Letter of Recommendation: Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, read by Martin Shaw

So for the past year or two, almost nonstop, I’ve been reading and rereading JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, the great

The history and future of data on magnetic tape

Maybe it’s because I’m part of the cassette generation, but I’m just charmed by IBM researcher Mark Lantz’s ode to tha

Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours

While Isaac Newton and the 17th century were more decisive for understanding the physics of color, you can’t beat the l

Joel Embiid and the YouTube Generation

Joel Embiid is (probably) the most talented and (easily) the most entertaining young player in the NBA today. It’s real

Stunning high-res photo of a stellar nursery

Astronomers using an infrared telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile recently released an infrared ph

The Other Side of the Wind

Netflix is finally releasing The Other Side of the Wind, a film by Orson Welles that has been unfinished since filming

The Indonesian customized Vespa scene is straight out of Mad Max

Festivals dedicated to the celebration and modification of Vespa scooters are held in various places around Indonesia

Offering a more progressive definition of freedom

Pete Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He is a progressive Democrat, Rhodes scholar, served a tour of duty

What does a nuclear bomb blast feel like?

In the 50s and 60s during tests of nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, thousands of British soldiers were deliberate

A full-scale Lego supercar that actually drives

Over the past few months, a team at Lego has been building a full-scale model of a Bugatti Chiron supercar using only

Stephen Colbert connects Chance the Rapper & Childish Gambino to the Lord of the Rings

Stephen Colbert is a *huge* J.R.R. Tolkien nerd. When Rolling Stone asked the late night host to break a song down, he

The community of The Tables

The Tables is a short documentary about the ping pong tables in NYC’s Bryant Park and the cast of characters who play

Close-up shark portraits

I’m not sure how underwater photographer Todd Bretl manages to take such close-up snaps of sharks — diving cage? unde

Painting the skin you live in

For the beginning of school, second-grade teacher Aeriale Johnson had each of her students mix up a container of paint

Summer sunset

Last night’s sunset threw all of these crazy colors into the sky. If you’re into that sort of thing, these images av

Go back in time to the Byzantine Empire

French illustrator Antoine Helbert is a great fan of the architecture of Byzantium and has created more than two doz

When traveling, avoid The Algorithmic Trap

In a piece called The Algorithmic Trap, David Perell writes about the difficulty of finding serendipity, diversity, an

Every US President at their worst

On Twitter, @InstantSunrise wrote an entertaining thread “in which I drag every single US president in order”. She star

The best designed maps from the past two years

Published by the North American Cartographic Information Society, the upcoming 2018 Atlas of Design showcases 32 of the

Yo-Yo Ma plays Bach for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series

NPR does this thing called Tiny Desk Concerts where they bring musicians and bands into the office to play behind a de

American Dharma, Errol Morris’ upcoming documentary about Steve Bannon

Errol Morris has made a documentary film about Steve Bannon called American Dharma that he refers to as “a kind of horr

Biodegradable food containers inspired by egg shells & orange peels

Inspired by natural packaging like egg shells and orange peels, Swedish design studio Tomorrow Machine created a seri

An appreciation and brief history of generative art

In his piece Why Love Generative Art?, Jason Bailey takes us on a short journey through the history of using computers

The original demo of Imagine by John Lennon

A demo version of Imagine, unheard for decades, was recently uncovered in an archive of Lennon audio tapes. You can lis

Infinite mirrored tunnels

Digging this work by Sarah Meyohas. I mean, why do I like these so much? (via colossal) Tags: art   Sarah

The (mostly) true story of hobo graffiti

TIL that the hieroglyphic hobo code probably wasn’t used as extensively as the internet suggests. However, hobos and t

“I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights”

Beto O’Rourke is running against Ted Cruz for one of Texas’ two Senate seats. At a recent event, he was asked if he th

10 wonder-filled years of Legal Nomads

In 2008, corporate lawyer & city slicker Jodi Ettenberg quit her job to travel the world for a year…and then just n

Pixel Pottery

Using traditional materials and techniques to achieve a digital effect, Japanese artist Toshiya Masuda makes this co

Ancient Denisovan/Neanderthal human-hybrid discovered

Wow! Genetic analysis of a human bone fragment found in Siberia reveals that her parents belonged to two different grou

The man who owns the Moon

For more than 35 years, Dennis Hope has been selling land on the Moon. Hope registered a claim for the Moon in 1980 an

New No’s by Paul Chan

After the 2016 election, artist and writer Paul Chan wrote the following poem that he called “New No’s”. No to racists

Grandmaster Flash built his first mixer using parts from Radio Shack

Hip hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash grew up in the Bronx and attended a public vocational high school. There he learned h

Aretha Franklin’s soul roots and gospel power

In this video for Vox, Estelle Caswell explores Aretha Franklin’s unique blend of pop, soul, and gospel, particularly

Using a crane and concrete blocks to store energy for later retrieval

A Swiss company has designed a system for storing energy in concrete blocks. The blocks are lifted by a crane when surp

Barack Obama’s end-of-summer reading list for 2018

Earlier this year, before a trip to Africa, President Obama shared a recommended reading list for this summer heavy on

Relax and watch billions of particles dance and change colors

Volumes is a 4K Full CG art film by Maxim Zhestkov exploring the juxtaposition of emotions with the laws of nature. B

The 23 best films of the 2000s

The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday proposes a list of movies made in the 2000s that should be added to the canon of the

What Homer Simpson would look like in real life

Welp, I want to unsee that. 3D rendering courtesy of Miguel Vasquez, who did the same thing for SpongeBob awhile back.

Watching an art conservator restore a damaged painting

There’s something so relaxing about watching art conservator Julian Baumgartner restore this damaged painting, a self-

The carrot is not important. Chasing it is.

I finally picked up Tamara Shopsin’s Arbitrary Stupid Goal the other day. This is how it begins (emphasis mine): The

Detroit’s own Queen: Aretha Franklin at history’s crossroads

There are many very fine obituaries and appreciations of Aretha Franklin, who passed away this week at 76. I have two

Battery death is the new horror film staple

I’ve been enjoying The Verge’s series of posts about batteries, not least because it’s not just about so-called “hard”

Solving the spaghetti problem

If you’ve ever tried to snap dried pasta in half, you know that it’s hard to get just two even pieces; what you usually