An interactive feature on the wonky grooves of J Dilla. "People are moved by things that aren’t perfect".
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, Khanh Phan Thi) but you should click through to see the rest. (via curious about everything)
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 Ulivieri also made a visual essay about this and it's really worth a watch.
Let's go back to that glance that has been noticed by a few film critics. Some say it's a Brechtian effect to expose the artifice of the mise en scène and have the audience reflect on the film medium. But Kubrick's films are not intellectual, despite what the critics say. "The truth of a thing," Kubrick said, "is in the feel of it, not in the think of it." If this look at the camera means anything, for me it means that we are not safe from Jack's fury. He knows where we are, he may come for us next. But what about the others? Why on Earth is Jack Torrance constantly glancing at us, breaking the fourth wall over and over, and over, and over.
What all of these micro-glances mean is open to interpretation. Ulivieri offers a few theories of his own -- e.g. Jack is looking at ghosts, or perhaps just one ghost: the camera ghost -- but says one of the reasons he made the video is to hear what other film critics and fans think might be going on here. I thought this response to his thread hit near the mark:
My gf's read The Shining, and it's really interesting now that they notice all these fourth wall breaks Jack does. throughout the whole book, Jack feels like he's being watched and judged, and that's why he feels so much pressure to keep up appearances.
If Jack is the only one in the MOVIE to consistently break the fourth wall, where it's always just passing glances, that's a pretty effective way to show the character's fear of being watched or judged. Especially if WE don't notice it at first.
I wonder how many The Shining re-watches this video and thread have inspired...I'm gonna watch it again in the next few days and see how my awareness of the glancing changes the film for me.
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 a three-year absence.
Note: if you're shopping for a fishing/hunting/golfing dad, this list might not be that useful. Read on if your dad is a tech/design/culture dork like me — this is all stuff I wouldn't mind getting or already own myself.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo Switch. This game has gotten such good reviews that the only thing holding me back from getting it is the knowledge that I have other things in my life that I cannot completely neglect for the next three weeks.
Ernest Wright Turton Kitchen Scissors. I've featured products from this English scissor company for years — the first time was almost 9 years ago. These suckers aren't cheap and they're backordered (so won't arrive in time for Father's Day), but they're handmade and a pleasure to cut with. You could also try the Kutrite (pictured above), although that one is so backordered that there's now a ticketed reservation system in place.
Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation). Great noise-cancelling earbuds that are a true step up from the 1st gen ones. And somehow, Amazon is selling them for 20% less than what you would pay at the Apple Store. 🤷♂️👍
Tidbyt. This is a simple retro-style display device that can show you the time, weather, news, sports scores, etc. and fits on your bedside table or kitchen counter. You can even make your own apps for it. Tidbyt is connected to the internet to get data, but there's no speaker, AI, or microphone, so you don't have to worry about it eavesdropping on you or organizing your appliances into open rebellion.
Darn Tough Hiking Socks. These are made right here in Vermont and they are great socks — I have several pair for hiking and skiing. Check out their website for many more options.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. This is a total dad book and a damn good read to boot. Other dad books: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad.
Ember Travel Mug 2. I can't tell if this is idiotic or genius, so I'll let you decide: a travel mug with a programmable temperature feature, a pairable app, and if you lose it, you can locate it with Apple's Find My feature. For the right person, I bet this is the perfect gift.
Xi'an Famous Foods Hand-Pulled Noodles Meal Kits. When I learned that one of my favorite places to eat in NYC shipped meal kits around the country, I was excited but also a little wary. Would the food taste like it does in the restaurant? Thankfully the answer is a resounding yes...my family and everyone I've ever recommended this to loves it. My personal favorite is the Mt. Qi Pork Hand-Ripped Noodles.
Vintage Baseball Cards. If your dad watched baseball or collected baseball cards as a kid, a cool thing to get them is a little nostalgia bomb in the form of some unopened packs of cards from whenever they were 8-16 years old (give or take). For me, that was the mid-to-late 80s. They aren't that expensive and will be worth every penny to see the look on their face when they open them and attempt to chew the extremely stale gum within.
Ice.Made.Clear. When making cocktails at home, I'm a fan of the big ice cube. This ice maker ups the game in a major way: big cubes that are perfectly clear like you get at the fancy cocktail bar where the staff refer to themselves as mixologists. If you don't want to splurge on this one, try this cheaper one.
Ooni Fyra 12 Wood Pellet Pizza Oven. Everyone I know that has an Ooni pizza oven uses it to churn out restaurant-quality pies and loves it. This model is portable, uses hardwood pellets, and can cook a pizza in just 60 seconds at 950°F.
