33 Letters for Ukraine: an Alphabet of Solidarity

33 Letters for Ukraine: an Alphabet of Solidarity

10:41 Add Comment

the letter K with sharp teeth

the letter A made from two people hugging

a letterform made from two doves

the letter B made from tiny flowers

a letterform of a character walking, holding a peace offering

A pair of Polish designers have organized a challenge for designers around the world called 33 Letters for Ukraine: to create letterforms of the Ukrainian alphabet “as a sign of solidarity”. Each day until April 6th, a new letter is chosen and featured on their Instagram account — you can see some of the work above. It’s Nice That has a piece on the challenge.

Speaking on the thinking behind 33 Letters, Alina says: “To put it briefly, we have two main goals for the project — promoting the Ukrainian alphabet and encouraging people to donate to organisations helping Ukraine. The Instagram challenge is an essential starting point, and we loved to see so many designers getting involved and expressing their solidarity by drawing the letters. But equally important are tangible results: collecting funds and education.”

To do so, they are hoping to sell original artworks and prints of the letters once the project has finished, and then they plan to exhibit all of the works as part of a fundraiser, though the venue is yet to be confirmed. “There are amazing designers taking part in the challenge, and it would be great to see their work shine also outside of Instagram,” says Alina.

(thx, jackson)

Tags: Ukraine   design   typography

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/heFC5OV
via IFTTT

Francis Ford Coppola Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films

07:19 Add Comment

Francis Ford Coppola, a legendary filmmaker no matter how you slice it, sat down recently to talk through his most notable films: The Godfather films, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and a new movie he’s working on called Megalopolis. I really enjoyed this. Some tidbits:

  • Coppola didn’t know anything about the Mafia before making The Godfather.
  • The studio did not want to call it Godfather Part II. And now explicit sequels like that are ubiquitous.
  • He praised the way Marlon Brando thought about ants and termites?!
  • I’d missed that Godfather Part III had been recently recut and rechristened “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone”, which is what Coppola wanted to call it all along.

And this is a great way to think about creative projects:

Learning from the great Elia Kazan, I always try to have a word that is the core of what the movie is really about — in one word. For “Godfather,” the key word is succession. That’s what the movie is about. Apocalypse Now,” morality. “The Conversation,” privacy.

(via open culture)

Tags: Francis Ford Coppola   The Godfather   film school   movies   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/Yo67sgH
via IFTTT
Four Quick Links for Wednesday Afternoon

Four Quick Links for Wednesday Afternoon

16:55 Add Comment

The Unskippable Opening Credits for Severance

13:56 Add Comment

After hearing a buzz from my social circle about Severance on Apple+, I’ve been catching up on it for the past couple of weeks. Here’s the series synopsis:

Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs.

I’m going to reserve judgment on the show for my next media diet post, but let’s talk about the opening credits sequence by Oliver Latta. It’s fantastic, an instant edition to the Unskippable Intros Hall of Fame. Mashable talked to Latta about his process and you can see a few behind the scenes images at Behance. And check out Latta’s other animations…you can definitely see where some of the imagery in the title sequence came from.

Now, back to the Unskippable Intros Hall of Fame. For me, the opening title sequences that I never ever push the “skip intro” button on are Succession (that music!), Stranger Things (again, that music!), Halt and Catch Fire, The Wire, The Simpsons (gotta catch that couch gag), Transparent, Six Feet Under, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, and The Muppet Show. What would you add to the mix?

Tags: Oliver Latta   Severance   TV   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/5HFIWgp
via IFTTT

The Giant Archive Hidden Under the British Countryside

11:55 Add Comment

This is very cool: Tom Scott (who you may remember from The Giant Chainmail Box That Stops a House From Dissolving) visits an underground storage facility operated in a working salt mine by a company called Deepstore.

DeepStore was set up in the 1990s because we’ve got the perfect atmosphere down here to store items. The salt creates a naturally occurring dry atmosphere. And of course with the racking, nothing actually comes into contact with the salt. Because this is relatively a shallow mine — we’re around 150 metres, 400-500 feet — and because of the salt bed, it has created this natural ambient temperature of 14-15° along with a relative humidity of 53-55%, which anybody in the archive and storage world knows, naturally occurring, that is absolutely fantastic.

