This is how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear on live television in 1983. This was a *huge* event in my childhood and I am thrilled to finally learn how it was done.
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. ❤️
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
First Trailer for Star Wars From 1976
In 1976, 20th Century Fox released a teaser trailer for a little film called Star Wars…aka “the story of a boy, a girl, and a universe”.
No James Earl Jones voiceover for Vader, no John Williams score (which wasn’t finished until just two months before the film premiered), but those visuals must have impressed.
Here’s the first teaser trailer for Empire Strikes Back, which features no film footage at all, just concept art drawn by Ralph McQuarrie:
And for the sake of completeness, the teaser trailer for Return of the Jedi, which appeared in theaters before Lucas changed the name from Revenge of the Jedi:
I’ve seen a lot of these bouncing ball videos (balls double until my PC crashes, etc.) but this one is absolutely mesmerizing. So many more of these on Slightly Satisfying’s TikTok.
The Guardian on why they’re not posting on Twitter anymore. “The benefits…are now outweighed by the negatives and…resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.” (If your org can’t stop, at least post elsewhere first.)
The Threat of Trumpism Is Real. So Is the Need for Rest. “If we don’t seek out pleasure, comfort, companionship, and laughter, numbness becomes our only protection. And fascism thrives when we are dead inside.”
Baby Evacuation Aprons
Today I learned about evacuation aprons, which places like maternity wards use to rescue infants and toddlers in case of emergency or fire. Or as this labor & delivery nurse on Threads put it:
…the goal is to grab your vest and just stuff as many babies as humanly possible in its giant kangaroo pockets before running out the door.
This particular company sells a few different models, like this apron for newborns and this one for larger infants and toddlers that can carry a total weight of 60 lbs. All the aprons are fire-resistant.
There is also something called the Med Sled, which can carry up to 6 infants at a time.
Actually not an Onion article: The Onion Says It Has Bought Infowars, Alex Jones’s Site, Out of Bankruptcy. They’re going to relaunch the site as “a parody of itself” with Everytown for Gun Safety as an advertiser.
Is the love song dying? Or has the definition broadened? The Pudding investigates.
I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how. “I’ll read news, not other people’s reactions to news.”
Jon Batiste Hears Green Day for the First Time
In this video from Pianote, the multi-talented Jon Batiste hears Green Day’s Holiday for the first time (drum & vocals only) and is challenged to come up with a piano accompaniment for it — and he really really gets into it. (How do you find a song that a musical encyclopedia like Batiste has never heard before though?)
These are always so fun to watch — see also Drummer Plays Metallica’s Enter Sandman After Hearing It Only Once. Oh and Green Day’s demastering of Dookie. (via @unlikelywords.bsky.social)
Oooh, Casey Johnston is coming out with a “memoir and manifesto” about weight lifting: A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting. (I am inching ever closer to taking up lifting myself…)
Huge if true: “Triangles were long believed to be related to squares, but genetic analysis proves that they are actually very pointy circles.”
A New View of the Aftermath of JFK’s Assassination
This is a still frame of a film shot just a few moments after President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, TX in 1963:
From a NY Times story back in September:
For decades Mr. Carpenter’s 8-millimeter snippets of what transpired in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, have been a family heirloom. When he died in 1991 at 77, the reel, which included footage of his twin boys’ birthday party, passed to his wife, Mabel, then to a daughter, Diana, and finally to a grandson, James Gates.
A family heirloom! I find it fascinating that bits of history like this keep turning up. What’s the thought process of the sort of person who keeps (culturally, monetarily, investigatorially?) valuable objects like this casually squirreled away for 60 years? How much more of this kind of thing exists and how much of it just gets thrown away? Again, fascinating!
Another interesting facet is the process of verifying the film’s authenticity. I’m sure the auction house did their due diligence, but so did the Times. Malachy Browne works on the Visual Investigations team at the paper, which was tasked with verifying that the film was legitimate. He shared part of their process on Bluesky:
Time: The length of the shadow matches what it should be around that time of day on Nov. 22, 1963, Suncalc tells us.
Location: Where on the route was it taken? The angle of sun also helps to narrow that down: most likely this section of the North Stemmon’s Freeway. https://www.suncalc.org/#/32.8014,-96.8277,15/1963.11.22/13:00/1/3
P.S. The film was sold for $137,500 at auction. (via @kokogiak.bsky.social)
Hey, it’s the Microscope Museum, featuring ‘scopes from the early 1800s to the 1980s. “An antique microscope is a work of art as well as science.”
What Will You Do? “What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs? Or if the uniforms are not police uniforms, and there is not even a knock?”
Erin McKean goes down a rabbit hole of WWII resistance diaries, “dipping into the thoughts of people who were also made heartsick and distressed by fascist politics”.
10,946: a Year-Long Post-It Note Animation
10,946 is a mesmerizing stop-motion film by Daren Jannace composed of drawings on Post-It notes. He created 30 drawings a day for an entire year and then animated them: “Set at 30 frames a second, each second represents 1 day.” The animation is accompanied by audio Jannace recorded on his phone during the year.
