Former gang leader Duane Keith Davis has been indicted for the murder of Tupac Shakur. “The broad outlines of what occurred that night were known to the police as far back as 1996” but they lacked admissible evidence.
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Entries for September 2023
Hand Embroidered Satellite Imagery
Danielle Currie creates these amazing hand-embroidered artworks of satellite views of Earth.
Danielle Currie’s intricate hand embroidered pieces capture the beauty of Earth from a satellite view. Each piece is named with the latitude and longitude coordinates, providing observers the opportunity to independently explore the area which inspired the piece.
Here’s the Landsat 8 satellite photo that inspired the embroidery at the top of the post.
Currie sells the original artworks as well as some prints of her work.
P.S. Apparently I’ve posted more than a little about embroidery over the years, so I gave the subject a tag page. There’s some cool stuff in there…I’d forgotten about The Embroidered Computer.
A Template for Right-Wingers Upset with Taylor Swift. “Taylor Swift’s popularity is clearly a sign of societal decline because she doesn’t embrace my [patriotism / Judeo-Christian values / need to force girls and women into giving birth].”
The Seven Meetings You Hate. “2. Why Am I Here? It seems like a good set of people, but I have no clue how I’m relevant to this meeting.”
A good interactive from The Pudding on the invisible loneliness epidemic in America. “The amount of time we spend with friends has plummeted — and again it hit younger people [34 or younger] especially hard.”
Stunning High-Resolution Lidar Images of Rivers & Deltas
I cannot get enough of Dan Coe’s high-resolution images of rivers and river deltas constructed from lidar data. So swirly, swoopy, fractally, and squiggly! Many of these images are time machines, showing the various meanders these rivers took hundreds and thousands of years ago. As I wrote in a post about the Mississippi River meander maps designed by Army Corps of Engineers cartographer Harold Fisk:
Fisk’s maps represent the memory of a mighty river, with thousands of years of course changes compressed into a single image by a clever mapmaker with an artistic eye. Looking at them, you’re invited to imagine the Mississippi as it was during the European exploration of the Americas in the 1500s, during the Cahokia civilization in the 1200s (when this city’s population matched London’s), when the first humans came upon the river more than 12,000 years ago, and even back to before humans, when mammoths, camels, dire wolves, and giant beavers roamed the land and gazed upon the river.
Coe has put 4K versions of these images up on Flickr in both landscape and portrait aspect ratios. They work really well for computer and phone wallpapers — I’ve been using this one on various devices since I first saw it years ago.
New linguistics trend: “whom of which” (and its relation to “pied piping”). “Our striker, whom of which is our best player, scores a lot of goals.”
Daft Punk is releasing a “drumless” edition of their album Random Access Memories. It’ll be out in Nov.
Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water. “Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun.”
Part one of Erin Kissane’s investigation into the role Facebook/Meta played in the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. “The harms Meta passively and actively fueled destroyed or ended hundreds of thousands of lives.”
Ethiopian Tigst Assefa is the new women’s marathon record-holder: 2:11:53. The men’s record in 1965 was 2:12, but the women are getting faster quicker. Since ‘65: men are 11m faster while women are an hour faster. (And 5m vs 9m since ‘98.)
Open thread for comments. Tell me something you’ve found particularly interesting over the last couple of days, with links if you have them. I’ll go first: this index of aesthetics.
The Storm Pilot
Santiago Borja is an airline pilot who takes stunning photos of storms and clouds from the flight deck of his 767. Definitely offers up a different perspective than the typical storm chaser photography. You can find his work on his website, on Instagram, and in book form.
Winners of the 2023 Bird Photographer of the Year Competition
From over 23,000 entered images, the judges in the Bird Photographer of the Year competition for 2023 have selected their winners and runners-up. I selected a few of my favorite images above; the photographers from top to bottom: Nicolas Reusens, Henley Spiers, and Gianni Maitan.
Hamburger Helper Unveils New Line Of Erotic Casseroles Meant To Be Eaten Off Naked Body. “The erotic casserole’s box would include step-by-step instructions on how to blindfold one’s partner and titillatingly dribble hot grease on their chest.”
An Update on the Squiggle Shirts
Hey folks. Just wanted to check in with how The Process Tee is going. We’ve sold quite of a few of them so far, and I’ve just sent off the first of hopefully many donations to the National Network of Abortion Funds to the tune of $1288 to support their mission of working towards a world “where all reproductive options, including abortion, are valued and free of coercion”.
Thanks so much to everyone who has bought a shirt so far! If you’d like to purchase one of your own, you can check out the original post for more information and the ordering links.
“Health experts are calling for a ‘feminist approach’ to cancer to eliminate inequalities, as research reveals 800,000 women worldwide are dying needlessly every year because they are denied optimal care.”
The Norwegian secret: how friluftsliv boosts health and happiness. “Friluftsliv is not a specific activity. Hiking in the forest, kayaking along the fjords and skiing in the mountains could all be part of it, but so [is] simply sitting in the woods.”
The Origins of the Socialist Slur
The Atlantic has an adapted excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s new book, Democracy Awakening: The Origins of the Socialist Slur. It begins:
For years after World War II, the “liberal consensus” — the New Deal idea that the federal government had a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and promoting infrastructure — was a true consensus. It was so widely popular that in 1950, the critic Lionel Trilling wrote of the United States that “liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.”
But the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional tied the federal government to ensuring not just economic equality, but also civil rights. Opponents of the liberal consensus argued that the newly active federal government was misusing tax dollars taken from hardworking white men to promote civil rights for “undeserving” Black people. The troops President Dwight Eisenhower sent to Little Rock Central High School in 1957, for example, didn’t come cheap. The government’s defense of civil rights redistributed wealth, they said, and so was virtually socialism.
Actor Michael Gambon has died at the age of 82. He had a long career on stage and screen and gained international fame as Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films.
Happy Birthday, Jason
Today is Jason’s 50th birthday. Ten years ago, Aaron Cohen and I surprised Jason by rounding up as many Kottke.org guest hosts as we could find and taking over the site for the day.
If I’d planned further ahead, I would have done something similarly spectacular, like all of us (and there are even more guest hosts and friends-of-Kottke now) arriving in Vermont to take him on a party train to Montreal. (We need more party trains. We rented a party train — technically just a private car — for my wife Karen McGrane’s 50th birthday, and it was amazing.) But we will just have to settle for this short solo tribute.
Jason runs the best blog on the planet, and he’s been doing it for half his life. But blog posts rarely go viral any more, and Jason’s style was never about controversy or provocation or any of the things that lead to virality, even novelty. Jason has cultivated an audience of dedicated readers who help make other things go viral.
I’m sure there are casual Kottke.org readers, but most of the ones I’ve encountered in my thirteen years writing for the site are unusually devoted to it, and to him as a writer and editor — again, even though Jason himself does not do most of the things that inspire that kind of charismatic devotion.
Jason puts the internet first and keeps himself at arm’s length. So you get peeks and pieces of his face and his character, but mostly it shows through his interests rather than his confessions.
I’ve been lucky that Jason’s been my friend and counselor and frequent collaborator now for many years. And we’re lucky to have him. We’re lucky that he and a few others from the beginning of blogging/posting are holding it down for RSS and the open web. We’re generationally lucky that so much of Gen X’s contribution to this still evolving form has a steadfast representative — even though again, Jason is not especially well-characterized by most of the stereotypes about Generation X!
We’re lucky that as the fortunes of online advertising for independent sites have waxed and waned, Jason has still found a model that has let him keep doing what he does full-time. And we should celebrate that and keep it going. (It would make an excellent birthday gift.)
Ten years ago, when we took over the site for a day, we asked each of the guest hosts to say something about their favorite Kottke.org post. I wrote a short essay called “Computers Are For People,” which riffed on a 2009 post Jason wrote called “One-Handed Computing with the iPhone”. You can read both pieces to find out more about why September 27th is important to me, for reasons only tangentially to do with Jason. But it ends like this:
Jason is important to me because Jason is always writing about how technology is for human beings. He doesn’t bang gavels and rattle sabres and shout “TECHNOLOGY IS FOR HUMAN BEINGS!” That’s partly because Jason is not a gavel-banging, sabre-rattling sort of person. But it’s mostly because it wouldn’t occur to him to talk about it in any other way. It’s so obvious.
The thing that tech companies forget — that journalists forget, that Wall Street never knew, that commenters who root for tech companies like sports fans for their teams could never formulate — that technology is for people — is obvious to Jason. Technology is for us. All of us. People who carry things.
