"Fully vaccinated people, and also just liars, can now go mask-free at theaters" [avclub.com]
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Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch finally has a theatrical release date: Oct 22, 2021. [indiewire.com]
An AI, teamed up with non-funny humans, is trying to win the New Yorker cartoon caption contest. [pudding.cool]
Sky Pool. Yikes! [mossandfog.com]
An Other War Memorial, memories from victims and survivors of the American War in Vietnam. [anotherwarmemorial.com]
Some literary collective nouns. My favorite by far is "a gruop of proofreaders". [theguardian.com]
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We all know that the microwave oven was invented by Raytheon’s Percy Spencer in 1945. What this video presupposes is, maybe it was invented to thaw out frozen hamsters? And somehow James Lovelock, who formulated the Gaia hypothesis, is involved? (via @fourfoldway)
Tags: James Lovelock Old Custer Percy Spencer physics science video---
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Ted Gioia’s newsletter is called Culture Notes of an Honest Broker and in this recent issue, he shares the surprisingly cloak and dagger story of how he came to think of himself as an “Honest Broker”.
“Who, exactly, is this Honest Broker?”
“There’s at least one in every city. But don’t expect their business cards to say ‘Honest Broker’ - that’s just what I call them. But that’s exactly what they are. Sometimes they don’t even have an official position. But they are the key to everything.”
He proceeded to explain how Honest Brokers play a hidden but vital role in communities without a history of legal protections and stable institutions. Their influence and power is built solely on a reputation for straight talk and trustworthy dealings. “They are true brokers, intermediaries between others. They aren’t going to participate in your deal, no matter what it is. They are go-betweens, really. But do not underestimate the power of this kind of brokerage. Whatever you need — a loan, a building permit, political influence, a place to land a private jet, whatever — they will introduce you to the right people and steer you away from the sharks.
Reading Gioia’s essay, I realized that with my work here on kottke.org, I’ve been unknowingly trying to be that Honest Broker for you folks. I don’t always live up to that ideal, but I work pretty hard so that everything I write and link to here is stuff that I genuinely enjoy and find interesting and believe that you will as well.
Do not underestimate the power of this kind of brokerage…the Honest Broker plays the long-term game, mate. Over time, that scrupulous fidelity and reputation for trustworthy advice beats out all other strategies. The Honest Broker is irreplaceable, and all the more so when other guides have become unreliable.
All it takes is 23 years of consistent effort…and presto! :)
Tags: Ted Gioia kottke.orgCoronavirus Variant Excited To Compete With World’s Top Mutations In Tokyo This Summer. (This is The Onion, but just barely.) [theonion.com]
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I didn’t wake up this morning knowing I needed to hear Cate Blanchett saying “I love you” over and over again while looking right at me, but now that it’s happened I could not have imagined it going any other way. (She also says “I don’t love you” several times but we’re going to ignore that.)
Tags: Cate Blanchett video
These surrealistic images were created by Cream Electric Art for a United Airlines ad campaign. Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes on how the Route 66 image was constructed. Prior art: Berg’s Here & There map of Manhattan, Inception, and these curved cityscape panoramas. (via moss & fog)
Tags: art remixThe Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum will reopen in NYC on June 10 and admission to the museum will be free through October 31. [cooperhewitt.org]
"minion skin" [twitter.com]
Basic research on the mouse hepatitis virus (a coronavirus) begun in the 1980s proved essential to understanding & combating SARS-CoV-2 when it appeared in late 2019. [covid19prequels.com]
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In this video, rollercoaster engineer Korey Kiepert talks about all the different types of rollercoasters that you’ll see at an amusement park, including wooden, terrain, launched, hyper, out-and-back, and wild mouse coasters.
So, when we design a roller coaster, we’re trying to take something that’s very much driven by the same codes that would be used to design a building. And we’re working with those to create something that gives you the illusion that it’s daring and adventurous but, at the same time, it’s all very controlled.
See also Every Bridge For Every Situation, Explained by an Engineer. (via the kid should see this)
Tags: Korey Kiepert video
Beloved children’s book author Eric Carle died this past weekend at the age of 91 and this is one of the best openings to an obituary I can recall reading:
When a fictional caterpillar chomps through one apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries, five oranges, one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake and one slice of watermelon, it might get a stomach ache.
But it might also become the star of one of the best-selling children’s books of all time.
Eric Carle, the artist and author who created that creature in his book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” a tale that has charmed generations of children and parents alike, died on Sunday at his summer studio in Northampton, Mass. He was 91.
