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Entries for February 2022
Very Abstract Pixel Art
From former Nintendo art director Takashi Maeda, a collection of very abstract pixel art that’s free to download and use. (via @presentcorrect)
A pair of recent preprints asserts that “the Huanan market [in Wuhan] was the epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 emergence” and “SARS-CoV-2 emergence very likely resulted from at least two zoonotic events”. Basically: not a lab leak.
10 Minutes of Fascinating Deep-Sea Animals
From the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, a 10-minute video of fascinating deep-sea animals like the strawberry squid, black seadevil anglerfish, psychedelic jelly, and Pacific blackdragon. Amazing, fantastical creatures. (via colossal)
Red Sprites and Blue Jets: Massive Luminous Displays in Stormy Skies
Sometimes the sky above powerful thunderstorms can light up in massive displays of color; they’re called transient luminous events. Whoa, I’ve never seen or heard of this phenomenon before!
On rare nights with clear visibility over powerful distant thunderstorms, you might be able to see and capture red sprites. Sprites are large scale electrical discharges occurring high above thunderstorms in the upper atmosphere. They are massive events, sometimes 50 kilometers tall by 50 kilometers wide. Sprites belong to a mysterious and colorful group of phenomenon called Transient Luminous Events, or TLEs. Other TLE’s include halos, Elves, trolls, secondary jets, Blue starters, Blue jets and the magnificent gigantic jets. But what exactly are these transient luminous Events, and how do they form?
This video is a great explainer about the phenomenon — how it arises, where the colors come from, etc. (via the kid should see this)
You Can Have Geothermal Power Everywhere If You Drill Deep Enough. A new startup says it can access the Earth’s virtually unlimited geothermal energy almost anywhere by using a microwave drilling technique that can reach 12 miles down.
Catwoman vs. the White House
In 1968, singer, actress, and activist Eartha Kitt was invited to a “Women Doers” luncheon at the White House by Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady. Kitt’s focus on actual problems and solutions didn’t jibe well with the self-congratulatory platitudes of a DC working luncheon. First she pointedly questioned a caught-off-guard President Johnson about childcare for working parents after he stopped by to gladhand a little bit. Then, after remarks from several other women in the room, Kitt rose and spoke out against the war in Vietnam:
The children of America are not rebelling for no reason. They are not hippies for no reason at all. We don’t have what we have on Sunset Blvd. for no reason. They are rebelling against something. There are so many things burning the people of this country, particularly mothers. They feel they are going to raise sons — and I know what it’s like, and you have children of your own, Mrs. Johnson — we raise children and send them to war.
After the luncheon, Kitt’s career in the United States took a turn for the worse.
A Regular Guy Tries to Compete at Olympic-Level Curling
In this video, complete curling novice Clay Skipper spends a day getting trained up by some of the best curlers in world and then tries to apply what he’s learned in a doubles match. This is actually really interesting and well-done — not only do you get a good overview of the rules and strategy of curling, you also see the progression of coaching & learning, from the basic approach (that will get the stone down the pitch) to fine-tuning techniques to reliably place your shots where you want them. Oh, and you can see just how difficult it is to play at a high level.
See also The Worst NBA Player Is Way Better Than You.
How to Make Potatoes While Dread Presses In from Every Direction
John Green shares his technique for roasting potatoes while fighting “the creeping sense of dread” that many of us may be experiencing right now.
All right, let’s make some potatoes. You want enough potatoes that they will sustain the sack of flesh that contains your soul for several hours. And ideally you want these little red potatoes, which you then cut into sixths — or eighths if they’re too big. Don’t overthink the size of your potato wedges but also don’t underthink it. This is the key not just for cooking but also for most things.
(via @jackisnotabird)
The Biden administration has nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson for the vacant Supreme Court seat. Here’s a short profile of Jackson and why she was chosen.
From military historian Bret Devereaux: Understanding the War in Ukraine. The invasion was planned months ago, Putin was never going to negotiate, NATO had limited options before the invasion.
John Oliver Explains Critical Race Theory
I don’t know if it was the plan for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to become Funny Cliffs Notes for Important Social Issues in the Failing States of America, but here we are. On this week’s Last Week, Oliver explains the “manufactured panic” around critical race theory in America.
How American Conservatives Turned Against the Vaccine
From Vox’s Joss Fong, a video essay on how conservatives turned against the Covid-19 vaccine in the US.
