kottke.org posts about video
I just got back from the XOXO Festival and one of things that happened was that Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou showed their new short film The Second and their first new Every Frame A Painting video essay in eight years!! And now the video essay is on YouTube:
It’s a quick one about the sustained two-shot, a type of shot that was used a lot in the olden days but still has its uses today — and gives actors room to actually act.
So happy to see Ramos and Zhou back at it. I’m not sure if I should even say this, but they indicated during their XOXO appearance that there will be more to come (in fewer than 8 years).
Here’s my post about them shuttering the channel and a few of my favorite videos of theirs.
Conservation biologist Tim Shields is trying to save the Mojave Desert’s desert tortoise population, which is under threat from ravens, an invasive species brought to the area by habitat-encroaching humans. Working with an engineer, he’s trying to train the ravens to leave the tortoises alone — their work is the subject of the short documentary Eco-Hack!
Together, they embarked on what Shields calls a campaign of “aversive training” for ravens, which, among the various threats to desert tortoises, he says seemed like the easiest to address. They set about booby-trapping the desert to train the birds to leave the tortoises alone. Their methods seem like a sophisticated version of sitting in the driveway and burning ants with a magnifying glass: placing laser emitters on terrestrial rovers; building and deploying 3-D-printed fake tortoises laced with artificial grape flavoring, which ravens evidently hate. They give their creations proud retro names: the Techno-Tort, the Blastoluxe. “The idea is just to make the haunted landscape where there’s just no relief from the surprises, and all the surprises are bad,” Shields says of the ravens, one of the collective nouns for which is, fittingly, an “unkindness.”
Amazing image at the 10:35 mark of the video btw.
As one of the top trials riders in the world, Danny MacAskill can certainly do a wheelie. In this fun video, he does wheelies all over the place, joined by a bunch of friends. The behind-the-scenes video is just as fun. And I watched the “how to do a wheelie” companion video with interest because I’ve never been able to do a wheelie on a bike for more than a couple of seconds and it’s probably time to learn — even though a manual would be more useful for mountain biking. (via the kid should see this)
The different kinds of sounds that carmakers have had to come up with to make EVs audible to pedestrians, bikers, and other drivers are wild: orchestras, pitch-shifted didgeridoos, gas car noises.
For over a century, the internal combustion engine powered vehicles with an intricate combination of moving parts and tiny explosions. That combustion process inevitably made noise, and that noise came to define the background soundscape of our roads, cities, and day-to-day life. But as hybrids and EVs became increasingly mainstream — and more of their near-silent electric motors filled the streets — it became clear that silent vehicles didn’t fit in the ecosystem we’d built around cars.
Spearheaded by associations of the blind and visually impaired, legislation eventually began to require electric vehicles to emit an artificial engine noise out of hidden external speakers. These hidden speaker systems, called “Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems” — or AVAS — had to meet certain sonic criteria. But they were also a blank slate for sound designers to decide how the cars of the future should sound.
Reminder: cities aren’t noisy, cars are.
I’ve been enjoying watching these livestreams of watering holes in the arid regions of Namibia. As I’m looking now, there appear to be some zebras and giraffes hanging out — previous sightings include hyenas, ostriches, cheetahs, wildebeest, oryx, and even honey badgers. You can find more cams and archived footage at @NamibiaCam.
The Howtown crew explains how food manufacturers, the USDA, and food label services figure out how many calories are in the foods we eat. Spoiler: it’s not just a matter of burning food to see how much energy is produced — different nutrients are absorbed more or less efficiently by the body so you need to measure the output and compare it to the input.
And don’t forget to check the comments for Joss Fong’s banana oat blobs.
Humans are the first and, to our knowledge, only entities on Earth to develop general intelligence, which has allowed us to dominate and alter the planet in a way and at a speed that no other entity has managed. Now, some people are working towards building an artificial general intelligence. So what happens when humans are matched or even far outclassed by this new general intelligence?
Such an intelligence explosion might lead to a true superintelligent entity. We don’t know what such a being would look like, what its motives or goals would be, what would go on in its inner world. We could be as laughably stupid to a superintelligence as squirrels are to us. Unable to even comprehend its way of thinking.
This hypothetical scenario keeps many people up at night. Humanity is the only example we have of an animal becoming smarter than all others — and we have not been kind to what we perceive as less intelligent beings. AGI might be the last invention of humanity.
The musician Nick Cave was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this week (full interview) and he read a letter from his Red Hand Files, an AMA project where fans write in with questions and he answers them. The question was:
Following the last few years I’m feeling empty and more cynical than ever. I’m losing faith in other people, and I’m scared to pass these feelings to my little son. Do you still believe in Us (human beings)?