I’ve written about Carle and his most famous creation, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a couple of times here — I can still remember the first time my son read (or, more likely, recited from memory) the list of everything the caterpillar ate on Saturday, including all of his adorable pronunciations.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar was certainly one of my favorite books as a kid — along with Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy Town & Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, and the Frog & Toad books — and it was one of the first books we read to our kids. I remember very clearly loving the partial pages and the holes. Holes! In a book! Right in the middle of the page! It felt transgressive. Like, what else is possible in this world if you can do such a thing?
You can see Carle at work in his workshop from an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1998. I particularly appreciated this short exchange:
Tags: Eric Carle Fred Rogers The Very Hungry Caterpillar books obituariesRogers: In this, there’s just no mistakes, is there?
Carle: No, you can’t make mistakes really.
For this video, the NY Times talked to several people from around the world (Britain, Zimbabwe, Norway, India, etc.) about what they think about how the United States is approaching climate change and other environmental challenges. Spoiler alert: there is a lot of incredulity about how shitty America is doing in this area. And that matters because what happens here affects everyone around the world.
See also What Does U.S. Health Care Look Like Abroad? and What Do U.S. Elections Look Like Abroad?
Tags: global warming USA videoAn oral history of A Different World. [vanityfair.com]
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For The Atlantic, Luke Savage writes that Democrats have to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to protecting American democracy.
If you’ve followed recent Democratic messaging, you’ll have heard that American democracy is under serious attack by the Republican Party, representing an existential threat to the country. If you’ve followed Democratic lawmaking, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the threat is actually a rather piddling one. The disconnect, in this case, isn’t attributable to Democratic embellishment, but to inexcusable complacency.
Without meaningfully reforming the rules of the Senate, the Biden administration & Congressional Democratic leadership basically gets to pass one substantial bill per year (through budget reconciliation). That’s it. If Democrats lose the House in 2022, which seems likely or even certain without the passage of a federal voting rights bill, then it’s only one or two bills. And then maybe Democrats don’t see the White House, a Senate majority, and a House majority for a generation and we’ll all have to ask ourselves whether we actually like living in a de facto nationalistic one-party state.
Tags: Luke Savage politics USAI have been making @mslynnchen's Taiwanese pork chops with scallions and broccoli lately and really liking them. [food52.com]
Amazon is buying MGM for $8.45 billion. [variety.com]
The housing market in the US right now is bonkers. "There are now more Realtors than listings." [twitter.com]
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Singer and actor Leslie Odom Jr., who grew up in Philadelphia and who you may know from Hamilton and who is wearing an amazing purple sweater in this video, breaks down some Philly slang for us, including jawn, Mummers, MAC machine, old head, water ice, and outta pocket.
Tags: language Leslie Odom Jr. videoIn the history of science, there are women who have made significant contributions to their field but haven’t gotten the recognition that their male peers have. The field of astronomy & astrophysics in particular has had many female pioneers — Vera Rubin, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Annie Jump Cannon, Nancy Grace Roman, Maria Mitchell, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Caroline Herschel, Williamina Fleming, and many others. Add to that list Hisako Koyama, a Japanese astronomer whose detailed sketches of the Sun over a 40-year period laid the foundation for a 400-year timeline of sunspot activity, which has aided researchers in studying solar cycles and magnetic fields.
Ms. Koyama was a most unusual woman of her time. As a scientist, she bridged the amateur and professional world. She preferred “doing” activities: observing, data recording, interacting with the public, and writing. No doubt many Japanese citizens benefited from personal interaction with her. The space and geophysics community continues to benefit from her regular and precise observations of the Sun. Although we know very little of her young personal life other than she was relatively well educated and had a father who supported her desire to view the skies by providing a telescope, we can see from snippets in Japanese amateur astronomy articles that she had a passion for observing, as revealed in her 1981 article: “I simply can’t stop observing when thinking that one can never know when the nature will show us something unusual.”