I would love to see more video of just riding through the tunnels in that cavernous place…gonna have to poke around on YouTube to see what I can uncover.

Tags: Tom Scott   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/k9X5Fyt
via IFTTT
Two Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

Two Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

10:53 Add Comment
Impeccable Digital Recreations of TV Game Show Sets

Impeccable Digital Recreations of TV Game Show Sets

07:54 Add Comment

digital recreation of the set of Jeopardy!

digital recreation of the set of The Price Is Right

digital recreation of the set of Match Game

If you, like me, grew up semi-obsessively watching game shows from the 70s and 80s, you will get a big kick out of this. Photographer Steven Rosenow makes incredibly accurate digital renderings of the sets of old game shows like Jeopardy!, The Price Is Right, Wheel of Fortune, Match Game, and Family Feud, which he shares with a Facebook group called Eyes of a Generation. David Friedman shared some of these recreations in his newsletter. Here’s Rosenow’s notes on the Price Is Right set:

This was a fairly difficult set to model in 3D even though I had blueprints of the set to work with, as well as blueprints of CBS Studio 33… Assistance in this project was provided by the current owner of Door No. 2, who bought it from CBS when it was auctioned off.

I might have a new aspiration in life: to be “the current owner of Door No. 2”. (via waxy)

Tags: architecture   David Friedman   remix   Steven Rosenow   TV

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/2N58zQE
via IFTTT
Four Quick Links for Tuesday Noonish

Four Quick Links for Tuesday Noonish

09:55 Add Comment
Discover Modern Art with Each New Browser Tab

Discover Modern Art with Each New Browser Tab

09:55 Add Comment

I just switched my web browser to use the New Tab with MoMA extension. Each new browser tab I open contains another piece of art from MoMA’s collection. Here are a few things that have popped up so far:

screengrab of an artwork by Jacob Lawrence

screengrab of an artwork by Julie Mehretu

screengrab of an artwork by Beauford Delaney

screengrab of an artwork by Hannah Hoch

I’m really enjoying this so far…it feels like being in a slow-moving art history class all day long.

Tags: art   MoMA   museums

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/qBXnuxi
via IFTTT

Conspiracy Theorists Anonymous

07:54 Add Comment

Let’s listen in on a support group for recovering conspiracy theorists.

Hi, my name’s Terry and I believe that Matt Damon runs a network of underground tunnels beneath a pizza parlor in Washington DC to secretly vaccinate 5G towers.

Hi, Terry.

So, it’s been six days since I last posted anything on Facebook about lizards running the world.

But even the most hardcore members of the group don’t believe one of the most durable conservative tenets of American capitalism…

Tags: video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/rgCT1Fa
via IFTTT
Two Quick Links for Tuesday Morning

Two Quick Links for Tuesday Morning

06:54 Add Comment
Two Quick Links for Monday Afternoon

Two Quick Links for Monday Afternoon

15:53 Add Comment
The Wizard of Oz as an Allegory for the Presidential Election of 1896

The Wizard of Oz as an Allegory for the Presidential Election of 1896

14:53 Add Comment

I’ve never heard this theory before: L. Frank Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz as an allegory for the 1896 Presidential election, the central issue of which was the monetary concept of bimetallism. Quickly, from Wikipedia, a definition of bimetallism:

Bimetallism is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit is defined as equivalent to certain quantities of two metals, typically gold and silver, creating a fixed rate of exchange between them.

There was much debate in the run-up to the election over how to define the rate between gold and silver in the US. Here’s where The Wizard of Oz comes in:

Dorothy is whipped out of Kansas by a tornado with her little dog “Toto” (short for teetotalers, who made a loud noise yip-yapping but were otherwise ineffective political companions). On her way to the Land of Oz, Dorothy picks up her electoral coalition. First, the Scarecrow, representing western farmers. “He thinks that he has no brains because his head is stuffed with straw. But we soon learn that he is shrewd and capable. He brings to life a major theme of the free silver movement: that the people, the farmer in particular, were capable of understanding the complex theories that underlay the choice of a standard.”

