Now that summer is in full swing, you might need this Comprehensive Guide to Yellow Stripey Things, so you can tell harmless bumblebees (you can pet them!) from “asshole” yellow jackets.
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“He Painted Bugs Like Jewels”
In a collaboration with the National Gallery of Art, Evan Puschak made a video about 16th-century Dutch artist (and all-around polymath) Joris Hoefnagel, who painted some of the first dedicated and detailed images of insects in the world. His paintings were so accurate tha...
Trying to cut back on social media? The methaphone is a phone-shaped...
Trying to cut back on social media? The methaphone is a phone-shaped slab of clear acrylic that you can carry instead of your phone to “help you manage cravings and withdrawal symptoms”.
Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers. “We want our...
Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers. “We want our publishers to stand with us. To make a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.”
“The Big, Beautiful Bill assigns each American a billionaire who will live...
“The Big, Beautiful Bill assigns each American a billionaire who will live the American dream for you. You can check in on your billionaire at intervals and see how he is using your money. Maybe he’s building a 19th pool…”
Great Art Explained: Jackson Pollock
The fantastic art history YouTube channel Great Art Explained has a great two-episode series on Jackson Pollock.
In Part One of my film I look at how, post World War Two, the art scene shifted from Paris to New York. How America was searching for “The Great American pa...
A decade-plus in the making and now on Kickstarter: a book of...
A decade-plus in the making and now on Kickstarter: a book of Pooja Saxena’s photography of signs and lettering found on the streets of cities all over India.
Large Hadron Couture Collider
Iris van Herpen has an on-going collaboration with CERN. The Dutch fashion designer’s latest project, with photographer Nick Knight, takes place in the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, which is maybe the most sci-fi looking thing on Earth.
(via susannah breslin)
Tags: CERN · fashion · Iris van Herpen · LHC · Nick Knight · science
I Randomly Decided To Pay Off A School’s Lunch Debt. Then Something...
I Randomly Decided To Pay Off A School’s Lunch Debt. Then Something Incredible Happened. “Within a week, I’d raised $6,000. Within a month, $10,000.”
The Music of Pixar’s Elio, Created by a Choir of Wooden Dolls
Ok so this is weird and delightful. Swedish electronics company Teenage Engineering makes a collection of singing wooden dolls called the Choir. The dolls are basically speakers but with some autonomy and personality…and they can work together:
what you see are eight wooden...
Could Should Might Don’t. “This isn’t a book filled with predictions and...
Could Should Might Don’t. “This isn’t a book filled with predictions and prophecies, and it makes no assertions about what the future will hold. It’s a book which unpacks how we think about the future.”
Retraction Watch: a blog that tracks corrected and retracted scientific papers....
Retraction Watch: a blog that tracks corrected and retracted scientific papers.
Project Hail Mary, Official Trailer
I read Project Hail Mary (by The Martian author Andy Weir) a few summers ago; it was fine. I suspected at the time it might make a better movie than a book and after watching the trailer, I’m excited to see this next summer. Ryan Gosling stars and Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, produced the Spider-verse movies) are directing. Out in theaters March 2026.
Tags: Andy Weir · books · Christopher Miller · movies · Phil Lord · Project Hail Mary · Ryan Gosling · space · trailers · video
Ted Chiang writes about the earliest works of fiction about superintelligence. “The...
Ted Chiang writes about the earliest works of fiction about superintelligence. “The first novel about superintelligence is actually a work of horror SF, a cautionary tale about the dangers of knowing too much.”
The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001). “Spanning the years...
The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001). “Spanning the years 1937–2001, the collection should especially appeal to those with an avant-garde or musicological bent.”
Ex-FBI agent on ICE masking: “Masking has always been associated with police...
Ex-FBI agent on ICE masking: “Masking has always been associated with police states. I think the masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls.”
Scammers are using AI tools to sell spectacular-looking but non-existent plant species...
Scammers are using AI tools to sell spectacular-looking but non-existent plant species that resemble butterflies, Hubble photos, or psychedelic Jurassic Park flora.
Cheating Expert Answers Casino Cheating Questions
Cheating expert Sal Piacente, who’s got the perfect name, accent, demeanor, and face for someone who helps casinos catch cheaters, stops by Wired Tech Support to answer reader queries about how gamblers & casinos attempt to bamboozle each other.
Can slot machines be h...
Stupid-Americans feel about Trump the way Irish-Americans felt about JFK in 1960....
Stupid-Americans feel about Trump the way Irish-Americans felt about JFK in 1960. “They love him for who he is, which is one of them, and because he shows them every day that Stupid-Americans can reach the social mountaintop.”
Whoa, Anna Wintour is stepping down as Vogue’s editor-in-chief, a post she...
Whoa, Anna Wintour is stepping down as Vogue’s editor-in-chief, a post she has held for 37 years. Your reminder to watch the excellent documentary The September Issue.
Hope Is a Risk
From Cole Arthur Riley, author of Black Liturgies (Amazon):
Hope is a risk; especially when you’ve known what it is to dream for better and only be met with the tyranny of degradation, greed, and violent appetites.
But despair is a concession.
Be careful of who you let regulate your dreaming. Always remember who benefits from our hopelessness.
Tags: Cole Arthur Riley
“Denis Villeneuve is set to direct the next James Bond film for...
“Denis Villeneuve is set to direct the next James Bond film for Amazon MGM Studios, the studio announced Wednesday.” Bond + Villeneuve could be a potent combination.
How Field Notes Went From Side Project to Cult Notebook. “One by...
How Field Notes Went From Side Project to Cult Notebook. “One by one we fired all our clients because this Field Notes thing was getting bigger and taking up more of our time…”
Rick Rubin collaborated with Anthropic to create The Way of Code: The...
Rick Rubin collaborated with Anthropic to create The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding. Inspired by Laozi’s Dao De Jing, it’s Rubin’s take on intuitive programming. (I had to triple-check that this was indeed Rick Rubin the record producer…)
This Sahara Railway Is One of the Most Extreme in the World
Join National Geographic as they ride one of the most punishing train routes in the world, the Mauritania Railway, which travels through the Sahara Desert.
One of the longest and heaviest trains in the world, the 1.8-mile beast runs from the mining center of Zouerat to th...
The Weird Zombie Existence of the Family Circus. The long-running comic is...
The Weird Zombie Existence of the Family Circus. The long-running comic is now mostly just re-running strips from its archive, updated for modern times.
Pathfinder: find and explore the relationships between two concepts....
Pathfinder: find and explore the relationships between two concepts.
Aaron Sorkin is writing and directing a sequel to The Social Network....
Aaron Sorkin is writing and directing a sequel to The Social Network. “The new film isn’t a ‘January 6’ movie and will focus not just on the 2020 election but also Facebook’s effect on teens, preteens, violence and countries outside the U.S.”
What Was Jim Crow?
This is an excellent video explanation from Jamelle Bouie of what Jim Crow was, how it developed, and how it continues to reverberate in American society and politics today.
If you are an American watching this, and you had a standard social studies or history class in h...
A blog about sci-fi interfaces in movies and TV shows with lots...
A blog about sci-fi interfaces in movies and TV shows with lots of screenshotted examples.