Here are a few of her sunspot sketches, the top two done using her home telescope and the bottom one using the much larger telescope at the National Museum of Nature and Science (that shows the largest sunspot of the 20th century):
(via the kid should see this)
Tags: astronomy Hisako Koyama physics science space SunBefore I clicked play on the video embedded above of 1000 musicians playing Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters, I assumed it was going to be kind of a mess, a muddled wall of sound. Instead, I was surprised to hear something almost magical, a rock anthem played with the fullness of a orchestra or chorus, the band and the crowd merged into a single, gorgeously layered entity. I was moved by it, almost immediately. All those drummers pounding away on their drum kits in unison! You can check out this playlist for more 1000 musician versions of rock songs, including Seven Nation Army (White Stripes), We Will Rock You (Queen), and Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana):
I also have to say that these videos hit me harder now, 15 months into a global pandemic that kept my family and I separated from all but a narrow slice of the world, than they would have before, especially now that things are starting to loosen up a bit and I am able to safely socialize with other vaccinated folks in person. Seeing thousands of people collectively engaged something so joyful is both a reminder of what we lost during the pandemic and what we stand to gain if we can manage to contain the virus worldwide. I think this is the reason why this video of a flash mob performing Ode to Joy went viral early on in the pandemic. All the feels. (another great find via openculture)
Tags: crying at work music videoHow do you know what to do with your life? The introduction to this new and uncharacteristically existential Kurzgesagt video is some real truth:
Wrapping your mind around your life is pretty hard, because you are up to your neck in it. It’s like trying to understand the ocean while learning how to swim. On most days you are busy just keeping your head above water. So it is not easy to figure out what to do with your life and how to spend your time. There are a million distractions. Your family, friends and romantic partners, boring work, and exciting projects. Video games to play and books to read. And then there is your couch that somebody needs to lie on. It’s easy to get lost.
Thinking about this stuff can be kind of a downer, as the writer of this video admits in a comment:
It’s so easy to get lost in your daily life: there are so many “urgent” and “annoying” things that you forget that actually every day is special, sort of. And even more so the days we have with friends and family. I know watching a video like this can hit pretty hard. But at least for me, the message it tries to convey does make me actually change my behavior. Reprioritize things. You know. Hope it had a similar effect for some of you.
See also Your Life in Weeks by Tim Urban.
Tags: Kurzgesagt videoAfter watching this short film on how much data private companies are able to gather about you (data that we willingly give them in some cases), you might be forgiven for thinking that, never mind some far flung future, we are living in a full-on dystopia right now. The set design, the acting, the positioning of the tables, the see-through table tops, the laptop vs. notebook…this was really well done. When the interrogator got up from his desk, I viscerally felt the invasion of privacy.
Tags: COVID-19 privacy videoWorld-renowned magician David Berglas, now 94 years old, does a card trick that’s so effortlessly simple and dazzling that no one has figured it out and Berglas himself says it cannot be taught.
The trick is a version of a classic plot of magic, called Any Card at Any Number. These tricks are called ACAAN in the business.
ACAAN has been around since the 1700s, and every iteration unfolds in roughly the same way: A spectator is asked to name any card in a deck — let’s say the nine of clubs. Another is asked to name any number between one and 52 — let’s say 31.
The cards are dealt face up, one by one. The 31st card revealed is, of course, the nine of clubs. Cue the gasps.
There are hundreds of ACAAN variations, and you’d be hard pressed to find a professional card magician without at least one in his or her repertoire. (A Buddha-like maestro in Spain, Dani DaOrtiz, knows about 60.) There are ACAANs in which the card-choosing spectator writes down the named card in secrecy; ACAANs in which the spectator shuffles the deck; ACAANs in which every other card turns out to be blank.
For all their differences, every ACAAN has one feature in common: At some point, the magician touches the cards. The touch might be imperceptible, it might appear entirely innocent. But the cards are always touched.
With one exception: David Berglas’s ACAAN. He would place the cards on a table and he didn’t handle them again until after the revelation and during the applause. There was no sleight of hand, no hint of shenanigans. It was both effortless and boggling.
Of course, his unwillingness to reveal how the trick works or even that he is unable to show someone else how to do it could be part of the trick. But in recent years, Berglas has pulled back the curtain on most of his other tricks, like the time he made a grand piano vanish into thin air, explained by Berglas himself in a YouTube video:
But not this card trick, as the author of the Times’ piece discovers. A delightful read.
Tags: David Berglas how to magic video---
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Great Art Explained is a super YouTube series that I am somehow just now learning about that, uh, explains great art. Host James Payne has done about a dozen videos on pieces like Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych, and Untitled (Skull) by Jean-Michel Basquiat. His latest is about The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai.
In 1639 Japan closed its borders and cut itself off from the outside world. Foreigners were expelled, Western culture was forbidden, and Entering or leaving Japan was punishable by Death. It would remain that way for over 200 years.
It was under these circumstances that a quintessentially Japanese art developed. Art for the people that was consumed on an unprecedented scale.