Next, the Tin Man (or Tin Woodman). The working class man, once a true human, is now just a cog in the industrial machine. Piece by piece his human body was replaced by metallic parts. He is now little more than a machine, a heartless (literally) machine. The Populist hope of the era was a grand farmer-labor coalition that never quite solidified — and we still see residual evidence of this hope in the official name of Minnesota’s Democratic Party, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

The Cowardly Lion, then, was William Jennings Bryan himself. Capable of a great roar — his speeches were legendary — alas, to mix metaphors, he was all bark and no bite.

(via kyle westaway)

Tags: L. Frank Baum   The Wizard of Oz   books   economics   finance

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/MWoUOPA
via IFTTT
Introducing Cool Stuff Ride Home

Introducing Cool Stuff Ride Home

11:54 Add Comment

Hey folks, just wanted to let you know about a slight change in the lineup around here. The Kottke Ride Home podcast has been renamed Cool Stuff Ride Home and will no longer be affiliated with kottke.org. The show’s got the same format (15-20 minutes of interesting news & information each weekday, a linkblog in podcast form) and the same great host, just with a new name that more accurately represents what the show is about. You can find the podcast here, here, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

It’s been a pleasure to have the podcast as part of kottke.org for the last year and a half. Brian, James, and the crew at Ride Home Media were great to work with and I especially valued getting to know Jackson Bird — who knows, you might see something of him around here in the future. Good luck with the podcast!

Tags: Cool Stuff Ride Home   Jackson Bird   Kottke Ride Home   kottke.org   podcasts

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/962AhPx
via IFTTT
Six Quick Links for Monday Noonish

Six Quick Links for Monday Noonish

10:53 Add Comment
Slime Molds!

Slime Molds!

09:54 Add Comment

macro photograph of slime molds

macro photograph of slime molds

macro photograph of slime molds

macro photograph of slime molds

I have been a fan of slime molds ever since I read about them in Steven Johnson’s Emergence; they are fascinating. From a NY Times excerpt of Johnson’s book:

The slime mold spends much of its life as thousands of distinct single-celled units, each moving separately from its other comrades. Under the right conditions, those myriad cells will coalesce again into a single, larger organism, which then begins its leisurely crawl across the garden floor, consuming rotting leaves and wood as it moves about. When the environment is less hospitable, the slime mold acts as a single organism; when the weather turns cooler and the mold enjoys a large food supply, “it” becomes a “they.” The slime mold oscillates between being a single creature and a swarm.

In his ongoing series of photographs, Barry Webb captures these bizarre and exotic creatures. Yet another example of not having to look off-world to find alien life. (via colossal)

Tags: Barry Webb   books   Emergence   photography   Steven Johnson

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/PJ7Nfpj
via IFTTT

The Queen of Basketball Wins the Oscar

06:54 Add Comment

At the Oscars last night, The Queen of Basketball won the award for best documentary short. The film is about Lusia Harris, the only woman to officially be drafted by an NBA team. Here’s what I wrote about Harris and the film back in August:

Before this morning, I had never heard of Lusia Harris and now she’s one of my favorite basketball players. Playing in the 1970s, before the enforcement of Title IX in athletics, the 6’3” Harris dominated in high school, led a small university to three consecutive national basketball championships in the first 5 years of the program (while averaging 25.9 points and 14.5 rebounds per game), scored the first basket in Olympics women’s basketball history, is the only woman ever officially drafted by an NBA team, and was inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame.

Great to see this film win, but also bittersweet because Harris died only two months ago at the age of 66. The director is Ben Proudfoot, whose stuff I have been posting about since 2011. Really fun to see him be rewarded for his talent.

Tags: basketball   Ben Proudfoot   Lusia Harris   sports   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/WgXQ8UP
via IFTTT
Four Quick Links for Thursday Afternoon

Four Quick Links for Thursday Afternoon

15:54 Add Comment

Claude Monet’s War Paintings

15:54 Add Comment

This is another great episode of James Payne’s Great Art Explained on the work of Claude Monet, specifically the massive water lily canvases he completed before his death, created as “a war memorial to the millions of lives tragically lost in the First World War”.

Claude Monet is often criticised for being overexposed, too easy, too obvious, or worse, a chocolate box artist. His last works, the enormous water lily canvasses are among the most popular art works in the world.

