Ok, I think I have to move back to NYC (at least for Sept.) because this Big & Loud series sounds amaaaazing: films like Lawrence of Arabia, Close Encounters, 2001, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Matrix, Fury Road, etc. in 70mm + Dolby Atmos. Wow!
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The Evolution of How Rappers Construct Their Rhymes
In this video, Vox’s Estelle Caswell and Martin Conner break down how rappers construct their rhymes and how it’s changed and evolved since rap’s early days. As someone who doesn’t know a whole lot about music and even less about rapping but appreciates both, this was super entertaining and informative.
[This is a vintage post originally from May 2016.]
Tags: Estelle Caswell · Martin Conner · music · timeless posts · video
Your Zodiac Sign Is 2,000 Years Out of Date. “Over millennia, our...
Your Zodiac Sign Is 2,000 Years Out of Date. “Over millennia, our view of the stars has shifted, because of Earth’s wobble. It may be time to rethink your sign.” (I actually wrote about this 26 years ago.)
Reviews of the best mp3 players you can buy in 2025. “MP3...
Reviews of the best mp3 players you can buy in 2025. “MP3 players — or digital audio players, as they should more accurately be called — are seeing a small resurgence…”
Why AI Narrators Will Never Be Able to Tell a Real Human...
Why AI Narrators Will Never Be Able to Tell a Real Human Story. “Narrating audiobooks today is the closest thing to that primal art form. One person, one voice, spinning a tale for another.”
Objects From Films
Artist and poet Marcus Merritt draws objects from films — the TV above is from E.T. and the payphone is from Terminator 2.
I very much dig the spare illustration style here. (via waxy)
Tags: art · Marcus Merritt · movies
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Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape. “Recently, disposable vapes have gotten...
Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape. “Recently, disposable vapes have gotten more advanced”; some have USB-C and rechargeable batteries.
Dataguessr. “This game is inspired by the work of Gapminder and Our...
Dataguessr. “This game is inspired by the work of Gapminder and Our World in Data. It uses data to give you a better understanding of the state of the world.”
TypePad is closing down at the end of the month and Phil...
TypePad is closing down at the end of the month and Phil Gyford has shared the process for downloading a TypePad blog (so that you can turn it into “a pretty self-contained ‘static HTML’ site”).
Coulou’s Vinyl Cafe (No. 1)
This is not some AI-generated to-study-to jazz video; it’s a guy who really likes jazz playing a bunch of records from his extensive collection.
over the years i’ve built a small but reallllly incredible and meaningful record collection, spanning from jazz, classical, a ...
Defiant nuns flee care home for their abandoned convent in the Alps....
Defiant nuns flee care home for their abandoned convent in the Alps. “‘Before I die in that old people’s home, I would rather go to a meadow and enter eternity that way,’ said Sister Bernadette.” (Someone get a screenplay going on this…)
Karen Attiah: “The Washington Post Fired Me”
Former Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Attiah this morning on Bluesky: “I’ve been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting.” Until the Post’s relatively recent shift towards the right, Attiah had been a pivotal figure at the paper:...
Radical Neighbouring. “The food from this place has been offered as a...
Radical Neighbouring. “The food from this place has been offered as a gift to the neighbours and strangers who find their way here. Welcome to the farm where nothing is for sale.”
How to Navigate a City Without Street Addresses
Direcciones is a short documentary about how giving directions works in Costa Rica, where “a centralized system for street addresses does not exist”. Instead, people use landmarks as reference points when giving directions. Here’s a postal worker talking about how some sen...
How Albert Einstein Used His Fame to Denounce American Racism. “As a...
How Albert Einstein Used His Fame to Denounce American Racism. “As a target of anti-Semitism…the Jewish scientist was well aware of the harm that discrimination inflicts, and sought to use his platform to speak out against the mistreatment of others.”
David Friedman on how he created a fun little game called Doomscroll....
David Friedman on how he created a fun little game called Doomscroll. “I’m not a coder, but I enjoy how vibe coding lets me turn an idea into something real. So naturally, I turned to vibe coding for this. It didn’t work.”
The Hive Architect: Saving Britain’s Wild Bees
The Hive Architect is a short documentary about honey bee conservationist Matt Somerville and the log hives he builds to house wild bees.
There is a widely held theory that our British honey bee couldn’t exist without being domesticated by beekeepers. However, for bee co...
A collection of newspaper front pages from around the world. (See also...
This YouTube channel has a bunch of 40-60 minute DJ mixes of...
This YouTube channel has a bunch of 40-60 minute DJ mixes of jazz vinyl. The videos have names like “Jazz Kissa”, “Velvet Night”, “Elegant Morning”, and “Breezy Noon”.
Enjoyed these thoughts from food critics about what they’d like to see...
Enjoyed these thoughts from food critics about what they’d like to see more of (“simple foods broken down and made perfect”) and less of (“caviar, truffles, Wagyu and uni in the wrong places”) in restaurants.
Rogue Rattlesnake Removed from Grand Isle. This is such a Vermont story...
Rogue Rattlesnake Removed from Grand Isle. This is such a Vermont story — the woman who found the snake “sat for 30 minutes, until these rangers arrived, doing my loving-kindness meditation, trying to just send peace to this snake”.
I Planted a Forest Four Years Ago
Four years ago, Beau Miles planted 1440 trees in 24 hours. Recently, he went back to see how they were doing; those trees are a bonafide forest now.
In 2021 I planted a tree a minute, for 24 hours, on my mates farm. It was freakin hard work, but also one of the coolest, m...
Watching the highlights of the recent GeoGuessr world championships is wild; competitors...
Watching the highlights of the recent GeoGuessr world championships is wild; competitors nailing the exact coordinates of Street View locations in a matter of 30-60 seconds is just bonkers.
Tycho’s Burning Man Sunrise Set for 2025
I needed some new bouncy/chill music today and Tycho’s sunrise DJ set from this year’s Burning Man is doing the trick. I also ran across this playlist with 190 DJ sets from Burning Man this year containing 305 hours of music.
(via @mikeakers.bsky.social)
A new book from photographer Sally Mann: Art Work: On the Creative...
A new book from photographer Sally Mann: Art Work: On the Creative Life. I really enjoyed Mann’s previous book, Hold Still.
The Amazing Art of the Video Game Marquee
Dan Sinker recently visited an arcade full of old school vintage arcade games and documented some of the wonderful typography and design of the game cabinet marquees.
After a while though, I became captivated not by the games themselves but by the incredible art on th...
Defector is celebrating its fifth anniversary. “This is a website run by...
Defector is celebrating its fifth anniversary. “This is a website run by people who want to speak — plainly, honestly, passionately — to an audience that we acknowledge as people rather than metrics.” 🎉
Aubrey Hirsch is an eternal optimist. In her latest comic, she writes/draws...
Aubrey Hirsch is an eternal optimist. In her latest comic, she writes/draws about “freaking the hell out” about the current political situation and the limits of optimism.
You Need to Be Bored. Here’s Why.
Here’s a short video by Arthur Brooks (that you are probably watching on your phone) about why you should log off, put your phone down, and let yourself be bored.
You need to be bored. You will have less meaning and you will be more depressed if you never are bored. I mean, it couldn’t be clearer.
See also In Praise of Boredom, In Defense of Boredom, and “Boredom: the great engine of creativity”.
Tags: Arthur C. Brooks · video
“A growing number of scientists believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may instead...
“A growing number of scientists believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may instead be subtly altering our immune systems.” Is Covid-19 to blame for “the global surge in non-covid infections”?