Really interesting stuff. Subscribed.
See also several different versions of The Great Wave print and The Art of Traditional Japanese Printmaking. (via open culture)
Tags: art art school James Payne Katsushika Hokusai video
This is a photo of a tiny tiny snippet of the universe, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Every object you see in the photo is a staggeringly massive galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars along with all sort of other things.
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is well over one hundred thousand light years across. We only see a pitiful portion of it. Although it contains several hundred billion stars in its expanse, we can only see a fraction of a fraction of them.
And even that doesn’t fully capture the essence of a galaxy, which also has planets, gas, dust, dark matter, and more. Galaxies are colossal objects, their true nature only becoming apparent to us a century ago.
I know I’ve posted photos like this before, but every time I see something like this, my mind boggles anew at the sheer scale and magnitude of it all and I just have to share it.
P.S. And Earth contains the only sentient life in the entire universe? Lol.
Tags: astronomy Hubble telescope photography spaceGorgeous My Neighbor Totoro zoetrope. [twitter.com]
"Kiyan Prince was killed in 2006 at the age of 15. Now, EA Sports is continuing his legacy by putting him in [FIFA 21]." [fastcompany.com]
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Using data from the United States Geological Survey, River Runner visualizes the path taken by a raindrop from its landing spot to its eventual endpoint. Just click on any spot in the US and it maps out the path the drop would take, complete with a satellite fly-through of the route. I spent many happy minutes playing with this, although the endpoint of “Canada” for a raindrop that lands in my Vermont yard was somewhat unsatisfying.
See also The Marvelous Mississippi River Meander Maps and a map of all of the rivers in the US. (via waxy)
Tags: infoviz maps USA
Translating sites, search engines, social networks, browsers, ISPs, and other internet entities into geographic features, Martin Vargic has created a map of the internet circa 2021.
It includes several thousand of some of the most popular websites, represented as distinct “countries”, which are grouped together with others of similar type or category, forming dozens of distinct clusters, regions and continents that stretch throughout the map, such as “news sites”, “search engines”, “social networks”, “e-commerce”, “adult entertainment”, “file sharing”, “software companies” and so much more. In the center of it all can be found ISPs and web browsers, which form the core and backbone of the internet as we know it, while the far south is the domain of the mysterious “dark web”.
See also an actual map of the known internet from May 1973.
Tags: infoviz internet maps Martin Vargic remixThe evolution of butts. "Gently turn that blobby body around, and gaze deep into its marvelous, multifunctional anus." [theatlantic.com]
This is a really lovely & meditative set of instructions for creating your own bird kite at home. [nytimes.com]
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Curated by The Luupe, this is “a collection of photographs and words celebrating the complexities of motherhood”. And somehow even 100 photographs don’t adequately capture the vast experience of motherhood around the world. Photos above by Dee Williams, Brittany Marcoux, Diane Allford (via storythings)
Tags: parenting photography
From Flowing Data, a stacked bar chart showing the relative population distribution of age generations from 1920 to the present. The thing that’s really apparent to me in this graph is how the size, increased life expectancy, and better quality of life of the Silent and (especially) Baby Boomer generations really shifted the social order in America. It’s a triple whammy: this large group of very healthy people stuck around so much longer than the previous generations that they were able to keep their wealth and political/corporate power instead of handing it off to the next generations. It’s a generational firewall — they didn’t leave any room for their children or grandchildren. Instead, Gen X and Millennials got branded as lazy/apathetic and financially careless. (via @mikey_two)
Tags: demographics infoviz population USA10 positions that chess engines have a difficult time understanding but human players see easily. [chess.com]
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Because of the remarkable Covid-19 vaccines, the pandemic is easing in America. In many parts of the country, things are returning to some semblance of normal, whatever that means. But many will continue to struggle and come to terms with what happened for awhile longer. Ed Yong, What Happens When Americans Can Finally Exhale:
But there is another crucial difference between May 2020 and May 2021: People have now lived through 14 months of pandemic life. Millions have endured a year of grief, anxiety, isolation, and rolling trauma. Some will recover uneventfully, but for others, the quiet moments after adrenaline fades and normalcy resumes may be unexpectedly punishing. When they finally get a chance to exhale, their breaths may emerge as sighs. “People put their heads down and do what they have to do, but suddenly, when there’s an opening, all these feelings come up,” Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, the founder and director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute, told me. Lipsky has spent decades helping people navigate the consequences of natural disasters, mass shootings, and other crises. “As hard as the initial trauma is,” she said, “it’s the aftermath that destroys people.”