Yet there is nothing tame, traditionalist, or cosy about these last paintings. These are his most radical works of all. They turn the world upside down with their strange, disorientating and immersive vision.

Monet’s water lilies have come to be viewed as simply an aesthetic interpretation of the garden that obsessed him. But they are so much more.

These works were created as a direct response to the most savage and apocalyptic period of modern history. They were in fact conceived as a war memorial to the millions of lives tragically lost in the First World War.

I’ve seen these paintings at the Musée de l’Orangerie — amazing to see them exactly the way in which the artist intended them to be seen.

See also Film of Claude Monet Painting Water Lilies in His Garden (1915) and Monet’s Ultraviolet Vision.

Tags: art   art school   Claude Monet   James Payne   video   war   World War I

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/ieHcfRl
via IFTTT
The Collected Photography of Roger Deakins

The Collected Photography of Roger Deakins

12:53 Add Comment

a dog jumps off of a wall onto the beach

a row of deck chairs sit empty in front of the ocean

an empty chair next to a James Bond sportscar

a seagull faces off with a wooden carving of a bear

It’s no surprise that the cinematographer responsible for some of the beautifully shot films ever made is also an avid and talented photographer. Roger Deakins, who won Oscars for his work on Blade Runner: 2049 and 19171 and shot almost all of the Coen brothers’ films, has published a book of his black & white photography from the last five decades: Roger A. Deakins: Byways.

Although photography has remained one of Roger’s few hobbies, more often it is an excuse for him to spend hours just walking, his camera over his shoulder, with no particular purpose but to observe. Some of the images in this book, such as those from Rapa Nui, New Zealand and Australia, he took whilst traveling with James. Others are images that caught his eye as walked on a weekend, or catching the last of the light at the end of a day’s filming whilst working on projects in cities such as Berlin or Budapest, on Sicario in New Mexico, Skyfall in Scotland and in England on 1917.

Artnet has an interview with Deakins about the collection and his photography.

Looking back through these photos, I wondered if my eye had changed, and I don’t think it has, really. The photographs I took back then are really quite simple; they’re pared down in terms of what’s in the frame. I guess that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

  1. Lol, I really want to see a Blade Runner: 1917 now…

Tags: books   movies   photography   Roger Deakins

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/Sh2Ny1k
via IFTTT
Three Quick Links for Thursday Noonish

Three Quick Links for Thursday Noonish

10:53 Add Comment

Aldous Huxley Narrates a One-Hour Radio Dramatization of Brave New World

09:53 Add Comment

For the radio program CBS Radio Workshop that premiered in January 1956, Aldous Huxley read a one-hour dramatization of his 1932 dystopian1 science fiction novel Brave New World. You can listen to it here or at Internet Archive:

A contemporary review in Time magazine noted the extensive production work that went into the production:

It took three radio sound men, a control-room engineer and five hours of hard work to create the sound that was heard for less than 30 seconds on the air. The sound consisted of a ticking metronome, tom-tom beats, bubbling water, air hose, cow moo, boing! (two types), oscillator, dripping water (two types) and three kinds of wine glasses clicking against each other. Judiciously blended and recorded on tape, the effect was still not quite right. Then the tape was played backward with a little echo added. That did it. The sound depicted the manufacturing of babies in the radio version of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

In addition to Huxley’s book, CBS Radio Workshop dramatized for radio the work of Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, James Thurber, and Mark Twain — you can listen to the entire run of the show here. (via open culture)

  1. In the introduction to the dramatization, Huxley himself calls the world of the book a “negative utopia”.

Tags: Aldous Huxley   audio   books   Brave New World   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/jZhqFgl
via IFTTT

Succession But It’s Arrested Development

07:53 Add Comment

You might have noticed that the two families in Succession and Arrested Development share some similarities — business-focused, rich, dysfunctional, sibling rivalry. Luís Azevedo explored the likeness with this video of scenes from Succession with music & Ron Howard’s voiceover from Arrested Development. So good. Also worth a look: scenes from Arrested Development with the music from Succession.

See also The Simpsons Parody of Succession and The Succession Theme Works Over Any TV Show Title Sequence.