People. Us. These stupid, stubborn, spectacular machines made of meat and electricity, friends and laughter, genes and dreams.
Happy birthday, Jason. I hope you’re surrounded by people you love today. Here’s to the next 50 years of Kottke.org.*
* It could be a family business! The Ochs-Sulzbergers did it! Why not Ollie or Minna? Dream big, kids.
Update: Oh man, thank you Tim! And also to the Swedish Chef! What a lovely and touching surprise. I was going to write a bday post this morning — something about how the only thing I want for my birthday is for you to support kottke.org with a membership, buy a Squiggle t-shirt, etc. — but it seems like Tim’s got that covered. So, I’m gonna take the day and I’ll see you back here tomorrow. I’m gonna get changed, grab my bike, and head out to the trails. 👋 -jason
P.S. You should check out Tim’s new gig: he’s producing a weekly newsletter about AI called The Batch.
Artistic Leaf Raking
In a nice example of accidental occupational surnames, land artist Nikola Faller travelled to a pair of European parks (in Croatia and Hungary) to rake fallen leaves into a variety of patterns. You can check out more of Faller’s work, including the sand art he’s most well-known for, on Instagram and Facebook.
Scientific American: How to Survive Mercury in Retrograde. “What does Mercury in retrograde have to do with electronics malfunctioning or social interactions taking a negative turn? Well, nothing.”
Wow, all 67 episodes of Moonlighting will be available to stream on Hulu starting Oct 10. I loved this show as a kid and am curious to see how it holds up.
Corporate America Promised to Hire a Lot More People of Color. It Actually Did. “The year after Black Lives Matter protests, the S&P 100 added more than 300,000 jobs — 94% went to people of color.”
This has greatly improved my macOS Notes experience: you can change the link color from that what-were-they-thinking yellow to a useful color by going to System Settings / Appearance and changing the “Accent color”.
New York’s Hottest Steakhouse Was a Fake, Until Saturday Night. How an in-joke amongst an extremely online group of friends became a restaurant/performance art piece for one night. “The menu purported to follow the life cycle of a cow.”
In honor of National Pancake Day, may I humbly offer you The World’s Best Pancake Recipe.
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson, author of the excellent Letters from an American newsletter, has a new book out today about the health of American democracy: Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. From Virginia Heffernan’s review of the book in the Washington Post:
She has an intriguing origin point for today’s afflictions: the New Deal. The first third of the book, which hurtles toward Donald Trump’s election, is as bingeable as anything on Netflix. “Democracy Awakening” starts in the 1930s, when Americans who’d been wiped out in the 1929 stock market crash were not about to let the rich demolish the economy again. New Deal programs designed to benefit ordinary people and prevent future crises were so popular that by 1960 candidates of both parties were advised to simply “nail together” coalitions and promise them federal funding. From 1946 to 1964, the liberal consensus — with its commitments to equality, the separation of church and state, and the freedoms of speech, press and religion — held sway.
But Republican businessmen, who had caused the crash, despised the consensus. Richardson’s account of how right-wingers appropriated the word “socialism” from the unrelated international movement is astute. When invoked to malign all government investment, “socialism” served to recruit segregationist Democrats, who could be convinced that the word meant Black people would take their money, and Western Democrats, who resented government protections on land and water. This new Republican Party created an ideology that coalesced around White Christianity and free markets.
Heffernan calls this first part of Richardson’s book “the most lucid just-so story for Trump’s rise I’ve ever heard”. I’m in the midst of two other books right now (The Vaster Wilds & The Mountain in the Sea) but I might have to make room for a third.
America’s 2023 Covid booster rollout has been slow and uneven because it works like the rest of our health care system now (whereas before it was a single-payer program run by the US government).
The Plot of All Objects in the Universe
You just have to admire a chart that casually purports to show every single thing in the Universe in one simple 2D plot. The chart in question is from a piece in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Physics with the understated title of “All objects and some questions”.
In Fig. 2, we plot all the composite objects in the Universe: protons, atoms, life forms, asteroids, moons, planets, stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, giant voids, and the Universe itself. Humans are represented by a mass of 70 kg and a radius of 50 cm (we assume sphericity), while whales are represented by a mass of 10^5 kg and a radius of 7 m.
The “sub-Planckian unknown” and “forbidden by gravity” sections of the chart makes the “quantum uncertainty” section seem downright normal — the paper collectively calls these “unphysical regions”. Lovely turns of phrase all.
But what does it all mean? My physics is too rusty to say, but I thought one of the authors’ conjectures was particularly intriguing: “Our plot of all objects also seems to suggest that the Universe is a black hole.” Huh, cool.
Scientists Witnessed The Birth Of A New Accent In Antarctica. “The changes in accent were subtle, but significant enough to be acoustically measured and even predicted by a computational model.”
Eminem’s Lose Yourself, the Super Mario Bros Edition
There I Ruined It is fast becoming one of my favorite web delights — musician Dustin Ballard remixes and mashes beloved songs in an attempt to ruin them. The video embedded above features Eminem’s Lose Yourself sung to the tune of the Super Mario Bros theme song…and it makes me laugh every time I watch it.
You can check out more of There I Ruined It on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
P.S. My idea for a song to ruin: the Happy Days theme song, but it just keeps repeating the days of the week (“Sunday Monday happy days / Tuesday Wednesday happy days…”) in a loop, using the Shepard tone to (seemingly) keep the pitch ever-rising.
“The Blood Collages of John Bingley Garland (ca. 1850–60)”
I don’t know about you, but the title “The Blood Collages of John Bingley Garland (ca. 1850–60)” made me click pretty damn fast to see what sort of Victorian age shenanigans this dude was up to. From the Public Domain Review:
The Blood Book is handmade, folio-sized, with a handsome marbled endpaper and forty-three pages of exquisitely crafted decoupage. John Bingley Garland, the manuscript’s creator, used collage techniques, excising illustrations from other books to assemble elegant, balanced compositions. Most of the source material is Romantic engravings by William Blake and his ilk, but there are also brilliantly colored flowers and fruits. Snakes are a favorite motif, butterflies another. A small bird is centered on every page. The space between the images is filled with tiny hand-written script that reads like a staccato sermon. “One! yet has larger bounties! to bestow! Joys! Powers! untasted! In a World like this, Powers!” etc.
The book’s reputation, however, rests on a decorative detail that overwhelms: To each page, Garland added languid, crimson drops in red India ink, hanging from the cut-out images like pendalogues from a chandelier. Blood drips from platters of grapes and tree boughs, statuaries and skeletons. Crosses seep, a cheetah drools, angels dangle bloody sashes. A bouquet of white chrysanthemums is spritzed.
To be clear, Garland’s blood is not that of surgery or crime or menses, but of religious iconography. He obviously intended the blood to represent Christ’s own.
The Blood Book are strikingly modern; as PDR states, Garland uses “techniques usually dated to Cubism in the early twentieth century” to make his collages. I love running across seemingly out-of-time objects like this.
David Frum in 2018: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
Physicians say transgender sports bans are a health issue. “Physically active youths have improved mental health outcomes, greater self-esteem and social supports, increased school retention rates…”
Typical Urban Planning Opinion Progression
From XKCD, the progression of people’s opinions about cars & urban planning, from “I wish there wasn’t so much traffic to get into the city. They should put in more lanes.” to “Anything that makes a city a worse place to drive makes it a better place to live.” As The War on Cars said on Bluesky, “Randall Munroe, welcome to The War on Cars.”
P.S. Re: putting in more lanes, read up on induced demand and road dieting for why that’s often not a great idea.
Painter David Salle has been working with an AI program trained on his work. “Salle had to admit the machine was finally starting to spawn images with true artistic value.”
Jesus Chris, Nepo Baby. “I totally understand that people think I got my job because of my dad, but I definitely would have still been the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ even if my dad wasn’t God.”
Taylor Lorenz: The makers of counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags are promoting their wares with live fashion shows on TikTok.
How to Apologize
Elizabeth Spiers for the NY Times on how to apologize (given the recent spate of celebrity non-apologies): I Have a Question for the Famous People Who Have Tried to Apologize.
The first step in a good apology is acknowledging harm. The second is expressing genuine regret, and where possible, acknowledging our shortcoming. Our intentions are not always good. Sometimes we’re selfish. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing, and sometimes we fail to consider the consequences. If we can admit these things, it helps repair trust.
