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The Cassini probe, launched from Earth in 1997 (six months before I started publishing kottke.org), has been taking photos of Saturn and its moons for 11 years now. The Wall Street Journal has a great feature that shows exactly what the probe has been looking at all that time. (Note: the video above features flashing images, so beware if that sort of thing is harmful to you.)
In 1995, Danny Hillis came up with the idea of building a clock that would last 10,000 years.
I cannot imagine the future, but I care about it. I know I am a part of a story that starts long before I can remember and continues long beyond when anyone will remember me. I sense that I am alive at a time of important change, and I feel a responsibility to make sure that the change comes out well. I plant my acorns knowing that I will never live to harvest the oaks.
I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years.
The Clock of the Long Now is a short video portrait of Hillis and his collaborators as they build this clock in a mountain in western Texas. I like what Hillis had to say about our future:
I’m very optimistic about the future. I’m not optimistic because I think our problems are small. I’m optimistic because I think our capacity to deal with problems is great.
If you’ve ever wanted to see a video about how to cook a pot-infused Thanksgiving turkey shot in the style of a Requiem for a Dream heroin-shooting sequence, you have come to the right place. (via devour)
OMG OMG OMG! Théo Sanson recently slacklined across a gap spanning nearly a third of a mile in Utah, which might just be a world record. This is gorgeously filmed; you really get a sense of the scale of the gap Sanson crossed and how high in the air he was. My palms are absolutely drenched after watching that. (via colossal)
Randall Munroe has a new book coming out called Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words in which he uses the 1000 most common English words to explain interesting mostly scientific stuff. In a preview of the book, Munroe has a piece in the New Yorker explaining Einstein’s theory of relativity using the same constraint.
The problem was light. A few dozen years before the space doctor’s time, someone explained with numbers how waves of light and radio move through space. Everyone checked those numbers every way they could, and they seemed to be right. But there was trouble. The numbers said that the wave moved through space a certain distance every second. (The distance is about seven times around Earth.) They didn’t say what was sitting still. They just said a certain distance every second.
It took people a while to realize what a huge problem this was. The numbers said that everyone will see light going that same distance every second, but what happens if you go really fast in the same direction as the light? If someone drove next to a light wave in a really fast car, wouldn’t they see the light going past them slowly? The numbers said no-they would see the light going past them just as fast as if they were standing still.
It’s a fun read, but as Bill Gates observed in his review of Thing Explainer, sometimes the limited vocabulary gets in the way of true understanding:1
If I have a criticism of Thing Explainer, it’s that the clever concept sometimes gets in the way of clarity. Occasionally I found myself wishing that Munroe had allowed himself a few more terms — “Mars” instead of “red world,” or “helium” instead of “funny voice air.”
See also Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity In Words of Four Letters or Less. You might prefer this explanation instead, in the form of a video by high school senior Ryan Chester:
This video recently won Chester a $250,000 Breakthrough Prize college scholarship.2 Nice work!
Other quibble: I would have called Einstein the time doctor. [cue Tardis noise]↩
Which reminds me of when I was a high school senior and I showed a clip of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure to my physics class for a report on time travel and wormholes. It’s been all downhill for me since then.↩
From NASA, an animation of the yearly cycle of the Earth’s plant life. The data is taken from satellite measurements (plant density for land and chlorophyll concentration for the ocean) and averaged over several years.
From December to February, during the northern hemisphere winter, plant life in the higher latitudes is minimal and receives little sunlight. However, even in the mid latitudes plants are dormant, shown here with browns and yellows on the land and dark blues in the ocean. By contrast the southern ocean and land masses are at the height of the summer season and plant life is revealed with dark green colors on the land and in the ocean. As the year progresses, the situations reverses, with plant life following the increased sunlight northward, while the southern hemisphere experiences decreased plant activity during its winter.