Tags: Arrested Development   Luis Azevedo   Succession   TV   remix   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/Fm6XCEA
via IFTTT
Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

14:53 Add Comment
Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

12:53 Add Comment
Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

11:53 Add Comment
Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

10:53 Add Comment
A Collection of Unusual Geological Landforms

A Collection of Unusual Geological Landforms

11:53 Add Comment

a massive rock juts hundreds of feet out of the Earth

a small canyon cuts into the green earth

a vivid blue river meanders through a green valley

The Instagram account Geomorphological Landscapes features some of the more beautiful and unusual natural and geological features our planet has to offer, including inselbergs, caves, murmurations, ice balls, clouds, and river meanders. The account doesn’t stick to strictly natural wonders, but whatever they post is usually worth a look. (via dense discovery)

Tags: geology   photography

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/4cfhnoZ
via IFTTT
A Collection of Unusual Geological Landforms

A Collection of Unusual Geological Landforms

10:54 Add Comment

a massive rock juts hundreds of feet out of the Earth

a small canyon cuts into the green earth

a vivid blue river meanders through a green valley

The Instagram account Geomorphological Landscapes features some of the more beautiful and unusual natural and geological features our planet has to offer, including inselbergs, caves, murmurations, ice balls, clouds, and river meanders. The account doesn’t stick to strictly natural wonders, but whatever they post is usually worth a look. (via dense discovery)

Tags: geology   photography

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/4cfhnoZ
via IFTTT
A Collection of Unusual Geological Landforms

A Collection of Unusual Geological Landforms

09:53 Add Comment

a massive rock juts hundreds of feet out of the Earth

a small canyon cuts into the green earth

a vivid blue river meanders through a green valley

The Instagram account Geomorphological Landscapes features some of the more beautiful and unusual natural and geological features our planet has to offer, including inselbergs, caves, murmurations, ice balls, clouds, and river meanders. The account doesn’t stick to strictly natural wonders, but whatever they post is usually worth a look. (via dense discovery)

Tags: geology   photography

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/4cfhnoZ
via IFTTT
Three Quick Links for Monday Afternoon

Three Quick Links for Monday Afternoon

15:53 Add Comment

How Saturn Got Its Rings

13:53 Add Comment

Within the past 100 million years, an icy moon got too close to Saturn and the planet’s gravity ripped it apart, forming the iconic rings. This clip from BBC’s The Planets details how that happened, accompanied by some amazing photography from NASA’s Cassini mission.

I got this from The Kid Should See This, who shared some ring facts:

They are younger than the dinosaurs, they form a disk wider than Jupiter that averages just 9 meters (30 feet) thick, and thanks to Cassini, we now know that there are tall peaks rising as high as 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) from the planet’s B ring.

I’ve shared this story on the site before, but seeing the rings of Saturn through my telescope in my backyard as a teenager made a massive impression on me as to the scale of the solar system and humankind’s ability to understand it through science and technology. I still can’t believe you can see those rings with a cheap telescope or binoculars. Incredible.

Tags: astronomy   Saturn   space   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/C7JmSHd
via IFTTT
When Superheroes Graced Marvel’s Annual Financial Reports

When Superheroes Graced Marvel’s Annual Financial Reports

11:53 Add Comment

front cover of the 1991 Marvel Annual Report featuring several Marvel characters

front cover of the Marvel Quarterly Report for the 3rd quarter of 1991

a pair of interior pages of the 1993 Marvel Annual Report

Starting in 1991 and continuing through 1996, Marvel released their quarterly and annual financial reports to shareholders in the form of comic books. Columbia University librarian Karen Green writes:

Working with editor Glenn Herdling, and using the Marvel Method of story to art to dialogue, Fishman developed the plot, Herdling found some of Marvel’s best artists to pencil, ink, and color, then Fishman wrote the copy (conveying everything the lawyers and SEC demanded), and Herdling put everything together. And so, thirty years ago today, a slim four-page comic debuted, with a cover by legendary artist John Romita Sr. Inside, Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (sporting, appropriately, an accountant’s green eye shade) discussed net income, publishing revenues, and earnings per share.