And it wasn’t just the pandemic:
Not everyone will feel this way. Perhaps most Americans won’t. In past work, Silver, the UC Irvine psychologist, found that even communities that go through extreme traumas, such as years of daily rocket fire, can show low levels of PTSD. Three factors seem to protect them: confidence in authorities, a sense of belonging, and community solidarity. In the U.S., the pandemic eroded all three. It reduced trust in institutions, separated people from their loved ones, and widened political divisions. It was something of a self-reinforcing disaster, exacerbating the conditions that make recovery harder.
Also, let’s not forget: “Globally, the pandemic is set to kill more people in 2021 than in 2020.”
Tags: COVID-19 Ed Yong USA---
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Last week, I posted about Texas death row inmate Quintin Jones and his plea for clemency in the face of his pending execution. Again, here is his video message to Texas governor Greg Abbott:
On Wednesday evening, in the presence of two outside witnesses, Texas killed Quintin Jones. Two journalists who were to bear witness to the execution for the public were not called into the prison by officials who somehow “forgot” to do so:
Absent were two journalists who had been scheduled to attend the execution but whom prison officials said they had accidentally failed to summon.
Before he died, a video director for the NY Times recorded a short video of Jones’ last words to the public, in which he thanked everyone for helping him be a better person and even asked viewers to consider the trauma that death row prison guards endure in the course of doing their jobs. A separate statement of his last words was recorded by prison officials:
“Love all my friends and all the friendships that I have made,” Mr. Jones said, according to those state prison records. “They are like the sky. It is all part of life, like a big full plate of food for the soul. I hope I left everyone a plate of food full of happy memories, happiness and no sadness.”
Then he said, “I’m done, warden.” He was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m.
That same day, Governor Abbott, who is a member of the so-called “pro-life” Republican party, signed a law that bans abortions in Texas after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is before many women are even aware they are pregnant.
Tags: crime death Greg Abbott murder Quintin Jones videoToday is Dieter Rams' birthday and to celebrate Gary Hustwit is streaming his documentary about the legendary designer for free for 24 hours. [ohyouprettythings.com]
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As someone who is mostly unable to nap, I’ve always felt a twinge of envy towards those who can shut their eyes, drift off for 20 minutes, and awake refreshed & raring to go. Maybe I’ll have better luck after watching this TED-Ed lesson by sleep researcher Sara Mednick (author of Take a Nap! Change Your Life.), which explains when and how long you should nap for optimal results. (via open culture)
Tags: how to Sara Mednick sleep videoI suspect that if you read this site with any regularity, the pandemic has you thinking about our society’s prioritization of the rights & desires of the individual versus the needs of the community. Using the purchase of a backyard trampoline for his kids as a jumping off point, Jeremy Williams wonders if we haven’t “tipped too far towards private consumption”.
Capitalism pushes us towards private affluence. We aspire to acquire our own things. Shared things are seen as second best, something of an inconvenience. Politics responds accordingly, prioritising economic growth and ‘more money in your pocket’, rather than shared goods and services. So everyone has their own lawnmower while the grass grows long in the park. People get their own exercise bikes or rowing machines, and the gym at the local leisure centre starts to look tired and under-funded. The wealthy pay for childcare or hire a nanny, but the early years nursery closes down.
Having access to your own things looks like progress, but there is a cost. Community is one of the victims. Shared spaces are places where community happens, where people mix and meet. Nobody makes new friends on their own rowing machine, in front of the TV. Inequality is another. Those who can afford their own won’t notice, but those on lower incomes rely much more on shared resources. When a library closes, it’s those on the margins of society who lose access to books, internet access, or a warm place to sit and do their homework. There is also an environmental cost, as private ownership means endlessly duplicated goods, many underused objects across many owners rather than a few well used objects that are shared.
(via dense discovery)
Tags: Jeremy Williams politics
Jon Larsen collects and photographs micrometeorites from all over the world, finding them even in urban areas mixed in among terrestrial dust and dirt.
The cosmos is a swirling soup of stardust. Every day, approximately 60 tons of dust from asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies fall to the Earth. These tiny metallic, alien stones of various shapes, textures, and colors-known as micrometeorites-are some of the oldest pieces of matter in the solar system.
Even though micrometeorites blanket the Earth, scientists have generally only been able to discover them in remote places devoid of human presence, such as Antarctic ice, desolate deserts, and deep-sea sediments. Scientists began searching for micrometeorites in the 1960s, and they predominantly thought the extraterrestrial dust would be impossible to find in urban environments. The conventional wisdom held that densely populated areas had too much man-made sediment that camouflaged the tiny space particles.