Then we vow, in good faith, to not perpetuate the same harm again.
The last step is repair. This means directly addressing the harm done — not via self-flagellation on YouTube nor with any expectation of forgiveness.
I posted about how to apologize a few years ago after reading Katie Heaney’s piece on, wait for it, celebrity non-apologies:
Here are the six components of an apology from Beth Polin:
1. An expression of regret — this, usually, is the actual “I’m sorry.”
2. An explanation (but, importantly, not a justification).
3. An acknowledgment of responsibility.
4. A declaration of repentance.
5. An offer of repair.
6. A request for forgiveness.
I think about these components whenever giving or receiving apologies — it’s a great framework to keep in mind.
Today is the day: every US household can sign up to receive four free at-home Covid tests delivered right to your residence. All you need to do is put in your name and address — it took me 20 seconds this AM. Pls boost/repost!
A timely message for tech/web workers watching the WGA get what they wanted from the Hollywood studios: Ethan Marcotte’s new book You Deserve a Tech Union. “By standing together, we can build a better version of the tech industry.”
The Writer’s Guild and the Hollywood studios reach a tentative deal after 146 days of striking. WGA’s negotiating committee: “We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional…” Unions work — form them, join them.
Biden Will Join Autoworkers on Picket Line in Michigan, a Historic Move. “There is little to no precedent for a sitting president joining striking workers on a picket line.”
How Big Ben Works: A Detailed Look Inside London’s Beloved Victorian Clock Tower. Always down for a clock mechanism explainer.
There’s No Such Thing as an Ethical Museum. “At its core, an art museum is essentially a narrative of empire. If, as Napoleon quipped, history is a set of lies agreed upon, a museum is their physical manifestation.”
How to identify and pronounce the names of ten common types of clouds, including cirrus, cumulonimbus, and nimbostratus.
It’s Time to Replace Urban Delivery Vans
European cities are transitioning to the use of cargo e-bikes and other micro-mobility solutions for package and other urban deliveries because they are safer, cleaner, and even faster in some cases than using vans or large trucks. The US isn’t making that same shift right now — this video from Vox explores why…and how we can move in that direction.
Fortunately, there’s a hero waiting in the wings: the e-cargo bike. Not only can these bad boys deliver packages in urban environments just as quickly (and sometimes faster) than delivery vans, they take up far less space and are much less likely to cause pedestrian deaths. Companies like Amazon, DHL, and UPS are using them in several European cities, but American cities haven’t followed suit.
In this video, we explore why that is, and lay out some of the big steps American cities would need to take to join the e-bike delivery revolution.
See also No Cars Allowed in This Swiss Town (Except Tiny Electric Ones).
The JWST has found carbon on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. It’s got water, it’s got carbon…it’s got life maybe?
Why Scalpers Can Get Olivia Rodrigo Tickets and You Can’t. “Ticketmaster’s ‘Verified Fan’ system doesn’t help fans. It helps scalpers who have hundreds of accounts, use special internet browsers, and have dozens of credit cards.”
Emerald and Stone, a Visual Tribute to Brian Eno
As a tribute to Brian Eno, visual artist Thomas Blanchard made this video of Emerald and Stone, a 2010 song that Eno collaborated on with Jon Hopkins & Leo Abrahams. According to Blanchard, he made the video with no digital visual effects — “the visual compositions have been created out of paint, oil and soap liquid.”
Eno himself is still working and mentoring younger artists…he and Fred Again released an ambient album back in May.
Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events. Just staggering corruption. As Jamelle Bouie says, this shows Thomas’s contempt not only for the American public but the Supreme Court as well.
Studio Ghibli has sold a controlling stake to Nippon Television and will become a subsidiary of the Japanese broadcaster.
“If AI takes over those mundane projects and tasks that aren’t creatively engaging or necessarily important, you free up designers to be creative in the same way the computer first did when it arrived on the scene.”
What Happens If You Destroy A Black Hole?
Here’s a fun thought experiment: can you destroy a black hole? Nuclear weapons probably won’t work but what about antimatter? Or anti black holes? In this video, Kurzgesagt explores the possibilities and impossibilities. This part baked my noodle (in a good way):
Contrary to widespread belief, the singularity of a black hole is not really “at its center”. It’s in the future of whatever crosses the horizon. Black holes warp the universe so drastically that, at the event horizon, space and time switch their roles. Once you cross it, falling towards the center means going towards the future. That’s why you cannot escape: Stopping your fall and turning back would be just as impossible as stopping time and traveling to the past. So the singularity is actually in your future, not “in front of you”. And just like you can’t see your own future, you won’t see the singularity until you hit it.
🤯
“A tachyonic antitelephone is a hypothetical device in theoretical physics that could be used to send signals into one’s own past.”
Kinda fascinating piece about TikTokers Mixie and Munchie. “Instagram, I look at it now, is the stage. Pick who you want to play, look how you want to look. Create a character of your own because everyone online is fake, anyway.”
Gritty Miniatures of Classic NYC Street Objects
Danny Cortes took up making patinated miniatures of familiar NYC objects during the pandemic and it turned into a full-time vocation for him. He spoke to the NY Times about how his work puts him in the flow state:
“I loved that when I worked on a piece, I didn’t think about my problems — my divorce, the pandemic,” said Mr. Cortes. “It was an escape — like I’m meditating, literally floating. I didn’t have a problem in the world. I wanted that high again, I kept chasing that.”
Love that and love the miniatures…they are crazy realistic.
Blighted façades and distressed structures are the very scenes which fuel Daniel’s attention to detail. The work to produce each piece is arduous and requires great precision to achieve such realism. Daniel had developed techniques that can give a model an aged, distressed or patinated style. He also recreates miniature scaled vintage advertising posters and graffiti art on his models. Daniel’s miniature models make unique collectable creations that will take you on a gritty romantic journey through New York that everyday passers by have overlooked.
You can check out more of Cortes’ work on Instagram.
Never past your prime! 13 peaks we reach at 40 or later. “Ageing doesn’t have to mean slowing down. In fact, you’re more likely to win an ultramarathon in midlife, not to mention get happier, wiser and more body confident.”
Bentley vs. Train. This is peak internet right here. We will be whispering “tren” in my household for a long time to come.
Everyone Loves Someone Who Had an Abortion
Using a phrase popularized by reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman, The National Network of Abortion Funds teamed up with Molly Crabapple and Padma Lakshmi to produce a video about their mission to support abortion access in the US.
In order for abortion to be truly an option, it must not only be legal, but actually available, without the shame. It’s time we worked together towards a world where all people have the power and resources to care for and support their bodies, identities, and health — for themselves and their families. We need to take the hassle, hustle, and harassment out of healthcare. It’s time to change the conversation about abortion, to make it a real option, available to all people without shame or judgment. We all love someone who has had an abortion, whether we know it or not.
The video is three years old and from the very first line (“Abortion is legal in all 50 states”), you can tell how much the situation has changed in the United States — and how the NNAF’s mission is even more urgent. If you’d like to join me in donating, step right this way.
The US government is restarting their program to send 4 free at-home Covid tests to every household in the country — you can sign up starting Sept 25th.
People’s behaviour at music gigs is getting worse. I have three rules to solve that. “Most of these conventions simply fall under the catch-all rubric of Don’t Be a Selfish Idiot. Being a selfish idiot, however, is very on-trend.”
Antique Book Patterns
From the Bergen Public Library Norway, a collection of antique book patterns from front or end papers. The books in question are from 1890-1930. Lovely.
Of course, this reminds of one of my favorite videos I’ve posted: a 1970 short film on how to make marbled paper.
An essay on friendship. “Friendship is a form of purposive idleness. The relationship is based on equality, not on power.”
The Zeitpyramide is a public art work designed to celebrate the 1200th anniversary of a German town. One block of the pyramid will be laid every 10 years until completion in 3183. The 4th block was just laid about a week ago.
Huh, you can take in-person and live virtual tours of Amazon’s warehouses. “The tour shows you how products move through our fulfillment centers, focusing on four main processes: Pick, Pack, SLAM, and Ship.”
“B612 is an highly legible open source font family designed and tested to be used on aircraft cockpit screens.”
Tycho’s Burning Man Sunrise Set for 2023
Every year at Burning Man (pandemic years aside), Tycho does a ~2hr DJ set around sunrise and then releases it on Soundcloud — here’s the 2023 version.
