Unseen Places: Rediscovering the Art of Observation by Anna Kodé. Looking forward to this one…Kodé is one of my favorite journalists covering urban culture. “Observation…is not a passive act, but a powerful and radical way of connecting…”
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Every US Electrical Outlet Explained
This video from Practical Engineering was very illuminating to me, a naive person who thought there were only three types of electrical outlets used in the US — the two-prong, the three-prong, and the 240V — and not the real number, which is more than 35 types of electrical outlets! Oh and “two-prong”? Not that plug’s actual name! (via unsung)
Tags: electricity · engineering · video
Japanese book rave. A club in Tokyo spread carpets on the...
Japanese book rave. A club in Tokyo spread carpets on the dance floor, played ambient music, and invited daytime clubgoers to chill out and read. Would 100% frequent a bookstore/cafe that did this regularly.
Weball allows you to roll up websites into a Katamari...
Weball allows you to roll up websites into a Katamari ball. You can even roll up KDO. This is too much fun. See also Destroy Any Website.
Is This Weird Quiz Game the Toughest F1 Video Game Ever?
It might be that this text-only quiz game from 1993 is the most challenging F1 video game of all time. Here are a couple of the 23 questions from Gerhard Berger’s Formula 1 Quiz:
3. Which team was the best in the 80’s?
Statistically, it’s McLaren, but that’s not a correct ...
I just went down a rabbit hole of incense seals. So cool.
I just went down a rabbit hole of incense seals. So cool.
Bill McKibben: I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We...
Bill McKibben: I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This. The human nervous system wasn’t designed for the polycrisis. “Among all the other dangers these developments represent, they’re simply wearing us out.”
In 1996, the Blondin family drove all around the US,...
In 1996, the Blondin family drove all around the US, blogging about it all before “blog” was even a word. “We were doing something that had no name and no manual, and we were doing it over a dial-up modem while living in a motorhome.”
Chasing a Plane Across the Moon
Agustín Ferrando Trenchi became a little obsessed with the moon as a kid. As an adult, he’s taken tons of photos and hundreds of hours of footage of the moon. After seeing an airplane fly close to the moon while he filmed, Trenchi began a quest to capture a plane flying acro...
Abolish Frat Culture. “This is going to be uncomfortable...
Abolish Frat Culture. “This is going to be uncomfortable for anyone with a kid in a fraternity to hear: If your son finds himself in a group that would send a ‘free pussy’ text, it’s too late. The group is the disease, the text is the symptom.”
Any Human Ever randomly picks an average person from some...
Any Human Ever randomly picks an average person from some point in human history and tells you about what their life was like. Mine was a woman born in 1547: “Of all the sounds of her life, the loudest were thunder and the church bells.”
Mamdani’s “Richard Scarry Socialism” Can Make City Life...
Mamdani’s “Richard Scarry Socialism” Can Make City Life Simple Again. “It is an astonishing indictment of our times that the cities of our picture books can seem like a radical utopia.”
Bertrand Russell Shows How to Respond to Fascists Who Want to Debate
Late in his life, the prominent English mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was subject to an attempt in the early 1960s by Oswald Mosley to provoke him into a debate about the merits of fascism. Before WWII, Mosley had founded the British Union of Fascists. BUF h...
The Global Rise of Electoral Dictatorships. Is the U.S....
The Global Rise of Electoral Dictatorships. Is the U.S. Next? “Electoral dictators — who identify as presidents and prime ministers — hold uncompetitive and unfair elections after aggressively suppressing political opponents.”
A short (too short?) video from Little White Lies on...
A short (too short?) video from Little White Lies on designer Saul Bass and his influence on the art of movie title design. They also did videos on Pablo Ferro and Kyle Cooper.
Great Deals on Apple Stuff Today
Just wanted to dip in here to say that Amazon is running another one of their sales for Prime members, which can be a great opportunity to upgrade some tech items at lower prices, especially with the price increases we’ve seen recently. Just a couple of quick things:
Th...
“Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that...
“Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon, died Sept. 30 in Cambridge, Mass. She was 90.”
Where in the world are typefaces being designed? The US,...
Where in the world are typefaces being designed? The US, Germany, and France…but also the UK, Netherlands, and Indonesia.
Wildwood
Laika is the stop-motion animation studio that made Coraline & Kubo and the Two Strings. Their newest film, Wildwood, looks pretty incredible; have a look at the trailer.
Creative Boom recently highlighted some of the process behind the film, which is heavily dependen...
AI-generated images don’t have to look like AI-generated...
AI-generated images don’t have to look like AI-generated images…they can be any style you want. (It’s just going to get more and more difficult to tell…)
In 2005, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory calculated that...
In 2005, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory calculated that the water stored by China’s huge Three Gorges Dam is enough to increase the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds and move the North pole by 0.8 inches. (A 9.1 earthquake had a bigger impact.)
Lots and Lots and Lots of Control Panels
To go along with my recent post about control rooms, here’s the Control Panels group on Flickr, containing almost 3000 photos of control interfaces for all kinds of things.
You’ll see some of the same photos as in the Control Rooms group, but when you get past the first couple of pages, there’s more variety: fiddly knobs, entire walls of nearly identical switches, dials, inscrutable gauges, soda machine interfaces, bump it and you might die buttons, computers with switches, Swinging Fingers (!!), and many more…
How much Gorton did you spot?
Tags: design · photography
The Job Trail, a web game about making it through 52...
The Job Trail, a web game about making it through 52 weeks as a laid-off creative worker. Based on The Oregon Trail. My first try: “You have died of burnout. Week 13. 51 applications, 1 ghosting.”
Blue Planet III
BBC Earth is returning to the ocean. 25 years after the first installment, the legendary naturalist, presenter, and centenarian David Attenborough narrates Blue Planet III. This first look video, backed by a song Hans Zimmer & Jade Thirwall, is teeming with stunning fo...
118 Things to Do Instead of Doomscrolling. Including “put...
118 Things to Do Instead of Doomscrolling. Including “put together a puzzle”, “go for a bike ride”, “hold a plank for as long as you can — even if it’s only a second”, and “make your own limoncello”.
From a tongue-in-cheek Google Japan, a conveyor belt...
From a tongue-in-cheek Google Japan, a conveyor belt keyboard, where the keys move and your hand stays still while typing. One of several unusual keyboards released by the company. You can even build your own.
Silent Friend
Silent Friend is a historical drama written and directed by Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi. Here’s the description:
In the botanical garden of a medieval German university, a ginkgo tree hundreds of years old watches its human neighbors through the slip-stream of time....
Things That Are Good to Do. Including “admit what you...
Things That Are Good to Do. Including “admit what you don’t know”, “put the cart away”, “rest before you’re exhausted” (I often get this one wrong), and “walk home if you can”.
The Ku Klux Klan is rebranding itself as The Knights...
The Ku Klux Klan is rebranding itself as The Knights Party, centered on “family and faith” along with proud & open white supremacy. 💩🖕
Watch One of Radiohead’s Best Live Shows: Bonnaroo 2006
Back in ~2008, right on the cusp of stardom, Lady Gaga did a crate-digging video in a London record shop and named Radiohead’s set at Bonnaroo 2006 as her favorite show she’s ever been to. A post-fame Gaga reaffirmed her choice in this 2018 Vogue interview. Many share her op...