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Entries for January 2024
The Verge looks at the symbiotic relationship between Google and the SEO industry, which has resulted in an internet full of sites “optimized for Google first and readers last”.
Electronic Music of the Future from Jean-Jacques Perrey in 1966
In 1966, electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey was on the game show I’ve Got a Secret and (spoiler!) his secret was he could play a single musical instrument that sounded like a number of other instruments. Perrey’s instrument was called the Ondioline, which was first developed in 1939 and was a forerunner of the modern electronic synthesizer. Perrey was a leading practitioner of the Ondioline:
Thanks to the Ondioline, I could imitate instruments from around the world, such as bagpipes from Scotland, American banjo, Gypsy violin, soprano voice, Indian sitar, and so on. I made a world tour in music and finished it with a gag of whistling a tune. At the end, the whistling was still going on (thanks to the Ondioline), but I was drinking a glass of water. We all laughed.
In the video from the game show, Perrey imitates a bunch of instruments and then plays an original composition with his collaborator Gershon Kingsley, which sounds at once wildly futuristic and laughably dated.
P.S. I first heard of Jean-Jacques Perrey courtesy of his 1970 song E.V.A., which sounds just as modern today as it did when I heard it back in the late 90s remixed by Fatboy Slim.
Apple announced a release date (Feb 2, preorder on Jan 19) and price ($3500 for 256GB) for the Apple Vision Pro. I am extremely curious about this…I’ve heard nothing but good stuff from those who have tried them.
The Perils and Pleasures of Bartending in Antarctica. “The freezer was a hole in the wall to the frigid snow and ice outside.”
Mapping Middle-earth: The lopsided demographics of Tolkien’s universe. “82% of Tolkien’s characters are male. Hobbits come closest to parity, with 30% women, followed by Men…where the imbalance is 87% versus 13%.”
From The Smallest to the Largest Thing in The Universe
I’ve posted more than a few size comparison videos here over the years — Powers of Ten is the obvious one — but this one from Kurzgesagt is one of the best, showing how big everything in the universe is compared to humans, who seemingly find themselves smack in the middle. This video does an excellent job illustrating the similarity of structures and interdependency across different scales — how blood vessels are like city streets for instance or how very tiny proteins can affect the entire Earth.
From Ritesh Babu, a review of the comics he loved in 2023. I am not generally a comics/graphic novel reader by habit, but Babu makes everything on this list sound so compelling.
What’s Your Go-to Comfort Media?
I reckon most of us have certain books, movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, and other media that we turn to when we need some comfort. These are things we’ve seen, read, or heard before — often many times — and know exactly what we’re going to get from them.
What we reach for depends on our needs. When I just want something familiar on in the background while I’m doing something else, to provide a vibe and the barest hint of a plot to follow, I often turn on Star Trek: TNG or old episodes of Doctor Who on Pluto TV. A few years ago during a really tough period, I read several of Tom Clancy’s novels (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Red Storm Rising) to keep my brain reliably engaged but also unfettered by challenging prose or the deep emotional lives of the characters. I rewatch Star Wars and Avengers movies for their reliable entertainment, characters I’m invested in, and predictable-but-satisfying outcomes — these are often good plane movies.
When I’m feeling a lot of relational feelings and need a bit of salt to make them feel even more intense (and punishing), I’ll watch season two of Fleabag or Midnight in Paris or even 50 First Dates (which is as close as I get to rom-coms). Radiohead is a great all-arounder for many situations — I’ve leaned on Everything In Its Right Place, True Love Waits, Videotape, and even Burn the Witch at various times in my life. The Great British Bake Off is reliably low stakes, entertaining, and nothing but good vibes.
So how about it? What’s your go-to comfort media?
For the people out there who really miss their Blackberrys, Clicks is an iPhone case with a keyboard built in.
From the NY Times’ Melissa Clark, a primer on salt and when to use which kind of salt. “Are fine sea salt and table salt interchangeable? Can you finish a dish that calls for flaky Maldon with coarse sea salt from a grinder instead?”