In a lovely letter in response (which he reads in the video above), Cave writes that “much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt” and that “it took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope”. That devastation was the death of his 15-year-old son in 2015, which he talks more about in this interview and in this book. Cave’s response concludes:
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.
I promise, your day will be better if you take a few minutes to watch or read this letter. And the entire interview is worth watching as well — there is no better interviewer on the topic of loss and grief than Stephen Colbert.
I’d missed that Time magazine is naming a “Kid of the Year” now and this year’s recipient is 15-year-old scientist Heman Bekele, who has developed a soap that could treat and even prevent skin cancer.
A few years ago, he read about imiquimod, a drug that, among other uses, is approved to fight one form of skin cancer and has shown promise against several more. Typically, imiquimod, which can help destroy tumors and usually comes in the form of a cream, is prescribed as a front-line drug as part of a broader cancer treatment plan, but Heman wondered if it could be made available more easily to people in the earliest stages of the disease. A bar of soap, he reckoned, might be just the delivery system for such a lifesaving drug, not just because it was simple, but because it would be a lot more affordable than the $40,000 it typically costs for skin-cancer treatment.
“What is one thing that is an internationally impactful idea, something that everyone can use, [regardless of] socioeconomic class?” Heman recalls thinking. “Almost everyone uses soap and water for cleaning. So soap would probably be the best option.”
This 4K drone video from @liulangCooki takes us on a journey from the base camp at 17,400 feet all the way to the summit of Mount Everest. Along the way, you can see tiny little people hiking up and the paths they take. Very cool.
Mark Rober built a robot that solves jigsaw puzzles and pitted it against Tammy McLeod, one of the world’s faster human solvers. The design and build process is fascinating, especially the fine-tuning enabling the robot to “wiggle” each piece into its place.
When we first tried to assemble the puzzle, almost none of the pieces fit together perfectly. This was before we had corrected the errors in the computer vision code as described earlier.
However even after we improved the computer vision code, some small errors remained. Many pieces would fit together perfectly, and then you would see one that was ever so slightly out of place, and that could ruin the alignment for the rest of the puzzle if left unresolved.
To solve this, we took inspiration from humans. If you try to place a puzzle piece with your hands, you’ll find that often you need to wiggle the piece around to get it to snap into place. So we programmed the robot to do the same thing.
Also, Kristen Bell shows up?
Kurzgesagt explores what happens when a virus or bacteria enters a human body and the essential role fever plays in helping your body fight off disease.
Fever feels bad. So we take medication to suppress it — but is this a good idea? It turns out fever is one of the oldest defenses against disease. What exactly is a fever, and how does it make your immune defense stronger? Should you take a pill to combat it?
We often mistake fever for the disease…it’s actually part of the cure. When my kids were young, I vividly remember our laissez-faire French pediatrician urging us not to give them medication to get rid of their fevers because that was the body fighting back and doing useful work — unless their temps got too high of course.
Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and an expert in cuneiform, takes a look at a 2900-year-old Mesopotamian tablet that contains a map of the world as it was known at the time.
The Babylonian map of the world is the oldest map of the world, in the world. Written and inscribed on clay in Mesopotamia around 2,900-years-ago, it is, like so many cuneiform tablets, incomplete. However, Irving Finkel and a particularly gifted student of his — Edith Horsley — managed to locate a missing piece of the map, slot it back into the cuneiform tablet, and from there set us all on journey through the somewhat mythical landscape of Mesopotamia to find the final resting place of the ark. And yes we mean that ark, as in Noah’s ark. Although in the earlier Mesopotamian version of the flood story, the ark is built by Ziusudra.
Finkel could not possibly look more like a British Museum curator than he does.
Btw, I first heard about the earliest Mesopotamian version of the flood story in a mythology class I took in college. I’d spent a lot of my youth going to church but religion didn’t click for me and I was never a believer. Hearing that flood story clinched it for me — the Old Testament of the Christian bible is just as mythological as the Greek or Mesopotamian gods (everything is a remix) — and I’ve been solidly atheist ever since. (via open culture)
Saturday Night is a forthcoming movie directed by Jason Reitman about the premiere of Saturday Night Live.
At 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television — and culture — forever. Directed by Jason Reitman and written by Gil Kenan & Reitman, Saturday Night is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. Full of humor, chaos, and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, we count down the minutes in real time until we hear those famous words…
According to Wikipedia, Succession’s Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg) plays both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson in the film. (via @ernie.tedium.co)
Myles Zhang, a PhD candidate in architectural history, created this drawing of Manhattan’s Chinatown several years ago.
