Here are some things I liked this year: Arrival. Halt and Catch Fire. Hamilton. Swiss Army Man. Kurzgesagt. The Undergr
A collection of photos of 80s video arcades
From Timeline, a collection of photos of video arcades in the 80s.
The years between 1978 and 1983 are generally con
Amazon Go is AWS for retail
Some interesting speculation from Evan Puschak on what Amazon is up to with Amazon Go. Basically, Puschak thinks Amazo
The 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do
From psychotherapist Amy Morin, who expanded this list into a book of the same name, a list of 13 ways mentally strong
The UI design of Rogue One
From design firm Blind Ltd, the user interface graphics they did for Rogue One. They had some graphics from the orig
Crossroads by Bruce Conner
One of my favorite art experiences this year was seeing Bruce Conner’s short film Crossroads at The Whitney. (It’s par
AI Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro
In the NY Times Magazine, Gideon Lewis-Kraus reports on Google’s improving artificial intelligence efforts. The Google
Isle of Dogs
We’ve known for awhile that Wes Anderson is doing another stop-motion animated movie, but in this video, Anderson hims
The best maps of 2016
From National Geographic, a list of the best maps produced (or made publicly available) in 2016, including a few I’ve
How stamps get designed
Art director Antonio Alcalá, one of four ADs employed by the USPS, talks a little bit about the history behind US post
The best media corrections of 2016
The annual list of media errors and corrections by Poynter is always worth a read. Some favorites:
Because of an editi
Rogue One, engineering ethics, and types of resistance
Scifi Policy reviews Rogue One as an engineering ethics case study (spoilers!).
The film also makes its engineering et
The truth about the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit
You may have heard about the dumb old lady who was driving with a cup of McDonald’s coffee in her lap, spilled it, and
“This is what happens to the bodies of the women you know”
My friend Courtney Skott wrote an intense piece about the three miscarriages she’s had, including one just a couple of
The Children’s Holocaust Memorial
The small town of Whitwell, Tennessee is home to The Children’s Holocaust Memorial. The memorial consists of eleven mi
Blade Runner 2049
The words “Blade Runner sequel” have inspired equal parts excitement and dread in my heart. Some things, you just shou
National Geographic’s issue on gender
Bravo to National Geographic for putting a transgender girl on the cover of the magazine. Editor-in-chief Susan Goldbe
Freezing soap bubbles
Watching these soap bubbles freeze in 5 °F weather is pretty much the coolest. What’s that? You want me to acknowledge
The Future of Cities
Collaborating with a number of different people from all over the place, filmmaker Oscar Boyson went out into the worl
Lil Buck dances with icons of modern art
Watch as dancer Lil Buck gracefully moves through an exhibit at Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Icons Of Modern Art
Discovery of a pre-Columbian “Stonehenge” in Brazil
Research on an arrangement of massive granite blocks in the Brazilian Amazon has indicated that they were used as an as
Online version of Lode Runner
Lode Runner was probably the first video game I was ever obsessed with. I finished all 150 levels and designed countle
The Great American Word Mapper
It’s that time of year again. No, not Christmas or Hanukkah. As the year winds down, it’s an opportunity for Americans
How cars went from boxy to curvy
In the US, cars went from curvy in the 30s & 40s to boxy in the 60s and then back to curvy in the 90s. The price o
Timeline maps of the most popular baby names in each state, 1910-2104
This is cool and a little mesmerizing: animated US maps showing the most popular baby name in each state from 1910 to
Skiing the ice caves of the Mer de Glace glacier
Ice Call is a clip from a freeskiing movie called Backyards Project that features Sam Favret using the gullies, ridges
The year in photos 2016
Brexit, climate change, Trump, Syria, white nationalism, Turkey, racism and police violence, the Flint water crisi
A powerful memorial to racial terror lynchings
The Equal Justice Initiative is filling jars with soil from the sites of lynchings to honor the victims and to create
Things you notice when you quit the news
David Cain quit following the news many years ago — “I’m mostly talking about following TV and internet newscasts here”
How to be brave: some stories about courage
