Entries for April 2023
Lego did not invent the stacking, interlocking plastic brick — Kiddiecraft did. So why did Lego’s version win? As Phil Edwards explains in this entertaining video, the answer can be boiled down to two words: innovation and marketing.
The first Lego plastic mold was the same one that Kiddicraft used, and early Lego bricks were almost identical to Kiddicraft blocks, with a few minor differences. They slightly changed the scale and the studs, but as you can see, they were pretty similar. Early Kiddicraft blocks had little slots in the side for windows and other attachments. So did early Lego bricks. From top to bottom, these were very similar to Kiddicraft blocks. So with such a simple idea that had kind of already been done, how did Lego win?
See also Why Oreo Won and a fascinating look at plastic injection molding, including a bit on “how quietly ingenious Lego’s injection molding process is”.
Hot Ones has a genius formula: thoroughly researched, substantive questions, celeb guests off-balance because their mouths are on fire. “Hot Ones was just the dumbest idea of all time. How is it, philosophically, that the dumbest idea is the best?”
I’m charmed by these ultra-realistic drawings of Japanese maintenance trains by Masami Onishi.
Japanese trains are renowned for their punctuality, comfort and overall reliability. But part of what makes them so reliable is an “unseen” workforce of overnight trains. These trains will be unfamiliar to the everyday rider because they only show themselves after regular service has ended for the day. Working through the wee hours of night and early morning, they perform maintenance work on tracks and electrical wires that ensures a smooth and uninterrupted ride during the day.
My pal Craig Mod recently spotted a “rare and majestic” inspection Shinkansen called Doctor Yellow.
The inspection vehicle is popular among train enthusiasts as a sighting of the train is said to bring good luck since it is so rarely glimpsed.
Gotta love a place that’s so deservedly proud of and enthusiastic about its rail infrastructure.
Update: Great Britain has a maintenance train called the Yellow Banana. (thx, james)
Thought-provoking take on 15-minute cities: “If you can get to the coffee shop within fifteen minutes, but the barista who makes your drink can’t afford to live closer than a half-hour away, then you live in a theme park.”
I love reading accounts of famous art discoveries in unassuming places. This painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger was covered in dust and discovered behind a door. The art auctioneer who spotted it: “My heart was beating so hard.”
For decades, Justice Clarence Thomas has secretly accepted luxury vacations (private jets, superyachts, ranches, retreats) from a GOP megadonor. This is a massive (but not surprising) ethical breach from a powerful public servant.
A short oral history of the making of Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You. “By summer, it had been released all over the world, just six months after being written. We only ever played that one live show, released this one single…”
Why is “indict” pronounced the way it is, rhyming with “delight” and not “predict” or “verdict”? (Because the spelling changed but the pronunciation remained the same.)
I totally love these “evolved” drawings of the elaborate patterns of broken plates by Robert Strati. The project was inspired by a plate that broke in the Strati household:
This work was inspired by a plate from my wife’s late mother, Barbara. One day it was dropped and shattered. Some time after, I picked up a pen and started working on the “Fragmented” series, exploring the possibilities of things broken and the stories that can evolve from them.
You can see more work from this project on Instagram and at this site.
See also Kintsukuroi and Martin Klimas’ Porcelain Figures. (via my modern met)
I enjoyed reading A.O. Scott’s exit interview after two decades of reviewing films for the NY Times. “I hesitate to second-guess myself. I can’t really take any of it back. The damage is done.”
Rainbows are actually full circles. “Most of us only ever see a fraction of a full rainbow: an arc. But optically, a full rainbow makes a complete circle.” My god, that pic at the top of the article…
I’ve long been a fan of Edward Burtynsky’s photographic surveys of humanity’s impact on our environment, so I was eager to explore his newest project, African Studies.
In Edward Burtynsky’s recent photographs, produced across the African continent, the patterns and scars of human-altered landscapes initially appear to form an abstract painterly language; they reference the sublime and often surreal qualities of human mark-making. While chronicling the major themes of terraforming and extraction, urbanization and deforestation, African Studies conveys the unsettling reality of sweeping resource depletion on both a human and industrial scale.