President Donald Trump presided over the fastest vaccine development process in history, leading to abundant, free vaccines in the US by the spring of 2021. Although the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines haven’t been able to stop transmission of the virus, they have been highly effective against hospitalization and death, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and rendering the majority of new Covid-19 deaths preventable.
Trump has received three doses of the vaccine. But many of his most dedicated supporters have refused, and many have died as a result. Why? Obvious culprits include misinformation on social media and Fox News and the election of Joe Biden, which placed a Democrat at the top of the US government throughout the vaccine distribution period. But if you look closely at the data, you’ll see that vaccine-hesitant conservatives largely made up their mind well before the vaccines were available and before Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
Fong makes a compelling argument for the potential genesis of conservative vaccine denial: early on in the pandemic, in February and March 2020, prominent conservative leaders and media outlets (like Trump and Fox News) told their constituents that the threat of the pandemic and of SARS-CoV-2 has been exaggerated by journalists and liberal politicians. So, in the mind of a Fox News viewer, if the pandemic is not such a big deal, if it is “just the flu”, then why would you want to get vaccinated? Or wear a mask? Or take any precautions whatsoever? Or, most certainly, why wouldn’t you be angry at you and your kids (your kids!) being forced to do any of those things?
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Good morning, everyone. As you have likely heard, Russia invaded Ukraine earlier today. Here’s the news from Reuters, NY Times, Associated Press, and CNN. From Reuters:
Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Thursday in a massed assault by land, sea and air, the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War Two.
Missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities. Ukraine reported columns of troops pouring across its borders from Russia and Belarus, and landing on the coast from the Black and Azov seas.
Although I hope I’m wrong, this is not likely to end well for anyone and my thoughts are with the people of Ukraine, those in nearby countries, and also with Russian citizens & soldiers who will bear the consequences for the actions of their “leadership”.
So I wanted to get that out there but also to acknowledge that I don’t know how much I will be talking about this on the site, even though it’s potentially such a big deal. There have never been any hard and fast rules about what goes on the site or not. I am not a journalist and I generally don’t cover current events and news here — but sometimes I do. The pandemic has been a massive exception in that regard over the past two years — it felt irresponsible not to talk about it here, link to resources, amplify expert advice & opinion, and attempt to counter deliberate and deadly misinformation. There are going to be much better sources of news, information, opinion, and analysis about the situation in Ukraine than kottke.org, so I’m going to largely leave them to it. Also, I have not been feeling super sturdy lately, and I’m not sure diving into WWIII is the best thing for me to be doing right now.
Again, just wanted to acknowledge that in case you were wondering why I’m not covering “the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War Two”. Be safe out there, everyone.
Tarantino’s Fan Fiction: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
From Kirby Ferguson (Everything is a Remix), a short video essay about how Quentin Tarantino remixed reality in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Quentin Tarantino is well-known for mashing up different movies into his own. The peak of this method is Kill Bill, which is loading with bits taken from other films. Since then, Tarantino seems to have changed — there hasn’t been nearly so much obvious copying in his movies. But actually he’s still doing the same thing. He’s just copying in a different way, and the sources he copies from are less often movies and more often reality.
My 24-Hour Experiment With Dystopian Food Units. “When you generate a square-shaped facsimile of asparagus that tastes exactly like asparagus but doesn’t feel like asparagus, it’s a little horrifying.”
The Overthrow of Hawaii
In this TED-Ed video, Hawaiian scholar Sydney Iaukea tells the abbreviated story of how Hawaii came to be a territory of the United States.
On January 16th, 1895, two men arrived at Lili’uokalani’s door, arrested her, and imprisoned her. The Missionary Party had recently seized power and now confiscated her diaries, ransacked her house, and claimed her lands. Lili’uokalani was Hawaii’s queen and she ruled through one of the most turbulent periods of its history. Sydney Iaukea shares how the ruler fought the annexation of Hawaii.
Inside the Super Positive Community of Competitive YouTube Water Drinkers. “You do kinda have to follow some rules — it’s not just laissez-faire hydration out there.”
Colorful Wavy Portraits by Foster Sakyiamah
These striking portraits are by Ghanaian artist Foster Sakyiamah. You can check out more of his work on Instagram.
“Have you ever wondered how a book becomes a book?” Great look at the printing process for Marlon James’ Moon Witch, Spider King.
Yes, this, exactly: who gives a shit about plot holes in a movie when the rest of it works? Plot killjoys begone!
