I've gotta say that I was a little skeptical when Phil Edwards started out this video saying that he wasn't going to talk about Pac-Man's gameplay as a vital component of why it was such a huge success when in came out in 1980. He allows that, of course, the gameplay was very compelling but other factors truly pushed the game beyond the competition and into its own category, including the decline of pinball (profit per square foot), its family friendliness, and some legal & financial maneuverings.
Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn't. Erin Kissane asked folks why they had disengaged from Mastodon; they described reasons like a hostile response from regulars, poor discoverability, and too serious/boring.
A bleak account of a Greyhound bus ride across the US. "Gone are the small, clean, cheap motels in the centre of cities, gone are public spaces where anyone can find a water fountain, a bathroom, a place to nurse a cheap cup of coffee and human company."
Rules for design in the real world: "If it looks neat, people will want to take a photo with it. If it looks comfortable, people will want to sit on it. If it looks fun, people will play around on it."
The roots of hip-hop and rap are various and stretch back in time to the antebellum South and from there to Africa. But by some accounts, a song called Noah by gospel group The Jubalaires was the first instance of recorded music that sounded like rap. Listen for yourself...the relevant bit is right around the 35-second mark:
I'm not a music historian by any stretch, but that sounds 30 years ahead of its time. There are several bad remixes of Noah on YouTube...this one is maybe the best at pairing their singing with a rap beat.
The two-storey structure was based on the design of the "traditional caboose". A workspace sits on the first level while the second, accessible via a steel ladder, serves as a cupola for taking in views and functions as a "calmer zone for creative exploration and restoration".
The control panel that operates the rails was taken from a Burlington Northern locomotive, while the door colour and the wood used were directly informed by colours and materials commonly found on American trains.
The railroad ties for the track were repurposed from the Great Northern Railroad line, though the studio noted the steel tracks "are a much larger gauge than is typically used".
There's even a Wes Anderson connection (because of course there is):
Inspired by Wes Anderson's love of trains in cinema, Maxon Railway takes some visual cues in the form of on-board artifacts and props from The Darjeeling Limited.
You can read lots more about the house and the railway, including more than you'd probably want to know about the history of rail travel and commerce in the Pacific Northwest.
In 2006, photographer Mark Preuschl recreated Georges Seurat's famous impressionist painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte in Beloit, WI with a group of volunteers. Here's the original for reference:
In conceiving this tableau vivant, the organizers wanted to keep things modern. Thus, all participants are wearing contemporary clothes with umbrellas substituted in for the 19th-century parasols. Though the team was organized, they weren't quite prepared for what mother nature threw their way the day of the shoot. Preuschl recalls winds of 20 to 25 mph coming off the river, as well as clouds that didn't allow for the shadows they were so desperately looking for. Luckily, there was a window of about 25 minutes when the sun came out and cast those shadows.
He really couldn't have scouted that location any better...it matches the original pretty well. Who knew you could find Belle Époque Paris in southern Wisconsin?
Many things that were once true — that we didn't have adequate solutions, that the general public wasn't aware or engaged — no longer are. Outdated information is misinformation, and the climate situation has changed a lot in recent years. The physical condition of the planet — as this summer's unprecedented extreme heat and flooding and Canada's and Greece's colossal fires demonstrate — has continued to get worse; the solutions have continued to get better; the public is far more engaged; the climate movement has grown, though of course it needs to grow far more; and there have been some significant victories as well as the incremental change of a shifting energy landscape.
I don't think of myself as a climate doomer, but I certainly feel less hopeful about the situation than Solnit does. She asserts that the main obstacles to meaningful action on the climate crisis in the West are politics and capitalism, which is supposed to make readers feel hopeful. But that's the part that often fills me with despair. The unpopular extremist party that controls more than half of the politcal apparatus in the country with the biggest responsibility to fix the planet is not only not interested in doing so, they are actively working against it. And they've built up such a wall against public accountability that I don't know if protest (which they will make illegal if they can) or even voting (which they've fought to make more difficult) are meaningful levers with which to try and change the situation.