You can check out more photos from the series here and here as well as in his forthcoming book (Amazon). (via colossal)
Angel Reese Can Shine as Brightly as She Wants. “When white athletes are demonstrative, they’re playing with passion and showing their love of the game. When Black athletes reveal their feelings, they’re disgraceful and ‘classless.’”
Tabloid is a programming language with the syntax of clickbait news headlines. “Print output with the keywords YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS followed by an expression. Everything…is automatically capitalized, and an exclamation point is added.”
I was keen to read that the debating method practiced by Trump, Putin, anti-vaxxers, and climate deniers of flooding the zone with a firehose of incorrect information has a name: the Gish Gallop. From Mehdi Hasan’s piece in The Atlantic, adapted from his new book, Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking (ebook):
Trump may be the grand master of the Gish Gallop, but he is not its originator. That honor goes to the person who gave the method its name: Duane Tolbert Gish.
Gish was a biochemist at the Institute for Creation Research, a pseudo-scientific group that maintains all life on Earth was created in six days by the God of the Old Testament at some point in the past 10,000 years, with evolution playing no part. Gish publicized the ICR and its creed — and himself — by winning debates against evolutionists across the country.
During debates, after letting his opponent go first, Gish would “begin talking very quickly for perhaps an hour”, overwhelming his opponent with factual-sounding nonsense. According to Hasan, there are a few tactics you can use to counter the Gish Gallop, but you’ve got to be prepared. For instance, you can call them out:
Don’t let your audience be fooled into assuming that your opponent has special command of the subject because of all the “facts” they’ve just spouted. Explain to them what your opponent is doing, and that the Gallop is really just a sleight of hand.
Wikipedia’s list of unidentified people includes Tank Man, Satoshi Nakamoto, Elena Ferrante, and The Falling Man.
How to easily draw dotted lines on a chalkboard. “You should feel your chalk ‘bounce’ or ‘vibrate’ along the surface of the board, creating a dotted line!”
Nonprofit No Longer Recalls Who They Were Originally Planning To Help. “[The] nonprofit employed dozens of employees, had several lucrative government contracts, and even hosted numerous events such as a 5k, a concert, and a gala at a museum…”
This Is the Lightest Paint in the World. “A Boeing 747 needs about 500 kilograms of paint. He estimates that his paint could cover the same area with 1.3 kilograms.”
Oh man, this is a huge huge nostalgia bomb for me - a 50-minute medley of the most popular song from each month since January 1980. When I was a kid growing up in rural Wisconsin, there were basically four choices of music to listen to: country, metal, oldies, and pop/top 40. I chose pop, so the first ~15 minutes of this video is basically the soundtrack to my childhood.
Here’s a playlist of all the songs on Spotify, in case you want to listen to the whole megillah. See also The Hood Internet’s remixes of pop music by year. (via open culture)
Grid World. “We radiate grids. If you are caught in the beam of someone else’s grid, as I was in my dad’s, the grid’s virality will infect you.”
I have very high hopes for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. It would be incredible if it lives up to them and the first two teaser trailers are a good start.
Also, I love how completely and utterly thirrrrrrsty the video’s description is to establish the bona fides and pedigree of the movie’s cast and crew:
From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig (“Little Women,” “Lady Bird”) comes “Barbie,” starring Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie (“Bombshell,” “I, Tonya”) and Ryan Gosling (“La La Land,” “Half Nelson”) as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera (“End of Watch,” the “How to Train Your Dragon” films), Kate McKinnon (“Bombshell,” “Yesterday”), Michael Cera (“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” “Juno”), Ariana Greenblatt (“Avengers: Infinity War,” “65”), Issa Rae (“The Photograph,” “Insecure”), Rhea Perlman (“I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “Matilda”), and Will Ferrell (the “Anchorman” films, “Talladega Nights”). The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne (“Little Women”), Emma Mackey (“Emily,” “Sex Education”), Hari Nef (“Assassination Nation,” “Transparent”), Alexandra Shipp (the “X-Men” films), Kingsley Ben-Adir (“One Night in Miami,” “Peaky Blinders”), Simu Liu (“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”), Ncuti Gatwa (“Sex Education”), Scott Evans (“Grace and Frankie”), Jamie Demetriou (“Cruella”), Connor Swindells (“Sex Education,” “Emma.”), Sharon Rooney (“Dumbo,” “Jerk”), Nicola Coughlan (“Bridgerton,” “Derry Girls”), Ritu Arya (“The Umbrella Academy”), Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren (“The Queen”).
