The Best Stunts of All Time, Over Nearly 100 Years of the Oscars. Buster Keaton, King Kong, Errol Flynn, Ben-Hur, Bullitt, Smokey and the Bandit, Top Gun, Speed, The Matrix, Kill Bill, Unstoppable, Mission Impossible, etc.
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When the Klan Got Kicked Out of Town. “More than 500 Lumbee men and women showed up, many of whom were war veterans. Some came with shotguns. Some came with baseball bats.”
The Art of Roland-Garros. Each year since 1980, the French Open has selected an artist to make an official poster for the tournament; this site displays all of the posters from 1980 to 2025.
Shortlist for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 Competition
In looking over the shortlist for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 competition, I thought about how I’ve seen thousands or even tens of thousands of incredible astronomical images and yet there are always new, mind-blowing things to see. Like this 500,000-km Solar Prominence Eruption by PengFei Chou:
Or Close-up of a Comet by Gerald Rhemann and Michael Jäger:
Or Electric Threads of the Lightning Spaghetti Nebula by Shaoyu Zhang (Lightning Spaghetti Nebula!!!):
Or Dragon Tree Trails by Benjamin Barakat:
Teasingly, the official site only has a selection of the shortlisted entries but if you poke through the posts at Colossal, PetaPixel, and DIY Photography, you can find some more of them. (via colossal)
New Sphere-Packing Record Stems From an Unexpected Source. “Sometimes all a sticky problem needs is a few fresh ideas, and venturing outside one’s immediate field can be rewarding.” I love reading about science/math breakthroughs…
No One Else Has a Bike Like Mine. “The most elaborately decorated e-bikes often include colorful adhesive ribbons wrapped around the posts, seat tube and headset, spoke covers and LED lights…” How NYC delivery folks trick out their bikes.
The Bayeux Tapestry is returning to the UK for the first time in more than 900 years. “The huge embroidery - which is widely believed to have been created in Kent - will go on display at the British Museum in London next year.”
A New Genetic Map of Human Disease for the Past 37,000 Years
Carl Zimmer writes about the results of a new genetic study of humans and the diseases that afflicted us over the past 37,000 years. It’s a really fascinating read — in part because of how scientific results can defy our expectations. For instance, the researchers expected to find the plague when people first started domesticating animals 11,000 years ago. But they didn’t:
But the ancient DNA defied that expectation. The scientists found that plague and a number of other diseases jumped to people from animals thousands of years later, starting about 6,000 years ago. And those microbes did not jump into early farmers.
Instead, the new study points to nomadic tribes in Russia and Asia. Thousands of years after the dawn of agriculture, those nomads started rearing vast herds of cattle and other livestock.
And then:
Those epidemics were so intense that they changed the genetic profile of the nomads. Last year, Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues found that the nomads experienced a spike in mutations that boosted their immune system and that may have helped them resist the diseases they contracted. But their active immune systems may have also attacked their own bodies, producing chronic diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
These diseases might have played a part in Bronze Age history. In previous research, Dr. Willerslev and other scientists have found evidence that nomads expanded from the steppes of Asia into Europe about 4,500 years ago.
The study published on Wednesday suggests that the nomads may have gotten help from their pathogens. European farmers and hunter-gatherers had not evolved resistance to diseases such as plague and may have died off in huge numbers, making it easier for the nomads to move in.
Read the whole thing — it’s interesting throughout.
Craig Mod: Overtourism in Japan, and How it Hurts Small Businesses. When your bar gets TikToked: “The only reason he opened the bar, he said, was so locals and friends like her would come. Now, all he had were customers he couldn’t talk to.”
“Lately, it has been difficult to ignore a tendency at the NY Times to make astonishingly bad news judgments. As Republicans increasingly circulate insane conspiracy theories and racist nonsense, the cult of centrism has taken a self-destructive turn.”
What If You Replaced the Moon With a Black Hole?
A question from a viewer of XKCD’s What If? series: “What would happen if the Moon were replaced with an equivalently-massed black hole? And what would a lunar (“holar”?) eclipse look like?” The answer to the first part of the question is: not that much. But the explanation of why that is is fascinating.
It’s worth reading the comments on the post as well…XKCD brings out the nerds and their interesting observations:
Imagine if a species grew up on a planet that had a black hole moon the mass of the moon. They’d have tides, they’d have an unobstructed view of the night sky, and they’d have no clue about this behemoth out there and would be unable to explain these bizarre perturbations in Earth’s orbit when they finally worked out Earth’s orbit.
EDIT: To everyone mentioning lensing effects: no. The eye can discern about 1 arc minute which at the distance of the moon is 280km. The lensing effect is detectable generally about double the event horizon. If the event horizon is about the size of a grain of sand, doubling it is not going to come close to being detectable with the naked eye from Earth. It is probably safe to assume that the same would be true of captured dust — that the particle size is too small to be detectable to the naked eye.
