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Marissa Mayer has only been CEO at Yahoo! for a day and she’s already creating viral content like a stop motion Lego version of The Wire. Imagine what we’ll get when she’s been there a week.
Audible guffaws at, “What’s up his ass?” “No one likes our season, that’s what.” (via @jonahkeri)
Jesse Owens’ medal-winning exploits against the Aryan backdrop of the 1936 Olympics are well known, but I had never heard the story of his friendship with his German rival in the long jump. Owens explained in a 1960 Reader’s Digest piece:
Walking a few yards from the pit, I kicked disgustedly at the dirt. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to look into the friendly blue eyes of the tall German broad jumper. He had easily qualified for the finals on his first attempt. He offered me a firm handshake.
“Jesse Owens, I’m Luz Long. I don’t think we’ve met.” He spoke English well, though with a German twist to it.
“Glad to meet you,” I said. Then, trying to hide my nervousness, I added, “How are you?”
“I’m fine. The question is: How are you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Something must be eating you,” he said-proud the way foreigners are when they’ve mastered a bit of American slang. “You should be able to qualify with your eyes closed.”
“Believe me, I know it,” I told him — and it felt good to say that to someone.
Here’s a video of Owens competing in Berlin:
Update: Or perhaps Owens fabricated the story? (thx, @jessakka)
If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the Amazon or something.
(via ★Stellar Interesting)
Go ahead and cross off ‘fishing off the front porch’ from the list of enjoyable summertime activities. If you’re impatient, skip to about :38.
Heck, we may as well round out the shark beat with a report of a baby shark for sale on the subway today, and a crazy picture of a shark stalking a kayak off the coast of Cape Cod this past weekend.
(hat tip @anildash)
If you put enough rubber bands around a watermelon, it will explode.
(via serious eats)
Two for you tonight. First up, Ken Block visits all your favorite San Francisco landmarks in his latest Gymkhana video. It’s a bit spooky how there’s hardly anyone on the streets, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying Block doing figure eights in between moving trolleys.
Then watch BMX maniac Harry Main do gorgeous and dangerous things on a bicycle.
(via Chris)
This is a five-minute video of Andy Warhol eating a Burger King hamburger accompanied by Heinz ketchup.
The scene is part of a film done by Jorgen Leth called 66 scenes from america.
Leth had his assistant buy some burgers and directly advised him to buy some in halfway neutral packaging as Leth was afraid that Warhol might reject some brands (Warhol always had an obsession with some of his favorite brands).
So Andy Warhol finally did arrive at the studio, of course along with his bodyguards, and when he saw the selection of burgers the assistant had brought he asked “Where is the McDonald’s?” and Leth — slightly in panic — was immediately like “I thought you would maybe not like to identify…” and Warhol answered “no that is the most beautiful”. Leth offered to let his assistant quickly run to McDonald’s but Warhol refused like “No, never mind, I will take the Burger King.”
(via bon appetit)
Can’t trust a clam farther than you can throw it, especially when salt is concerned, apparently.
Actually, I’m not sure if this video proves anything (what would happen if there was sugar on the table, or brownie crumbs, or cinnamon?) but it is pretty awesome. (via ★asimone)
Update: Just in case there’s any confusion, the clam is not eating the salt as the video title claims. That’s the clam’s foot, out to survey its surroundings.
How do you improve upon Game of Thrones? Maybe by adding lightsabers to the duel of Jamie Lannister and Ned Stark?
(via nextdraft)
This is a video showing all 135 launches of the various Space Shuttle at once.
Turn up your sound. I’ve seen this done with episodes of the Simpsons and Star Trek, but this is way better. The fade out on the tiny Challenger square is surprisingly affecting. Created by McLean Fahnestock.
Uh oh, this is bad news for my productivity after this Thursday…Andreas Illiger is set to release the sequel to the mega-fun Tiny Wings on July 12th. In the meantime, watch the adorable handmade trailer:
I passed this over several times before actually watching. I’m glad I did because it’s quite charming, and if you haven’t seen it, you’ll love it. 12 year old Jeremiah McDonald from 1992 interviews 32 year old Jeremiah McDonald.
Frazil ice is a Slushee-like mixture of ice and supercooled water that behaves a lot like lava or flowing cement. Here’s a short video about frazil ice in Yosemite…it starts off a bit slow but gets good around 1:30.
Motherboard journeyed out onto the streets of Williamsburg to see if the hipster on the street knew what the Higgs boson was. And he/she did not.
If you’re in that same boat, take a few minutes to learn about what the Higgs is. (via @alexismadrigal)
“The French Navy labeled this day a double code red prohibiting and threatening to arrest anyone that entered the water.”
(via ★colossal)
Adweek has a list of some of the best commercials Wes Anderson has made. It’s tough to beat his two-minute spot for American Express.