This is pretty cool: in collaboration with the British Museum, a team led by woodblock printmaker David Bull (who I first wrote about back in 20051) is carving woodblocks and creating prints from a series of previously unpublished drawings by legendary Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai.
The Museum has in their possession a group of drawings by Hokusai that were apparently intended for use in the production of a series of books. For reasons unknown to us now that project was cancelled, but the drawings survived, and we have selected 12 of them for a new subscription series.
For more details of the collection of images, please refer to this page of the British Museum website. But here, we can simply note that the drawings fall into a number of categories, and our set will reflect that diversity. Hokusai's series was intended to take his readers through aspects of Japanese historical culture, and we will meet Buddhist deities, warriors from ancient China, and historical landscapes, along with more prosaic scenes of the natural world.
The print shown above was the first one to be sent out in January. But look at this original drawing from the collection:
Wow. That is shockingly modern — like a 60s superhero comic or a still from 60s anime. I hope they reprint this one!
Here's a video from the British Museum of Bull talking about the project:
If you make woodblock prints for a living, you know the name Hokusai, and if you're a woodblock carver and you hear about original drawings from Hokusai that have never been carved into prints you would most likely do a little happy dance.
In 1910, a group of inexperienced climbers claimed to have summited Denali, the highest peak in what is now the United States. Their story was greeted with skepticism.
So when I found out that the first people to reach the highest point in North America (Denali, the mountain formerly known as McKinley) were just a bunch of Average Joes with no climbing experience who went up on a bet, I was flabbergasted. How had I never heard this story? The more I looked into it, the more fantastic the story became. When these guys descended from the mountain, nobody believed they really even made it. And they wouldn't be the first people to fraudulently claim to have reached the top, with no evidence to offer that they succeeded. This story has all the makings of a blockbuster action comedy. It's almost unbelievable.
But later evidence suggests that they just might have made it to the top.
Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project. "Although women participated in all aspects of the Manhattan Project, their contributions are either omitted or only mentioned briefly in most histories of the project."
In 1842, a French artist and scholar named Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey set out on a tour of the eastern Mediterranean to document sights and architecture via the brand new medium of photography. He started off in what is now Italy and continued on to Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and the Levant (which includes modern-day Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine). The daguerreotypes he took are the oldest surviving photos of those locations (aside from Italy). It's incredible to time travel back 180 years to see what these places looked like. (via aeon)
Colossal Is Taking a Summer Break! Colossal is one of my all-time favorite sites and it's great to see them stepping away for some time off.
I guess I care a lot about things like Futurama's collab with Fortnite now? *sneaks away from the computer to go get a Bender skin from the item shop...*
Vox talked to four television writers about how streaming and prestige TV have changed the financial picture for writers over the past 15 years, contributing to the writers strike that's been going on since early May.
Companies like Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+, and more have given consumers an unprecedented array of films and TV shows and opened the door to new voices that don't have to adhere to mainstream network formats. On the other hand, streaming has also changed how television gets produced, the role writers play, and how they get paid. We interviewed four television writers and showrunners about how streaming has changed how they work, how their incomes have taken a hit, and why it has become harder than ever to build a career.
I'm taken with the style of Jun Kumaori's illustrations — they look like drawings of (stay with me here) small JPEGs converted to GIFs and then clumsily enlarged, complete with all of the resultant digital artifacts. This makes me nostalgic for the late 90s web and Photoshop 3.0. (via the fox is black)
Hey folks. I'm trying to get into the habit of doing these media diet posts more frequently than every six months so they're actually, you know, somewhat relevant. Here's what I've been watching, reading, listening to, and experiencing over the last two months.
