Subscribe
Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
Featured
“If the Trump administration can get away with violating the Constitution because it knows the courts will be too slow to prevent it, then those constitutional rights simply no longer exist.”
“In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They’ll still charm your socks off.”
A few months ago, I wrote about Pee-wee as Himself, a two-part HBO documentary about the life and career of Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) that had then just premiered at Sundance. Now we’ve got a trailer and a premiere date: May 23.
It’s weird to be in this situation, having a documentary made, because I’m used to having control of my alter ego.
Tags: movies · Pee-wee as Himself · Pee-wee Herman · trailers · video
Randall Munroe notes that the typical path to getting a Ph.D. at an American college or university has changed somewhat in the past few months. In the alt-text for the image, he notes: “Rümeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street in my town one month ago.”
Öztürk is still being held without evidence and a federal judge recently ruled that she must be returned to Vermont while her detainment is being challenged.
Tags: crime · education · Randall Munroe · Rümeysa Öztürk · XKCD
As part of their Smithsonian purge, the Trump regime is dismantling and removing the Woolworth’s lunch counter (a key artifact of the Civil Rights Movement) from the NMAAHC and returning other artifacts to their owners.
I had no idea Logan was lousy with snowy owls. “Known as the ‘owl man of Logan airport’, the raptor researcher has caught and released into the wild more than 900 snowy owls that decided Boston Logan was their Boca Raton.”
Hmmm! Ken Burns & Lynn Novick are doing a 6-hour series on LBJ & the Great Society (to air in 2028). LBJ “voted against every civil rights bill during his tenure as congressman, then spearheaded the greatest civil rights measures since Reconstruction”.
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s 2019 sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, is getting a Hulu TV series of its own.
Boston’s MFA had been working on transferring their Benin Bronzes back to their land of origin. But instead, the wealthy donor of the bronzes is taking them back and the gallery will close.
Filmed at 780 fps with a Phantom Flex from the back of a moving SUV, James Nares’ Street depicts people walking New York streets in super slow motion.
The film runs 60 minutes (depicting about three minutes of real time footage), Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore did the soundtrack, and it’s on display at The Met until the end of May.
Update: Here’s another short clip of the full film from the National Gallery of Art.
[This is a vintage post originally from Apr 2013.]
Tags: James Nares · mesmerizing · museums · NYC · Thurston Moore · timeless posts · video
“Monarch Waystations are places that provide resources necessary for [monarch butterflies] to produce successive generations and sustain their migration.” Over 50,000 waystations (w/ milkweed & flowers) have been built by volunteers since 2004.
Timothy Ryback on Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs. “By seeking to ‘liberate’ Germans from a globalized world order, the Nazi government sent the national economy careening backwards.” Hmm, sounds familiar…
This is a visualization created on the screen of an oscilloscope by a musical piece:
Primer is an introduction to oscilloscope music, a genre and art form where vector visuals are formed by the music itself. The image is produced by using the left audio channel to control the beam on the X axis, and the right audio channel to control the beam on the Y axis.
Once I wrapped my brain around what was happening here, I found this to be quite an impressive achievement: creating beautiful & coherent visuals from non-discordant music. (via waxy)
Out today from chef, humanitarian, and activist José Andrés: Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs.