If you watch the whole thing, you get to experience what a year feels like if days were shrunk down into seconds. (via colossal)
Kenji López-Alt Returns From Beef Dimension With New Sear Method Beyond Human Comprehension. “…he jabbered incoherently about mountains of non-Euclidean tri-tips that needed to be cooked on high for both an instant and a thousand eternities.”
Single Line Mazes
Wacław Szpakowski was a Polish architect and engineer who, over the course of his life and in secret, made a series of drawings of mazes from single continuous lines. From The Paris Review:
The drawings, he explains, “were experiments with the straight line conducted not in research laboratories but produced spontaneously at various places and random moments since all that was needed to make them was a piece of paper and a pencil.” Though the kernels of his ideas came from informal notebooks, the imposing virtuosity and opaqueness of Szpakowski’s final drawings are anything but spontaneous or random. His enigmatic process — how he could draw with such supreme evenhandedness, could make his designs so pristine and yet so intricate — is hinted at only in his few visible erasure marks.
Geoff Manaugh writes at BLDGBLOG:
But the appeal of Szpakowski’s work would appear to extend well beyond the architectural. At times they resemble textiles, weaving diagrams, computer circuitry, and even Arts & Crafts ornamentation, like 19th-century wallpapers designed for an era of retro-computational aesthetics.
Woodworking templates, patent drawings for fluidic calculators, elaborate game boards — the list of associations goes on and on.
Of course, I was reminded of Dom’s challenge to Ariadne to draw a difficult maze in Inception, the light cycles in Tron, and the Etch A Sketch…but to each their own.
You can explore more of Szpakowski’s work at his website, at culture.pl, and at the Miguel Abreu gallery website.
Journalism’s fight for survival in a postliterate democracy. “The work of obtaining facts has a major economic disadvantage against the production of bullshit, and it’s only getting worse.”
‘I was a fool’: Art Garfunkel describes tearful reunion with Paul Simon. “We’ve made plans to meet again. Will Paul bring his guitar? Who knows.”
The Anti-Wonka Candy Factory
In 2011, Magnum photographer Martin Parr visited the Teddy Grays candy factory near Birmingham, England that makes old-fashioned candy with Wonka-esque names — Mint Humbugs, Nutty Brittles, Spearminties. The result is this ultra-charming 20 minute film profile of the company and its candy-making process.
Charmingness evidence, exhibit A: When asked if the company would ever modernize, company director Teddy Gray responds, “Imagine coming to work in the morning and looking at all them faxes, oh no.” Even his modernization references need modernizing.
Charmingness evidence, exhibit B: The lingerie calendar behind Gray as he talks on the phone, and the beefcake calendar behind his daughter in the very next scene.
Charmingness evidence, exhibit C through exhibit ZZZ: Every other scene in the film.
I know 20 minutes for a web video sounds daunting, but it’s worth the while. At the very least, skip to 14:00 and watch how they make “lettered rock”, hard candy sticks with words written on the inside of the candy. As shown in the video, the individual letters start out 3-4 inches high, are arranged into words when rolled up into a massive tube of candy a foot in diameter, and end up a fraction of an inch tall when pulled out into small sticks, like so:
And you thought laying out type for the web was difficult. (thx, nick)
Words from Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin about “the vital role that artists play in society generally, and doubly so in the face of authoritarian regimes”.
Marine biologist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: “Keep showing up. Join something. Find your people. Bring your superpowers. Be a problem solver. Choose your battles. Nourish joy. Love nature.”
A classic that really made me laugh this morning: Pachelbel’s Canon Played by Train Horns.
200 of the Largest Earth Impact Craters Mapped
I am predisposed to like videos about meteorite craters but this was even more interesting than I anticipated.
A nice example of a crater 2-3 km wide is Rotor Kamm in southern Africa. I should mention that we’re easily into city killer impacts here, in case you’re wondering.
You can explore the Earth Impact Database on their website. (via @michaelhobbes.bsky.social)
The Wired Guide to Protecting Yourself From Government Surveillance. The incoming administration has “vowed to deport millions and jail his enemies. To carry out that agenda, his administration will exploit America’s digital surveillance machine.”
Huh, I didn’t know that the guy who wrote The Curious Garden (one my kids’ favorite books when they were younger) also wrote The Wild Robot — both inspired by the High Line.
Delete Your Account. For Real This Time. “There’s no need for any Trump opponents now to be on X for the same reasons that they’re not on Gab, Gettr, Truth Social, or wherever else.”
Swifties are leaving toxic Twitter for Bluesky after the election. Lots of energy over on Bluesky right now. And Jesus Christ if you’re still on Twitter, it’s past time to move on and join us on Bluesky.
Andor season two will premiere on Disney+ on April 22, 2025 — 12 episodes that take place over a period of four years that lead right up to the events of Rogue One. May the tale of the radicalization of Cassian Andor be a lesson to us all.
A lovely piece by John Gruber about his dad, the election, loss, and hope.
