Nancy Friedman notes the decline in quality in movie taglines. “As movies have become louder, flashier, and more expensive, their taglines have atrophied: they’re limp, lackluster, and uninspiring.”
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The 16th season of the Dissect podcast is a deep dive into Daft Punk; here’s the 1st episode.
Bodega Cats of New York
The Bodega Cats of New York project documents the working cats of NYC’s delis, bodegas, and corner stores.
The cat at the local deli wasn’t a pet. She knew the regulars. She kept the mice out. She gave people a reason to walk an extra block. And she was technically a violation of city health code.
That was six years ago. Since then, the project has documented over 150 shops, collected 13,500 petition signatures, and helped introduce the first legislation in New York City history to classify bodega cats as working animals.
Available soon in book form.
KDO Rolodex a list of kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators
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see full listA few years back, the Mini Cooper’s taillights were designed to look like the Union Jack flag, which is fine until you turn the blinker on and it looks like an arrow pointing in the wrong direction. I hated this design the moment I saw it on the road.
The Astronomy Picture of the Day, in which the International Space Station looks like it’s landing on the Moon.
Project Plowshare: Nukes for Peace!
I’d vaguely heard of Project Plowshare but good god, what a ridiculous and dangerous waste of time and money.
At the height of the Cold War, nuclear weapons were seen not only as devices of destruction, but also as tools for progress. Project Plowshare was a bold attempt to use atomic explosions for more practical purposes: from digging canals and creating harbors to reshaping entire landscapes. This project was designed to push the limits of what seemed possible, but instead turned into an environmental disaster.
This reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons when Homer buys a gun and uses it around the house for everything, like changing the TV channel and opening beer cans. If the only tool you have is a hammer…
“Here are some things that have been found in donation bins: A live puppy. Live Japanese grenades. An 1854 tombstone for Rebecca Jane Nye. Old skulls. A stolen Frederic Remington sculpture. Customized Air Jordans made for Spike Lee.”
Historian Eric Cline, author of 1177 BC, explains how the collapse of several civilizations circa 1200 BC was the result of an “overly interdependent system that had no way to absorb multiple shocks at once”.
Hollywood’s World Map of California
This is a map published in 1927 by Paramount Studios showing the areas of California & Nevada that doubled as shooting locations for far-flung locales, including Siberia, Wales, the Nile, New England, the Red Sea, and the Alps.
Researchers have found that some aspects of sperm whales’ communication are “remarkably similar” to human languages.
What Was the Very First Plant in the World? “Scientists believe the first true plants evolved from green algae around 470 million years ago.”
The Brennan Self-Balancing Monorail
This is so cool: in the early 1900s, a mechanical engineer named Louis Brennan invented a self-balancing train that ran on a single track. This video demonstrates how the train worked using a clever system of gyroscopes.
This is the Brennan Monorail, a train from the early 1900s that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Not only did it keep itself perfectly balanced on a single rail, but it mysteriously leaned into corners without any driver input.
It’s kind of incredible how well Brennan’s system worked. It’s ingenious. (via messy nessy)
I mentioned this book in a previous post but it deserves its own thing: Timothy Ryback’s 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy will hit shelves in September. A must-read for me.
The People’s Clock: a Timepiece Made of People
As part of his Real Time series, artist Maarten Baas has created The People’s Clock, a timepiece that lives in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. To create the clock’s “workings”, Baas recorded more than 1000 volunteers moving as the clock’s hands over a 12-hour period. If you look carefully, you can see a single individual dressed in orange at the edge of the circle acting as the second hand:
Each of the installed clock’s faces is a looped video of that recording, synced to the current time. Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes video of how the clock was made:
See also Baas’s Sweeper’s Clock and Schiphol Clock.
The Great American GLP-1 Experiment. In the last few years, people have come up with all sorts of off-label uses for GLP-1s, including treating concussions, menopause, long Covid, IBS, drug addiction, anxiety, hair loss, and arthritis.
Your Backpack Got Worse On Purpose. “From a shareholder’s perspective, the bag that falls apart is the better product. That’s the business model. Repeat failure, repeat purchase, repeat revenue. The quality decline isn’t a side effect. It’s the strategy.”