Deep Space Archives. Been listening to this album by A.L.I.S.O.N on heavy rotation while working recently. (A-)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Bulter. Bleak and powerful, science fiction at its finest. (A)
Asteroid City. I liked Wes Anderson's latest effort quite a bit. Not quite as much as The French Dispatch but more than many other folks. (A-)
Dunkirk. Rewatched for the 5th time. For my money, this is Nolan's best movie. (A+)
Beef. I wanted to like this but I only lasted two episodes. Not for me, YMMV. (C)
Antidepressants. It took a bit to home in on the right one, but even my relatively low dose has helped me out of a particularly low point over the last few months. (A)
The Diplomat (season one). Burned through this one in just a few days — an entertaining political thriller that doesn't take itself too seriously. (B+)
Ooni Volt 12. Ooni was kind enough to send me this electric pizza oven to test out, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've been having a lot of fun making no-fuss pizza. Need to work on my dough game tho. (A-)
Silo. This hooked me right away and didn't let go, although it got a little bit ridiculous in places. I'm eager to see where things go in season two. (B+)
Interstellar. Watched this with the kids and we all enjoyed it. The musical score does a lot of heavy lifting in all of Nolan's films but in this one especially. (A-)
The Age of Pleasure. My only complaint about this album from Janelle Monáe is that it's too short. (A-)
Barr Hill Gin & Tonic. The best canned cocktail I've had. And it's turned me into a G&T fan. (A)
VanMoof S3. *sigh* Figures that I finally pull the trigger on getting an e-bike and the company that produces it files for bankruptcy. No matter: this thing is fun as hell and has flattened all the hills out around here. (A)
Átta. You always know what you're going to get with Sigur Rós: atmospheric, ambient, abundant crescendos, ethereal vocals. (B+)
Air. Ben Affleck has a bit of a mixed record as a director, but this Air Jordan origin story is really solid and entertaining. Viola Davis is great as Michael Jordan's mother Deloris. (A-)
The Bear (season two). There are aspects of The Bear that I don't like (the intensity seems forced sometimes, almost cheesy) but the highs are pretty high. Forks was a fantastic episode. More Sydney and Ayo Edebiri in season three please. (A-)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Solid Indy adventure and I love Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the sidekick/partner. I know some folks didn't like the climax but seeing Jones get what he's always wanted was satisfying. (B+)
Rebranding beloved brands. Max? X? No. So dumb. (F)
65. Oh dear. Adam Driver needs to choose his projects more wisely. Interesting premise but the rest was pretty lifeless. (C+)
Pizzeria Ida. The pizza is expensive (esp for Vermont), the ingredients top-notch, and the service rude (if you believe the reviews). We had a great time and this is probably the best pizza you can get in VT; it wouldn't be out of place in NYC. (A)
Oppenheimer. Epic. Almost overwhelming at times. Don't see this on anything but a big screen if you can help it. Perhaps not Nolan's best but it still packs a wallop. (A-)
Barbie. I enjoyed this very much but found it uneven in spots. And no more Will Ferrell please. But it was great seeing people dressed up for the occasion — Barbenheimer felt like the first time since before the pandemic that you could feel the buzz in the audience, an excitement for what we were about to experience together. (B+)
Currently I'm reading American Prometheus (on which Oppenheimer is based) and Wool (on which Silo is based), so I'll have those reviews for you next time hopefully. I don't have a TV series going right now and nothing's really catching my eye. Maybe I'll dig into season three of (the underrated) The Great — I've heard it's back to top form after a s02 dip.
From natural rubber to hundreds of bands in a box, here's how a Japanese manufacturing firm makes rubber bands.
Fun fact about me: I always have a rubber band or two on my wrist...I've been wearing them for no particular reason since I was 17. So this video is right up my alley. (via digg)
When you apply power with higher-than-normal voltage to electric kids toys, they tend to move faster. When you apply 30V instead of the usual 2.5V or 5V, they move really fast:
This reminds me of when I was in grade school. Does anyone remember Stompers? They were battery-operated cars and trucks that were bigger than HotWheels and, while not remote-controlled, were able to move around under their own power. But they weren't that speedy...maybe they could do 1-2 mph.