“The Quilt Index, originally launched in 2003, is an open access, digital repository of thousands of images, stories and information about quilts and their makers drawn from hundreds of public and private collections around the world.”
Surreal Glitch Pulls
Artist and “pixel pusher” Niall Staines creates these slightly surreal scenes by pulling a 1-px slices to the edge of his images. I’ve used this technique myself but Staines deploys it to great effect here. I love these. You can find more of his work on his website and Instagram.
Climate scientists say we will exceed the 1.5°C temperature threshold for the first time in 2024. “The limits that were set in the Paris agreement are starting to crumble given the too-slow pace of climate action across the world.” A grim milestone.
Why the Work Still Matters. In the face of a “larger-than-normal number of people canceling their subscriptions”, 404 Media explains why their “local reporting from the internet” is more important than ever.
The Big Wait
The Big Wait is a lovely short documentary about a couple who live alone in the middle of nowhere in Western Australia, managing an emergency airport and a small row of guest cottages that are rarely occupied. I got this from Colossal, which calls the film “poetic and dryly humorous”; I cannot improve upon that.
Laura Hazard Owen: We need a Wirecutter for groceries. “What if local news organizations around the country made it part of their mission to help readers compare grocery prices around town?”
Focus on the ball. Mesmerizing.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light
In 2015, the BBC & PBS adapted the first two books of Hilary Mantel’s excellent Wolf Hall trilogy into a six-episode miniseries called Wolf Hall, starring Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell and Damian Lewis as Henry VIII. Now they’ve made a second miniseries that covers the events of the third book, The Mirror and the Light. Here’s a trailer and synopsis:
The TV sequel picks up in May 1536 after the beheading of Anne Boleyn and follows the last four years of Thomas Cromwell’s life, completing his journey from self-made man to the most feared and influential figure of his time. These are years when Henry’s regime is severely tested by religious rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion. Cromwell must deftly navigate the moral complexities that accompany the exercise of power in this bloody time; he’s caught between his desire to do what’s right and his instinct to survive. The question is: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s brutally mercurial gaze?
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light premieres in the UK on BBC One on Nov 10 but Americans have to wait until March 23, 2025 to watch it on PBS.
I missed this back in May: the Boy Scouts of America is changing its name to Scouting America “in an effort to emphasize inclusion”.
In the three years since its launch, the JW Space Telescope has proven to be wildly popular with astronomers. “Demand for observing time on Webb outpaces supply by a factor of nine.”
An interview with Ridley Scott about Gladiator II, the challenges of working with Denzel Washington & Joaquin Phoenix, Palme d’Or bribery, and AI.
“A Soft Murmur is an online background noise generator designed to help you relax, focus, and tune out unpleasant sounds from your environment.”
I think I might take some time today to read Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart. “How can we live our lives when everything seems to fall apart - when we are continually overcome by fear, anxiety, and pain?”
If you can’t wait until Nov 15, Apple TV+ has uploaded the first five minutes of season two of Silo to YouTube. “Juliette lives.”
Election Grief Is Real. Here’s How to Cope. “You need to be patient with yourself if you’re feeling angry, sad, grieving right now. That’s a normal reaction to a surprising outcome and an outcome that…is going backward and not forward.”
Ran across a song with “741 Hz” in the title and there’s a whole Spotify playlist of similar songs (“a soothing solfeggio frequency that is used by many to let go of negativity and toxic energy”) and ngl they are relaxing.
A Time of Earnestness
Laura Olin’s newsletter of “art, internet, and ideas” is a favorite of mine (subscribe here), and I appreciated her comments from this morning on why sci-fi and fantasy movies work for moments like these.
I’ve never thought of myself as a person who’s particularly into sci fi or fantasy. But on the worst days — and yesterday was one — I find myself thinking of the essential lessons of art in that genre. Maybe because a lot of it is about people in dire situations making stark moral choices for a larger good — and for various reasons World War II parables aren’t really going to do it anymore, at least in America. We saw Rogue One in the theater soon after Trump’s first election and I took some strength from the image of (vague spoilers) Felicity and Diego on the beach, sacrificing themselves to give everything thereafter a chance. I’ve been thinking of the Battlestar Galactica reboot of the W. Bush years, with the fighter pilots touching a portrait of a comrade on a fallen planet on their way out to battle; of Stellan Skarsgard’s speech and “one way out” in Andor, which you must watch; of Katniss touching three fingers to her lips in a salute special to her community, and a crowd of people she can’t even see saluting back; of the fundamental text that is “Why must we go on?” / “Because there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” Is all this cringe? Undoubtedly; but I think we’ve entered a time that requires deep earnestness. (I hope to come back to this paragraph in four years and feel I was being overly dramatic about how bad things might get but I suspect I will not.)
For the last 18 years, Adam Smith has spoken to every Nobel laureate just after they’ve heard the news. “They are genuinely amazed. It takes their breath away, I suppose, in almost all cases.” But sometimes: “I’m kind of busy.”
Stay Connected