Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
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My first adventure of the day is going to the Shunkaen Bonsai Museum. Other Japan bonsai recs welcome!
I hoping to post some of my photos from Japan here when I get a bit more organized, but for now, you can follow my adventures on Instagram Stories.
I stopped into the MEGA Donki (Don Quijote) in Shibuya last night and it was like being inside a slot machine. They had 20 different Kit Kat flavors, including a sake flavor. Ppl had baskets overflowing with candy. It was so bonkers.
An iconic Philly skate locale, Love Park, was demolished in 2016 — but has been reconstructed in Malmö, Sweden (including street lights and trash cans).
“‘Take on Me’ is an ideal song for Song Exploder, because it’s so well known and beloved that it feels like a song predestined to be a massive hit, but the truth couldn’t be further from the case.”
In 1983, the BBC aired a six-part series called Fun to Imagine with a simple premise: put physicist Richard Feynman in front of a camera and have him explain everyday things. In this clip from one of the episodes, Feynman explains in very simple terms what fire is:
So good. Watch the whole thing…it seems like you get the gist about 2 minutes in, but that’s only half the story. See also Feynman explaining rubber bands, how trains go around curves, and how magnets work.
[This is a vintage post originally from Mar 2015.]
Tags: physics · Richard Feynman · science · timeless posts · video
For instance, there is an engraved stone erected at the Buddhist Kan’ei-ji temple to “console the spirits of the flies, crickets, and grasshoppers that had been killed in the production of a scientific text”.
Current status: looking through Atlas Obscura’s list of things to do in Tokyo.
Rapper 50 Cent, adjusted for inflation, is 109 Cent.
“The spread of dangerous infections that do not respond to antibiotics has been increasing by as much as 15 percent a year”, says the WHO. “The less people have access to quality care, the more they’re likely to suffer from drug-resistant infection.”
From director Kathryn Bigelow comes A House of Dynamite (trailer), starring Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, and Greta Lee.
When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
A House of Dynamite is out in theaters right now and will be on Netflix in a couple of weeks.
Tags: A House of Dynamite · Kathryn Bigelow · movies · trailers · video
“The MUTE Series is a collection of one-take microfilms that report on the vagaries of human behaviour.” There are 3 rules for their films: no dialogue, no camera moves, one shot only.
“The smartest design move isn’t chasing trends, it’s planting the tree and letting time do the work,” writes Dave Snyder. “Trees don’t pay off tomorrow. They pay off in a decade. They compound quietly, making everything around them better…”
For the last-ever episode of his WTF podcast, Marc Maron interviewed Barack Obama. You can watch their hour-long conversation here.
Missed this from a few days ago: the winners of the 2025 MacArthur Fellowship. “I think this year, we see empathy and deep engagement with community figures prominently in this class.”
I love the synchronized waves that these Himalayan giant honey bees use against their hornet predators.
