The 25 Most Influential Magazine Covers of All Time, including, of course,...
The 25 Most Influential Magazine Covers of All Time, including, of course, Ali on the cover of Esquire as Saint Sebastian. See also all the nominated covers.
Instead of hiding rips and tears, the visible mending movement turns them...
Instead of hiding rips and tears, the visible mending movement turns them into art. “Born from the Japanese art of sashiko, visible mending enables crafters to eschew fast fashion and make mistakes beautiful.”
Litestream v0.5.0 is Here
Litestream v0.5.0 is Here
I've been running Litestream to backup SQLite databases in production for a couple of years now without incident. The new version has been a long time coming - Ben Johnson took a detour into the FUSE-based LiteFS before deciding that the single bina...
Old Masters, New Media
In a five part series called “emoji-nation”, Ukrainian Nastya Ptichek mixes the work of well-known painters with graphical elements of new media. In the second part of the series, the works of Edward Hopper are augmented with social media interface icons:
The first part finds emoji doppelgangers for works of fine art while the third part uses paintings as movie poster imagery for the likes of Kill Bill and Home Alone (paired with Munch’s The Scream). For part four, Ptichek places modal dialogs over art works:
And part five plays around with several Google interface elements:
Love this kind of thing. Feels like I’ve seen something like it before though. Anyone recall?
[This is a vintage post originally from Apr 2014.]
Tags: art · Nastya Ptichek · remix · timeless posts
‘Fuck You, Make Me’
John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, uh, last week, regarding Disney’s initial (but brief) caving to Trump’s demands that they suspend or even fire Jimmy Kimmel for his having the temerity to mock the mad king for being a sociopathic ghoul sliding into the depths of dementia:
...
Radiolab
• WNYC Studios
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl
This is the story of a three-year-old girl and the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court case Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is a legal battle that has entangled a biological father, a heart-broken couple, and the tragic history of Native American children taken from th...
When Kittens Came to My Prison, I Had Not Petted One in...
When Kittens Came to My Prison, I Had Not Petted One in 15 Years. “All those hard cases doing hard time melt like butter on a summer sidewalk when they visit the felines, feed them, watch them chase the birds and bees…”
Sora 2 prompt injection
It turns out Sora 2 is vulnerable to prompt injection!
When you onboard to Sora you get the option to create your own "cameo" - a virtual video recreation of yourself. Here's mine singing opera at the Royal Albert Hall.
You can use your cameo in your own generated videos, an...
MLB Average Game Time Under Three Hours for Third Straight Year
mlb.com/news/mlb-average-game-time-under-three-hours-third-straight-year
Jason Foster, reporting for MLB.com:
Nine-inning games during the 2025 season have, on average, clocked
in at 2 hours, 38 minutes through Thursday, marking the third
straight season in which the average game time was 2:40 or
shorter.
Regular Season nine-inning @MLB g...
A Chronology of All 113 Prints of Hokusai’s The Great Wave
A few years ago, a researcher looked at every surviving print of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa that she could find (113 in all) and, using differences caused by “woodblock wear”, developed a system for determining if a particular print was made early in the life of...
Are you ok? In a recent video, Hank Green tells his brother...
Are you ok? In a recent video, Hank Green tells his brother John: I’ve Not Been Doing Well. Lots of what Green says here resonates with me.
Quentin Blake: How I Draw
Illustrator Quentin Blake, who is most widely known for his energetic drawings for Roald Dahl’s books, generously shares his drawing process on his website and also in a series of videos.
I do a freewheeling sort of drawing that looks as though it is done on the spur of the moment. However even a single drawing needs a certain amount of preparation and planning. Most of the time I need to do a rough in which I find out how people stand, what sort of expressions they have and how they fit on the page.
Here are some of the videos he’s done. Quentin Blake draws a Hornswoggler:
Ten Minutes of Illustration (in three parts for some reason):
The illustration above is from The Wild Washerwomen.
Tags: art · books · how to · illustration · Quentin Blake
The official number of exoplanets tracked by NASA has reached 6000. Astronomers...
The official number of exoplanets tracked by NASA has reached 6000. Astronomers have found “planets covered in lava; some with the density of Styrofoam; and others with clouds made of gemstones”.
Musician Plays the Last Stradivarius Guitar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made...
Musician Plays the Last Stradivarius Guitar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679. I had no idea Stradivari made guitars.
A company called Blackdot has built a tattooing robot. The company says...
A company called Blackdot has built a tattooing robot. The company says the machine is less painful and the tattoos look like they are laser-printed.
Folder Quick Look
New Mac app from Martin Lexow, the developer behind App Ahead (which offers a slew of good and intriguing Mac apps):
Preview folder and archive contents (ZIP, RAR, and more) instantly in macOS Quick Look. Just select a folder and press the Space bar.
It’s just that simple. Install it from the Mac App Store — free of charge — and you can Quick Look inside archives and folders. Looks, feels, and works like a feature that ought to be built into the Finder itself. Cool.
Have I Earned It?
Craig Mod is off on another of his long walks of Japan and is writing a pop-up newsletter (subscribe!) along the way. I am feeling this bit from his first missive recently:
To have a day like today feels a bit selfish, even more so after having met Vlad. He wonders, always wonders, if he has earned it. The time alone, the steps, the little interactions, the looking closely at the world. He takes it, he’ll take whatever he can get whenever, and try to be as grateful as possible. What else is there? Tiny men with big sticks upend sanity the world ‘round and all you can do is try to find your footing and push back.
Tags: Craig Mod
U.K. Makes New Attempt to Access Apple Cloud Data — This Time, iCloud Backups of U.K. Citizens
Anna Gross and Tim Bradshaw, reporting for the Financial Times (updated link to a syndicated version at Ars Technica, outside the FT’s parsimonious paywall):
The UK government has ordered Apple to allow access to encrypted
cloud backups of British users, after a previous...
Adobe Premiere Ships for iPhone and iPad
news.adobe.com/news/2025/09/adobe-premiere-now-delivers-fast-pro-quality-video-editing-mobile
Adobe:
Today, Adobe announced that the company is bringing its industry
leading Adobe Premiere video editor to mobile in a powerful new
iPhone app that empowers creators to make pro-quality video
on the go. The Adobe Premiere mobile app makes it fast,
free and intuitive ...
A new kind of bone glue that “mimics how oysters stick to...
A new kind of bone glue that “mimics how oysters stick to underwater surfaces” can bond bone fragments together in 2-3 minutes, “even in blood-rich areas where most adhesives fail”.