I’ve been listening to this for the past week and while I don’t like it quite as much as the sets from previous years, it’s definitely something to add to the rotation of chill work music.
See Tycho’s BM sets from 2022, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. Pretty much the only reason I’d ever want to go to Burning Man (esp after this year) is to catch this set in person sometime.
With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways. “We have to be truthful, not neutral. I would make sure that you don’t just give a platform … to those who want to crash down the constitution and democracy.”
Son, You’re Old Enough to Know the Truth, There is No Such Thing as the “Invisible Hand of the Market”. “The fingers! They’re unregulated!”
Close to 2,000 Environmental Activists Killed Over Last Decade. “Violence, intimidation, and harassment are also being inflicted to silence defenders around the world,”
Jet Line: Voicemails from the Flight Path
Talk to anyone who lives near the flight path of Burlington, Vermont’s airport and it won’t be too long until they are complaining to you about the F-35 jets that routinely disrupt their lives. The loud, expensive weaponry arrived in the state in 2019 and have upset and angered residents ever since.
A sudden roar announced that the military jets were taking to the sky again.
Julia Parise’s son had developed a routine for whenever this happened: He would look to his mother and assess whether it was “one of them” — the F-35 fighter jets that had become such a constant presence in his young life — before asking her to cover his ears. He might do it himself, recalling aloud her reassurances as he did: “They won’t hurt me. They won’t hurt me.”
To capture the community unrest created by what one resident calls “Lockheed Martin’s welfare program” (the jet program will cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion over its lifetime), filmmakers Patrick McCormack and Duane Peterson III made a short film called Jet Line: Voicemails from the Flight Path featuring residents’ concerns from a complaints hotline the pair set up.
This short film employs an anonymous hotline to elevate the voices beneath Vermont’s F-35 flight path, the first urban residents to live with one of the military’s most controversial weapons systems overhead.
Tranquil scenes of unassuming neighborhoods near Burlington International Airport are juxtaposed with voicemails of the unheard, those drowned out by the ear-shattering “sound of freedom.” Exploring the relationship between picturesque residential areas and the deafening fighter jets overhead, Jet Line is a poetic portrait of a community plagued by war machines, documenting untenable conditions in a small city once voted one of the best places to live in America.
I hear the F-35s almost every time I am up in the Burlington area and they are very loud. I hear them when I’m on the phone with friends who live in Winooski. I hear them during my weekly Zoom session w/ my Burlington-based therapist and we have to pause for a few seconds so everyone can hear again. I live 30 miles away and they flew loudly over my house earlier today, as they do at least once a week. Over the weekend, the Marine Corps tweeted that they’d lost an F-35 somewhere in South Carolina and — yes, you heard right: they lost a whole-ass $100 million lethal weapon over a populated area. (They found the wreckage yesterday.) Hopefully when one of VT’s F-35s decides to drop out of the sky someday, it somehow misses everyone.
Global adventurer Jan Chipchase just returned from a month-long trip in the Pamir Mountains, including lots of time in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. His travelogues are fascinating — start here and work your way forward.
The Man Who Became Uncle Tom. Clint Smith examines Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the remarkable, complicated man who helped inspire the title character, Josiah Henson.
The Process Tee
When you start something new, how do you know where you’re going to end up? Most of the time, you don’t — you stumble around for awhile, exploring uncertainly until, slowly, things start to make sense. That messy journey is all part of the process. Designer Damien Newman and I have teamed up with Cotton Bureau to make some t-shirts featuring his Design Squiggle that illustrate this untidy pattern of creativity. The Process Tee is available in two varieties — light design on dark fabric and dark design on light fabric — and 50% of the profits will be donated to a charitable organization (more on that below).
Newman originally came up with the Design Squiggle (aka The Process of Design Squiggle) more than 20 years ago to explain how design worked to some of his clients. Here’s his description:
The Design Squiggle is a simple illustration of the design process. The journey of researching, uncovering insights, generating creative concepts, iteration of prototypes and eventually concluding in one single designed solution. It is intended to convey the feeling of the journey. Beginning on the left with mess and uncertainty and ending on the right in a single point of focus: the design.
Although it originated in the design world, the Squiggle is handy for understanding or describing the process of many different creative endeavors. If you asked a chef, a scientist, a writer, a programmer, or an artist to describe how they got from their starting point to an end result, I think it would look a lot like the Squiggle. So what’s this shirt about? The Process of Design. The Process of Writing. Cooking. Art-making. Science. Learning a New Skill. Creativity. The Messy Process of Becoming a Better Human.
The Process Tee is short-sleeved and available in unisex, fitted, and youth sizes in several light (white, heather white, heather gray, banana, banana cream, pink, gold) and dark colors (black, royal blue, red, green, purple, orange) with sizes ranging from S to 5X, which I hope will work for almost everyone. I ordered a few test shirts to figure out the sizing and placement of the Squiggle and I think they turned out really well: sharp, simple, and even a little enigmatic.
50% of the profits from these tees will be donated to the National Network of Abortion Funds. Access to safe, legal abortion is essential health care and we’re supporting the NNAF in their mission to work towards a world “where all reproductive options, including abortion, are valued and free of coercion”.
Update: I’ve sent two donations to the NNAF so far, for a total of $3,640. Thanks for helping support such a great cause — I will continue to update this post with further donation amounts.
Update: Sent another donation from the past month of sales: $432 for a total of $4,072 donated so far!
Update: It’s been awhile, but I just sent another donation from the sales since November: $656 for a total of $4,728 donated so far!
Learn how to process your own JWST photos at home, “no technical experience required to start”.
Ok wow, they are making Kristen Roupenian’s Cat Person into a movie? And if you read the original short story in the New Yorker, you’ll find the movie poster very familiar.
The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie Cover Depeche Mode
On their current US tour commemorating the 20th anniversaries of their two seminal albums (Give Up and Transatlanticism), The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie have been coming together to perform an encore rendition of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence. The video above is their version of it from last weekend’s show in New Haven, which I attended and very much enjoyed, but there are several other versions to choose from on YouTube: Boston, Wash DC, Portland, Rhode Island, etc.
Cutting Up a Huge Lego Salmon
In this ASMR stop motion cooking video, a chef butchers a huge Lego salmon and prepares a salmon and rice bowl. This video is surprisingly visceral, what with the sound effects and the (Lego) blood.
This reminds me more than a little of the sushi scene in Isle of Dogs. (thx, caroline)
How Pontevedra, Spain transformed into a more people-centric city. “It’s not my duty as mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. For me, it’s the same as if you bought a cow, or a refrigerator, and then asked me where you’re going to put them.”
If you’re liking the NY Times puzzle game Connections, you can try your hand at your own grid for others to solve.
Some Stunning Shots From the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023 Competition
The Royal Observatory Greenwich in London has announced the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023 competition and as you can see from the selection above, there were some amazing shots. From top to bottom:
- Runwei Xu and Binyu Wang for their photo of The Running Chicken Nebula.
- Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau for capturing a question mark on the Sun. I will never tire of looking at the detail of the Sun’s surface.
- Angel An. “This is not, as it might first appear, an enormous extraterrestrial, but the lower tendrils of a sprite (red lightning)! This rarely seen electrical discharge occurs much higher in the atmosphere than normal lightning (and indeed, despite the name, is created by a different mechanism), giving the image an intriguingly misleading sense of scale.”
- Mehmet Ergün. More Sun!
- Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty for their shot of the Andromeda galaxy.
The last shot was the overall winner. While not as dramatic as some of the others, it documented the discovery of a previously unknown feature of a nearby cosmic neighbor:
The Andromeda galaxy is the closest spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way, and one of the most photographed deep-sky objects. Yet this particular photo, captured by an international trio of amateur astronomers, revealed a feature that had never been seen before: a huge plasma arc, stretching out across space right next to the Andromeda galaxy.
“Scientists are now investigating the newly discovered giant in a transnational collaboration,” explain the photographers. “It could be the largest such structure nearest to us in the Universe.”
You can see the rest of the winning images on the Royal Observatory site as well as coverage from the BBC, the Guardian, Colossal, and Universe Today.
How to Cool Down a City. “Almost every aspect of how we build cities amplifies heat, from the buildings we live in to the cars we drive.” But there are ways to design cities to be cooler.
Beyoncé’s birthday Renaissance show celebrated the depths of Black womanhood. “The reality is too many Black women don’t make it to 42 and too many are not celebrated.”
