I like these paintings by Spanish artist Lino Lago where traditional oil painted portraits peek through bright color fields. He calls them Fake Abstracts. (via colossal) Tags: art Lino Lago remix | Continue reading
The Fictional Brands Archive is a collection of fictional brands found in movies, TV shows, and video games — think Acme in Looney Tunes, Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., and Nakatomi Corporation from Die Hard. Very cool. But gotta say though, the dimming mouseover effect makes this more … | Continue reading
An extraordinary amount of human history — cultural, scientific, artistic — is held in private hands, unable to be viewed or used unless a steep price is paid. In his compelling short film A History Of The World According To Getty Images, director Richard Misek takes a look at se … | Continue reading
Tsunamis, tidal waves, storm surges, and other hazardous aquatic events can all unleash the great power of the sea on ships and shorelines, but rogue waves are the largest and most mysterious waves that our oceans can muster. Rogue waves are a fairly recent discovery…until you lo … | Continue reading
The Apple Lisa was the more expensive and less popular precursor to the Macintosh; a recent piece at the Computer History Museum called Lisa “Apple’s most influential failure”. Apple’s Macintosh line of computers today, known for bringing mouse-driven graphical user interfaces (G … | Continue reading
The end of the world is nigh…or at least it feels like that sometimes these days. As historian and archaeologist Ian Morris says in the video, the five factors that crop up throughout history when a major societal collapse occurs seem to be present today: mass migrations, epidemi … | Continue reading
It’s been a hectic few weeks here at Kottke HQ — lots going on personally/familially but I’ve also been pretty focused on the website. The site celebrated its 25th anniversary last month. I built and launched a micro-site for the Kottke Ask Me Anything & spent a couple of session … | Continue reading
I saw this video on the front page a YouTube a couple of weeks ago and ignored it. Like, of course water can solve a maze, next! But then it got the Kid Should See This seal of approval so I gave it a shot. It turns out: water can solve a maze…but specifics are super interesting … | Continue reading
In 1976, the price per watt of energy generated by solar photovoltaic was over $100. In 2019, it was less than 50 cents per watt, a price decline of 99.6%. Even since 2009, solar has declined 90% in price. So what’s behind that incredible drop? Industry played a part but the main … | Continue reading
As it ripens, banana skin oxidizes and turns black. Bruising the skin speeds up the process, a fact that Anna Chojnicka exploits to create these bruised banana artworks (also on Instagram). Here’s how it works: I bruise the peel by pressing into it lightly with a blunt point. Spe … | Continue reading
Earlier today, I posted a Quick Link to the 2nd-generation AirPods Pro on Amazon because they were $50 off, a good deal for an item that’s rarely on sale. I’ve been using a pair of these for the past month or so after a strong recommendation from John Gruber, and I can’t believe … | Continue reading
F. C. Schang collected the calling cards of prominent artists and musicians and in the late 20th century, donated a collection of them to Met Museum. Calling cards derived from a custom, originating in England, in which messages were inscribed on the backs of playing cards. Cards … | Continue reading
From Kurzgesagt, an accessible explanation of what happens to the human body when you get sick. Your brain activates sickness behavior and reorganizes your body’s priorities to defense. The first thing you notice is that your energy level drops and you get sleepy. You feel apathe … | Continue reading
Hey folks, just a short note to say that I’m dropping in to answer some more questions over on the Kottke AMA site this afternoon, so head on over there to check out what’s new or read through some previous questions if you missed it a couple of weeks ago. Tags: Jason Kottke k … | Continue reading
Back in 2020, the Smithsonian Institution placed 2.8 million high-resolution images and 3D models of objects in their collection into the public domain via their Open Access initiative. Over the past three years, that collection has grown to 4.5 million images, an absolutely imme … | Continue reading
The folks at RuPublicans are having fun using AI to generate photorealistic imagery of prominent conservatives in drag. Here are Anita Filibust-Her McConnell, Claretta Corrupta, Rhonda Santy, serving looks: From their Stories: Oh honey, darlings, sugar pies! THANK YOU for foll … | Continue reading