If you’re anything like me, about 2-3 times into the video’s cycle, you’ll be breathing in tune to the Earth. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Carbon dioxide in, oxygen out. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out… (via @EricHolthaus)
Evan Griffin let his dad use his GoPro camera on his vacation to Las Vegas, but Papa Griffin didn’t know which end was which, so he shot the entire trip with the camera pointed at himself. A video selfie tour of Vegas. Hilarious.
Stiller. Wilson. Cruz. Ferrell. Cumberbatch. Wiig. Bieber? If this is even half the goofy fun of the first one, I will be happy.
Born in 1915, Clara Cannucciari survived the Great Depression and, when she was in her 90s and with the help of her grandson, made a YouTube series about meals and cooking techniques used in that era. Watch as Clara cooks a 3-course Poorman’s Feast, a relatively rare treat in those lean times.
The series aired several years ago and Clara has since passed away, living until the age of 98.
From Vox, a quick video summary of the war in Syria and the rise of ISIS.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has claimed responsibility for Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, has its origins in Iraq, but the group as we know it today is in many ways a product of Syria’s civil war. That war is much bigger than ISIS, but it is crucial for understanding so much that has happened in the past year, from terror attacks to the refugee crisis. And to understand the war, you need to understand how it began and how it unfolded.
See also Syria’s civil war: a brief history.
Tom Harman recently rode an Amtrak train from NYC to San Francisco, taking little videos of the scenery outside all the while. He edited that footage into this 5-minute video.
This, friends, is the Eco Log 590D, which cuts down trees and turns them into logs with the quiet efficiency of Homer Simpson eating donuts.
While the Eco Log 590D is terrifying in its methodical nature, for true tree-killing malevolence, there’s still no beating the DAH Forestry Mulcher. I mean, when Skynet finally goes online, forget the almost-cuddly-in-comparison Terminator…if the machines truly want to wipe all organic matter from the Earth, they’ll probably build a bunch of nihilist robotic People Mulchers. (via digg)
In the ruins of Herculaneum, a Roman town destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, a carbonized loaf of bread was found. The British Museum had chef Giorgio Locatelli recreate the recipe as best he could.
Things start to get really interesting around 3:25, where Locatelli tries to recreate the unusual markings found on the bread…that hanging string around the edge is a little genius.
Watch as skier Ian McIntosh hits an unexpected trench on one of his first turns down an extremely steep mountain and tumbles 1600 feet in less than a minute. Actually, don’t just watch…put your headphones on and listen: McIntosh was mic’d up while falling and you can hear the whole thing. (via devour)
Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were great friends. When Edison died, arrangements were made for a test tube containing his last breath to be delivered to Ford. The test tube now resides in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI.
In 2007, a cruise ship called the Balmoral was brought into the dry docks to be extended. Like, they cut the ship in half and added an entire new section to it, like putting an extra slice of bologna on a sandwich. I totally didn’t know this was a thing you could do to a boat. (via @MachinePix)
Update: Ships can be cut apart and widened as well. (via @timotimo)
Red Bull spared no expense in shooting this video with BMX rider Kriss Kyle…I’ve never seen a BMX course quite like this one. (thx, nick)
Kurzgesagt’s newest video is about all the stolen video content on Facebook and the social network’s continued indifference to and profit from content creators, particularly small and independent creators.
Facebook just announced 8 billion video views per day. This number is made out of lies, cheating and worst of all: theft. All of this is wildly known but the media giant Facebook is pretending everything is fine, while damaging independent creators in the process. How does this work?
Hank Green wrote an essay in August called Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video.
According to a recent report from Ogilvy and Tubular Labs, of the 1000 most popular Facebook videos of Q1 2015, 725 were stolen re-uploads. Just these 725 “freebooted” videos were responsible for around 17 BILLION views last quarter. This is not insignificant, it’s the vast majority of Facebook’s high volume traffic. And no wonder, when embedding a YouTube video on your company’s Facebook page is a sure way to see it die a sudden death, we shouldn’t be surprised when they rip it off YouTube and upload it natively. Facebook’s algorithms encourage this theft.
What is Facebook doing about it?
