From top to bottom: Christine Blasey Ford by Win McNamee, Emma Gonzalez by Jonathan Ernst, White House rally by C
Can You Start a Fire with Moonlight and a Magnifying Glass?
Equipped with only a magnifying glass and the light of the Sun, it’s pretty easy to start a fire.1 So, with a much bigg
14 Rules for Maintaining Your Sanity Online
In an issue of The Discourse, Sean Blanda shared a list of rules for interacting with others online while maintaining y
Berthe Morisot, the Forgotten Pioneer of Impressionist Painting
Manet, Degas, Renoir, Monet, and Morisot. You’ve likely not heard of that last one, but Berthe Morisot was one of th
Women’s Rights and the Policing of Pregnancy
The New York Times is running a series of editorials on the erosion of women’s rights in the American judicial system a
“Little Man Little Man”, a Children’s Book by James Baldwin
In 1976, James Baldwin and artist Yoran Cazac released a children’s book called Little Man Little Man: A Story of Chil
Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2018
As he does every year, President Obama shared his favorite reads of the year on Facebook, books that he found “thought-
The Best Movie Posters of 2018
Check out these and many other top posters of the year at Creative Review, The Playlist, Little White Lies, and MUB
The Very Slow Movie Player
My pal Bryan Boyer has built a device he calls a VSMP (Very Slow Movie Player). It’s an e-paper display that shows a mo
The Effect of Populist Leaders on Democracies
In an effort to discover what effect populist leaders have on democratic institutions, a pair of researchers, Harvard’s
AI-Generated Human Faces That Look Amazingly Real
The opening line of Madeline Miller’s Circe is: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” In Miller’s t
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
The trailer for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, a feature-length special premiering tomorrow (12/28) on Netflix:
In 1984,
The Top 10 Title Sequences of 2018
From the Art of the Title, the picks for the best opening credits sequences of the year. Their #1 is Babylon Berlin, wh
Chuck Jones’s Trick for Drawing Animal Legs
For the past few hundred million years, the legs of vertebrate animals have evolved into many different forms and shape
My Recent Media Diet for Late 2018
I’ve been keeping track of every media thing I “consume”, so here are quick reviews of some things I’ve read, seen, hea
A Massive Ice-Filled Crater on Mars
The ESA’s Mars Express Mission recently photographed the Korolev crater on Mars, filled almost to the brim with water
Kottke.org’s Best of 2018, Parts 1 and 2
Subscribers to Noticing, the Kottke.org newsletter, have already seen our two-part Best of 2018 series, published on T
Towards the Future Book
Writing in Wired, Craig Mod expertly dissects both the e-book revolution that never happened and the quieter one that
Against Peter Jackson’s “They Shall Not Grow Old”
W.H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling once published a rather unusual review of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Deadwood Returns
More than twelve years after the original, beloved TV series was cancelled, the Deadwood movie is very real. The entir
How to Build a Dyson Sphere
Perhaps the most fundamental way to think about the Universe is in terms of energy. Even when you get away from physic
A Short History of Computer-Generated Visual Effects
While it’s billed as “How Pixar Helped Win 27 of the Last 30 Oscars for Visual Effects”, this video from Wired works p
Die Hard, the Greatest Christmas Story
The tradition of fans recutting trailers and clips of movies and TV shows into different genres — like Toy Story as a
Mesmerizing B&W Animated GIFs
Take a look at these black and white looping animated GIFs by Étienne Jacob. I would have posted these sooner, but tho
Typewriter Drawings from Lenka Clayton
Lenka Clayton does drawings using a portable 1957 Smith-Corona Skyriter typewriter. That vase is amazing. (via @warme
The Destroyed Collection of the National Museum of Brazil Resurrected Online
In 2016, the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro started working with Google Arts & Culture to make their c
The Best Book Covers of 2018
Book covers have long been one of my favorite design objects and with all the talented cover designers at work out ther
GDP Per Capita in China and Africa in 1980 and 2016
Using data from the IMF and World Bank, this map by Näytä Data shows how quickly the relative fortunes of China and Af
Papercraft Computers
Rocky Bergen makes paper models of vintage electronics and computing gear. And here’s the cool bit…you can download
“Working” by Robert Caro
Robert Caro, author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson, is coming out with a memoir called “Working:
Life-Size Stone Mosaics Based on 16th-Century Anatomical Drawings
Sculptor John Unger is making a series of life-size stone mosaics based on anatomical drawings by the 16th-century Ita
The Best News Bloopers of 2018
Today has been a weird day for no particular reason and this 15-minute collection of the best news bloopers of 2018 fit
Package Thief vs. Glitter Bomb Revenge Package
This is pretty nerdy and entertaining. After someone stole a package off of his porch, Mark Rober spent months designi
Remastered Film Footage of 1890s Paris
The Lumière brothers were among the first filmmakers in history and from 1896 to 1900, they shot several scenes around
The Story of the Titanic Keeps Getting Weirder
Within the last couple of days, I’ve learned two things about the sinking of the Titanic and I’m going to share them wi
Ultra-Precise Ice Core Sampling and the Explosive Cause of the Dark Ages
536 AD was an exceedingly bad year for humanity, perhaps even “the worst year to be alive”.
A mysterious fog plunged E
Terrible Maps
For the past few years, the @TerribleMaps Twitter account has been posting maps that aren’t useful or that don’t make a
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