Anyway, some kid at school figured out that you could remove the AA battery, connect wires to the battery terminals, and then connect those wires to as many C- and D-cell batteries as you could gang together in a series. So instead of the usual 1.5V, you could pump 4.5V, 6V, 7.5V, or even 9V into those tiny cars. And boy, did they go. We could barely keep up as we raced them against each other down the halls, running behind them holding our battery packs. But the thrills were short-lived — I think the school banned them and all that current burned the tiny Stomper motors out after awhile. Fun while it lasted though! (via waxy)
For the past 13 years, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has taught a class called Wealth & Poverty at UC Berkeley. He retired from teaching this year and has uploaded his lectures from the course to YouTube.
Welcome to my final UC Berkeley course on Wealth and Poverty. Drawing on my 40+ years in politics, including my time as secretary of labor, I offer a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s in the United States, and why this poses dangerous risks to our society.
This course also offers insights into the political and public-policy debates that have arisen in light of this inequality, as well as possible means of reversing it.
Here's the first lecture, What's Happened to Income & Wealth:
This is fun: Aqua's pop hit Barbie Girl, redone in the style of six classical composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Chopin, and Ravel. (via @Erikmitk)
To help celebrate 50 years of hip-hop, Cypress Hill visited NPR's studios to perform a Tiny Desk Concert.
While the term "pioneer" is used loosely in pop culture today, few terms describe Cypress Hill's impact over the past three decades more adequately. They are the first Latino hip-hop group to achieve platinum and multi-platinum status. B Real, Sen and producer DJ Muggs crafted a sound in the '90s that stretched beyond regional boundaries. It was dark, psychedelic and at times directly addressed mental health before the topic was commonplace. Many dismissed the group as "stoner rappers," yet the members were fervent advocates for the legalization of weed long before it came to fruition.
Really enjoyed this one...I'm not a particular fan of Cypress Hill but after this, maybe I am?
I've read The Wager (so good!) and have been wanting to dig into Matthew Desmond's book but most of the rest of these are new to me.
Right now, I'm reading Hugh Howey's Wool (after inhaling the first season of Silo) and American Prometheus (after seeing Oppenheimer last night) — I'm sensing a pattern here...
Long-time readers will recall that I used to link to Flash games pretty regularly. They were typically easy to play and hard to put down — I collected them under the addictive Flash games tag. The collective time and energy spent by kottke.org readers playing these games over the years is, well, I don't even want to take a guess. So, it is with regret for the rest of your workday that I pass along this site that contains playable versions of tens of thousands of Flash games, including many of the ones I've collected. Here are several that you might remember:
54 years ago today, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon and went for a little walk. For the 15th year in a row, you can watch the original CBS News coverage of Walter Cronkite reporting on the Moon landing and the first Moon walk on a small B&W television, synced to the present-day time. Just open this page in your browser today, July 20th, and the coverage will start playing at the proper time. Here's the schedule (all times EDT):
4:10:30 pm: Moon landing broadcast starts
4:17:40 pm: Lunar module lands on the Moon
4:20:15 pm - 10:51:26 pm: Break in coverage
10:51:27 pm: Moon walk broadcast starts
10:56:15 pm: First step on Moon
11:51:30 pm: Nixon speaks to the Eagle crew
12:00:30 am: Broadcast end (on July 21)
Set an alarm on your phone or calendar! Also, this works best on an actual computer but I think it functions ok on phones and tablets if necessary.
Back in 2018, I wrote a bit about what to look out for when you're watching the landing:
The radio voices you hear are mostly Mission Control in Houston (specifically Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke, who acted as the spacecraft communicator for this mission) and Buzz Aldrin, whose job during the landing was to keep an eye on the LM's altitude and speed — you can hear him calling it out, "3 1/2 down, 220 feet, 13 forward." Armstrong doesn't say a whole lot...he's busy flying and furiously searching for a suitable landing site. But it's Armstrong that says after they land, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.". Note the change in call sign from "Eagle" to "Tranquility Base". :)
Two things to listen for on the broadcast: the 1201/1202 program alarms I mentioned above and two quick callouts by Charlie Duke about the remaining fuel towards the end: "60 seconds" and "30 seconds". Armstrong is taking all this information in through his earpiece — the 1202s, the altitude and speed from Aldrin, and the remaining fuel — and using it to figure out where to land.