Well Wishes My Love, Your Love
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the animation style Gabriel Gabriel Garble uses in his short film Well Wishes My Love, Your Love — it’s so cool and unique. Everything in the film has this sort of radiating energy that interacts with everything else. (via it’s nice that)
Jamelle Bouie: “The unfortunate truth, as we’re beginning to see with the authoritarian turn in the Republican Party, is that our constitutional system doesn’t necessarily need democracy, as we understand it, to actually work.”
“Adults 18 years and older without health insurance and adults whose health insurance does not cover all COVID-19 vaccine costs can get updated COVID-19 vaccines at no cost through the [CDC’s] Bridge Access Program.”
Max Alexander is a 7-year-old fashion designer with 1.7 million followers on Insta.
Movies That Began As Short Films
Deadline’s Robert Lang compiled a bunch of short films (that you can watch for free online) that were later developed into feature-length films like Reservoir Dogs, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Boogie Nights, Bottle Rocket, Napoleon Dynamite, and District 9.
For instance, here’s Quentin Tarantino’s original Reservoir Dogs:
Wes Anderson’s original Bottle Rocket:
The original short version of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On:
Peluca, upon which Napoleon Dynamite was based:
The Dirk Diggler Story, the short film by PT Anderson on which Boogie Nights was based:
I was reminded this morning that Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad comes out in less than 2 weeks! Very excited!
The Brassicas Will Continue Until Morale Improves
For a recent XKCD, Randall Munroe celebrates the the magical brassica oleracea plant.
Brassica oleracea is a species of plant that, like the apple, has a number of different cultivars. But these cultivars differ widely from each other: cabbage, kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, collard greens, and cauliflower.
Welcome, redwood, to the family, er, species.
“There are reports that laboratory tests to detect abortion drugs have not only been created in Poland but are, in rare cases, also being used there to investigate the outcomes of pregnancies.”
The winners of the 2023 Ig Nobel Prize (for unusual and often goofy scientific achievements) include an explanation of why scientists like to lick rocks and “re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools”.
A lovely story about an NYC woman reading a now-deleted YouTube comment for the first time. “It was so, so emotional. I couldn’t believe anyone ever felt that way about me. I never knew I inspired anything like that.”
AI-Assisted Language Translation of Speaking, Including Mouth Movements
Ok, this is a little bit bonkers: HeyGen’s Video Translate tool will convert videos of people speaking into videos of them speaking one of several different languages (incl. English, Spanish, Hindi, and French) with matching mouth movements. Check out their brief demo of Marques Brownlee speaking Spanish & Tim Cook speaking Hindi or this video of a YouTuber trying it out:
The results are definitely in the category of “indistinguishable from magic”.
A bathtub in the kitchen? The NY Times takes a peek into the tiny, weird kitchens of NYC apartments and the people who love them (or have at least learned to live with them).
An excellent, thought-provoking, sobering read from Ana Marie Cox: What if our entire national character is a trauma response? “Privilege may keep you from certain kinds of risks, but it won’t make you resilient. Only community can.”
Lego is selling a kit with braille bricks for those with visual impairments. The studs on the bricks correspond to numbers and letters in the braille code.
The iPhone Alarm as a Piano Ballad
If you expand the default iPhone alarm into a piano ballad, it sounds quiet lovely actually. The sheet music is available here.
See also Steve Reich Is Calling, two iPhones ringing at slightly different tempos.
“By 1920, the network of interurbans in the US was so dense that a determined commuter could hop interlinked streetcars from Waterville, Maine, to Sheboygan, Wisconsin — a journey of 1,000 miles — exclusively by electric trolley.”
Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould
Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould is a new book documenting the work of early 19th century naturalist artist Elizabeth Gould.
Artist and illustrator Elizabeth Gould is finally given the recognition she deserves in this gorgeous volume that includes hundreds of her stunning and scientifically precise illustrations of birds from nearly every continent.
For all of her short life, Elizabeth Gould’s artistic career was appreciated through the lens of her husband, ornithologist John Gould, with whom she embarked on a series of ambitious projects to document and illustrate the birds of the world. Elizabeth played a crucial role in her husband’s lavish publications, creating beautifully detailed and historically significant accurate illustrations of over six hundred birds -many of which were new to science. However, Elizabeth’s role was not always fully credited and, following her tragic death aged only thirty-seven, her efforts and talent were nearly forgotten.
Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould is available for pre-order from Amazon or Bookshop.org and comes out on November 7. (via colossal)
Adjusted for inflation, the iPhone 15 is the most affordable base-model iPhone since the original iPhone in 2007.
The Analogue Pocket is a portable video game system that can play “the 2,780+ Game Boy, Game Boy Color & Game Boy Advance game cartridge library” as well as those from other systems (like Game Gear) with adapters. This looks cool as hell.
The One Thing Everyone Should Know About Fall Covid Vaccines. “The simplest way to think about them — everyone should just get one — is arguably the best.”
A Teaser Trailer for Season Four of For All Mankind
The first teaser trailer for season four of the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind takes the form of a recruitment video encouraging people to join the burgeoning workforce in space. It doesn’t give us much in the way of plot or character updates, but here’s the season synopsis (spoilers if you’re not caught up to the end of season three):
Rocketing into the new millennium in the eight years since Season 3, Happy Valley has rapidly expanded its footprint on Mars by turning former foes into partners. Now 2003, the focus of the space program has turned to the capture and mining of extremely valuable, mineral-rich asteroids that could change the future of both Earth and Mars. But simmering tensions between the residents of the now-sprawling international base threaten to undo everything they are working towards.
I have to admit my interest in the show waned a bit after the first season, but it’s still a pretty great show and I will be tuning in for season four on November 10. And is it just me or, if you tilt your head and squint, can you see For All Mankind as a prequel/origin story for The Expanse? (via gizmodo)
Welcome, John Scalzi, to the 25 years of blogging club! His wife Krissy threw him a surprise blog birthday party. 🎉❤️
The 10 electric vehicles of our collective dreams, including a fully EV Jeep Wrangler, a minivan, a Fiat 500, a small rounded van, a cheaper Tesla, and A Perfectly Good Little EV Truck.
Disney+ to Air a Real-Time Toy Story Version of an NFL Game
This is pretty clever actually: Disney+ and ESPN+ will air a real-time, Toy Story-ified version of the Oct 1st Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons NFL game. From Deadline:
Using the NFL’s Next Gen Stats and on-field tracking data, every player and play will be presented in “Andy’s Room,” the familiar, brightly colored setting for the Toy Story franchise. The action will be virtually simultaneous with the main game telecast, with most plays recreated after an expected delay in the neighborhood of about 30 seconds. Woody, Buzz Lightyear and many other characters will be visible throughout, and a press release notes they will be “participating from the sidelines and in other non-gameplay elements.” Along with game action, the announcers, graphics, scoreboard, referees’ penalty announcements, celebrations and other parts of the experience will all be rendered in a Toy Story-centric fashion.
I stopped watching the NFL years ago, but I might tune in to see how this works.
The Science of the Perfect Second
I really enjoyed this piece by Tom Vanderbilt on how time is kept, coordinated, calculated, and forecast. It’s full of interested tidbits throughout, like:
Care to gawk at one of the world’s last surviving original radium standards, a glass ampoule filled with 20.28 milligrams of radium chloride prepared by Marie Curie in 1913? NIST has it in the basement, encased in a steel bathtub, buried under lead bricks.
And:
For GPS to work, it needs ultra-exact timing: accuracy within fifteen meters requires precision on the order of fifty nanoseconds. The 5G networks powering our mobile phones demand ever more precise levels of cell-tower synchronization or calls get dropped.
And:
And as Mumford could have predicted, nowhere has time become so fetishized as in the financial sector, with the emergence over the past decade of algorithmic high-frequency trading. Donald MacKenzie, the author of Trading at the Speed of Light, estimated in 2019 that a trading program could receive market data and trigger an order in eighty-four nanoseconds, or eighty-four billionths of a second.
And:
All this makes F1 staggeringly accurate: it will gain or shed only one second every 100,000,000 years. Since the days when time was defined astronomically, the accuracy of the second is estimated to have increased by a magnitude of eight.
And:
“A clock accurate to a second over the age of the cosmos,” Patrick Gill, a physicist at the U.K.’s National Physical Laboratory, is quoted as saying in New Scientist, “would allow tests of whether physical laws and constants have varied over the universe’s history.”