An Octopus vs an Underwater Maze
Mark Rober puts an octopus he bought from a pet store through an underwater maze to see if it can solve a bunch of puzzles to reach a motherlode of tasty shrimp at the end. This video paired well with a book I recently read, Ray Nayler’s Mountain in the Sea: “Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future.”
As for the name Rober gives the octopus… Sashimi? Really? Bros gotta bro, I guess. 🙄
Two years, 400 journalists and 50 climate experts: Here’s what we learnt about how to report on climate change. “To make climate change less abstract, ‘Find your mango.’” (Aka the thing that your audience cares about that’s impacted by climate.)
When she was 19, Henn Kim stopped speaking for two years. “Growing up, I felt trapped because I couldn’t express my emotions. Now, without words, I felt inspired.”
Paul Ford: To Own the Future, Read Shakespeare. “The interdisciplinarian is essentially an exile. Someone who respects no borders enjoys no citizenship.”
What Can I Do About the Climate Emergency?
Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility is a climate anthology published last year and edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua. They’ve just added a chapter to the book that’s available for free download that contains practical advice on how to involved in combatting the climate crisis: What Can I Do About the Climate Emergency?
The climate movement needs you. In this pamphlet, we outline some of the ways you can join it, and we share examples of how ordinary people have found their role, their power, their impactful projects, and their climate community. There’s a place for you in the crucial work of speeding the transition away from destruction and toward thriving. Figuring out where your skills are useful and what you can stick with is important. Identifying whom to work with and what to work on is crucial. Some of us are good at staying with a legislative issue for a season or a year or a decade. Some of us are good campaigners. Some like protests and are ready to blockade and risk arrest. Some of us are homebound but can make calls and write letters. It all matters.
One of the best and most challenging things about the climate crisis is that there is no one solution. That is, the solution is a mosaic of many changes. The way we get to a world that doesn’t run on fossil fuel and instead centers justice, sustainability, and community is happening in hundreds of thousands of ways — this coal plant shutdown, that methane-gas ban, these electric schoolbuses and bike lanes, that solar rooftop, these offshore turbines, that grasslands protection. These need to be sped up and amplified. National legislation and international treaties matter, but so do the countless small pieces that add up. It’s not just about what we need to stop but also about the rejuvenating work of building the world we want.
“There should be lots of different, human-scale alternative experiences on the internet that offer up home-cooked, locally-grown, ethically-sourced, code-to-table alternatives to the factory-farmed junk food of the internet. And they should be weird.”
The Man Who Invented Fifteen Hundred Necktie Knots. “He established or articulated dozens of basic techniques: twisting, swirling, spiralling, tunnelling, snaking, flaring.” Learn how to tie some of them on YouTube.
Learn How to Dance Like David Byrne (From Byrne Himself)
This is an absolute delight: a pair of videos of David Byrne teaching us how to do a few dance moves. The first video shows more moves; the second one was recorded for “a social distance dance club” during the pandemic:
The dance club was open for 2 weeks in April 2021 and allowed for people to come together to dance however they wanted while masked and a safe distance from each other. It played a variety of music (including a couple of David Byrne and Talking Heads songs), and people who signed up to attend were encouraged to use this video to learn this routine in advance so that everybody could dance in sync for the final song of each hour session.
Ayun Halliday wrote a great post for Open Culture about Byrne’s dancing.
Rolling Stone picks The 150 Greatest Science Fiction Movies of All Time. So much to argue with re: the rankings (like why Jurassic Park is rated so low), but also so much to put on the watchlist.
Paul Hollywood & Prue Leith Judge the Best American Snacks
In a video for Bon Appétit, the judges from the Great British Bake Off weigh in on a host of American snacks, from the Snickers bar to Thin Mints to Ruffles potato chips to Combos. I’ll excuse them for eliminating my favorite Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the first round (even though their holiday-themed eggs, trees, and pumpkins are better) because their finalists were correct. Some of their reactions:
- Cheez-Its: “Tastes like old socks.”
- Pop-Tarts: “If I was starving, I’d eat that.”
- Combos: “I don’t think my dog would eat that.”