Moyu RS3M 2021 MagLev 3x3 Magnetic Speed Cube. A maglev Rubik's Cube? Yeah, this 3x3 cube has strong magnets in it to cut down on friction and noise while you're solving. This is perhaps overkill but for $13, why not? Besides, it might inspire them to bring that solving time down from 10 minutes...
Hokusai – The Great Wave Lego Set. The Lego version of the Hokusai's iconic woodblock print in one of several kits by the company geared towards adults. Here are some others to choose from: a bonsai tree, the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander, the Nintendo Entertainment System, a typewriter, and Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe.
Ambient Weather WS-1965 WiFi Weather Station. Just set up this personal weather station somewhere outside your house and you can measure the very local weather conditions, including temperature, barometric pressure, precipitation, humidity, wind speed & direction, and more. It connects to the internet so you can do some cool things with your data, including letting others access your hyperlocal weather via Weather Underground and other services.
Keap Wood Cabin Candle. I have this candle and love it — it smells great and lasts months and months if you don't overdo it. A very sensible splurge.
Kindle Paperwhite. Overall, this is still the best ereader out there...I'm on my third model. The Paperwhite holds thousands of books, goes several weeks between charges, and is waterproof for beach/tub reading. And you can use Libby to check books out from your local library right to your device.
Art from 20x200. My favorite online art shop, run by my pal Jen Bekman. Here are some things to get you started: Hilma af Klint, letterpress print of Albrecht Dürer's pillow drawings, Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone poster, Jason Polan's Zoo Baggu, and Harold Fisk's meander maps of the Mississippi River.
Cocktail Smoker Kit. I thought cocktail & food smoking required a large glass dome and some other fussy apparatus, but this tiny fire that sits on top of a glass looks pretty simple. I want to try this!
Babish Carbon Steel Flat Bottom Wok. Did you know that Binging With Babish has a line of cookware? I didn't either until I bought this wok last year. I was trying to follow Kenji's advice on wok-buying (14-inch, flat-bottom, carbon steel, thick gauge but not too thick) and his usual (and cheaper) choice was sold out, so I went with the Babish one and I really like using it.
Apollo Remastered: The Ultimate Photographic Record by Andy Saunders. This coffee table book contains hundreds of images from the Apollo program, recently rescanned and remastered from the original photographic film that rarely leaves a frozen vault at NASA. I haven't seen this book in person but it sounds amazing.
Amazon Gift Card. Let's destigmatize the gift card: there is no shame in not knowing what to get someone for a gift, even if you know them really well. This is actually the gift of getting someone exactly what they want, even if it's something practical & lame like razor blade refills, HDMI adapters, or laundry detergent.
That was fun — I've genuinely missed doing this. But I have too many things in my shopping cart now... 🫠 I hope you find this useful and that everyone has a good Father's Day.
P.S. If you need even more ideas, I used the following gift guides in compiling this one: Wired, >NY Times (one, two), The Verge, GQ, The Strategist (one, two, three), My Modern Met, Kitchn (one, two), The Spruce, and BuzzFeed.
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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
Insecure = Black Millennial Sex and the City
Will & Grace = Gay Friends
What We Do in the Shadows = Vampire Friends
Yellowstone = MAGA Succession
Game of Thrones = Dragon Succession
Arrested Development = Goofball Succession
Mad Men = Sexy 60s West Wing
The Bear = Sandwich West Wing
Ted Lasso = Soccer Office
Cheers = Bar Office
Schitt's Creek = Riches to Rags Full House
The Addams Family = Goth Full House
Some of these would make pretty good Midjourney prompts but I will leave that as an exercise to the reader.1
Mostly because I've never had the patience to figure out the Rube Goldbergian process for using Midjourney. Step 1: sign up for an account on a gamers chat app??! No thank you.?
Note: You can find more Quick Links in the archive.
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 the Harry Potter books:
One of my favorites is The Poggendorff Triangles, which goes to show you that straight lines aren't always straight:
Here's an audio illusion that sounds as though the tempo is endlessly rising (similar to the Shepard tone):
And then there's this hollow face illusion in which this woman's face looks at you as you move around her:
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 removal is a catch-all term for anything that people do that pulls CO2 out of the air and stores it somewhere else. To meet the world's climate goals, we would need to do this on a massive scale — anywhere from 440 billion to 1.1 trillion metric tons before the end of the century. That's more carbon than the U.S. has emitted in its entire history.
So how do we remove all that carbon? There are two carbon removal ideas that have really captured the conversation. One is direct air capture, which involves big factories that suck in tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, chemically concentrate it, and store it deep in the ground. The other idea is to simply plant trees! After all, trees have naturally sequestered carbon for millions of years.
(via digg)
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."
And much more in the archives...