Wes Anderson likes overhead shots, Quentin Tarantino prefers to peer up from below, Darren Aronofsky uses sharp sounds, and Stanley Kubrick often uses one-point perspective. [This was originally posted on September 4, 2012.] Tags:movies Stanley Kubrick video | Continue reading
I’ve written before about the data visualizations created by W.E.B. Du Bois for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. Apparently a selection of these infographics are on display at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in NYC until May 29. Wish I could get down there to see these… Tags: Co … | Continue reading
There are few sounds that can transport me back to a specific time and place like the handshake of a dialup modem. I heard that arrangement of noises thousands of times sitting at my desk in rural Wisconsin, trying to soak up the entire internet. That sound meant freedom, connect … | Continue reading
Using 3D models, this video compares the sizes of various flying creatures (insects, bats, birds, dinosaurs) past and present, from the microscopic fairyfly (which is dwarfed by a mosquito) to the albatross (with its 12-foot wingspan) to the immense Quetzalcoatlus, which stood 20 … | Continue reading
For his project Study of Perspective, artist and activist Ai Weiwei took photos of himself flipping off “significant institutions, landmarks and monuments from around the world”, notably Tiananmen Square in 1995. Using this Google Street View-enabled web tool, you can use Ai’s mi … | Continue reading
The arms race between the house and the gamblers over which they openly have the advantage is fascinating. I’ve read about all sorts of schemes involving card counting, dice shaving, covert signaling, computer analysis, and other shenanigans, but I hadn’t heard about the possibil … | Continue reading
I posted a link to these the other day from the broken plates post (and first posted about them more than 15 years ago), but I love these photographic sculptures by Martin Klimas so much that I wanted feature them in a proper post. From a height of three meters, porcelain figurin … | Continue reading
Lego did not invent the stacking, interlocking plastic brick — Kiddiecraft did. So why did Lego’s version win? As Phil Edwards explains in this entertaining video, the answer can be boiled down to two words: innovation and marketing. The first Lego plastic mold was the same one t … | Continue reading
I’m charmed by these ultra-realistic drawings of Japanese maintenance trains by Masami Onishi. Japanese trains are renowned for their punctuality, comfort and overall reliability. But part of what makes them so reliable is an “unseen” workforce of overnight trains. These trains w … | Continue reading
McDonald’s started out as McDonald’s Bar-B-Q in San Bernardino, CA in 1940. Here’s a copy of the menu from that time: The drive-in BBQ restaurant was a great success: The restaurant had carhops serving guests and would often see 125 cars crowding the lot on weekends. They quickl … | Continue reading
I totally love these “evolved” drawings of the elaborate patterns of broken plates by Robert Strati. The project was inspired by a plate that broke in the Strati household: This work was inspired by a plate from my wife’s late mother, Barbara. One day it was dropped and shattered … | Continue reading
I’ve long been a fan of Edward Burtynsky’s photographic surveys of humanity’s impact on our environment, so I was eager to explore his newest project, African Studies. In Edward Burtynsky’s recent photographs, produced across the African continent, the patterns and scars of human … | Continue reading
I was keen to read that the debating method practiced by Trump, Putin, anti-vaxxers, and climate deniers of flooding the zone with a firehose of incorrect information has a name: the Gish Gallop. From Mehdi Hasan’s piece in The Atlantic, adapted from his new book, Win Every Argum … | Continue reading
Oh man, this is a huge huge nostalgia bomb for me - a 50-minute medley of the most popular song from each month since January 1980. When I was a kid growing up in rural Wisconsin, there were basically four choices of music to listen to: country, metal, oldies, and pop/top 40. I c … | Continue reading
I have very high hopes for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. It would be incredible if it lives up to them and the first two teaser trailers are a good start. Also, I love how completely and utterly thirrrrrrsty the video’s description is to establish the bona fides and pedigree of the movi … | Continue reading