Gerwig directed “Barbie” from a screenplay by Gerwig & Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story,” “The Squid and the Whale”), based on Barbie by Mattel. The film’s producers are Oscar nominee David Heyman (“Marriage Story,” “Gravity”), Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner, with Michael Sharp, Josey McNamara, Ynon Kreiz, Courtenay Valenti, Toby Emmerich and Cate Adams serving as executive producers.
Gerwig’s creative team behind the camera included Oscar-nominated director of photography Rodrigo Prieto (“The Irishman,” “Silence,” “Brokeback Mountain”), six-time Oscar-nominated production designer Sarah Greenwood (“Beauty and the Beast,” “Anna Karenina”), editor Nick Houy (“Little Women,” “Lady Bird”), Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran (“Little Women,” “Anna Karenina”), visual effects supervisor Glen Pratt (“Paddington 2,” “Beauty and the Beast”), music supervisor George Drakoulias (“White Noise,” “Marriage Story”) and Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat (“The Shape of Water,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel”).
Is that….everybody? In the world?
An interview with illustrator Christoph Niemann, a particular favorite of mine. “Artists have to be emphatic. You have to have a sense of what you know and what your audience knows.”
I loved this analysis of a scene from the final episode of season three of Mad Men.
The scene shifts. The partners go from standing in disarray around the room to orderly sitting, two by two across from one another. They go from tense standing disagreements to calm, relaxed collusion.
This video is also a reminder of what a great show Mad Men was (it’s in my all-time top 5) and how they just don’t make TV like this anymore.
The Guardians of the Galaxy mixtape playlist has been updated with music from Vol. 3, including songs from Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Faith No More, and the Beastie Boys.
Where went the wolf? “The very attributes that make small dogs cute and popular are slowly strangling their ability to function as real animals.”
This was me a couple of years ago when I first started playing Fortnite, as satirized by Adam Driver and the SNL gang:
I found this sketch via a piece that Tom Vanderbilt wrote about playing Fortnite with his daughter (and her friends).
It’s not as though Sylvie and I discussed the problem of free will as we dodged RPG rounds. For the most part, our interactions weren’t nearly so high-minded. We stole each other’s kills and squabbled over loot. She badgered me for V-Bucks so she could buy her character new baubles in the Item Shop. But sometimes, after playing, we’d go for a walk and analyze how we were able to notch a dub — Fortnite-speak for a win — or how we might have done better. We’d assess the quality of newly introduced weapons. (The best were OP, for “overpowering,” but often the makers of Fortnite would later “nerf” them for being too OP.) She’d chide me for trying to improve by battling more, rather than by practicing in Creative mode — which suddenly made her open to hearing about the late Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson’s theories of “deliberate practice.” (Like many kids, she had a built-in filter against my teachable moments.) We actually were, per Adam Driver’s character, bonding.
And in our Fortnite games I saw her cultivate prowess. I’m not talking merely about the widely discussed perceptual and cognitive benefits of video games, which include an improved ability to track objects in space and tune out cognitive “distractors.” I’m talking about that suite of abilities sometimes referred to as “21st-century skills”: imaginatively solving open-ended problems, working collaboratively in teams, synthesizing complex information streams. “Unfortunately, in most formal education settings, we’re not emphasizing those very much,” argues Eric Klopfer, who directs the Education Arcade at MIT. “Just playing Fortnite doesn’t necessarily give you those skills — but playing Fortnite in the right way, with the right people, is certainly a good step in that direction.”
This is the plain and perhaps embarrassing truth: During my sabbatical, I didn’t pursue any activity (with the possible exception of mountain biking) as diligently as I did playing Fortnite. My kids have been playing it for awhile, both together and separately, and it was fun to watch them working together to complete quests and sometimes even win. I tried playing with them a few times the previous year, but the last shooter game I played was Quake III in the late 90s and so I was comically bad, running around firing my weapon into the sky or the ground and generally just embarrassing my kids, who left my reboot card where it landed after I’d died more often than not.