Another commenter points out that the video never explicitly answers the second question:
It never answered the part of the question about the eclipse. A grain of sand passing in front of the sun wouldn’t be visible, but if it’s a black hole, would lensing effects do anything weird?
The consensus in the comments seems to be that the effect would be minor and nearly imperceptible:
Lensing is dependent on two things: Mass of the object around which light passes, and how close by light passes. Since the black hole is one lunar mass, a very small mass on gravitational level, the lensing would be minor. Light could get a lot closer to the black hole, though. You might see a very slight “shimmer” at the edge of the sun when the black hole passes by the edge, but not much more than that. If the black hole happened to perfectly pass in front of a star that you’re observing with a telescope, you might very very briefly see a small ring instead of a point of light, but that’s about it.
Science!
When Moderation Becomes Appeasement. “Because reactionary centrists do not really have values, they struggle to understand the motivations of those who do.”
4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment. “Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel — the control of which has largely defined geopolitics — we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply.”
Wow, Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 earbuds are $149. That’s $100 off…the lowest price I’ve seen on the best earbuds I’ve ever owned.
Cool Anatomical Sculptures of Lego People
Artist Jason Freeny is making these neat anatomical sculptures of Lego people.
You can see more of his work in progress on his Facebook page. Reminds me of Michael Paulus’ work. (via colossal)
Who Goes MAGA? “His Substack has 10,000 subscribers and a name like ‘Uncomfortable Truths’ or ‘Against the Grain.’ He has an advanced degree & a career in academia or journalism. He positions himself as a truth-teller willing to say what others won’t.”
Something Extraordinary Is Happening All Over the World. “Millions of people from the poor world are trying to cross seas, forests, valleys and rivers, in search of safety, work and some kind of better future.”
“REFLECTIVE URBANISMS: Mapping New York Chinatown is an interactive web project that maps Manhattan Chinatown through its architectural changes.” The project combines 3D maps, photos from the 1940s, and community stories.
When Your Baggage Goes Through an Insecurity Inspection
Baggage is a short, stop-animation film by Lucy Davidson about the sometimes unpleasant experience of being seen — when going through airport security and also just generally.
Three girlfriends check in their baggage at the airport, but one is carrying a little more than the others. As they travel along the conveyor belt to security, can she hide what’s inside?
(via colossal)
On the Expert Generalist. “We’ve seen this capability be an essential quality in our best colleagues, to the degree that its importance is something we’ve taken for granted.”
Vintage recordings of J.R.R. Tolkien reading (and singing, in Elvish) selections from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Social media can support or undermine democracy — it comes down to how it’s designed. “Platforms routinely claim they merely reflect user behavior, yet […] toxic content often gets a boost because it captures people’s attention.”
I’m not ignoring your message – I’m overwhelmed by the tyranny of being reachable. “Because we appear online, we’re assumed to be free.”
From Marcin Wichary, a history of Mac settings (1984-2004). The article includes several embedded emulators, so you can actually use the setting panels under discussion. Amazing.
A Masterclass on Status, Power, & the Economy with Tressie McMillan Cottom. I’ve only started listening to this podcast, but it’s so good already and I’ve heard only great things about it.
Did Shakespeare Write Hamlet While He Was Stoned? Examining the evidence that the Bard smoked weed and that he was aware of its effect on his creativity.
ChatGPT kept directing people to use a non-existent feature on Soundslice…so the team built it. “To my knowledge, this is the first case of a company developing a feature because ChatGPT is incorrectly telling people it exists. (Yay?)”
This Breakthrough Sponge Could Change How the World Gets Clean Water. “A team of scientists has developed a groundbreaking sponge-like aerogel that can turn seawater into clean drinking water using only sunlight.”
100 Years of World History, As Told By 100 Movies
This is a unique look at the history of the world from 1925 to 2025, told through the lens of movies whose plots take place in those years. For example, the WWII era is represented by The Sound of Music (1965), The Pianist (2002), The Darkest Hour (2017), Casablanca (1942), The Thin Red Line (1998, Come and See (1985), Son of Saul (2015), Oppenheimer (2023), and Godzilla Minus One (2023).
As the video goes on, more and more of the scenes depict imagined past futures from films like 1984, Transformers: The Movie, Blade Runner, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Johnny Mnemonic.
In the end, it’s not a happy video — lots of war, both past and future. Hollywood does like to dwell on our worst times.
How Four Masters — Michelangelo, Donatello, Verrocchio & Bernini — Sculpted David. I saw Bernini’s David recently and it’s an amazing sculpture.
I Deleted My Second Brain. Why I Erased 10,000 Notes, 7 Years of Ideas, and Every Thought I Tried to Save. “Instead of accelerating my thinking, it began to replace it. Instead of aiding memory, it froze my curiosity into static categories.”
When in doubt, go for a walk. “Walking won’t solve everything. But it won’t make anything worse. That’s more than you can say for most things we do when we’re stressed, tired, or lost.”