After my post about Soap Bubble Worlds yesterday, several people sent me this video of the rainbow colors that can be seen on the surface of and in the steam above a swirling cup of hot water. I was expecting a straight-forward visual display accompanied by some relaxing music (and that version does exist) but it also includes a fascinating explanation of where all these colors and swirls come from.
I have a friend who is an artist, and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "Look how beautiful it is" and I'll agree. And he says, "you see, as an artist I can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think that he's kind of nutty.
First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people, and to me too, I believe - although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions, which also have a beauty. I mean, it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there's also beauty at smaller dimensions. The inner structure, also the processes, the fact that the colors and the flower are evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting. It means that insects can see the color.
It adds a question: Is this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms that... why is it aesthetic... all kinds of interesting questions which the science, knowledge, only adds to the excitement, and mystery, and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.
Speaking of inexpensive time travel, listen as David and Ben Crystal perform selections from Shakespeare in the original accent, as it would have been heard at the Globe in the early 1600s. (via @KBAndersen)
[This was originally posted on September 9, 2013.]
The 2023 SCOTUS Awards. "As this court has repeatedly shown, there's no limit to its ability to astonish the nation by going beyond our ordinary fears."
British land artist Justin Bateman makes these incredible portraits of people and objects using small stones and pebbles he finds in locations around his home in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Each portrait is documented and then left to atrophy, either by rain, wind, or human/animal intervention.
This advertisement from Orange, the French telecom company, about the French national football team is one of the best commercials I've seen recently. I don't want to tell you too much about it because the impact of it comes from watching it, so just watch it and you'll see. And afterwards, you can read more about the ad here.
What I learned from taking a train across the US. "Will the United States ever catch up to the rest of the world when it comes to train travel, or are Americans stuck with an underfunded, inefficient rail network forever?"
The timeline of the far future artice is far from the longest page on Wikipedia, but it might take you several hours to get through because it contains so many enticing detours. What's Pangaea Ultima? Oooh, Roche limit! The Degenerate Era, Poincaré recurrence time, the Big Rip scenario, the cosmic light horizon, the list goes on and on. And the article itself is a trove of fascinating facts and eye-popping phrases. Here are a few of my favorites. (Keep in mind that the universe is only 13.75 billion years old. Unless we're living in a computer simulation.)
50,000 years: "Niagara Falls erodes away the remaining 32 km to Lake Erie and ceases to exist."
1 million years: "Highest estimated time until the red supergiant star Betelgeuse explodes in a supernova. The explosion is expected to be easily visible in daylight."
1.4 million years: "The star Gliese 710 passes as close as 1.1 light years to the Sun before moving away. This may gravitationally perturb members of the Oort cloud; a halo of icy bodies orbiting at the edge of the Solar System. As a consequence, the likelihood of a cometary impact in the inner Solar System will increase."
230 million years: "Beyond this time, the orbits of the planets become impossible to predict."
800 million years: "Carbon dioxide levels fall to the point at which C4 photosynthesis is no longer possible. Multicellular life dies out."
4 billion years: "Median point by which the Andromeda Galaxy will have collided with the Milky Way, which will thereafter merge to form a galaxy dubbed 'Milkomeda'."
7.9 billion years: "The Sun reaches the tip of the red giant branch, achieving its maximum radius of 256 times the present day value. In the process, Mercury, Venus and possibly Earth are destroyed. During these times, it is possible that Saturn's moon Titan could achieve surface temperatures necessary to support life."
100 billion years: "The Universe's expansion causes all galaxies beyond the Milky Way's Local Group to disappear beyond the cosmic light horizon, removing them from the observable universe."
1 trillion years: "The universe's expansion, assuming a constant dark energy density, multiplies the wavelength of the cosmic microwave background by 10^29, exceeding the scale of the cosmic light horizon and rendering its evidence of the Big Bang undetectable."