But Jon Larsen, a Norwegian jazz musician and creator of Project Stardust, was able to show that it is possible to find micrometeorites in more populated areas. In a study published in January 2017 in the journal Geology, he and his colleagues catalogued more than 500 lustrous micrometeorites (and counting), all recovered from rooftops in urban areas.
Check out Larsen’s Project Stardust for more photos and information on how to hunt for your own. (via the kid should see this)
Tags: astronomy Jon Larsen photography science spaceWatch Accurate Recreations of Medieval Italian Longsword Fighting Techniques, All Based on a Manuscript from 1404. [openculture.com]
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This is pretty unusual. Years ago, NY Times film critic AO Scott panned Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic and Silverman, instead of reacting in a typical way, ultimately took his core criticism to heart and changed the way she thought about her comedy. The two of them recently linked up for a conversation about the “challenges both of doing comedy and of writing criticism”, namely that:
You’re supposed to be honest, and you’re supposed to tell the truth and not worry about giving offense. On the other hand, what you do, what I do has a risk of hurting people.
Here’s Silverman:
But the thing you wrote that kind of changed me on a molecular level, which is what, I think, you were kind of onto at the time was completely what I was abusing — and you saw that before anyone else, and you made me see it — which is I’m liberal, so I’m not racist, so I can say the N-word, because I’m illuminating racism.
My intentions were good but ignorant, and it’s funny that in that movie and in the subsequent series I did, my character was ignorant [and] arrogant, but what I didn’t realize was [that I] myself was arrogant [and] ignorant.
I couldn’t help thinking of Pixar’s Ratatouille here, in which the opposite thing happens: the artist changes the critic’s mind.
Tags: AO Scott art interviews movies Sarah Silverman
Even just looking at photos of pencils, I can still smell the sheets of mimeograph paper hot off the ditto machine.
Tags: design pencils typographyWhy Confederate Lies Live On. "Confederate history is family history, history as eulogy, in which loyalty takes precedence over truth." [theatlantic.com]
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I’m always on the lookout for sounds that help you focus and/or relax; I’ve collected a number of video soundscapes here. If you happen to find the sounds of Lego bricks relaxing, you can add these videos to your routine:
The first one features the sound of Legos being poured and the second one is the sound of someone digging through the Lego bin & snapping pieces together. The full 3.5-hour album of Lego sounds is available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music.
Here’s the company’s press release and a behind-the-scenes look at the album’s production from The Guardian.
The project was devised by Lego’s “head of creative” Primus Manokaran, who describes the streaming-only album as “a collection of soundscapes” designed to promote relaxation and mindfulness. Although the seven tracks, which each run to half an hour in length, are different in their granular details, essentially they were made by Lego pieces being poured out of tubs, sifted through and clicked together.
Manokaran’s team began thinking about why people love Lego during lockdown, and realised that a big hook was how it sounds. Inspired by the online craze for white noise as an aid to relaxation and focus, they began recording. “The acoustic properties of each brick was slightly different,” he says. “It was like composing with 10,000 tiny instruments.”
(thx, martin)
Tags: audio LegosLuke O’Neil talked to dozens of people who were able to work from home during the pandemic about not missing the commute part of working in an office. A few of the responses:
No one’s stopping anyone who works from home from going out and riding in circles on the subway for 30 minutes before they go back to their desk.
I save roughly $100 a month now. I have time in the morning to take my dog for a long walk every day. I have time in the evening to cook dinner. Commuting is psychological torture and my physical and mental health is significantly better without it.
I love to drive 30 minutes to stare at a different computer
Tags: Luke O’Neil workingI can’t even calculate the savings in gas, wear on my car, etc. But I can tell you that with nearly two hours back in each of my days, plus the extra 40 minutes or so of making myself presentable to be in close proximity to others, I have been able to reinvest that time in myself. I have been eating better, I have time for the gym, I have time to give my dogs the exercise they need. I know this year has been mentally taxing on so many, but I’ve found these changes work so much better for me.
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Every few months for the past couple of years, I’ve shared the movies, books, music, TV, and podcasts I’ve enjoyed (or not) recently. Here’s everything I’ve “consumed” since early February, accompanied by a mini review.
