From 1957, this is a drawing of the synergistic strategy of Walt Disney Productions, or what Todd Zenger of Harvard Business Review calls “a corporate theory of sustained growth”.
The boxes on the chart have changed, but since the appointment of Bob Iger as CEO, Disney ha...
The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience is an illustrated version of the bestselling book by Nikole Hannah-Jones, featuring archival images, photos by Black photographers, and artwork from Black artists like Carrie Mae Weems & Vitus Shell.
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“Things look a little different around Lumon.” The official teaser trailer for season two of Severance reveals a liiiiittle bit more about the upcoming season but not much. January 17, 2025 can’t come soon enough!
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“How you love, how you give, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are.” Maria Popova reflects on 18 years of her excellent website, The Marginalian. Learning to carry one’s vulnerability is one hell of a reframing.
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Here’s what participating in a human challenge trial for dysentery is like. They give you the disease and then try treating it, in this case with bacteriophage therapy. “I made plans to spend my 30th birthday in a dysentery ward.”
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On the logistics of building a space telescope powerful enough “to examine the features of nearby exoplanets with the same detail we can naturally see on the Moon”.
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This short video takes us on a trip through the criminal justice system and highlights a “hidden form of punishment” directed toward incarcerated people: fees. At every turn, people who are sentenced to incarceration are subject to tens of thousands of dollars in fees: bai...
New children’s picture book from the excellent Jessica Hische: My First Book of Fancy Letters, “a delightful spin on the traditional alphabet book, featuring creatively hand-lettered words from A to Z”.
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Pony Boys is a delightful short documentary about two boys (aged 9 & 11) who traveled from a Boston suburb to the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal by pony cart.
In the short documentary above, the “pony boys,” Tony and Jeff Whittemore, recount that as youngsters, they ...
Three thought experiments that suggest “the space-time continuum we seem to inhabit is not fundamental but an approximation of something deeper, and that the concept will eventually be replaced…” What a wrench in the works black holes are!
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Historian and scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder has a new book out called On Freedom (Bookshop.org), a companion to his 2017 bestseller On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have ...
Before Google, reference librarians answered questions via telephone. “We learned not merely how to find information but how to think about finding information. Don’t take anything for granted; don’t trust your memory; look for the context…”
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This Icelandic hotel offers a unique a valuable service: an aurora wake-up call. “When the northern lights appear in the night sky, they’ll wake you to make sure don’t miss a once-in-a-lifetime viewing experience.”
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“‘I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,’ Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. ‘People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.’”
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For the latest installment of Every Frame a Painting, Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos examine the artistry and thought silent film master Buster Keaton put into the physical comedy in his movies. I used to watch all sorts of old movies with my dad (Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel &...
I love this: a carpenter fires his nail gun in time to the music of a band practicing or performing next door. Music, artistry, and playfulness is everywhere.
Tags: music · video
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The Onion: “The Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns both debuted new commercials Tuesday that attempt to win support for their respective candidates with a supercut of Trump’s most racist comments.” 🎯
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These “containment cages” used in Texas prison are inhumane — standing-room only cages that prisoners are kept in for days at a time. “Solitary confinement itself was horrific, but these containment cages were catastrophic.”
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Oh boy, a new book from one of my favorite designers: Kelli Anderson’s Alphabet in Motion, a pop-up book that explains how typography works. Watch the video…this book is bonkers. Instant pre-order for me.
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From The Pudding, more than you’ve ever wanted to know about a game called Crokinole. Like: WTF is Crokinole?? (Partial A: “a mashup of shuffleboard and curling, played on a tabletop board”.)
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Too Much Love is a project from Katja Kemnitz in which she photographs the beloved dolls & stuffed animals of young children alongside brand-new versions of the same toys. Anyone who is a parent or caregiver can relate to the destruction on display here, as well as the difficulty of replacing these items.
I show old, much-loved teddies and dolls and compare them with as good as new doppelgangers. I think the broken stuffed animals have a lot of soul. The project is inspired by my older daughter, who took her plush dog everywhere when she was little. One day I found this dog again without button eye and torn seams in the store and bought it. She did not like him. The old one was better and could not be replaced.
Tags: Katja Kemnitz · photography
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Ooh, a preview clip from season three of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I like this crew. Season three premieres sometime in 2025 and, huzzah!, has been renewed for a 4th season.
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From Ryan Broderick’s comments on the state of text based social media, a new life goal for me: “One day you’ll be the last person writing words on the web and wonder where everyone went.”
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Historian Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny), who studies forced population movements, thinks we aren’t taking the Trump/Vance deportation plans seriously enough. (I agree.) The effects will be familiar to anyone who has read anything about totalitarian regimes and/or caste-based s...
The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway. 100%. My feeling is that it’s been months since his campaign was about winning the election — they’re focused on the coup endgame.
This TV ad is from 2006 but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. It’s so good though…no reason a deodorant commercial has to go this hard!
Tags: advertising · video
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My 17-year-old took this Street Survival driving skills course this weekend and I recommend it! They learn how to handle their own car, how it feels to stop fast, corner fast, etc. You can see the kids level up their driving throughout the day.
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From French street artist OakOak, a reminder that art is everywhere and that art comes from everywhere. From their website and Instagram, here are a few more pieces that caught my eye:
And ha, I just noticed this one, a riff on Hokusai’s The Great Wave.
Tags: art · Mark Rothko · OakOak · remix
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A new concept album by Lin-Manuel Miranda & Eisa Davis is
a musical based on the 1979 movie The Warriors and “sung by a cast that includes everyone from artists like Lauryn Hill, Nas, Ghostface Killah and Billy Porter to Broadway stars Phillipa Soo…”
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