1 quadrillion years: "Estimated time until stellar close encounters detach all planets in the Solar System from their orbits. By this point, the Sun will have cooled to five degrees above absolute zero."
10^65 years: "Assuming that protons do not decay, estimated time for rigid objects like rocks to rearrange their atoms and molecules via quantum tunneling. On this timescale all matter is liquid."
10^10^56 years: "Estimated time for random quantum fluctuations to generate a new Big Bang, according to Caroll and Chen."
Read the whole thing, it's worth the effort. (via @daveg)
When you think of directors that have influenced Wes Anderson, you typically think of Truffaut, Godard, Scorcese, and Ashby. But as you'll see in this video of Anderson pulling out some recommended films from this Paris video store, his taste in movies is broad. There's Drunken Angel (Kurosawa), A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan), Vagabond (Varda), Birth (Glazer), Bridge of Spies (Spielberg), and Witness (Weir).
Of Spielberg, Anderson says:
If you make movies, if you direct movies, this is somebody who can help you. You looked at his movies for solutions. He usually found a way to do it right. He's one of my favorites.
20 ways to fancy up your food on a budget, including using parmesan rinds for extra umami, retain and use fats, lemon zest (acid!), and chili sauce (or chili oil). My addition (from Kenji): white miso paste for an umami punch. (via digg.com)
This, from XKCD, hits my science and design interests right in the sweet spot.
If you covered the surface of the Atlantic Ocean with twelve-point printed text, with the lines wrapping at the coasts, the expansion of the ocean basin due to tectonics would increase your word count by about 100 words per second.
This is a supercut of the final moments of the Titanic as represented in various films and TV shows, from 1912's La Hantise to a 2012 British TV series written by Downton Abbey's Julian Fellowes. It also doubles as a demonstration of the increasing capabilities and aspirations of filmmakers and their special effects teams throughout the years, although in terms of budget and effort, James Cameron's effort in 1997 marks the high point.
Greta Gerwig takes us on a whirlwind tour through 33 films that influenced the Barbie movie, visually, thematically, and in terms of plot/content. The influences include The Wizard of Oz, Rear Window, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Singin' in the Rain, The Godfather, Oklahoma!, 2001, and Saturday Night Fever.
Then, Saturday Night Fever, I always had a sense of wanting this to be a movie with an amazing soundtrack. Saturday Night Fever obviously has this incredible soundtrack by the Bee Gees. There's a documentary about the Bee Gees, and I'd seen it and was so touched by the Bee Gees, and I thought Barbie seemed so disco to me in her heart, because Barbie's sort of — and I will say this as a lover of Barbie and disco — a little bit dorky in the best way. Saturday Night Fever was a movie that was driven by music, but not a musical. I guess we're half of a musical.
Climate anxiety differs from many forms of anxiety a person might discuss in therapy — anxiety about crowds, or public speaking, or insufficiently washing one's hands — because the goal is not to resolve the intrusive feeling and put it away. "It's not a keep-calm-and-carry-on approach," Davenport told me. When it comes to climate change, the brain's desire to resolve anxiety and distress often leads either to denial or fatalism: some people convince themselves that climate change is not a big deal, or that someone else will take care of it; others conclude that all is lost and there's nothing to be done. Davenport pushes her clients to aim for a middle ground of sustainable distress. We must, she says, become more comfortable in uncertainty, and remain present and active in the midst of fear and grief. Her clients usually struggle with this task in one of two ways, she said: they tend to be activists who can't acknowledge their feelings or people so aware of their feelings that they fail to act.
Watching this video of a complex set-change for a play at the National Theatre in London reinforces the extent to which the crews of plays/movies/concerts/etc. are engaged in a high-level, precisely choreographed performance as much as the actors are.
Uh, the world's first salmon ATM? Located in Singapore, the machine "dispenses 200-gram fillets of frozen salmon from the fjords of Norway".