How S Group, a cooperative company, became Finland’s dominant retailer. “For one thing, since a co-op has no shareholders, and hence no strict need for profit maximization, it can compete quite ruthlessly on price.”
Some Wonderful Things from 2023
As the bulk of 2023 recedes from memory, I wanted to share some of the things from my media diet posts that stood out for me last year. Enjoy.
Succession. I did not think I would enjoy a show about extremely wealthy people acting poorly, but the writing and acting were so fantastic that I could not resist.
25 years of kottke.org. Very proud of what I’ve accomplished here and also genuinely humbled by how many people have made this little site a part of their lives.
Fleishman Is in Trouble. Uncomfortably true to life at times.
Antidepressants + therapy. I was in a bad way last spring and it is not too strong to say that finding the right antidepressant and arriving at some personal truths in therapy changed my life.
The Bear (season two). I don’t always love it (especially when the intensity ramps up) but there’s definitely something special about this show.
Barr Hill Gin & Tonic. The best canned cocktail I’ve had, by a mile.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Brutal and inspiring.
Crossword puzzles. A few times a week, a friend and I do the NY Times crossword puzzle together over FaceTime. It’s become one of my favorite things.
AirPods Pro (2nd generation). Am I ever going to shut up about these? Possibly not. The sound quality is better than the first-gen ones and the sound cancelling is just fantastic. I used these on several long flights recently and you basically can’t hear much of anything but your music.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Visually stunning.
The Kottke Hypertext Tee. Might be bad form to put your own merch on a list like this, but I’m just tickled that these exist. Putting an actual physical good out into the world that people connect with is somehow satisfying in a way that digital media is not.
ChatGPT. This very quickly became an indispensable part of my work process.
Downhill mountain biking. I did this a couple years ago and it didn’t click for me. But my son and I went last summer and I loved it…it’s one my favorite things I did all year. Gonna try and get out more in 2024!
Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland. Probably the best TV thing I watched last year. Listening to survivors of The Troubles talking about their experiences was unbelievably compelling.
Au Kouign-Amann. One of my all-time favorite pastries. Looks like a boring cake, tastes like magic.
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson. An extremely clear-eyed explanation of how Trumpism fits in with the Republicans’ decades-long project of weakening American democracy.
The Creator. I liked this original sci-fi a lot — more stuff that’s not Star Wars and Marvel pls.
Northern Thailand Walk and Talk. I will write this up soon, but this was one of the best things I’ve done in my life.
BLTs. I could not get enough of this simple sandwich at the end of last summer — I was eating like 4-5 a week. When the tomatoes are good, there’s nothing like a BLT.
The little hearts my daughter put on the backs of the envelopes containing her letters from camp. Self explanatory, no notes.
The smoked beef sandwich at Snowdon Deli. The best smoked sandwich I’ve had in Montreal.
The Last of Us. A bit too video game-y in parts but overall great. A couple of the episodes were incredible.
Photo of a Vermont vista taken by me this summer while mountain biking.
People with Charles Bonnet syndrome have visual hallucinations. This man saw people in 19th century dress in the lobby of his building. “I thought, if I close my eyes and shake my head, they will go away. I didn’t want them to go away.”
This guy built his own little railcar and rides it on abandoned railroad tracks.
Jan Chipchase reports on a recent trip to Afghanistan under Taliban 2.0 rule. “Afghanistan consistently shines the harshest light on who you think you are, but the ample reward is that is provides a glimmer of what you might become.”
1000 Matchsticks Feature in This Epic Stop Motion Animation
Tomohiro Okazaki has perfected a very specific skill: stop-animating matchsticks in more ways than you could possibly imagine. When I last wrote about his work, I said that I wished that the 7.5 minute movie were longer and, well, I got my wish: this new one runs for an hour and 17 minutes. I’ not going to sit here and tell you that I watched the whole thing, but I did watch for longer than I perhaps should have on a day with lots to accomplish. (via colossal)
It’s weird seeing Roger Ebert, who was such a keen observer of movies, misunderstand Starship Troopers so badly. The satire wasn’t a sly element…it practically beats you over the head.