Two Japanese aquariums have released their 2026 flowcharts of their penguins’ relationships. “Penguin drama can include serious crushes and heartbreaks but also adultery and egg-stealing.”
Vintage Pan-Am Luggage Tags
I love these oversized prints of vintage Pan-Am luggage tags from artist Ella Freire. The typography and colors are just perfect. (via daringfireball)
Don’t Just Replace Chavez — Rethink Monuments. “A memorial based on the great-man theory of history is a tale only half told.” And: “There are elegant ways to pay tribute to groups of people.”
The Testaments TV Series
I’d vaguely remembered that Hulu was adapting The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, as a sequel to the TV series of the same name, but I was surprised to find out that the show has premiered and is already three episodes in (a fourth will be available today).
The initial series lost its way after 2-3 seasons, but I still ended up watching the whole thing. I’ll probably give The Testaments a shot as well.
Listen to the NYC Subway play some Train Jazz. “Every dot is a real subway train. Eight hundred of them, give or take, form a small jazz combo (walking bass, piano, sax, vibes, brushes) that has been playing without pause for over a hundred years.”
The Engineer Guy Bill Hammack has written a book based on his great YouTube channel: The Things We Make: The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans.
It’s Happening: More Signs of Life From Boards of Canada
I reported last week that signs of activity have been detected from Boards of Canada in the form of mysterious VHS tapes sent out to fans. Yesterday, the group’s record label posted a bunch of photos of posters hung up in cities around the world (NYC, Tokyo, LA) that match BoC’s style. First new album since 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest? Let’s hope so!
If Every Congressman Facing Credible Rape Allegations Resigned, We’d Have No One Left to Govern the Country. “It’s naïve to imagine the government can continue to function without the tireless dedication of our best and brightest rapists.”
Authoritarian Megalomaniacs Love Gaudy Buildings
You know who else wanted to construct gaudy buildings in his own image? Here’s Timothy Ryback on Adolf Hitler’s obsession “with adding an expensive new wing to the Reich chancellery”.
The new annex, connected to the chancellery by a marble corridor hung with crystal chandeliers, was part of Hitler’s ambitious plans to align the Berlin cityscape with his vision for the future of the country. Hitler wanted a Triumphbogen, a triumphal arch, twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He wanted an “Avenue of Splendor” for military parades. “The Champs-Élysées is a hundred meters wide,” Hitler told Speer. “We will make our avenue twenty meters wider.” A planned Volkshalle was to accommodate 180,000. The Eiffel Tower could fit beneath its cupola. This “Hall of the People” was to be topped by the largest swastika on Earth. Berlin itself was to be rechristened as Weltstadt Germania, “Capital of the World.”
Ryback is the author of several books on Hitler and the Nazis, including his forthcoming 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy, which sounds like a must-read to me.
I’ve been enjoying the series of articles he’s been doing at The Atlantic about the parallels between Hitler and the dangers of Trump’s authoritarianism without ever explicitly mentioning Trump. In addition to the above piece about architecture, he’s written about Hitler’s Greenland Obsession, What Happened When Hitler Took On Germany’s Central Banker, Hitler Used a Bogus Crisis of ‘Public Order’ to Make Himself Dictator, Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs, and The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hitler. If it looks like a duck…
“The internet known within China is a very different internet to the one known by the world at large. It is censored, regulated and structured quite differently. It is controlled and managed, rather than organic and sprawling.”
Now Online: a Treasure Trove of 1000s of Secret Concert Recordings
For decades, a guy named Aadam Jacobs has been recording live music shows. His collection of over 10,000 shows since 1984 feature the likes of Nirvana, R.E.M., The Pixies, Björk, Depeche Mode, Liz Phair, Sonic Youth, The Cure, Phish, Fugazi, and so many more. With the help of archivists, the entire collection is making its way onto The Internet Archive.
The growing Aadam Jacobs Collection is an internet treasure trove for music lovers, especially for fans of indie and punk rock during the 1980s through the early 2000s, when the scene blossomed and became mainstream. The collection features early-in-their-career performances from alternative and experimental artists like R.E.M., The Cure, The Pixies, The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Stereolab, Sonic Youth and Björk.
There’s also a smattering of hip-hop, including a 1988 concert by rap pioneers Boogie Down Productions. Devotees of Phish were thrilled to discover that a previously uncirculated 1990 show by the jam band is included. And there are hundreds of sets by smaller artists who are unlikely to be known to even fans with the most obscure tastes.
