The Opposite of Superman

The late 1930s were a time of explosive creativity in the comics industry, with the creation of Superman, Batman, and

The Mind of a Forger

The Atavist’s “Masterpiece Theater,” by Anna Altman, traces the works of an art forger, Geert Jan Jansen (aka, among o

Supercuts of the Stylistic Cues of Master Filmmakers

Video essayist Jacob T. Swinney makes makes these great little supercuts of the stylistic habits of filmmakers. His two

Why Do Chinese People Like Their Government?

From Kaiser Kuo, a long piece attempting to answer the question: “Why do so many people feel that the Chinese can’t pos

Margaret Bourke-White, Fearless Photographer

Yesterday I linked to a thread discussing old school bloggers who are still active. One of the best of the old guard is

No Surprise: Anti-Abortion Advocates Care Little About Women’s Equality

A recent poll of almost 2000 likely 2020 voters suggests that the anti-abortion movement is not really about protecting

The Symbiotic & Toxic Relationship Between Houses and Cars in America

Since reading Gregory Shill’s writing about how heavily subsidized cars are in the United States, I’ve been on the look

Endlings and the Death of Species

An endling is the last known member of a species and once it dies, the species becomes extinct. George was a tree snail

SpaceX Starhopper Rocket Test

SpaceX took its Starhopper rocket out for a little test run in Texas the other day, taking off and then landing about

My 2019 Roadtrip Along the Pacific Coast of the US

In late July after visiting my kids at camp, I flew into LA, rented a car, and spent two weeks driving up the coast fr

The Hubble’s New Portrait of Jupiter

A photo of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in late June was recently released by NASA. Among other things,

VFX Breakdown of Ctrl Shift Face’s Ultra-Realistic Deepfakes

Ctrl Shift Face created the popular deepfake videos of Bill Hader impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hader doing Tom

Unearthly Iceland

If you need to convince yourself to go to Iceland, this short film by Vadim Sherbakov should do the trick for you. Jus

Mario Kart Tour for iOS

I don’t talk about it much on the site for some reason, but Mario Kart is one of my all-time favorite video games. So I

Distorted US Map of Where Candidates Campaigned in 2016

Because of the Electoral College and the way the primary system works in the US, presidential candidates end up spendin

A Tiny Sea Ecosystem in a Jar

I don’t know about you, but I found it extremely difficult to not watch something called “A Year Ago I Put Saltwater in

The Entire Plane of the Milky Way Captured in a Single Photo

By photographing two separate nighttime scenes, one in the northern hemisphere and the other in the southern hemispher

Fighting the Measles and Dangerous Ideas

For the New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten writes about this year’s measles outbreak in the US, the largest such outbreak in d

Playful Chess Variants

From experimental game developer Pippin Barr, several variations on the game of chess that makes the game more interes

Mister Rogers Cuts a Record

From a 1972 episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Mister Rogers demonstrates how to make a record using a machine ca

Metallica’s Enter Sandman, Covered in 20 Different Musical Styles

Listen in as Anthony Vincent covered Metallica’s classic Enter Sandman in 20 different musical styles, ranging from yo

Hand-Sculpted Archaeological Reconstructions of Ancient Faces

Working from remains discovered during archaeological excavations, sculptor and archaeologist Oscar Nilsson combines hi

What’s Cropped Out of Passport Photos?

Passport photos are subject to an extensive list of guidelines and restrictions — for instance, the background has t

Playful BMX Video Full of Rube Goldberg-esque Street Tricks

In this fun BMX video, Tate Roskelley uses all sorts of props — car tires, milk crates, trees, tennis balls — to perfo

A Collection of 100 Years of US National Parks’ Graphical Ephemera

From the folks that produced the NYC Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual and the NASA Standards Manual comes a

The King of Fish and Chips

In the 1960s, Haddon Salt built up a small empire of fish & chips shops in North America — they eventually had more

Le Corbuffet

Le Corbuffet was a series of performances by artist Esther Choi that sought to bring together food with notable artists

Music Video Shot from the Front of a Toy Lego Train

The music video for Anna Meredith’s latest song, Paramour, is a single-take journey of a toy Lego train through a grou

Lovely and Relaxing Videos of Traditional Countryside Life in China

Li Ziqi is a woman who lives in Sichuan province in China with her grandmother, preparing food and making clothing from

The Return of Grumpy Cloud

Andy Bailey is a stop-motion animator at Laika who worked on Kubo and The Boxtrolls. In this video, he shares his proc

Overview, Young Explorer’s Edition

In 2016, Benjamin Grant published Overview, a book of high-definition satellite photos of the Earth that were drawn fro

There’s Always Something Charming and Creepy In A Circus

Circuses, like children, are always both charming and creepy. Make it a children’s circus, i.e., like Greenboro, Vermo

How [Points In A Circle] All This Could Be Different

Gizmodo has a pretty cool theme this week: the Alternate Internet. Not, like, the internet where they play Stone Temple

Interviewing Ira Glass

One of the troubles with interviewing Ira Glass is that Ira Glass has a lot of thoughts about interviews. Claudia Dre

The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders

The servers at The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders, a series of pop-up restaurants in Tokyo, are all living with dementia

These Nigerian Teens Are Making Sci-Fi Shorts with Slick Visual Effects

For the past year, a group of teens in Nigeria called the Critics Company have been uploading short sci-fi films to the

Barack Obama’s Summer 2019 Reading List

As he does every so often, President Obama shared a list of the books that he’s reading this summer in this Facebook po

The Earth Rotating Beneath a Stationary Milky Way

In most time lapse videos you see of the night sky, the stars wheel through the sky as the heavens revolve around the

Up and Up

Photos by Daehyuk Im of the Coney Island amusement rides and other structures, framed against the sky. Looking back

The 1619 Project

The first Africans to be brought as slaves to British North America landed in Port Comfort, Virginia in 1619. Thus bega