13-Year-Old Becomes First to Beat NES Tetris
13-year-old Blue Scuti is now the best Tetris player in the world after becoming the first human player to beat the NES version of the game by playing until reaching the kill screen. The feat took him 38 minutes (as well as who knows how many thousands of hours of practice) and also resulted in a new high score, new level & lines records, and something called a “19 Score world record”. Skip to the 38:00 mark to watch his last few lines and what happens when he wins.
See also: an AI beating Tetris just over 2 years ago and an explanation of the “rolling” technique that Blue Scuti used to beat the game. (via waxy)
Lovely photography by Zay Yar Lin. Several arresting images in his portfolio.
Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real. “Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.”
Regulate: Warren G × Kenny G
I had no idea this existed: back in 2015, rapper Warren G and saxophonist Kenny G came together to perform Warren G’s Regulate. Now, I’m not sure the smooth jazz saxophone improves the song at all, but I love that some mad genius was like, we need to get the two Gs together and then made it happen.
The Best Podcasts of 2023, According to People Who Make Podcasts. Lots of good stuff here.
Seriously, I would really like a Lego set of Delia Derbyshire in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Motion Extraction
In this video from his YouTube channel “about anything”, Posy demonstrates a video filtering technique called motion extraction. A commenter calls this video “a tutorial, a demonstration, and a work of art”, all rolled into one. It’s really lovely and informative. My jaw actually dropped at the “how can you tell which stones were disturbed on the path” part.
Translation of a New York Times’ Real Estate Article for Those Living Without a Trust Fund. “He realized he could rip up the floorboards, cabinets, walls, and every historical detail, replacing them with Amazonian timber salvaged from impending wildfires.”
Cathedral, Mountain, Moon
Wow, what an incredible shot by Valerio Minato of the triple-alignment of a church, a mountain, and the Moon.
Taken in Piemonte, Italy, the cathedral in the foreground is the Basilica of Superga, the mountain in the middle is Monviso, and, well, you know which moon is in the background. Here, even though the setting Moon was captured in a crescent phase, the exposure was long enough for doubly reflected Earthlight, called the da Vinci glow, to illuminate the entire top of the Moon.
Wow, look at this recently discovered collection of baseball cards from the 1920s. Includes cards of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Babe Ruth, and Ty Cobb.
Nothing Can Stop These Trans Footballers from Playing. “We spoke to [three trans & non-binary players] about their love for their teams and the challenges they encountered along the way.”
Tom Scott Stops Making Weekly Videos After 10 Years
After posting a video (almost always an elaborate, well-produced and well-researched one) to his YouTube channel every week for ten years, Tom Scott is stepping back for a break.
I’ve been throwing stuff at the internet since 1999. And for many, many years, that stuff went almost nowhere. I had occasional bits of success, but could never make any of them last long-term. I remember thinking, so many times during all those years… will any of this stuff I’m making ever work?
Well, this did.
I didn’t know that, back when I was filming the first videos for the series that was then called Things You Might Not Know, I just held out my phone at arm’s length and talked into it for 90 seconds with almost no research! I really don’t like those videos now. But the first of them was published exactly ten years before this one. To the minute. 4pm, January 1st, 2014.
For the first month of that format, I was publishing a video almost every day, and then I settled down: one video a week. Mostly on location, near windswept infrastructure, although there’s computer science and linguistics in there too, and occasional green-screen animated videos. I experimented with other formats on other days, but the rule I set myself was: Monday, 4pm, something interesting.
Incredible. Scott has one of the few Weird Internet Careers that I am truly envious of — it just looks like so much fun getting to do all of that stuff and then telling people all about it.
Congratulations, Tom Scott — I hereby induct you into the Internet Hall of Fame! 👏 👏 👏 👏
P.S. Was the long explanatory walk-n-talk an homage to James Burke’s famous “perfectly timed clip” from Connections? Honest to god, I thought Scott was going to stop at the end of the video, turn, and watch a rocket take off. (via waxy)
The End of Snow. “‘I’m not sure our grandkids will even know what snow is,’ she said, with a wry ‘I’m kidding, but I’m not’ laugh.”
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