Chinatown’s tenements are in the foreground, while the skyscraper canyons of Lower Manhattan rise above. This shows the area of Chinatown bordered by Bowery, Canal Street, and Columbus Park.
It took him around 60 hours to complete; he made a time lapse video of its creation:
There’s a very large scan of the image that’s worth looking at.
If you spend any amount of time on the internet — and if you’re reading this, you probably do and perhaps even feel shamed by your weekly Screen Time notification — you’ve probably seen the statistic that 5% of the Earth’s population is related to 13th century ruler of the Mongol Empire and presumed prolific father, Genghis Khan. In this episode of SciShow, Hank Green explores if that’s true and how researchers investigate relations across dozens and even hundreds of generations.
Over the last century, athletic performances have dramatically improved because of better training, improved nutrition, a bigger pool of people to draw from, technology, increased financial support, and the human desire to build on each others’ successes. It’s actually shocking how much better athletics have gotten, as you can see from these “then & now” videos from the Summer Olympics. Here’s the men’s pole vault from 1912 and then 2020:
The women’s javelin in 1932 (Babe Didrikson!) vs. 2020:
And perhaps the most stark difference: the women’s 10-meter platform diving in 1912 and 2020; it’s like watching two completely different sports:
Ok, maybe gymnastics too:
You can see the entire playlist of then & now videos on the Olympics YouTube channel. (via open culture)
Brick Technology’s new video features increasingly powerful Lego machines designed to topple ever stronger towers. I love their iterative engineering videos (and those from Brick Experiment Channel). As I’ve written about these videos before:
They’re not even really about Lego…that’s just the playful hook to get you through the door. They’re really about science and engineering — trial and error, repeated failure, iteration, small gains, switching tactics when confronted with dead ends, how innovation can result in significant advantages. Of course, none of this is unique to engineering; these are all factors in any creative endeavor — painting, sports, photography, writing, programming. But the real magic here is seeing it all happen in just a few minutes.
I am uncomfortably close to buying some Technic and Mindstorms to dork around with my own little machines. (via waxy)
In this video, Evan Puschak takes a close look at the iconic chase scene in Point Break to see how director Kathryn Bigelow uses POV shots to help put the viewer right into the action in a way that is incredibly immersive. Oh, and there a surprise appearance by Disneyland’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
Confession: I have never seen Point Break. Guess I should watch it now?
I was among the minority of viewers who enjoyed the first season of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series The Rings of Power, so I was excited to watch this extended trailer for the show’s second season. It seems to give away a little too much of the story for my taste (even though we all knew where it was going), but I am definitely pumped for season two.
Sauron has returned. Cast out by Galadriel, without army or ally, the rising Dark Lord must now rely on his own cunning to rebuild his strength and oversee the creation of the Rings of Power, which will allow him to bind all the peoples of Middle-earth to his sinister will.
Season two starts streaming on Amazon Prime on August 29.
Ok, I did not know this, and it’s blowing my mind: we have been imaging exoplanets for such a long time that scientists have made time lapse movies of their motion around their stars. This one is a 12-year time lapse of four planets orbiting a star called HR 8799 (images from 2009-2021):
And this one of Beta Pictoris b covers a time period of 17 years (2003-2020):
HR 8799 is 133.3 light-years away from Earth and Beta Pictoris is 63.4 light-years away. That’s amazing! (via @philplait.bsky.social)
Vice President Kamala Harris has debuted her first ad for her presidential run and it’s a good one. First of all: Beyoncé. But also: “freedom” is a great theme for Harris. For too long Republicans have defined what that word means in America and now’s the time for Democrats to assert their vision. From the ad:
The freedom not just to get by but get ahead. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty, where we can all afford health care, where no one is above the law.
I think a lot about this 2018 Rolling Stone interview with Pete Buttigieg (when he was still mayor of South Bend, Indiana) in which he offers his thoughts on recasting “concepts that conservatives have traditionally ‘owned’ — like freedom, family, and patriotism — in more progressive terms”.
You’ll hear me talk all the time about freedom. Because I think there is a failure on our side if we allow conservatives to monopolize the idea of freedom - especially now that they’ve produced an authoritarian president. But what actually gives people freedom in their lives? The most profound freedoms of my everyday existence have been safeguarded by progressive policies, mostly. The freedom to marry who I choose, for one, but also the freedom that comes with paved roads and stop lights. Freedom from some obscure regulation is so much more abstract. But that’s the freedom that conservatism has now come down to.
Or think about the idea of family, in the context of everyday life. It’s one thing to talk about family values as a theme, or a wedge — but what’s it actually like to have a family? Your family does better if you get a fair wage, if there’s good public education, if there’s good health care when you need it. These things intuitively make sense, but we’re out of practice talking about them.
