21 Things That Kept Me Going In 2020

For the past few years, I’ve been keeping track of everything I read, watch, listen to, and experience in my media die

That’s All, Folks!

As things are winding down here in 2020, I’m taking this last week off. Mostly. There might be a couple of things that

Six Quick Links for Thursday Noonish

Making a digital clock in Google Sheets. "'This is cool, really cool, but I feel like maybe you need an intervention' -

The Gap Between Having Good Taste and Doing Good Work

I’ve shared this observation from Ira Glass about the gap between having good taste and doing good creative work befor

Three Quick Links for Wednesday Afternoon

From Open Culture, a collection of explainer videos about how vaccines work. [openculture.com] "Trump's cult of persona

Between the Places Where I Have Lived

In 1980, Sol LeWitt created a piece of art called The Area of Manhattan Between the Places I Have Lived Is Removed wher

Seven Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

Russia's FSB (the modern-day version of the KGB and under the control of Putin) tried to assassinate opposition leader

Tea Bag Watercolor Paintings

Ruby Silvious paints watercolors on used tea bags. Art is everywhere and anything is a canvas. Check out her Instag

The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

I somehow1 missed this a few months ago: Roman Mars’ venerable podcast 99% Invisible has resulted in a book that seems

The Year in Photos 2020

How will we remember this pivotal year in human history? Many of us won’t want to, but in doing so we risk repea

Meet the Monkey Slug Caterpillar

This handsome looking character is called the monkey slug caterpillar and its appearance has evolved to resemble a tar

“Listen to a Random Forest”

Tree.fm lets you tune into the sounds of different forests from around the world, bringing a taste of forest bathing t

By An Eye-Witness

(Note: The images below depict simulated violent death.) By An Eye-Witness is an arresting series of images by Azadeh A

Three Quick Links for Monday Noonish

This is an upsetting, puzzling, and incredible read about a journalist who fell in love with "pharma bro" Martin Shkrel

A Sneak Preview of Peter Jackson’s Documentary About The Beatles

The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson’s documentary about the making of Let It Be, was delayed by the pandemic, so he a

50 Years of Trickle-Down Economics Didn’t Work

Trickle-down economics is the economic theory that lowering taxes on the wealthy and on businesses will stimulate busin

Fuck You, 2020!

I enjoyed this holiday campaign ad from Public Inc. (It contains some salty language! It’s ok — kids are swearing more

Two Quick Links for Saturday Noonish

The Ban Christmas movement (and SantaCon!) in America dates back to at least 1659 when Massachusetts Puritans banned th

Weathering Time: Nancy Floyd’s Anti-Perfectionist Selfies

Since 1982, Nancy Floyd has regularly been taking photos of herself around the house and now she’s compiled 1200 of the

Today’s Work Music: Max Richter’s My Brilliant Friend Soundtracks

That someone was able to turn Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels into a compelling TV series is nothing short of miracu

Four Quick Links for Friday Noonish

I've been thinking about this question from @helfitzgerald all week: "Do you really miss pre-pandemic life, or do you j

“Can We Do Twice as Many Vaccinations as We Thought?”

In an opinion piece for the NY Times, Zeynep Tufekci and epidemiologist Michael Mina are urging for new trials of the M

NY Times Retracts “Caliphate” Podcast

Caliphate, Rukmini Callimachi’s podcast for the NY Times about ISIS, was one of my favorite podcasts of 2018 — I recomm

Four Quick Links for Thursday Afternoon

Maira Kalman has illustrated a new book based on her friend David Byrne's hit Broadway show American Utopia. [bookshop.

In Flight

Those are just a couple of the shots of birds in the air from Mark Harvey’s In Flight series. I love that top photo —

The Credibility Is in the Details

The book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland contains a passage about whether artists should focus of quantit

Five Quick Links for Thursday Noonish

Tales of wedding photographers in the time of Covid. "I've been in hotel ballrooms inside and it's been packed like sar

Private Views

Posing as young apartment-hunting Hungarian billionaire, artist Andi Schmied was able to gain access to more than two

Unsettling Photographs

Some unsettling/weird/funny photos from @thundergirl_xtal on Instagram. They have a separate account just for nails

Three Quick Links for Wednesday Afternoon

How Citizen Kane became considered the greatest film ever made. [vulture.com] The interesting/unfortunate thing about T

The Millennium Camera, a Pinhole Camera with a Thousand-Year Exposure Time

Critic, artist, and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats has installed pinhole cameras in three locations around th

How to Self-Rescue If You Fall Through Thin Ice

In this video, Kenton Whitman explains how to survive a fall through ice on a frozen lake or river. The explanation co

Five Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

This is really fun: Blob Opera. "Play four voices with the help of machine learning." [artsandculture.google.com] Covid

Ghosts of Segregation, the Vestigial Architecture of America’s Racism

Ghosts of Segregation is a project by photographer Rich Frishman with the goal of documenting the “the vestiges of Am

Three Quick Links for Tuesday Afternoon

Paloma Elsesser is on the cover of the Jan 2021 issue of Vogue and this video where she sees the cover for the first ti

The Best Book Cover Designs of 2020

Well, what an unprecedented year that was! *sigh* 2020 is not a great year for ledes, so let’s skip right to the c

Sometimes Choreography Involves Goalkeeping**

I’ve featured the work of choreographer Yoann Bourgeois on kottke.org before — his work gets performers moving on rotat

Four Quick Links for Tuesday Noonish

As the US death toll passes 300,000, families whose loved ones have died from Covid-19 are becoming more explicit in th

Unendurable Line

For Design Ah by Daihei Shibata, Unendurable Line is a short film about sudden changes due to “thresholds hidden in ev

The Art of Traditional Japanese Wood Joinery

This video is three minutes and nine seconds of pure precision — welcome to the world of Japanese wood joinery. Carpen

Three Quick Links for Monday Afternoon

Austin Kleon on The Vampire Test, "a simple way to know who you should let in and out of your life". [austinkleon.com]

Beer Can Pinhole Camera Takes Longest Exposure Photograph Ever

This pinhole solargraph, taken using a beer can pinhole camera over a period of eight years and one month, is thought

Recommendation: The Audiobook for Barack Obama’s A Promised Land

I read both of the excerpts from A Promised Land, Barack Obama’s memoir of his time in the White House: I’m Not Yet Rea