I loved this analysis of a scene from the final episode of season three of Mad Men. The scene shifts. The partners go from standing in disarray around the room to orderly sitting, two by two across from one another. They go from tense standing disagreements to calm, relaxed collu … | Continue reading
In acceleration chess (aka progressive chess), each player gets to make one more move than the previous player. White moves first, but then Black gets to move twice. Then White gets to move three times in a row, then Black four times in a row, then White five times in a row, and … | Continue reading
This was me a couple of years ago when I first started playing Fortnite, as satirized by Adam Driver and the SNL gang: I found this sketch via a piece that Tom Vanderbilt wrote about playing Fortnite with his daughter (and her friends). It’s not as though Sylvie and I discussed … | Continue reading
Just a quick reminder that I answered a bunch of questions from readers for the inaugural Kottke.org Ask Me Anything. I talked about how to separate work from life: If I let it, every part of my life could be part of my job: not only books, movies, and travel but kids, relationsh … | Continue reading
Well this is some bizarre good fun — turns out that the campy goofiness of Star Wars and the campy seriousness of high fashion make for a pretty good combination. See also Lord of the Rings by Balenciaga and Game of Thrones by Balenciaga. Oh, and Hipster Star Wars. Tags: artific … | Continue reading
You’ve probably seen the work of animation pioneer Max Fleischer; he made the old Popeye, Superman, Betty Boop, and Koko the Clown cartoons waaaay back in the early-to-mid 20th century. Films from back then are often not well-preserved, so when a copy is discovered in a film libr … | Continue reading
For Scientific American, Jen Christiansen tracks down where the iconic image on the cover of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures came from. Designer Peter Saville found the image, a stacked graph of successive radio signals from pulsar CP 1919, in a 1977 astronomy encyclopedia but i … | Continue reading
Using drones, a team led by photographer Chris Hytha has been traveling around the country capturing images of the tops of some of America’s most beautiful and notable early 20th century skyscrapers. The prosperity of early 20th century America resulted in a boom of skyscrapers t … | Continue reading
Insider has been doing a whole series of videos on how movie props are made (view the entire thing here) and I found this one on how prop makers rely on noiseless props to be particularly interesting. To cut down on distracting on-set noise (so dialogue can be heard, for instance … | Continue reading
The first few sentences of the abstract for this paper from the scientific journal Renewable Energy contain a twist in the middle that’s worthy of M. Night Shyamalan: The USA is confronted with three epic-size problems: (1) the need for production of energy on a scale that meets … | Continue reading
I have to admit that as much as I love Evan Puschak’s Nerdwriter videos, I did not have high hopes for his latest video on John Singer Sargent, a painter I didn’t know a lot about and assumed, mostly based on his name (ugh, I know), that he was some fusty 19th-century painter who … | Continue reading
This year, Kurzgesagt celebrates 10 years of making videos on YouTube and to mark the occasion, they’ve produced this video about their history, how their business works (their shop accounts for a large chunk of their revenue), and the values that guide their work. Kurzgesagt’s f … | Continue reading
[Yesterday I spent all day answering reader questions for the inaugural Kottke.org Ask Me Anything. One of them asked my opinion of the current crop of AI tools and I thought it was worth reprinting the whole thing here. -j] Q: I would love to know your thoughts on AI, and specif … | Continue reading
The top two comments on YouTube sum this trailer for Asteroid City up pretty well: “Just when you don’t think it can get more Wes Anderson, it gets more Wes Anderson.” and “You know a Wes Anderson movie is a Wes Anderson movie, but you can’t really describe a Wes Anderson movie t … | Continue reading
Last month, I put out a call for readers to ask me anything — “questions about the sabbatical, media diets, 25 years of blogging, membership stuff, editorial policies, my fiddle leaf fig, Mastodon, parenting, Fortnite, etc.” I meant to start answering these sooner, but I ended up … | Continue reading
From Max Miller’s informative & entertaining YouTube channel Tasting History comes this lesson on pemmican, a mixture of meat and fat/tallow that was invented by the indigenous peoples of North America. Pemmican’s main attributes are its shelf-life (years), portability, and nutri … | Continue reading