“Can I get my snack?”
“You’re eating it.”
Well, everyone knows Clinton played sax on the Arsenio Hall Show. What this video presupposes is… maybe he played M83?
Watch at :30 to see the hand claps sync. (★Interesting)
This. This is what happens to an egg 60 feet under water.
This is gonna revolutionize poaching eggs! (via ★adamkuban)
To demonstrate a pair of their products, Google arranged for a group of skydivers to jump out of a blimp and parachute onto the roof of the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the building in which the Google I/O was being held. The divers were each wearing a pair of Google Glass networking glasses and video chatting on a Google+ Hangout.
Here’s what it looked like from the ground:
I think this is what Robin Sloan was referencing in his tweet earlier:
Watched #GoogleIO. This company is totally Doc Brown. In one corner, an automatic banana-peeler; in the other, A WORKING TIME MACHINE.
The trick with the roshambot is that it waits until its opponent has made her choice and then chooses the winning throw in about 1 millisecond. I.e. it cheats.
I wonder what would happen if you put two of these robots against each other? (via @dens)
Here’s the entire first episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. You can also watch it on HBO.com but you have to register first. I doubt non-US residents can watch it in either place. Why isn’t this embeddable? I don’t understand…they don’t want more people to watch it? Does the internet girl know?
If your jaw doesn’t drop while watching this video, you need to go to a doctor because you don’t have a jaw. Hopefully, even without a jaw, you can enjoy this edit of amazing BMX tricks.
(via @mathowie)
Speaking of what fast looks like, here’s a pair of synced videos that show just how fast F1 cars are. On the left are drivers participating in a track day, that is, normal folks who want to drive their cars fast on a real race course. A couple of them look like actual GT cars and are moving pretty quick. On the right, you’ve got F1 cars on the same track. It’s not even close:
Here’s an overlaid version and you can also see how much faster F1 cars are than just 25 years ago…the 2011 F1 car beats the 1986 F1 car by an amazing 22 seconds over a total time of a minute and a half. (via @coreyh)
Update: In a speed test, an F1 car starts 40 seconds after a Mercedes sports car and 25 seconds after a V8 Supercar (essentially an Australian NASCAR) and still catches them by the end of the first lap.
I know this is a “viral video” and I’m a sucker for posting it, but it’s pretty cool and fits under the umbrella of what fast looks like. Anyway, watch this Mercedes chase down a golf ball that flies off the tee at almost 180 mph.
Hole in one! And just so you don’t mistake this for some sponsored Mercedes love-fest, some shitheels in a silver Benz very much like the one in the video woke my whole family up at 5am this morning by deliberately setting off their car alarm every 30 seconds outside my house. You know, for fun.
This is a long zoom look at how pizza gets delivered to hungry people. It starts by looking at the routes taken by a Dominos delivery person during a typical night and slowly zooms out to reveal the pizza giant’s national supply chain.
Embark with Kwon on a trip that begins with a pizza delivery route in New York City, then goes across the country to California’s Central Valley, where nearly 50 percent of America’s fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown, and into the heartland for an aerial look at our farmlands.
Why does McDonald’s food look so much better in the ads than at the restaurant? Watch as the director of marketing for McDonald’s Canada buys a Quarter Pounder at McDonald’s and compares that to a burger prepared by a food stylist and retouched in post by an image editor.
Short answer: the burger at the restaurant is optimized for eating and the photo burger is optimized for looking delicious. (via ★interesting)
In this series of slow motion clips, you can see that if you hold a Slinky by one end and drop it, the bottom end doesn’t actually move until the top end catches up with it.
I’ve watched this like six times and it drops my jaw every time…the bottom of the Slinky JUST. DOES. NOT. MOVE. Here’s the scientific explanation:
The explanation that “it takes time for the bottom of the slinky to feel the change” might work ok, but it isn’t the best.
Then why doesn’t the bottom of the slinky fall as the top is let go? I think the best thing is to think of the slinky as a system. When it is let get, the center of mass certainly accelerates downward (like any falling object). However, at the same time, the slinky (spring) is compressing to its relaxed length. This means that top and bottom are accelerating towards the center of mass of the slinky at the same time the center of mass is accelerating downward.
(via @stevenstrogatz)
Update: See also The Physics of a Falling Slinky. (via @jeffhellman)
NBA TV did a documentary on the 1992 Men’s Olympic basketball team, aka the Dream Team. It it, for now, available on YouTube:
Get it while you can…this looks like an unofficial copy and the NBA is likely to take it down soon. (thx, david)
Turns out that video of people in front of really powerful fans is better than just photos.
(via laughing squid)
In the vast cheese warehouses of Europe, robots are employed to flip the cheeses as they age. Here’s a Gruyere flipper:
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