I also think we need to talk about a different kind of patriotism: a fidelity to American greatness in its truest sense. You think about this as a local official, of course, but a truly great country is made of great communities. What makes a country great isn’t chauvinism. It’s the kinds of lives you enable people to lead. I think about wastewater management as freedom. If a resident of our city doesn’t have to give it a second thought, she’s freer.
To which I added:
Clean drinking water is freedom. Good public education is freedom. Universal healthcare is freedom. Fair wages are freedom. Policing by consent is freedom. Gun control is freedom. Fighting climate change is freedom. A non-punitive criminal justice system is freedom. Affirmative action is freedom. Decriminalizing poverty is freedom. Easy & secure voting is freedom. This is an idea of freedom I can get behind.
Compare that to the “freedoms” that Republicans are pushing for in Project 2025 — and have been pressing on Americans even before that:
There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.
There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.
There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.
And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.
The Declaration of Independence stated our fledgling nation’s assertion that people are endowed “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. It’s pretty clear which of the two parties’ interpretations of freedom hews closer to that assertion.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that encapsulates the feeling of America in the 1970s more than this local news report about 13-year-old Terry “Evel Knievel” Bolinger and his attempt to jump over 10 trash cans on his bike “made from the parts of several other bikes”.
At the beginning of the segment, the reporter on the scene says of Bolinger, “There are some youngsters that know what they want to do in life from the time they can talk and walk.” And so it appears that his daredevil ways never left him:
Terry Michael “Spike” Bolinger 42, of Indianapolis, lived, loved and died riding his Harley. “Spike” passed away Tuesday, September 6, 2005 in Wishard Hospital. He was born October 7, 1962 in Indianapolis, IN.
(via the dice)
In this visual essay (and video embedded above), Alvin Chang shows how science fiction movies have gotten darker and more complex since the 1950s, when many movies were set in the present with a clear existential threat that was then overcome.
But these days, it’s much more likely that protagonists also have to overcome societal forces — political movements, systemic inequality, rampant capitalism. These are basically things that seem too big to fix.
It’s also far more likely that the narrative explores inner conflicts — moral dilemmas, identity crises, and wrestling with our understanding of what it means to be human. We don’t just face outside threats; we also face threats within ourselves.
Ultimately, today’s sci-fi stories are far more likely to be a commentary on current social issues. These might be critiques of political ideologies, runaway capitalism, irresponsible innovation, human apathy, or eroding mental health.
(via studio d)
Cat Graffam combined their love of art and old technology to create a mashup of Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World and the Windows XP wallpaper, using MS Paint and a mouse. You can watch how they did it in this video:
Prints of the finished product are available. (via waxy)
A true master of the electric guitar, Jimi Hendrix missed the era of MTV Unplugged by almost 20 years and video & audio clips of him playing an acoustic guitar can be difficult to find. Open Culture recently collected a pair of videos of Hendrix unplugged.
While Hendrix did more than anyone before him to turn guitar amps into instruments with his squalls of electric feedback and distorted wah-wah squeals, when you strip his playing down to basics, he’s still pretty much as good as it gets.
A YouTube commenter said:
Jimi could make an acoustic sound like an electric, and an electric like something else.
P.S. Here are several clips of another otherworldly musician playing an acoustic guitar…his name is Prince (and he is funky).
The legendary dancer, actor, and singer Gene Kelly appeared on The Muppet Show in season five, in what turned out to be the last episode of the show ever filmed. The episode’s gag involved Kelly being under the impression he was turning up to watch the show and not perform. Kermit tricks him into it, but in the final act, Kelly refuses to do his most famous song, Singin’ in the Rain. Until…
As Jonathan Hoefler said about this bit on Threads:
For all the satire and irony and anxiety that shaped Gen X, we were so lucky to grow up with the gentleness, wit, kindness, and respect of Jim Henson, the Children’s Television Workshop, and public television generally. How lovely is this?
As if we needed more reasons to love her, Ayo Edebiri is a total film dork. First, there’s the account on Letterboxd — her review of Empire Strikes Back: “this movie is great but I was really shocked by how ugly Yoda was sorry if that pisses anybody off but I had only seen baby Yoda and adult Yoda is fucking busted”. And recently, she totally nerded out in the Criterion Collection closet.
The actor shares her love for sexy and stylish heist movies like Charade and Thief; praises the work of Juzo Itami (whom she calls “the G.O.A.T.”) and his wife, Nobuko Miyamoto; and talks about the African American surrealist imagery in To Sleep with Anger.
So infectiously joyful! As one of the YT commenters said:
Between the prepared list on her phone and the Radiohead t-shirt I feel like this was the closest the comments section has been to having one of us in the closet
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