Early last year, even before I left on my sabbatical, I decided I wanted to learn how to play properly, so that I could do something with my kids on their turf. I played mostly by myself at first — and poorly. Slowly I figured out the rules of the game and how to move and shoot. I played online with my friend David, who was forgiving of my deficiencies, and we caught up while he explained how the game worked and we explored the island together. I finally got a kill and a win, in the same match — I’d found a good hiding place in a bush and then emerged when it was down to me and some other hapless fool (who was probably 8 years old or a bot) and I somehow got them. A friend who had arrived for dinner mid-game was very surprised when I started yelling my head off and running around the house.
Over the summer after I started the sabbatical, I played most days for at least 30 minutes. I got better and was having more fun. I won some matches and bought the Battle Pass so I could get some different skins and emotes. Even though I got a late start in the season, I grinded on quests to get the Darth Vader skin, which is amusing to wear while you’re trying out different emotes. (You haven’t lived until you’ve watched Vader do the death drop or dance to My Money Don’t Jiggle Jiggle, It Folds.1) When the kids got back from camp, I was good enough to at least not slow them down too much and get a couple of kills in the meantime. I learned the lingo and how to work as a team, with my kids leading the way.1 I’m still not great, but it’s become one of our favorite things to do together and I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
Oh, just watching some Siegfried & Joy videos on Instagram - these are great.
How Paris Kicked Out the Cars. In the past 2 decades, car trips within Paris are down 60%, car crashes down by 30%, pollution levels are down, and mass transit ridership has increased 40%.
This San Francisco barbershop has a “silent mode” for patrons who don’t want to chat with barbers. This is great for introverts…I don’t get my hair cut as often as I should because of chit chat.
Just a quick reminder that I answered a bunch of questions from readers for the inaugural Kottke.org Ask Me Anything. I talked about how to separate work from life:
If I let it, every part of my life could be part of my job: not only books, movies, and travel but kids, relationships, emotions, everyday goings-on, etc. etc. etc. That’s the way it used to be, much more than it is now. But slicing and dicing everything up for consumption all the time, meta-experiencing absolutely everything; that’s no way to live. Back in the day, you saw journalers and bloggers burn out from sharing too much of themselves and their lives online with others — now you see it happening with YouTubers, TikTokers, and influencers. I’ve learned (mostly) how to meter myself; you get less of me now (this AMA notwithstanding) but hopefully for much longer.
And who I have in mind when I write for the site:
The site is best when I try to write posts as if each one is an email to a curious friend who I think would be interested in the thing I’m writing about, irrespective of topic/subject/field/whatever. I know not everyone is interested in every topic (or even most topics!) but I tend to look for things that people might find intriguing even if they don’t normally collect stamps, skateboard, watch ballet, appreciate mathematics, or listen to rap. Anything is interesting if you dig deep enough, observe it from the correct angle, or talk to the right enthusiast.
And what my kids and I have read before bedtime:
One book we read together that turned out to be surprisingly popular with them (when they were ~9-11 years old) was Emily Wilson’s excellent translation of The Odyssey. They were already fans of Greek mythology and knew some of the story and Wilson’s writing is so wonderful — “Soon Dawn was born, her fingers bright with roses” — that we blazed right through it and were sad when it ended.
And a favorite recent pasta recipe:
I have been really enjoying this Pasta alla Norcina recipe I found on Instagram awhile back. There’s some great Italian sausage that I get from the local market that works really well for it. And my daughter got me some truffle oil for my birthday, so we put a little bit of that on there too.
I might pop in there later this week to answer some more questions, so stay tuned! Folks had lots of questions about my process and what I learned on my sabbatical, so I may tackle them next.
We’re living in the Age of Average. Cars, architecture, interiors, brands, people, and media all look the same. “Distinctiveness has died. In every field we look at, we find that everything looks the same.”
Well this is some bizarre good fun — turns out that the campy goofiness of Star Wars and the campy seriousness of high fashion make for a pretty good combination.
See also Lord of the Rings by Balenciaga and Game of Thrones by Balenciaga. Oh, and Hipster Star Wars.
How Stop-Motion Movies Are Animated at Aardman. The way they do the fire, fog, and rain is pretty cool.
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