How To with John Wilson. What happens near the end of the risotto episode got all the attention, but I’m all about the bag of chips saga. (B+)
Black Art: In the Absence of Light. I can listen to artists and critics talk about art all day long. Also? Everyone in this has impeccable eyewear. (A)
Spirited Away. A masterpiece. (A)
Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine (BNT162b2). Possibly the best experience of the past 5 years. (A+++++)
Casino Royale. The best of the Daniel Craig Bonds IMO. (B+)
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante. Another marvelously constructed world with vibrant characters by Ferrante. (A)
Wandavision. A love letter to television. Watched this with the kids and we all loved it. (A)
Looper. This is perhaps my favorite type of movie: clever sci-fi with a creative director and good actors that give a shit. (A-)
Sonic the Hedgehog. Jim Carrey is the highlight here and not much else. (C+)
The Remains of the Day. One of my favorite movies. I’ve watched this every few years since 1993 and what I get out of it changes every time. Great book too. (A+)
Judas and the Black Messiah. Fantastic performances by Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield. (A)
Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Way too long and nearly pointless. This is what happens when you start treating the director of Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole like an auteur. (B-)
A Promised Land by Barack Obama. I recommend the audiobook version of this. You can really tell the bits of the book he cares about and the stuff he phones in a little bit more. The tone of his voice when he talks about Michelle — that love is real. (B+)
Making Sense — The Boundaries of Self. I listened to this conversation with the poet David Whyte at the beginning of March and it was exactly what I needed to hear at that time. I must have listened to his short essay on Friendship about 5 times. (A)
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. About the invention of the wireless telegraph and the beginning of our abundantly connected world. (B+)
Still Processing - The N Word. The way that Morris and, particularly, Wortham use inclusive language is fascinating. They invite people into the conversation without any loss of insight or critical capability. A bracing rebuttal to the idea that using so-called “woke” language is hamstringing discourse in America. (A-)
Matilda by Roald Dahl. Read this aloud to the kids and was told my rendition was not nearly as good as Kate Winslet’s. (B+)
You’re Wrong About (The continuing OJ saga). This has become the show’s version of Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, with entire episodes dedicated to explaining mere minutes of the trial. I am here for it. (A)
Godzilla vs. Kong. I watched this after eating an edible and I think that’s the perfect way to do it. Monsters, roar! (B)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. One of my favorite Trek movies. (A-)
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Less popular with me and the kids than Wandavision. Occasionally fun but also kind of a mess, especially when it comes to the “moral of the story”. (B)
The Talk Show with Craig Mod. Every single second of this 2.5-hour-long conversation between Craig Mod and John Gruber felt like it was created specifically for me. (A-)
Rough Translation - Liberté, Égalité, French Fries… And Couscous. A follow-up to a classic episode about a French McDonald’s that was commandeered by its employees. (B+)
Unstoppable. The perfect movie. I wouldn’t change a thing. (A)
Pac-Man 99. A nice update to this venerable game. The kids dismissed it as “too hectic”. (B+)
Fortnite. The perfect game for introverts — you can actually win by cleverly avoiding crowds and then dealing with a much more manageable 1-on-1 situation. But also I am old and there are too many buttons on this controller. (B+)
Croupier. Young Clive Owen, wow. (B+)
HazeOver. Recommended to me by Mike Davidson, this macOS app dims background windows to help you focus on your work. (B+)
Titanic. Had to rewatch after Evan Puschak’s video about it. Still an amazingly effective blockbuster movie. (A)
For All Mankind (Season One). So many people have recommended this to me over the past year and I finally got around to watching it. I was hooked within the first 5 minutes. (A)
The Mitchells vs. The Machines. Entertaining and stylistically interesting. (B+)
NYC. So much to say about this city and the resilience of the people who call it home. Still undefeated. (A)
Throughline — The Real Black Panthers. Great podcast on the political agenda and strategy of the Black Panther Party. A natural companion to Judas and The Black Messiah. (A)
Frick Madison. They have like 10% of the world’s Vermeers in just one room! (B+)
The Whitney. Great to be back here to see the work of Dawoud Bey and Julie Mehretu. (A)
The outdoor dining situation in NYC. The city has to keep this and the pandemic pedestrian areas reclaimed from cars. More room for people, less room for cars. (A)
Fairfax. This is the sister restaurant to my two favorite places in NYC, both of which closed permanently because of the pandemic, and the first restaurant I’ve been to since March 2020. We ate outside, I had too many cocktails, and it was perfect. (A+)
Past installments of my media diet are available here.