And:
“If you were to lift this clock up a centimeter of elevation,” Hume told me, “you would be able to discern a difference in the ticking rate.” The reason is Einstein’s theory of relativity: Time differs depending on where you are experiencing it.
And I could go on and on. If any or all of those tidbits is interesting to you, you should go ahead and read the whole thing.
“Studies have found that [cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia] is as effective as using sleep medications in the short term and more effective in the long term.” And there are self-directed online programs that are effective.
Mike Pence on That Time When the Insurrectionists Wanted to Hang Him. “I was honored to be a part of the discourse that day. You see, democracy is messy.”
New Super-Human Super Mario Bros Speedrun Record Set
I love reading about speedrunning, specifically Super Mario Bros speedrunning, so this piece in Ars Technica about a new world record by Niftski is right up my alley. Here’s the run if you want to watch it:
Four particular things caught my eye about this run:
- Niftski’s new record is 4m 54.631s, which is now faster than what was believed to be the theoretical limit for a human-played game.
- It’s also extremely close to the fastest SMB game ever played done using tool-assisted speedrunning (where you basically play in super slow motion, so you can make all the very precise movements easily, a la The Flash). “In the battle of man versus machine, Niftski is now just 0.35 seconds away from standing up, John Henry-style, against the standard of machine-made automation.”
- I always marvel at the level of dedication and ingenuity of the players working together (though competition) to lower the possible times through the tiniest of adjustments.
- His heart rate tops out at 188bpm by the end of the game. I know he’s sitting at a desk, but that’s got to be of some cardiovascular advantage, right?
👏👏👏
How the Underground Railroad Got Its Name. A new book reveals that Thomas Smallwood, an African American shoemaker, coined the term in 1842.
Huh, the premiere of Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar on Netflix will be followed by three other short film adaptations of Roald Dahl stories by Anderson, starring the same cast.
The 2023 Fall Foliage Prediction Map
Well, it is that time of year again when the leaves in the northern hemisphere change colors. As usual, SmokyMountains.com has published their best guess as to when the leaves will be changing in various parts of the country. At the end of September and beginning of October here in Vermont, it’ll start looking like this.
River, a visual connection engine. “Clear your mind and surf laterally through image space.”
The JWST has detected tantalising (but very tentative) signs of life on an exoplanet 120 light years away in the form of dimethyl sulphide. “On Earth, at least, this is only produced by life.”
Student-Built EV Car Goes 0-62 mph in Record 0.956 Seconds
A group of students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts recently set a record for the fastest 0-62mph time with their hand-built electric car: 0.956 seconds. The 309-lb car got up to 62mph in just 40.3 feet, which is ~10 feet shorter than the width of a basketball court. The old record was 1.46 seconds, which this car just absolutely obliterated. For reference, the Tesla Plaid’s 0-60 time is 1.99 seconds.
The video of their run is kind of amazing…the car is just so ludicrously quick that I started giggling when it leapt off the line.
Both the FDA and CDC have signed off on updated Covid booster shots for ages six months and up. You should be able to get your shot as early as the next few days. I’ll be getting mine as soon as I can.
If you want to know what Apple announced at their event today, The Verge’s 15-min recap video is a good place to start.
Repurposed Retro Tech Portraits by Nick Gentry
London artist Nick Gentry takes old recording media (VHS tapes, cassette tapes, floppy disks) and turns them into portraits (Instagram). Gentry gets his materials from members of the public:
Made from floppy disks contributed by members of the public. As a social art project, the process is open to everyone. Find out how to recycle and include your obsolete materials in future artworks by getting in touch.
(via colossal)
I’m a little ashamed to admit that I was excited to find out that there’s a Cheetos Mac & Cheese. But this can’t actually be good, can it?
Stunning JWST Image of a Grand-Design Spiral Galaxy
Love this recent JWST shot of the M51 spiral galaxy.
The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike the menagerie of weird and wonderful spiral galaxies with ragged or disrupted spiral arms, grand-design spiral galaxies boast prominent, well-developed spiral arms like the ones showcased in this image. This galactic portrait was captured by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI).
In this image the reprocessed stellar light by dust grains and molecules in the medium of the galaxy illuminate a dramatic filamentary medium. Empty cavities and bright filaments alternate and give the impression of ripples propagating from the spiral arms. The yellow compact regions indicate the newly formed star clusters in the galaxy.
(via bad astronomy)
How Covid Affects the Heart. “In addition to the complications that can occur during the acute phase of a Covid infection, there appears to be an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and other problems up to a year after an infection.”
Trump plans to become a dictator — denial will not save you. “Trump and his advisers are actively creating the infrastructure for him to follow through on his plans to be a dictator when/if he retakes the White House in 2025.”
Relocating a Floating Island
About once a year, boat owners on Wisconsin’s Lake Chippewa gather to move a small floating island from blocking access under a bridge. It’s a simple application of Newtonian physics: the boats all just nose into the island, gun their motors, and slowly shove the island out of the way.
The floating clump of mud and plant material is technically a bog, not an island, but it’s hefty enough to support the growth of trees all the same. Looking at it, you could easily believe it was a fully-fledged island. That is… until it starts drifting around.
“It’s one of the first things you look for when you come out here in the morning; where’s the bog?” Denny Reyes, owner of The Landing in Chippewa, told Arizona News.
The problematic bog is actually one of many, but it’s one of the biggest and close to a bridge that can get blocked when it goes for a wander. In 2022, with the wind on their side, it took around 25 boats to budge the bog and collectively push it back out into the lake.
It seems like Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki has once again failed to retire. “Not only does he not feel like retiring anymore, he’s actively coming into work to create yet another film.”
“I take risks on solo hikes, navigating animal traps and dangerous terrain. But for a woman, men are the biggest threat. I do it to be more open to the world, in the hope it will be more open to me.”
A Trans Travel Guide. “This project seeks to provide ‘travel advice’ for trans travelers (and our companions) based on laws and practical safety within various jurisdictions.”
A recipe to make sriracha from scratch. “Setting out to recreate Huy Fong’s ubiquitous sauce, I ended up with something that hit the right notes, but with a brighter, fresher flavor.”
My Saturday Self Versus My Sunday Self. “Saturday: Hopefully, I’m not getting a cold, so I can make Jamie’s surprise party. Sunday: Hopefully, I’m getting Ebola, so I can miss work.”
Swedish criminal gangs using fake Spotify streams to launder money. (Given Spotify’s tiny payouts, this actually seems like a very slow way to launder money…)
A new database of testimonies by survivors of the Roma and Sinti genocide during World War II. Between 250,000 and 500,000 Roma & Sinti were murdered by the Nazis in the 30s and 40s.
Are any words the same in all languages? Some that are close: orange, taxi, and tomato. Can you guess what two words made the grade?
Surprising Movies That Got Thumbs Down From Siskel, Ebert, or Both. The Silence of the Lambs, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Die Hard (Ebert 👎?!), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
“White men have controlled women’s reproductive rights throughout American history — the post-Dobbs era is no different.” Enslaved women were forced to reproduce and others were sterilized due to the eugenicist movement.
Dives of the Kingfisher in Slow Motion
Nature does its thing so quickly sometimes that you have to slow it down to appreciate the beauty and power of it. This is a video of a kingfisher plucking fish out of the water, with views from both above the water (which catches the dive and takeoff) and below the water (which shows the efficient grab of the fish). The underwater view is amazing…I’d never seen that before.
Affirmative Action Is Still in Effect. For Men. “Declining male enrollment has led some colleges to adopt an unofficial policy that many find objectionable: ‘We need to admit men, and women are going to suffer.’”
Bike Index is a non-profit bike registry. You can register your bike and if it gets stolen, you might be able to get it back with the help of the community.
Do you really need to walk 10,000 steps a day? Separating fitness truths (“exercise is more important as you age”) from fitness myths (“lifting weights will make you bulky”).
Psycho and the End of the Continuously Showing Movie
Going to the movies used to be a somewhat different experience than it is today: people wandered into a theater at any point in a film and would just watch until it looped back around when they came in. From a piece in the Hollywood Reporter:
Throughout the classical Hollywood era, moviegoers dropped in on a film screening whenever they felt like it, heedless of the progress of the narrative. In the usual formulation, a couple go to the movies, enter midway into the feature film, sit through to the end of the movie, watch the newsreel, cartoon, and comedy short at the top of the program, and then sit through the feature film until they recognize the scene they walked in on. At this point, one moviegoer whispers to their partner, “This is where we came in,” and they exit the theater.