In this video from Architectural Digest, architect Michael Wyetzner runs us through why American diners look the way they do. Early diners took their cues from trains:
So let's take a look at a typical American diner. So the outside has a shape that's reminiscent of a train. In fact, that's how diners got their name. They're named after the dining car on a train.
Many of the design elements in a diner are based on the necessities of dining on a train in a railroad car, like booth seating and counter seating, and an open kitchen.
So I like these two photos because they show all the elements that go into the classic American diner. On the exterior, you have that stainless steel smooth curvature, you've got that Art Deco typography. And then on the interior you have the checkered floor, you have the booths, you have the globes, and you have the jukebox.
In the early part of the 20th century, trains were the dominant form of travel. If you look at some of the earliest diners, they were in fact, actual train cars that were placed permanently on the ground.
Later, cars and space travel provided inspiration in the diner's evolution.
A Third of North America's Birds Have Vanished. The bird population in North America has decreased by 3 billion birds in the past 50 years, "an absolutely profound change in the natural system".
The whitest paint ever just dropped. "The paint's properties are almost superheroic:" it reflects 98% of sunlight, reduces building surface temperatures by 8°F (up to 19°F at night), and decreases air-conditioning needs by up to 40%.
The impossible paradox of car ownership. "Cars are harmful to the environment, expensive, and loaded with negative externalities. But the individual benefits to low-income people are too great to ignore."
The Friar's Club was founded in 1904 and, like other private social clubs of the era, their membership was male-only. Women could visit as guests but only after 4pm and the club didn't admit its first woman as a member until Liza Minnelli in 1987.
One of the club's biggest traditions was its closed-door luncheon roasts of celebrities, which over the years included roasts of Humphrey Bogart, Johnny Carson, Milton Berle, Redd Foxx, and Bruce Willis.1 A few women were roasted before 1987 (Lucille Ball, Martha Raye, Barbra Streisand) but they were not allowed as guests. They even sent the waiters out of the room for the roasts.
In 1983, after months of planning, Phyllis Diller dressed up as a man (named Phillip Downey) and attended the roast of Sid Caesar (she's on the left in the photo above with her co-conspirator, Howard Rosen). Here are a pairof videos of Diller talking about her infiltration. To be fair, the Friar's Club didn't seem that mad at her because they roasted her just two years later.
In 2004, the club roasted Donald Trump (roastmaster was Regis Philbin) and the next year Trump served as roastmaster for Don King. What a weird time/place/thing.↩
If you were left hungry by the food in season two of The Bear, Binging With Babish has got you covered. In this video, he recreates the potato chip omelette that Sydney makes in the second-to-last episode of the season. And then, he makes an adjacent dish, José Andrés's tortilla española with potato chips. Just to contrast, here's Andrés making it:
For the last few years, Amazon has spent a couple of summer days putting a bunch of their most popular items on sale for their Prime members. This year, Prime Day runs from July 11-12 and includes a number of things that I can personally recommend (or are currently coveting). Keep in mind that you need to be an Amazon Prime member to take advantage of these deals: here's where you sign up for Prime if you're interested (there's a free 30-day trial).
The 13" M1 Macbook Air is on sale for for $750...that's 25% off the list price. This is the exact computer I'm using right now and I love it. Still feels super quick and powerful, even a few years after it was released.
Moving on from Apple to Play-Doh. You heard me! 24 cans of Play-Doh for $14.49, who can resist? That smell still takes me right back to when I was a kid...
I have too many plants to take care of these days, but this hydroponic indoor garden (70% off!) sure is tempting. (I am almost positive your weed plant needs more light than this? And actual soil? But do some research...maybe it'll work? 🤪)
KitchenAid's smaller 3.5 Qt. Stand Mixer, which is lighter and takes up less counter space in smaller kitchens, is on sale for $260 (32% off).
Ok that's all I've got, but if you don't see anything here that interests you, your best bet is to head over to Amazon's Prime Day page and start digging around. I know there's a bunch more deals on things like kitchen items, TVs, fashion, tech products, and beauty products. Good luck!
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