Laura Olin runs the Everything Changes mailing list for The Awl and she asked her readers “about a time they’d been bra
Bill Gates starts new $1 billion clean energy fund
Bill Gates and a number of other investors are starting a billion venture fund focused on “cheap, clean, reliable energ
LIGO’s gravitational wave data may contradict relativity
Earlier this year, the LIGO experiment detected evidence of gravitational waves. Now the evidence shows that those wave
Don’t tell me what I already know
Director Steven Soderbergh is constantly looking for new ways to give his audience information about the story and the
The best scenes from Planet Earth
The original Planet Earth series was released 10 years ago. In celebration, BBC asked some YouTube creators to share t
The Brilliant Life of Ada Lovelace
From Feminist Frequency, a quick video biography of Ada Lovelace, which talks about the importance of her contribution
A documentary on the 808 drum machine
808 is a feature-length documentary film on perhaps the most important musical instrument of the past 30 years, the Ro
Relaxing time lapse videos
Michael Shainblum makes time lapse videos of nature, landscapes, and cities, and some of them are very relaxing to wat
Interesting facts about every country in the world
If you were a religious reader of the encyclopedia and peruser of atlases like I was as a kid, you’ll love this video
Feathered dinosaur tail trapped in amber
Paleontologist Lida Xing found the feathered tail of a tiny dinosaur trapped in a piece of amber for sale at a market
A long oral history of Prince
GQ talked to a bunch of people about Prince and came back with many stories — “ordinary and out there” — about the ente
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper
As part of Time magazine’s recent selection of the 100 most influential photos of all time, art historian Christine Ro
A tribute to post-apocalyptic cinema
The World of Tomorrow is Bora Barroso’s tribute to some of the best post-apocalyptic movies, including Children of Men
The Secret World of Stuff
Sean Charmatz makes these cute little video vignettes about the secret lives of everyday things like French fries, le
This ping pong volley sounds like Super Mario Bros
This volley played during a game of ping pong sounds a lot like the first few bars of the music from Super Mario Bros.
LightMasonry
LightMasonry is a light installation by Jason Bruges Studio in York Minster, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe.
The top 25 films of 2016
I look forward to David Ehrlich’s video countdown of his favorite films of the year and 2016’s installment does not di
Richard Feynman’s sweet letter to his late wife Arline
At an event called Letters Live, actor Oscar Isaac read a letter that noted physicist Richard Feynman wrote to his wif
Trailer for The Circle
The film adaptation of Dave Eggers’ novel The Circle is moving right along. The movie stars Tom Hanks and Emma Watson
The evolution of Disney animation, from Snow White to Zooptopia
This video quickly sums up almost 80 years of Disney animated movies, from Snow White and Pinocchio to Big Hero 6 and
The 2016 kottke.org Holiday Gift Guide
For the past few years, I’ve featured the season’s best gift guides from other sites and pulled out a few things from e
Carl Sagan explains the fourth dimension
From his seminal TV program Cosmos, Carl Sagan attempts to explain the fourth dimension of spacetime. The story starts
The Dead Bookstore
Ben Pieratt, who you may recall as the cofounder of Svpply (and many other diverse projects), has a new project calle
Amazon Go and “Just Walk Out” shopping
Amazon Go grocery stores will let you walk in by swiping an app, grab whatever you need, and just walk right out the d
The bell tolls at Britain’s oldest manufacturing company
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is the oldest manufacturing company in Britain. It was officially founded in 1570, but th
The future of football
This conversation between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell about the current state of football and the NFL is quite go
52 things learned in 2016
Consultant Tom Whitwell shared 52 things he learned in 2016. Here are three:
Call Me Baby is a call centre for cybercr
Lovely illustrations drawn on vintage sheet music
Russian illustrators Alexei Lyapunov and Lena Ehrlich use the notes, staffs, and other musical notation marks on vin
The best books of 2016
It’s just the beginning of December and the lists of the best books of the year are already starting to stack up like
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