This began to change in the 40s and 50s for a variety of reasons — theater owners and movie studios didn’t like it, movies were getting more complex, the rise of TV, etc. — but the real shift occurred with the premiere of Psycho in 1960. The studio put out a promotional blitz before it’s release stating that no one would be allowed entrance to the theater after the start of the film.
On June 16, 1960, after a saturation campaign giving fair warning, the DeMille and Baronet theaters in New York premiered Psycho with the see-it-from-the-beginning edict in place. In a practice later to be known as “fill and spill,” exhibitors hustled audiences in and out with military efficiency (the staggered showtimes — every two-hours for the 109-minute film — made for a tight squeeze). Uniformed Pinkerton guards were on hand to enforce the policy.
Here’s a video of Hitchcock laying out the policy for moviegoers (via open culture):
Psycho didn’t singlehandedly stop the practice, but Hitchcock’s stand was an important part in shifting moviegoing practices to the set start times we have today.
The Evolution of Hummingbirds
Really interesting video from Moth Light Media about how hummingbirds evolved into the unusual little creatures they are today.
The story of hummingbird evolution is how they have reaped the advantages of drinking a natural energy drink and then have had to evolve alien features to quell the disadvantages that have now gone on to define them.
Other popular videos from Moth Light Media include Evolution of Spider Webs, What Happens to Whale Bodies When They Die?, When Fungus Grew to the Size of Trees, and How Plants Became Meat Eaters.
Painting Elaine Benes dancing into a thrift store painting. 👍💃😂
Tom Vanderbilt on his quest to get some air while mountain biking. “I initially pictured the transition to be merely a shift in terrain. A bike is a bike, after all. But I was vastly mistaken.” Nodded a lot at this; I too have taken up MTB recently.
The Life Cycle Of Superhero Storytelling
In this short video essay, Evan Puschak explores the typical life cycle of superhero storytelling, where things move from standalone stories to crossovers and interconnections, the stakes continually rise, and things get so complicated that entertainment becomes homework. Marvel in particular is in the later stages of this cycle,1 where casual fans are dropping off because they haven’t watched increasingly mediocre movies and full seasons of shows to keep up to date on what’s to come.
Star Wars is getting there too, and Star Trek seems like they’re trying their hardest to catch up.↩
Plato’s Cave Regrets to Inform You It Will Be Raising Its Rent. “As the costs of maintaining a cave meant to trap you in your ignorance increases year after year, we want you to know, from the bottom of our hearts, that we, too, are suffering.”
The Trailer for The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki’s Final Film
It is with the appropriate feelings of melancholy and excitement that I share with you the teaser trailer for The Boy and the Heron, the legendary Hayao Miyazaki’s final animated feature film for Studio Ghibli.
A young boy named Mahito, yearning for his mother, ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead.
There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning.
A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.
Miyazaki had previously retired after 2013’s The Wind Rises but according to Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki, he had good reason to come back for one more film:
Miyazaki is making the new film for his grandson. It’s his way of saying, ‘Grandpa is moving on to the next world, but he’s leaving behind this film.’
The Boy and the Heron opens on December 8 in the US. (via waxy)
The SAF Aranet4 CO2 monitor I’ve seen many people using to estimate ventilation levels in indoor spaces (for Covid safety) is 20% off the regular price at Amazon today.
This is a small study but semaglutide treatment eliminated the need for insulin in 70% of newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes patients. “It could possibly be the most dramatic change in treating Type 1 diabetes since the discovery of insulin in 1921.”
Eric Meyer has a lovely remembrance of Molly Holzschlag. “She was a groundbreaker, expanding and explaining the Web at its infancy.”
RIP to web pioneer Molly Holzschlag. May her name continue to ring out as a true champion of the open web, someone who made the internet a better place for all of us.
368 Broadway: the NYC Building That Nurtured the Film Careers of Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, the Safdie Brothers, and More
Somehow I’d never heard of this before watching this video (nor it seems, had much of anyone else outside of the participants), but the building located at 368 Broadway in Manhattan was, in the years after 9/11, the creative home for a surprising number of filmmakers: Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, the Safdie brothers (Josh & Benny), the Neistat brothers (Casey & Van), the Schulman brothers (Ariel & Nev), and Henry Joost.
Here’s a clip of Van Neistat talking about those days (starting at 19:50):
Brian Eno had a word for places like 368 Broadway and the people who gather together to create: scenius. Austin Kleon elaborated on scenius in his book Show Your Work:
There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals — artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers — who make up an “ecology of talent.” If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.” Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals: it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.
All of the 8,291 License Plates in America
Have you noticed there are a lot of different license plates you can choose for your car these days? So did Jon Keegan; he scraped the DMV websites of all 50 states and DC and came up with over 8,200 different plate combinations you might see out on the road.
By my count, there are currently 8,291 different vehicle license plates offered by the 50 states and the District of Columbia. States now offer a vast menu of personalized plate options for a dizzying array of organizations, professions, sports teams, causes and other groups.
My count was conducted over June and July 2023, so this should be considered a snapshot, as I’m sure some plates have changed already.
Fun fact: finishers of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race are eligible to get a special “Iditarod Finisher” plate for their car.
Less fun fact, per Keegan:
Yes, license plates are still made by cheap prison labor in most states. 80% of all license plates issued in the U.S. today were made by state prisoners, with only 12 states opting out of the practice. According to a 2022 ACLU report on prison labor in the U.S., many states offer no pay at all to prisoners, while the average hourly wage across the country was between 13 and 52 cents per hour.
Here in Vermont, the use of prison labor for manufacturing things like license plates resulted in the image of a pig hidden in a cow’s spots appearing on an official crest emblazoned on state police cars back in 2012.
From Self magazine, a package on trans kids & sports. “We believe that children deserve the right to experience the wide-reaching benefits of organized sports in a fun, safe, and nurturing environment, without having to compromise who they are.” 💯
Who Gets to Enter the Arena and Who Gets to Leave
Ryan Broderick on this year’s Burning Man shitshow as a metaphor for the climate crisis, America’s fraying social fabric, or our crumbling national infrastructure (pick two all three):
If you want to see what the next 25 years are going to be like, Burning Man is it. Millionaires and managers ignoring huge structural problems until it starts to impact their libertarian freak fests and then escaping to somewhere safe when they get the chance. Well, until there aren’t any safe places to escape to, I guess…
Wow, NYC has all but banned Airbnb, restricting short-term rentals to registered hosts who are present at the time of the stay (and a limit of two guests).
Huh, a good-tasting non-alcoholic beer. “The Athletic tasted good. Undeniably good. Bitter and complex and full. Deliriously, pleasurably cold. The exact right amount of foamy. It tasted real.”
The Tenderness of Marshawn Lynch
For the role of a teacher/coach in her new film Bottoms (about a pair of queer girls who start a fight club in their high school in order to get laid), director Emma Seligman made the unorthodox decision to cast former NFL player Marshawn Lynch. It turned out to be an inspired choice — according to an interview with Seligman, he was a natural.
He was one of the best improvisers I’ve ever worked with. I’m not overstating that. He improvised most of his stuff in the movie that ended up in the final cut! We couldn’t ever write something that would be as funny as what he gave us. He’d spew out the most brilliant jokes ever. I kept on encouraging him to do more improv. He’d be like, “Ugh, that stuff’s easy! I wanna get your words right!” I told him that it was so much better than anything we could have written and he was like, “I don’t care about this. I want to honor your work.” I’m so glad I got to talk about him this much.
Here’s a short clip of Lynch doing his thing as Mr. G, “an air-headed high school teacher”:
Lynch also used the film as an opportunity to make some amends for how he reacted when his sister came out as queer:
This was a good opportunity for me because when I was in high school, my sister had came out as being a lesbian or gay — I did not handle it right. You feel me, as a 16-year-old boy, I didn’t handle it the way that I feel like I probably should have. So I told [Seligman] it was giving me an opportunity to correct my wrongs, to rewrite one of my mistakes.
From that interview with Seligman again:
In our first conversation, he told me that his sister is queer and when they were in high school, he didn’t necessarily handle it super well. He felt like this movie coming into his hands was the universe giving him a chance to right his wrongs. That’s what he said. He walked her down the aisle. He felt like they were all good, you know? But his sister thought it’d be really cool if he did this.