The report caused an immediate sensation. No one had seen anything like it. Even more impressive was the subsequent annual report. A 36-page stapled book on glossy paper, it combined information in comics form, introduced by Uatu the Watcher, with updates on licensing, advertising, and more, along with traditional financial tables and text.

If you’re interested, you can score copies of many of these on eBay for under $20.

Tags: comics   finance   Karen Green   Marvel

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/S0jslq5
via IFTTT
Five Quick Links for Monday Noonish

Five Quick Links for Monday Noonish

09:53 Add Comment
The FBI Guide to Internet Slang

The FBI Guide to Internet Slang

09:53 Add Comment

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2014, the FBI released their internal 83-page guide to internet slang (most of which are initialisms and acronyms). The quality of the scanned document is very poor, but it’s (just) readable. A few of my favorite phrases gleaned from skipping around the report:

BMUS - beam me up, Scotty
EMFBI - excuse me for butting in
JC - Jesus Christ/just curious/just chilling
MOS - mom over shoulder
PS - photoshop/play station/post script
SMG - sub-machine gun
TOTES FRESH - totally precious
YOYO - you’re on your own
WYLABOCTGWTR - would you like a bowl of cream to go with that remark?

For their annual publication that they send out to their company mailing list, Pentagram recently made a far more legible and well-designed version of the FBI’s guide featuring some of their own favorites.

sample pages from Pentagram's FBI Guide to Slang

sample pages from Pentagram's FBI Guide to Slang with the initialisms BTW, ITII, and LWY

The booklet challenges readers to identify 14 abbreviations of varying difficulty and absurdity, with answers at the back. The acronyms are set in two custom typefaces designed by Pentagram partner Matt Willey, based on the markings that appear on the agency’s uniforms, particularly in popular media. The two fonts are fittingly named Edgar Sans and Clyde Slab in honor of longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his deputy and alleged lover Clyde Tolson.

Tags: design   FBI   language   Pentagram

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/KkRdXlf
via IFTTT
Sweeper’s Clock

Sweeper’s Clock

07:53 Add Comment

As part of his Real Time series of new clock designs, Maarten Baas created the Sweeper’s Clock, a timepiece where the time is indicated by hands made of trash that is swept around the face by a pair of cleaners sweeping for 12 hours.

I got this from Colossal, who also highlight Baas’s Schiphol Clock and Analog Digital Clock.

Tags: art   Maarten Baas   time   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/t04Vw2O
via IFTTT
Three Quick Links for Friday Noonish

Three Quick Links for Friday Noonish

12:53 Add Comment
Three Quick Links for Friday Noonish

Three Quick Links for Friday Noonish

11:53 Add Comment
Three Quick Links for Friday Noonish

Three Quick Links for Friday Noonish

10:53 Add Comment

How Galaxy Quest’s Thermian Aliens Were Created

07:53 Add Comment

In this short clip, the cast of Galaxy Quest looks back on how the speech, mannerisms, and culture of the Thermian people were developed. One of the actors came up with the voice in an audition and the filmmakers and actors just ran with it. (via digg)

Tags: Galaxy Quest   movies   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/YiKuNqa
via IFTTT
Two Quick Links for Thursday Noonish

Two Quick Links for Thursday Noonish

09:53 Add Comment

Brilliant Slowed Down 80s Pop Hits by Alvin & the Chipmunks

07:53 Add Comment

This is an oldie but a goodie: Brian Borcherdt took an album of 80s covers sung by Alvin & the Chipmunks (Walk Like an Egyptian, My Sharona, Always On My Mind) and played them at 16 RPM on a record player. The effect “revealed what was secretly the most important postpunk/goth album ever recorded”.

Every time I hear the version of “You Keep Me Hanging On” on this video I just collapse laughing because it sounds exactly like what would happen if The Afghan Whigs were given the sound of Peter Gabriel’s 1982 SECURITY. That opening! That’s f**king “San Jacinto” right there!

See also the same treatment given to a 1998 album of Chipmunks dance mixes.