Tags: books media diet movies museums music podcasts travel TV video
Photo by Laura Rowe. Wow. Evocative of Milton Glaser’s Bob Dylan poster. (via @mathowie)
Tags: clouds Laura Rowe photographyRick Steves’ travel shows and videos typically highlight the positive aspects of travel destinations in Europe and around the world. But more recently, he’s also been making shows about Europe’s unpleasant past. In 2019, he did an hour-long TV special about the history of fascism in Europe
Because Steves hosts a travel show, they visit some of the places where this history played out, including Nuremberg, Auschwitz, and Rome, talk to historians and tour guides, and discuss fascist and anti-fascist art, including Picasso’s Guernica.
And earlier this year, Steves made a similar show that focused just on Germany, embedded above.
Traveling across Germany, we learn how fascism rose and then fell, taking millions of people with it. Visiting actual locations — from Munich to Nürnberg to Berlin — we trace the roots of Nazism in the aftermath of World War I, when masses of angry people were enchanted by Hitler. We explore the totalitarian society Hitler built, and see the consequences: genocide and total war. Learning from Germany’s fascist story, we can recognize that hateful ideology as well as the tricks of wannabe dictators in our own age.
(via open culture)
Tags: Adolf Hitler Germany Nazis politics Rick Steves travel video WWIIAn AI tries to finish a 15-second clip of the Spice Girls' Wannabe in the style of Nine Inch Nails. [youtube.com]
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While he was filming the TV adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, director Barry Jenkins was also working on this piece, entitled The Gaze. It’s a 50-minute, non-narrative video portrait of several of the show’s actors dressed in their period clothes, wordlessly looking into the camera.
I don’t remember when we began making the piece you see here. Which is not and should not be considered an episode of The Underground Railroad. It exists apart from that, outside it. Early in production, there was a moment where I looked across the set and what I saw settled me: our background actors, in working with folks like Ms. Wendy and Mr. and Mrs. King — styled and dressed and made up by Caroline, by Lawrence and Donnie — I looked across the set and realized I was looking at my ancestors, a group of people whose images have been largely lost to the historical record. Without thinking, we paused production on the The Underground Railroad and instead harnessed our tools to capture portraits of… them.
What flows here is non-narrative. There is no story told. Throughout production, we halted our filming many times for moments like these. Moments where… standing in the spaces our ancestors stood, we had the feeling of seeing them, truly seeing them and thus, we sought to capture and share that seeing with you.
(via the morning news)
Tags: Barry Jenkins The Underground Railroad videoOh right, carmakers are probably going to charge vehicle owners by the hour for self-driving service. [teslarati.com]
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This video from Veritasium is a nice explanation of the mathematician David Hilbert’s paradox of the Grand Hotel, which illustrates that a hotel with an infinite number of rooms can still accommodate new guests even when it’s full. Until it can’t, that is. See also Steven Strogatz’s explanation of Hilbert’s infinite hotel and how Georg Cantor’s discovery of different types of infinities complicated the hotel’s hospitality. (via digg)
Tags: David Hilbert Georg Cantor mathematics Steven Strogatz videoEdgar Wright has directed a documentary on a band called Sparks, which was formed by brothers Ron & Russell Mael in 1967 and the trailer (above) hails as “your favorite band’s favorite band”.
How can one rock band be successful, underrated, hugely influential, and criminally overlooked all at the same time? Edgar Wright’s debut documentary THE SPARKS BROTHERS, which features commentary from celebrity fans Flea, Jane Wiedlin, Beck, Jack Antonoff, Jason Schwartzman, Neil Gaiman, and more, takes audiences on a musical odyssey through five weird and wonderful decades with brothers/bandmates Ron and Russell Mael celebrating the inspiring legacy of Sparks: your favorite band’s favorite band.
The Sparks Brothers will be in theaters on June 18.
Tags: movies music Sparks The Sparks Brothers trailers videoComing in Jan 2022 from @michaelharriot, Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America. [bookshop.org]
Who can do what through the where now? [phys.org]
What's the opposite of a Rube Goldberg machine called? [mobile.twitter.com]
A useful thread from @waxpancake about the crisis in Gaza [twitter.com]
Incredible fly-by video of Mount Rainier taken from a recent Delta flight. [twitter.com]
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This is a treat: artist David Hockney wordlessly flipping through one of his sketchbooks from 2019 for 6 minutes. For the first few minutes, I thought that some verbal annotation would be nice, but it’s actually perfect as-is — you can just focus on looking. (via open culture)
Tags: art David Hockney video