pushing and, in the style of FDR's Four Freedoms speech, outlines what goals they are attempting to achieve. There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy o … | Continue reading
This is just beautiful. This short animated film by João Gonzalez starts off slow but really pays off in the end. Ice Merchants was nominated for a 2023 Academy Award. Here's an interview with Gonzalez at Director's Notes. Tags: death · Joao Gonzalez · video | Continue reading
Using colorful wooden blocks cut at different angles, Timur Zagirov makes pixel-log 1 representations of famous artworks by Vermeer, van Gogh, and Leonardo. You can check out his work on Instagram or at Stowe Gallery. (via moss & fog) Pixelized + analog + wood = pixel-log! Ok fin … | Continue reading
Earlier this week, the retired electronic duo Daft Punk released the 10th anniversary edition of Random Access Memories, their last studio album. The anniversary album includes 35 minutes of previously unreleased music. Among the tracks is a demo of Infinity Repeating, featuring … | Continue reading
Space Iris is a mesmerizing abstract video by Rus Khasanov of expanding and contracting patterns that resemble eye irises and cosmic nebulae. The description doesn't say how this was made, but a glance at Khasanov's Instagram account shows some a bunch of experiments with liquids … | Continue reading
The First Folio is a collection of 36 plays by William Shakespeare that was published in 1623. One of the most influential books ever published, only about 230 copies are known to have survived. The Victoria and Albert Museum has three copies, and in this video, they lead the vie … | Continue reading
I've been waiting patiently on this one: the teaser trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It's based on the fantastic book by David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In the … | Continue reading
Right now in the US, the majority of children are driven to school, even though many of them live within walking or cycling distance. In 1969, about 48% of students walked or cycled to school in the United States. Today that figure is about 11%. And this decline wasn't just in th … | Continue reading
Hardware engineer Mohit Bhoite designs functional little desktop bots like this thermometer and this internet-connected weather display: These are adorable...there's no other way to describe them. You can check out more of Bhoite's sculptures on his website or on Instagram. (vi … | Continue reading
In this short video, Norwegian creative director Torger Jansen explains how he designed an unofficial transit map that combines all three of Oslo's public transportation networks (tram, metro, train) into a single diagram. His four main goals: 1. Showing all the lines on every ne … | Continue reading
What does it feel like to soar majestically like an bird? Maybe something like this video, shot with a camera strapped to the back of an eagle flying near Chamonix in France. See also first-person footage of a peregrine falcon diving and killing a duck in mid-air. (via @gavinpurc … | Continue reading
Well, I don't think these photos of Icelandic ice caves by Ryan Newburn need much explanation. Stunning. I found these photos via Colossal, which has more information about how they were taken. Occupying such an ancient and always evolving space is an experience that's difficult … | Continue reading
I've always wondered about the process for making pieces of metal that appear to fit together perfectly, so perfectly that you can't see any sort of cut or seam. In this video, Steve Mould explains how wire EDM works, in part using cheese. Tags: how to · Steve Mould · video | Continue reading
In Japan, people who disappear from their lives are called "evaporated people". People choose to drop out of their lives for different reasons, ranging from debt or abuse to mental health struggles or a lack of second chances in Japanese society. Some Japanese who want to go into … | Continue reading
Artist Amy Goodchild recently published an engaging article about the earliest computer art from the 50s and 60s. My original vision for this article was to cover the development of computer art from the 50's to the 90's, but it turns out there's an abundance of things without ev … | Continue reading
From XKCD, Curve-Fitting Methods and the Messages They Send. Ahhhh, this takes me back to my research days in college, tinkering with best fits and R-squared values... Tags: infoviz · mathematics · Randall Munroe · science · XKCD | Continue reading
If you're like me, sometime in the past 4-5 years you noticed that a lot of the films you liked (or, even if you didn't, you appreciated that they were getting made) were coming from the same place, A24. Moonlight, Uncut Gems, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Aftersun, The Trag … | Continue reading
On their YouTube channel, Art21 hosts a treasure trove of video profiles of artists like Amy Sherald, Olafur Eliasson, Chris Ware, Christian Marclay, Anish Kapoor, Kara Walker, Barbara Kruger, Julie Mehretu, and Sally Mann. This is excellent — what a resource. (via colossal) … | Continue reading
From The Atlantic, 23 Pandemic Decisions That Actually Went Right, the result of interviews with more than a dozen pandemic experts. 17. Basic research spending matters. The COVID vaccines wouldn't have been ready for the public nearly as quickly without a number of existing adva … | Continue reading
This short animation from NASA shows the sizes of some of the supermassive black holes that feature at the center of galaxies. Some are relatively small: First up is 1601+3113, a dwarf galaxy hosting a black hole packed with the mass of 100,000 Suns. The matter is so compressed t … | Continue reading
When it came to making safety posters, the Dutch were pretty hardcore — a lot of these vintage posters look more like horror film adverts than safety warnings. (via meanwhile) Tags: advertising · design · Netherlands | Continue reading
In this short film by Sarah Klein & Tom Mason, Christen O'Brien tells the story of how she almost died from a massive pulmonary embolism, what she experienced in those moments, and what she took from the experience. The film is based on an essay she wrote called What It Felt Like … | Continue reading
I know, I know. Too much Wes Anderson. Too much AI. But there is something in my brain, a chemical imbalance perhaps, and I can't help but find this reimagining of the Lord of the Rings in Anderson's signature style funny and charming. Sorry but not sorry. See also The Galactic M … | Continue reading
As part of a project to reproduce all 36 of Hokusai's views of Mount Fuji as 1-bit black & white pixel art, James Weiner drew Great Wave Off Kanagawa: And he used an old Mac running System 7 to do it: I usually use either my Quadra 700 or PowerBook 100, mostly because those are … | Continue reading
Hey folks, I have some sad news to share. Heather Hamilton (aka Heather Armstrong), who wrote the popular and influential Dooce weblog, died yesterday. She was 47 years old. My thoughts are with her children, her family, and those closest to her. I'll see you back here tomorrow. … | Continue reading
Drawing from the materials of The Roddenberry Archive, this video takes us on a virtual tour of the 3D rendered bridges of every iteration of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, from the original 1964 sketches to the final scenes of Star Trek: Picard. I've watched a bunch of … | Continue reading
Bill Eppridge photographed all sorts of people skateboarding in NYC in the '60s. [This was originally posted on February 23, 2012.] Tags:Bill Eppridge NYC photography skateboarding | Continue reading
From Kurzgesagt, this video is a good overview of the arms race going on in all human bodies between cancer cells and the defenses developed by our immune systems over the years. Somewhere in your body, your immune system just quietly killed one of your own cells, stopping it fro … | Continue reading
Remember Line Rider? It's a simple video game / physics toy where you draw slopes and curves for a person on a sled to navigate, pulled along by gravity. SineRider, a project started by Chris Walker and finished by a group of teen hackers at Hack Club, is a version of Line Rider … | Continue reading
Hey, I just wanted to pop in with some reminders and a couple of new things. As I outlined in a post last month, 2023 has been busy around here: The site celebrated its 25th anniversary last month. I built and launched a micro-site for the Kottke Ask Me Anything & spent a couple … | Continue reading
Pooja Saxena collects interesting examples of lettering from the streets of cities in India. Here are a few recent examples: (via @ashur) Tags: design · India · Pooja Saxena · typography | Continue reading