Tags: Alvin and the Chipmunks   Brian Borcherdt   music   remix   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/Y9aB7Tw
via IFTTT
Surrealist Makeup

Surrealist Makeup

11:54 Add Comment

elaborate face makeup that makes it look like there's a slice of pie cut out of a woman's head

elaborate face makeup that makes it look like a woman has several eyes

elaborate face makeup that makes it look like a woman's face is made of blocks

elaborate face makeup that makes it look like there's a hole in the middle of a woman's face

Mimi Choi is a makeup artist who specializes in creating visual illusions — you can check out her work on her website or on Instagram. If you click into her individual posts on Instagram (like this one or this one), you can see how she does each look and also get freaked out when she starts blinking her real eyes and opening her hidden mouth and such. So cool!

See also Alexa Meade’s Living Paintings.

Tags: art   Mimi Choi

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/b3pXiZK
via IFTTT
Two Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

Two Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

11:54 Add Comment
Two Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

Two Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish

10:53 Add Comment

RCA SelectaVision, the Weird and Doomed Early 80s Video Record Player

08:53 Add Comment

I have to admit that about 3 minutes into this video, I was not entirely sure that the RCA SelectaVision, a vinyl record-based system for playing videos released in 1981, was not a made-up thing. I’d never heard of this contraption before, but apparently it was an actual product that got released into the world and was apparently pretty much a disaster, as you might expect.

This video, as well as parts 2 & 3 (below), is a pretty deep and entertaining dive into the SelectaVision and the Capacitance Electronic Discs it played.

(via open culture)

Tags: video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/7dmkJVE
via IFTTT
Four Quick Links for Tuesday Evening

Four Quick Links for Tuesday Evening

17:53 Add Comment

SNL on Amazon Go’s Grab-and-Go Shopping Experience

09:53 Add Comment

This short sketch from Saturday Night Live highlights how Amazon Go’s “grab-and-go” shopping experience (where you walk out of the store with your items without having to check out first) doesn’t work that well for all shoppers.

Back in 2016 when Amazon announced their new store concept, Xavier Harding wrote Amazon Go’s “just walk out” technology sounds like a headache for shoppers of color.

White people who have never been “randomly” followed around at a Walgreens may have no problem walking into a store, grabbing an item and leaving — like this guy in the Amazon Go promo video.

But shoppers of color, who already see enough unwanted attention, may have their doubts. Especially in a store where the employees are mostly there for customer service, as Amazon’s promo video suggests. They roam the store, stock shelves and hang out near shoppers.

Tags: Amazon   racism   Saturday Night Live   TV   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/0yPQAqc
via IFTTT

Why It’s Almost Impossible to Lose Anything in Japan

07:53 Add Comment

Japan’s lost and found system is legendarily good — millions of items are turned into local police stations by residents every year and most of those items make their way back to their owners (unless it’s a cheap umbrella). As this short video explains, there are a few reasons why the system works so well — the importance of the “societal eye”1 in Japanese culture is one of them.

The Japanese concept of ‘hitono-me’ or the ‘societal eye’ is an important part of the process. “Our internal morals usually help us modify our behavior, but so does the ‘societal eye.’” The culture prevents people from doing wrong, even without a police presence. “Japanese people care deeply about how other people view their behavior. So their attitude to lost property is tied to their image in society.” The moral discipline is upheld even in the face of natural disasters. “It’s often the case in Japan that when disasters happen, crime doesn’t go up. The only exception was the Fukushima disaster when we had cases of crime. So I think that the power of people’s eyes around us is far greater than the power of public authority.”

This article goes into more detail about why Japan’s lost and found system works so well. The comments on YouTube are full of people describing their experience w/ the lost and found system, many by foreigners who are stunned at the honesty. Here’s one:

This is really true. I lost my bag that had all our passports, laptops, money… everything. Somehow they managed to track it down 200km in Nagoya and bring it to me the next morning in Takayama. I offered to give them something as a token of my gratitude but they didn’t accept because this is considered normal in their country. Absolutely amazing.

  1. It is not quite the same thing, but “hitono-me” reminds me of Jane Jacobs’ emphasis on the importance in cities of having “eyes upon the street”:

    A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, out of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:

    First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.

    Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.

    And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.

    Almost no need to note here that “eyes upon the street” is a thing that almost does not exist in most American cities these days.