All of it is slowly becoming available for streaming and free download at the nonprofit online repository Internet Archive, including that nascent Nirvana show recording, with the audio from Jacobs’ cassette recorder cleaned up.
Some of the shows, like this pre-Dave Grohl one from Nirvana, were recorded before the bands hit it big. It’s wild to hear their performance of About a Girl get about three claps from the audience.
On the network effect of the weekend: “The essential characteristic of the weekend is not just the having of a day off, but rather that other people have the day off.”
A Collection of Transit Tickets
A brand designer’s “compendium of transit tickets” from around the world. Many of these are from the 90s and 00s. Design inspiration for daaaaays.
(via meanwhile)
The Death of the Basic American Car. “Today, there are so many wealthy people who can afford luxury cars that it simply isn’t that profitable for companies to produce cars for the bottom 40 percent of Americans by income.”
An AI bot created by Andon Labs is running its own retail store in San Francisco. The bot has hired a pair of human employees and “has a corporate card, a phone number, email, internet access and eyes through security cameras”.
“Gerontocracy has always thrived in undemocratic places — Communist people’s republics, Gulf monarchies — where only death could pry power from the ruling elders. American gerontocracy is exceptional for being freely elected.”
An interactive explainer on the physics of GPS. “The answer is in some ways simpler than you’d expect, and in other ways more complex. GPS is fundamentally a translation tool: it converts time into distance.”
Media companies are increasingly blocking the Internet Archive from archiving their material (but at the same time using the site to gather data for their stories).
The Christophers
I’m so glad Steven Soderbergh unretired from filmmaking. His newest film, The Christophers, looks amazing. It stars Ian McKellen as a famous artist and Michaela Coel as his assistant — but of course there’s more to it. Reviewer David Sims calls it both a heist movie and “a meditation on the relationship between art and commerce”. I hope this one actually comes to Vermont so I can see it in the theater.
Coel and McKellen both have such great faces, don’t you think?
We love a slime mold around here. “From mottled gray bulbs that look like snow-covered trees to pink, coral-like tendrils, Webb chronicles a huge array of colors and shapes.”
This is incredible: Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here’s How to Use It. I knew some of these but not all, e.g. verbatim mode “returns results for exactly what you typed, stripped of personalization and synonym-swapping.”
The Crystal Skull
David Altmejd’s 2017 sculpture entitled “God” is one of the most disturbing artworks I’ve seen recently, so naturally I had to show all of you. If you need further wigging out, here you go. Lots more on his website and Instagram.
Great new Patrick Radden Keefe piece on a New Orleans insurance fraud scheme involving big rigs. “After all, who would agree to be cut open on an operating table if it weren’t necessary? Quite a lot of people, it turns out.”
Fred Again’s Tiny Desk Concert
Almost three years ago exactly, Fred Again rolled into the NPR studios and did a Tiny Desk Concert.
When Fred again.. first proposed a Tiny Desk concert, it wasn’t immediately clear how he was going to make it work — not because he lacked creativity, but because translating purely electronic music at the Desk is a daunting task for anyone. How would an artist, whose performances take the form of DJ sets in front of massive audiences, curate an intimate and unique experience? But what the British songwriter and producer came up with is a reminder of what a Tiny Desk is at its best: an opportunity for artists to challenge themselves in such a way that it almost feels like they’re making new music, all while sticking to what feels true to them. For Fred again.. that meant re-learning the marimba, playing the vibraphone, singing at the piano and looping sounds and beats — all at the same time.
Why Japan Has Such Good Railways. “Their system excels because of good public policy: business structure, land use rules, driving rules, superior models for privatization, and sound regulation.” Other countries can follow their lead.
Rebecca Solnit: “The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled.”
Hungarian Opposition Ousts Viktor Orbán After 16 Years in Power. “Magyar…pledged to repair Hungary’s strained relationship with the EU, crack down on corruption and funnel funds towards long-neglected public services.”
Interviews with five novelists (Jesmyn Ward, Joyce Carol Oates, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ottessa Moshfegh, Margaret Atwood) on writing something true with fiction. Oates: “If you could read Toni Morrison, why would you read AI?”
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