If you have never seen this old interview with Lynch about the value of persistence, buckle up because you’re in for a treat:
Somehow, the illustrator who created the cover image for a 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time was unknown…until the Endless Thread podcast sleuthed out his identity.
Notes On Losing. “Nearly every time I play tennis, I melt down spectacularly. Why do I keep coming back for more?”
Harvard Graduate Raises Over $300 Million From Angel Investors With Drawing Of Flying Dog. “I’m not even sure if there is a company or if it has a name, but we forked over $50 million right away.”
Save the Bees! But Which Bees?
When most people think of bees, they picture the honeybee. But the honeybee is a domesticated animal — essentially livestock — and are well taken care of. The thousands of species of wild bee are paid less attention and are no less important to maintaining healthy ecosystems (and yes, helping out with pollination).
As a group, wild bees are considered incredibly important pollinators, especially for home gardens and crops that honey bees can’t pollinate. Tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, for example, require “buzz pollination;” bees have to vibrate their bodies to shake the pollen free — a behavior that honey bees can’t do (bumblebees and some other native species can).
Yet these free services native bees provide are dwindling. While wild bees are, as a group, understudied, existing research suggests that many species are threatened with extinction, including more than a quarter of North American bumblebees.
The Real Crime Isn’t Shoplifting — It’s Wage Theft. “A 2017 study from the Economic Policy Institute estimated that low-wage workers lose more than $50 billion annually to wage theft.”
The Trailer for Michael Mann’s Ferrari
Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari — a little too on the nose? Michael Mann hasn’t made a film since 2015’s Blackhat and hasn’t made an award-winning film since 2004’s Collateral, so it’s nice to see him back in the director’s chair. The film is based on Brock Yates’ 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine.
Next to the Pope, Ferrari was the most revered man in Italy. But was he the benign padrone portrayed by an adoring world press at the time, or was he a ruthless despot, who drove his staff to the edge of madness, and his racing drivers even further?
Brock Yates’s definitive biography penetrated Ferrari’s elaborately constructed veneer and uncovered the truth behind Ferrari’s bizarre relationships, his work with Mussolini’s fascists, and his fanatical obsession with speed.
Ferrari just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and early reviews are mostly positive but not overwhelmingly so. The film opens on Dec 25 in the US.
New iOS game from Iconfactory (makers of Twitterrific, RIP): Ollie’s Arcade. It consists of 3 retro-style mini-games: Ollie Soars (a Flappy Bird-like scroller), Tranquility Touchdown (lunar lander), and Snake (er, Snake).
Two people detained for digging shortcut through Great Wall of China. “The suspects admitted under questioning that they had used a digger to create a shortcut in the wall in an attempt to reduce local travel time.”
Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland
Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland is a 5-part documentary series from director James Bluemel on the Troubles in Northern Ireland that is available to watch on PBS and BBC. A short1 trailer is above.
“Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland” weaves together the personal stories of ordinary men, women and children who were drawn — both willingly and unwillingly — into a conflict that spanned over thirty years. The series mixes extraordinary archive footage and emotionally compelling first-person testimonies to create an intimate, multi-generational portrait of Northern Ireland’s past, present and future with an emphasis on understanding and empathy for all points of view.
I’ve heard really good things about this series and, after recently reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent Say Nothing, I’m looking forward to watching this. Bluemel even interviewed Michael McConville, whose mother’s disappearance forms the backbone of Keefe’s book:
Michael McConville remembering the day his mother, Jean, was taken away and murdered by the IRA felt like an important historical story to include in the series. The IRA denied murdering her for over 30 years and they only revealed the whereabouts of her body in 2006. The trauma of this event on Michael is evident, not just in the way he talks but also the way he holds himself, his body displays the pain he feels. The trauma of those years can be consuming and was present in nearly everyone I interviewed.
Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland is available to stream on PBS and BBC sites and apps. (via @overholt)
I embedded the BBC trailer rather than the PBS one because it was a little longer. I wish PBS made longer trailers for their series…how do you even begin to tease something like a five-hour documentary on the Troubles or a six-hour series on the Holocaust with 30- and 60-second trailers? If you give people more of an idea of what the series is like, you might convince more people to watch.↩
WOW: “If Earth were an exoplanet, JWST would know there’s an intelligent civilization here.” The telescope is capable of detecting molecules of life & industrialization — which means we should be able to detect those on other exoplanets.
“The fastest we ever travelled was in 1969.” A barn-burner of a thread about the slow collapse of the US after the revolt of the rich in the early 70s against the excess freedom/wealth of the middle/working classes.
This Labor Day is for Laborers. “There is an energy in the air. It’s in our unions and our workplaces and all over the news and it has the power to transform our economy and our country.”
Great piece from The Marshall Project about a group of men on death row in Texas who play Dungeons & Dragons. “Playing Dungeons & Dragons is more difficult in prison than almost anywhere else.”
Aww, I am bummed that Hulu has cancelled The Great after three seasons. This show was hilarious…Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult were fantastic as Catherine and Peter.
I may or may not have gotten irrationally excited about finding this NY Times recipe for Homemade Hamburger Helper, which “melds the indelible comfort of macaroni and cheese with the complexity of a good Bolognese”. My fam is skeptical!
What if beavers were reintroduced into NYC? “I’m here to tell you that restoring a population of urban beavers could help bring New York City into a more prosperous, ecological future.”
An Amazing 19th-Century Autograph Quilt
In 1856, a 17-year-old girl named Adeline Harris started making a unique quilt. Over the next two decades, she sent pieces of silk to famous people from around the world and they signed them and sent them back to her. She assembled them into a quilt with a tumbling blocks pattern (aka, the Q*bert pattern).
The signatures that Harris was able to acquire are astounding: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Samuel Morse, Alexandre Dumas, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alexander von Humboldt, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oh, and eight US Presidents: Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant.
The aesthetics of this thing are just marvelous, with all the different colors and patterns arranged into a strict grid.
Oh and I couldn’t resist checking The Great Span of the quilt. The earliest-born signatory I could find is Alexander von Humboldt, who was born in 1769, and the last person to die was Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune, who died in 1922. That’s a span of 154 years, all in one incredible quilt.
I found this via the Public Domain Review, who is offering prints of the quilt.
I feel like I have posted this before but it’s worth a second look: a huge collection of animations of how to tie different knots.
“For more than 150 years, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were sent to boarding schools across the country. In many cases, they were forcibly removed from their homes.”
25 Perfect TV Episodes From the Last 25 Years, include those from Arrested Development, Mad Men, The Wire, Black Mirror, Fleabag, The Americans, and, of course, the finale of Six Feet Under.
How the Race Was Won
What an amazing, info-dense composite photograph taken by Casey Sims of the semi-finals of the men’s 110-meter hurdles at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest from last month. You can see and analyze the entire race, just from this one image. Eventual finals winner Grant Holloway is in lane 5 and led from start to finish.
From the NY Times, a calendar of noteworthy events in astronomy or spaceflight. “Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other astronomical and space event that’s out of this world.”
Human ancestors nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago. “A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals.” !!!
Trailer for Errol Morris’s The Pigeon Tunnel
Oh yay, I had been wondering just the other day what Errol Morris has been up to and it turns out to be a project with Apple TV+ called The Pigeon Tunnel, which is billed as the final interview with espionage novelist John le Carré (born David Cornwell).
It’s terribly difficult to recruit for a secret service. You’re looking for somebody who’s a bit bad, but at the same time, loyal. There’s a type. And I fit it perfectly.
The movie has the same title and covers some of the same ground as le Carré’s 2016 memoir, probably with more of an emphasis on Morris’s general obsession with what constitutes truth. More info on the film from the Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie is premiering on Sept 11:
Cornwell once worked for the British spy agencies MI5 and MI6. He sparingly gave interviews, but accepted Morris’ invitation because he saw it “as something definitive.” He had already begun a process of opening up in his memoir The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life.
Crucial to the narrative is the author’s relationship to his father Ronnie, an inveterate gambler and con artist. Cornwell’s mother disappeared when he was five, so his main frame of reference was the world of his father, who was endlessly on the run from the mob or the police. The title The Pigeon Tunnel comes from Cornwell’s experience as a child going to Monte Carlo with Ronnie. Imprinted on his memory was a shooting range on the top of a cliff. Beneath the grass was a tunnel from which trapped pigeons were ejected over the sea as targets.
The Pigeon Tunnel will be out on Apple TV+ on Oct 20, 2023.
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