Tags: Jane Jacobs   Japan   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/lNf8egQ
via IFTTT
Two Quick Links for Monday Noonish

Two Quick Links for Monday Noonish

10:53 Add Comment
24 Years

24 Years

09:53 Add Comment

a collection of past designs for kottke.org

24 years ago today, I published the first post on kottke.org and, aside from a few weeks-long stretches (including a two-month paternity break when my son was born), I just never stopped. 1998! The late 20th century, for god’s sake. I write an anniversary post like this every year and I’m increasingly unsure how to think about the magnitude of that length of time — 24 years is just a few months away from being half of my life. Half. Of. My. Life. How? Why?!

In 2018, on the 20th anniversary of the site, I wrote a little bit about what I’ve gotten out of the site:

Some of my older posts are genuinely cringeworthy to read now: poorly written, cluelessly privileged, and even mean spirited. I’m ashamed to have written some of them.

But had I not written all those posts, good and bad, I wouldn’t be who I am today, which, hopefully, is a somewhat wiser person vectoring towards a better version of himself. What the site has become in its best moments — a slightly highfalutin description from the about page: “[kottke.org] covers the essential people, inventions, performances, and ideas that increase the collective adjacent possible of humanity” — has given me a chance to “try on” hundreds of thousands of ideas, put myself into the shoes of all kinds of different thinkers & creators, meet some wonderful people (some of whom I’m lucky enough to call my friends), and engage with some of the best readers on the web (that’s you!), who regularly challenge me on and improve my understanding of countless topics and viewpoints.

I had a personal realization recently: kottke.org isn’t so much a thing I’m making but a process I’m going through. A journey. A journey towards knowledge, discovery, empathy, connection, and a better way of seeing the world. Along the way, I’ve found myself and all of you. I feel so so so lucky to have had this opportunity.

I’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch for the past several months, both related to the site and not, and it’s so helpful for me to read that today, to be reminded of what kottke.org has given me and the special place it occupies in my life. I know some of you have been reading since the very beginning and others only for a few weeks/months, but I’d like to thank all of you for coming along with me on this journey.

And hey, while I have you here, I’d especially like to thank those readers who have supported kottke.org with a membership over the last five years — that financial support has allowed me to keep this site open and free for everyone to read, an increasing rarity in today’s subscription media environment. If you would like to join them (or if you’re a former member1 wanting to contribute again), step right this way.

  1. I discovered the other day that there are nearly as many former members of kottke.org as current members. That seems surprising to me, but I’m not entirely sure why…

Tags: Jason Kottke   kottke.org   weblogs

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/qp37iWF
via IFTTT

Experience the Lake District of Beatrix Potter

06:53 Add Comment

This is a really nice way to start the week: with relaxing bucolic scenes from the Lake District, a mountainous region in NW England that inspired the tales of Beatrix Potter. The lovely short film is part of an exhibition on Potter at the V&A.

The Lake District is a region and national park in Cumbria, North West England known for its glacial lakes and rugged fell mountains. Beatrix Potter eventually settled here after growing up in her ‘unloved birthplace’ of London, becoming an award-winning sheep farmer and respected member of the local community. When Potter died aged 77 on 22 December 1943, she left 14 farms and more than 4,000 acres to the National Trust.

Produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker and photographer Terry Abraham, this film captures intimate shots of the native wildlife that Potter would have sketched and later immortalised in her storybooks, alongside epic panoramic footage of its mountains and lakes, featuring locations where Potter lived, worked and admired.

Here’s an interview with filmmaker Terry Abraham about the film.

Over the last year or so I’ve been volunteering for my local red squirrel charity in the Eden Valley. Sadly, our beloved Squirrel Nutkin is on the verge of extinction within England and Wales thanks to the non-native grey squirrel brought in by the Victorians from North America. Little did they know that greys are immune carriers of a virus that wipes out red squirrel communities. Cumbria is the last major stronghold for Nutkin now and so along with many others I do my best to protect them and ensure their survival. Consequently, I’ve befriended many wild reds and can easily capture them on camera. Some even eat from my hand or sit by my side in the forest!

You can see some red squirrel footage starting right around 3:20 in the video. (via the kid should see this)

Tags: Beatrix Potter   Terry Abraham   video

from kottke.org https://ift.tt/azmcNT5
via IFTTT