The Black Panther Party Ten-Point Program
In 1966, Huey Newton & Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party and wrote a 10-point manifesto of what the group stood for and what they wanted. Here’s the full text of the plan.
4. We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter of Human Beings.
We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
5. We Want Education for Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role in the Present-Day Society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
Medieval Murder Maps. “Discover the murders, sudden deaths, sanctuary churches, and prisons of three thriving medieval cities. Click on a pin to read the story based on the original record written down in the rolls of the coroner.” (Fascinating…)
A Swim Through Jellyfish Lake
Jellyfish Lake in Palau is home to approximately 13 million jellyfish. Their mild stings mean you can snorkel in their midst and capture beautifully surreal scenes like this:
If I had a bucket list, I think a swim in Jellyfish Lake w/ classical accompaniment might be on it. (via colossal)
How Silicon Valley Got Rich. “When Apple went public in 1980, it created 300 millionaires. When Microsoft did in 1986, 3,000 employees became millionaires. After Google’s IPO in 2004, 1,000 employees held stock worth more than $5 million.”
“All games are cooperative. The very act of agreeing to & honouring rules, & the deeper compact, of temporarily engaging in the roleplay that the drama taking place on the table is *important* - this is a fundamentally cooperative enterprise.”
Bookshop.org’s 100 Bestselling Books of 2025 (So Far)
Online bookseller bookshop.org recently released a list of their bestselling books of the year (so far). The list is quite a bit different than what you might see from larger booksellers and looks more like what your local bookstore has on their bestseller list. The top five:
- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. “Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”
- Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. “An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.”
- Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. “As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances.”
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. “In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable’ books may be unmatched.”
- We Can Do Hard Things by Abby Wambach, Amanda Doyle, and Glennon Doyle. “When you travel through a new country, you need a guidebook. When you travel through love, heartbreak, joy, parenting, friendship, uncertainty, aging, grief, new beginnings — life — you need a guidebook, too. We Can Do Hard Things is the guidebook for being alive.”
Others on the list that caught my eye:
- One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. “From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values.”
- James by Percival Everett. “A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view.” (So, so good.)
- Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba. “What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.” (Buy direct from the publisher.)
- The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. “A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist’s Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.” (I think I saw, via Insta, Doechii reading this recently.)
- Bad Company by Megan Greenwell. “A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers.”
Always worth a read: the latest issue of Jodi Ettenberg’s The Curious About Everything newsletter. (I have so many tabs open to read now… 🎉🫠)
Every Wes Anderson Movie, Explained by Wes Anderson
Clocking in at almost an hour, this “definitive interview” with Wes Anderson by Vanity Fair about all 12 of his films is perhaps only for Wes stans or cinephiles, but then again, listening to thoughtful, creative people talking earnestly about their work is almost always worth the time.
Hi, I’m Wes Anderson. I have made, apparently, 12 films and I’m now going to walk us through every one of them in some way.
(via open culture)
“The fundamental dilemma [of media like NYT]: journalism is, by its nature, supposed to be on the side of accuracy, against lies & liars, but the GOP is lies & liars top to bottom. And for reasons of power & access, journalism can not say so.”
Here’s what Tom Holland’s lip-sync of Umbrella can teach us about stormwater management. “So set designers must have accounted for the flow to go somewhere, but not all residential or commercial properties are so well drained.”
Science writer Jennifer Ouellette reflects on the 30th anniversary of Apollo 13, including the movie’s realism “The actors, once locked in, breathed air pumped into the suits just like the original Apollo astronauts.” I love Apollo 13.
A Great Art Explained Book? Sign Me Up!
Ah, this is awesome: Great Art Explained is one of my favorite YouTube channels and there’s a book version coming out in the fall.
Art can be thrilling, and resonate on a deep personal level. It is how you view the work, place it in context and understand its history that makes an artwork truly come alive.
A fresh approach to a classic subject, James Payne’s no-nonsense analysis sheds new light on 30 masterpieces from around the globe and reveals what makes them truly timeless works of art.
Each chapter delves into not only the art itself but also the artist’s life, as well as the work’s place in their wider oeuvre; in other words, what makes it “great.”
You can preorder Great Art Explained from Bookshop or Amazon.
The detention center in Florida easily fits the definition of concentration camp. “This facility’s purpose fits the classic model, and its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country.” Alligator Auschwitz.
Conscientious SUV Shopper Just Wants Something That Will Kill Family In Other Car In Case Of Accident. “The last thing I want is a flimsy sedan that takes out Mommy and Daddy in the front seat but leaves behind a couple of orphans in the back…”
NPR Tiny Desk Concert by the cast of Buena Vista Social Club, a hit Broadway musical about the Cuban musical ensemble.
An original technicolor print of Star Wars (before all of Lucas’s tinkering) was recently shown in Britain. “It was very clear — without a doubt — that Han shot first.”
Hued is a daily game in the vein of Wordle/Spelling Bee where you have three guesses to match a target color.
French artist Mantra paints photo-realistic murals that look like massive butterfly specimen display frames. Fantastic.
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