Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
In her last column for WaPo, columnist Catherine Rampell shares some advice for aspiring pundits. “Know your immovable principles and red lines — journalistically, ethically, ideologically — and why you’re columnizing in the first place.
After Paramount cancelled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert after he criticized the network’s $16 million bribe to Trump, David Letterman’s YouTube channel uploaded this 20-minute supercut of archival Letterman footage trashing CBS. That’s the stuff.
Wilmer Chavarria, a US citizen from VT, was detained for many hours by US immigration, who suggested his job as a school district superintendent was fake. Chavarria said the ordeal was “nothing short of surreal and the definition of psychological terror”.
In this video entitled Rush Hour, cars, pedestrians, and cyclists have been edited together to produce dozens of heart-stopping near misses.
Reminds me of the world’s craziest intersection, traffic organized by color, intersections in the age of driverless cars, and the dangerous dance of NYC intersections. (via colossal)
[This is a vintage post originally from Sep 2014.]
Tags: Fernando Livschitz · timeless posts · traffic · video
“We’re in a golden age of comedy now where everyone can say exactly what they want, free of the fear of censorship, except by the government. Donald Trump has made comedy legal again!”
Ozzy Osborne died today at the age of 76. His farewell concert a few weeks ago was the highest-grossing charity concert of all time, raising more than $200 million.
Follow Architectural Digest as they head behind the scenes at the offices of NPR Music to see how the now-iconic Tiny Desk Concerts come together. My favorite bits are the callouts of all the stuff on the shelves behind the artists: Adele’s water bottle, Sabrina Carpenter’s bedazzled martini glass, a Green Bay Packers helmet signed by Harry Styles. And: “Chappell Roan’s wig is actually sitting on Cypress Hill’s skull.”
Tags: Architectural Digest · music · NPR · Tiny Desk Concerts · video
Since 2004, new editions of the Choose Your Own Adventure books have included branching diagrams of all of the possible paths through the books.
Some madman/genius put cut, copy, and paste into Doom.
I love the look of this black & white animated video made by Anthony Dickenson from thousands of hand-painted frames for Rival Consoles’ song Soft Gradient Beckons. Stick around after the song ends for a behind-the-scenes look at how it was made.
If I plan too much, it’s often disappointing. It’s much nicer if I just let it go the way it wants to go. But obviously sometimes it just doesn’t work and, you know, that’s okay. Sometimes, the mistakes are the bits that really reveal kind of new techniques. I love these little moments of imperfection. Otherwise, you know, you might as well just build it in AI.
The skateboard dolly! (via colossal)
Tags: animation · Anthony Dickenson · art · music · Rival Consoles · video
XKCD mapped the most observed plant and animal for all 50 US states as reported by iNaturalist users. I had no idea bumble bees were such a popularly observed animal — the common eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) is most-observed in Vermont, Wisconsin, Maine, Connecticut, Illinois, and Minnesota. Also popular: white-tailed deer, bison, milkweed, honeysuckle, and robins.
Tags: maps · Randall Munroe · USA · XKCD