Did you know you can renew your US passport online now? The State Department is beta testing the new online renewal system for the next several months.

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New book out this fall: Comic Sans: The Biography of a Typeface. “Author Simon Garfield tells the story of how Comic Sans emerged from speech bubbles on educational software to become one of the most recognized — and reviled — typefaces on Earth.”

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For National Geographic, Tony Hale (who played Fear in Inside Out 2) talks to psychologist and author Dr. Lisa Damour about Pixar’s new film, her role as a consultant for the filmmakers, and what science says about the emotions in the movie. From The Kid Should See This: ...

This video catalogs every borrowed sample from Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, from the soundtrack to Car Wash to the Sugarhill Gang to the Eagles to the Ramones to the Beatles. They play the original first and then what they did with it on the album. Somehow this vi...

This maddening little web toy on vole.wtf challenges visitors to draw a perfect circle and judges them on how well they do. After dozens of tries with a mouse, I could only manage 92.9% perfection (which looks more like 80% tbh).

Then I tried it on a touchscreen and got much closer: 95.2%. Several more tries with an Apple Pencil bumped it up to 97.7%, after which I retired so as not to waste the entire rest of my afternoon on this.

And of course, here’s the classic video of Alexander Overwijk drawing a perfect freehand circle on the blackboard in about a second.

I love everything about this video — the way he swings his arm to warm up, his drying-the-blackboard flapping motion, and the ease of his perfection. 100.0%. (via sam potts)

[This is a vintage post originally from Oct 2019.]

Tags: Alexander Overwijk · timeless posts · video

TIL that the hieroglyphic hobo code probably wasn’t used as extensively as the internet suggests. However, hobos and tramps did tag bridges, water towers, and train cars with tramp writing, which usually consisted of their moniker (i.e. their hobo name), the date, and the ...

Bumblebee, honey bee, yellow jacket, paper wasp…what’s the difference? I don’t know if this comprehensive guide to Yellow Stripey Things is entirely truthful or not — a bumblebee is “actually a flying panda” and a yellow jacket “is just an asshole” — but it is pretty enter...

Art director Antonio Alcalá, one of four art directors employed by the USPS, talks a little bit about the history behind US postage stamps and how they are designed and produced.

[This is a vintage post originally from Dec 2016.]

Tags: Antonio Alcala · design · stamps · USPS · video

From Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence, a reminder of the rules of adjective order that fluent English speakers follow without quite knowing why. …adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. S...

This is a video of Nirvana playing Smells Like Teen Spirit in a small club just two days after Nevermind came out in 1991. There’s a freight train bearing down on those boys and they don’t even know it. (via digg)

See also The Notorious B.I.G. freestyling on a Brooklyn corner at 17 and LL Cool J plays to a mostly empty gymnasium in Maine…he was also just 17.

Update: And here’s 40+ minutes from the same show at which they played Drain You, Polly, and Breed. (via @fimoculous)

[This is a vintage post originally from Aug 2016.]

Tags: music · Nirvana · timeless posts · video

Speaking of DJ Shadow, his 2-hour Essential Mix that aired in early July is really hitting the spot right now.

[This is a vintage post originally from Aug 2016.]

Tags: DJ Shadow · music

From photographer Richard Silver, vertical panoramic photos of churches that emphasize their often incredible ceilings. (via ignant) [This is a vintage post originally from Oct 2015.] Tags: architecture · photography · religion · Richard Silver · timeless posts

This image was tweeted out by the NASA Europa Mission account the other day:

One of these images is of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon, and the other eight are frying pans. Can you pick Europa out? Hint: frying pans tend not to have impact craters.

Update: The photos of the frying pans were taken by Christopher Jonassen, whose work I featured back in 2011 (which I had totally forgotten about). At the time, I even joked about the pans looking like a Jovian moon. kottke.org is a flat circle. (thx, tony)

[This is a vintage post originally from Aug 2015.]

Tags: astronomy · Christopher Jonassen · Europa · Jupiter · NASA · space · timeless posts

Marvin Gaye’s isolated vocals on I Heard It Through The Grapevine. The man has pipes.

[This is a vintage post originally from Sep 2014.]

Tags: Marvin Gaye · music · video

Tom Chiarella shares his rules for giving a eulogy. It may hurt to write it. And reading it? For some, that’s the worst part. The world might spin a little, and everything familiar to you might fade for a few minutes. But remember, remind yourself as you stand there, you a...

I posted a video earlier today of a Super Cub airplane landing on the side of a mountain. Super Cubs are ideal for that undertaking because of their low stall speed and short take-off and landing distances. But I had no idea you could land and take off in one in the space of...

I’ve posted this before, but it’s so good, here it is again: a super-simple explanation of why differential gears are necessary in cars and how they work.

(via @stevenstrogatz)

[This is a vintage post originally from Apr 2013.]

Tags: cars · science · video

This is a five-minute video of Andy Warhol eating a Burger King hamburger accompanied by Heinz ketchup. The scene is part of a film done by Jorgen Leth called 66 Scenes from America. Leth had his assistant buy some burgers and directly advised him to buy some in halfway...

E. Berry Wall was a dude. But not just any dude. In 1888, he was declared “King of the Dudes” in a competition against another gentleman, one Robert Hilliard. Wall became famous after meeting Blakely Hall, a reporter hungry for good copy. Thereafter, every week or so, Hal...

In 1956, 96-year-old Samuel Seymour appeared on a game show called I’ve Got A Secret…his secret was that he saw Lincoln’s assassination when he was five years old. Mind-blowing…the Civil War & Lincoln’s assassination directly linked to something as modern as a TV game...