Inside the Underground Economy of Solitary Confinement. How prisoners undergoing the torture of solitary confinement “use their ingenuity, collaboration skills and a form of ‘fishing’ to get what they need”.
How Long Covid Exhausts the Body. “Studies estimate that perhaps 10 to 30 percent of people infected with the coronavirus may develop long-term symptoms.”
The Winners of 2021 International Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest
All of the winners and shortlisted entries of the 2021 International Landscape Photographer of the Year contest look fantastic, but I managed to pull out a few favorites. From top to bottom, photos by Tanmay Sapkal, Wayne Sorensen, Takashi Nakazawa, and Tom Putt.
You can view the winners online, or in PDF form.
Tom Holland lip syncing to Rihanna always cheers me up. Instant mood lifter.
An Explanation of the US Interstate Numbering System
From CGP Grey, here’s an explanation of the numbering system used by the US Interstate Highway System. Here’s the basic deal, from Wikipedia:
Primary Interstates are assigned one- or two-digit numbers, while shorter routes (such as spurs, loops, and short connecting roads) are assigned three-digit numbers where the last two digits match the parent route (thus, I-294 is a loop that connects at both ends to I-94, while I-787 is a short spur route attached to I-87). In the numbering scheme for the primary routes, east-west highways are assigned even numbers and north-south highways are assigned odd numbers. Odd route numbers increase from west to east, and even-numbered routes increase from south to north (to avoid confusion with the U.S. Highways, which increase from east to west and north to south).
In-car and on-phone GPS systems have made knowing this system largely irrelevant for most drivers. I spent a lot of time in the car as a kid — summer roadtrips around the country and frequent local travel out of our rural area — and loved maps & atlases even at that age, so this was pure nostalgia for me. The video covers some of the numbering exceptions at the end (like the 35E/35W split in the Twin Cities I used to drive on often), but I would easily have sat through 10 more minutes of them.
The Stairs of Alfred Hitchcock
Stairs show up all over the place in Alfred Hitchcock’s movies — here’s a supercut of some of those scenes from his more than 50 years of movie-making.
In the first shot of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film, The Pleasure Garden (1925), a line of women stream down a spiral staircase backstage at a theater. In the last shot of Hitchcock’s last film, Family Plot (1976), Barbara Harris sits down on a staircase, looks into the camera, and winks. In the fifty years and over fifty films between these bookends, Hitchcock made the staircase a recurring motif in his complex grammar of suspense — a device by which potential energy could be, metaphorically and literally, loaded into narrative, a zone of unsteady or vertiginous passage from one space to another, always on the verge of becoming a site of violence.
(via storythings)
La Demoiselle d’Instagram
Using an app called Prequel, Savannah Cordova ran a portrait of herself through the app’s Cartoon filter several times, which smoothes out facial features and increases the level of abstraction. The first pass turned her into a Disney/Pixar-esque character:
But after 10 rounds of filter reapplication, Cordova’s portrait is in solid Picasso territory:
See also more feedback loops in audio (I Am Sitting in a Room) and video (I Am Sitting in a Room (with a video camera) and Dueling Carls).
An American gun company is selling an AR-15 for kids that “operates just like Mom and Dad’s gun”. A semi-automatic assault rifle for children…this is sick.
Alien in 60 Seconds
In just one minute and with what seems like a budget of only $60, these folks made their own version of Alien. The effects, they are certainly special. Remember sweded films? (via digg)
A report on how the city of Montreal deals quickly and decisively with all the snow they get during a typical winter. “Sidewalks, bike paths, and streets are all cleared in a snow removal effort that is choreographed and masterful.”
The dystopian Winter Olympics. “With their spectacle of extreme athletics held against a backdrop of climate emergency, public health disaster, political brinkmanship and rampant corruption, the Games reek of societal decline.”
A comprehensive guide to understanding, producing, and using olive oil from a small California producer called Fat Gold. “Olive oil is best understood as the fresh fruit juice of the olive.”
How Insulated Glass Changed Architecture
Before the invention of insulated glass (i.e. double-paned windows) in the 1930s, builders and architects had to balance bringing light into a structure with keeping heat transfer to a minimum. For buildings in most climates, that resulted in the use of small windows and not a lot of natural light. Insulated glass meant you could keep the heat in (or out) while letting in large amounts of light and this changed how both residential and commercial buildings were built. (via the morning news)
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