They’ll take the video down a couple days after you let them know. Y’know, once it’s received 99.9% of the views it will ever receive.
The teaser trailer for Pixar’s sequel to Finding Nemo is out. I’m excited for this one. Nemo was my favorite Pixar movie for a long while, until Wall-E came out. (via devour)
In 1977, when Stoney Emshwiller was 18 years old, he recorded himself interviewing his older self. This year, Emshwiller sat down to answer those questions. The result is wonderful. He’s raising funds to turn the interview into a longer film which he describes as “My Dinner with Andre but with a touch of Birdman”. (via bb)
Update: I had forgotten this link from 3 years ago where 12 year old Jeremiah McDonald from 1992 interviews 32 year old Jeremiah McDonald. (thx, robert)
From Julia Kim Smith, The Real Wi-Fi Of Baltimore, a look at the names of wifi networks in various neighborhoods of Baltimore. Some favorites:
Abraham Linksys
NSA Surveillance Van
Fuck Off
Bill Wi The Science Fi
There was even a Wu Tang LAN sighting. Note: about 4 years ago, my wireless network was called hamsterdam. Currently: surfbort.
A quick but fascinating look at the fast fashion retailer Zara.
Fashion used to be sold in four seasons. Zara wants you to buy for one-hundred-and-four. New clothes arrive in every store twice a week — days known by fans as “Z Days” — and fuel the need to turn over your wardrobe.
The brand’s global distribution centre, also in Spain, moves 2.5 million items per week. Nothing remains warehoused longer than 72 hours.
The integration and feedback incorporated into their system is impressive. The knockoffs, not so much. Lots of parallels to Facebook here, not the least of which is both companies’ founders are among the richest people in the world.
This is a Japanese trailer for The Force Awakens. It’s similar to the most recent trailer released in the US, but it contains a bunch of new footage. Still no Luke. (via @gavinpurcell)
The Protopiper is a hand-held fabrication device that turns tape into hollow tubes for prototyping large objects at 1:1 scale like cabinets, couches, microwaves, or whatever else you wish.
The key idea behind the device is that it forms adhesive tape into tubes as its main building material, rather than extruded plastic or photo-polymer lines. Since the resulting tubes are hollow they offer excellent strength-to-weight ratio, and thus scale well to large structures.
Love this…it’s like a low-tech 3D printer. (via prosthetic knowledge)
This terrifying machine eats cars and spits out junk. The real action gets going around 25 seconds in. It’s weird watching something so substantial as a truck get dismantled like dropped a Lego vehicle off of a table onto a hard floor. (via digg)
This is an animated map of the lower 48 United States showing every boundary change (country, colony, state, and county) from 1629 to 2000. (via @ptak)
Have you noticed that non-mainstream films are increasingly being produced/financed/released through Amazon, HBO, and Netflix and not the big studios? The latest example is Spike Lee’s new joint, Chi-raq. Set among the gang violence in modern-day Chicago, the film is an adaptation of an ancient Greek play by Aristophanes called Lysistrata.
Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman’s extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace — a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society.
Even with all the big names attached — Lee, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson, Samuel L. Jackson, Wesley Snipes, John Cusack — I wonder if a movie with a predominantly African-American cast, strong women characters, and based on an Aristophanes play would get greenlit at a major studio these days.
BBC Radio One got David Attenborough to narrate the first minute or so of Adele’s video for Hello as if it were a nature documentary. Solid gold. Although I am a little cross they made Attenborough say the words “hashtag flip phone”. :|
Bonus pseudo-Attenborough: the episode of Human Planet on The Douche.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Earth, in a snappy 7-minute video. I am trying very hard not to watch the rest of Kurzgesagt’s videos this afternoon, but I did make time for this one on the Big Bang — key quote: “time itself becomes wibbly wobbly” — and how evolution works.
Seven years after his directorial debut with the fantastic Synecdoche, New York comes Charlie Kaufman’s second movie as a director, a stop-motion animated film called Anomalisa. The film successfully raised funds on Kickstarter and will be out in select theaters in December.
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