This site is made possible by member support. ❤️
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
In fiction, Dan Brown was #1 but James Patterson appears *five times* in the top 25. On the nonfiction side, a certain former Alaskan governor (no, not Walter J. Hickel) tops the list. The full list is here. (via the millions)
This is one of my favorite end of the year lists: the top ten shots in movies (part one, part two). (via fimoculous)
If you didn’t get a chance to check this out earlier in the week, a friendly reminder: my 100 favorite links of 2009, culled from the archives of kottke.org. Good for killing several hours.
One of my favorite end-of-the-year lists: the BBC’s 100 things we didn’t know last year. For instance, the English Channel froze from Dover to Calais in 1673. Thanks, Little Ice Age.
For each of the past six years, I’ve collected my favorite stuff posted to kottke.org into a “best links of the year” list. 2009’s list — the original 100 kottke.org posts containing those links, in random order — covers such topics as healthcare spending, Amish hackers, gaussian goats, surfing videos, fun Flash games, Pete Campbell dancing, Rwandan genocide, and something called the McGangBang, as well as the usual array of dazzling video, photos, and art featured on kottke.org in the past year. Kiss the rest of your day goodbye!
Past best-of lists: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.
P.S. kottke.org’s Person of the Year: Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger III.
From Vimeo’s list of favorite videos of 2009, the music video for Luv Deluxe by Cinnamon Chasers:
Also worth watching is the Tarantino Mixtape, which hovers somewhere between an analysis of the themes in QuentinTarantino’s films and a toe-tapping remix of all the great music, visuals, and sounds he uses in them. (via @brainpicker)
Regret the Error presents its annual list of media errors and corrections. These are two of my favorites:
An article on Aug. 2 about older alumni who have been helped by university career counselors referred imprecisely to comments by a 1990 graduate of Lehigh University who lost his job in February when his company was downsized, and a correction in this space last Sunday misspelled his surname. As the article correctly noted, he is David Monson, not Munson, and he was speaking generally — not about himself — when he said that newly unemployed people sometimes mope around the house in sweatpants.
—
ON 17 July 2008 in our front page article “Ron the Lash” we falsely reported that whilst recovering from an operation to his ankle Cristiano Ronaldo had “gone on a bender” at a Hollywood nightclub where he splashed out pounds 10,000 on champagne and vodka and threw his crutches to the ground and tried to dance on his uninjured foot. We now accept that Cristiano did not “go on a bender”, did not drink any alcohol that evening, did not spend pounds 10,000 on alcohol, nor throw his crutches to the floor or try to dance.
(via df)
One of the better lists out there: the top astronomy photos of the year. From the list, this is a more detailed view of the Martian landscape than we’re used to seeing:
My personal favorite, the photos taken by the LRO of Apollo 11’s landing site, made the list as well.
The Black List is the collection of scripts that got movie executives most excited in 2009. Here’s #1:
1. The Muppet Man By Christopher Weekes
What it’s about: The life and times of the late Jim Henson, the man behind Sesame Street and The Muppets.What it’s like: The Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, but with puppets. This moving story depicts the life of a creative genius, with occasional surreal appearances by the likes of Kermit and Miss Piggy.
(via subtraction)
Bygone Bureau asks a bunch of folks: what was your favorite new blog of 2009?
One of my favorite end-of-the-year lists is Foreign Policy’s The Top Ten Stories You Missed; here’s this year’s installment. A Hotline for China and India caught my eye.
“Hotlines” between world leaders, like the legendary Moscow-Washington “red telephone” devised after the Cuban missile crisis, are designed to prevent misunderstandings or miscommunications between nuclear powers from escalating into a nuclear conflict. China and the United States have one. So do India and Pakistan. This year, the leaders of India and China agreed to set one up between New Delhi and Beijing, highlighting concerns that a worsening border dispute could quickly become the first major conflict of the multipolar era.
The NY Times Magazine has published their Year in Ideas issue for 2009. Lots of good stuff in there. Before I got sidetracked with family obligations (Minna!), I planned on pitching the magazine’s editors a couple of ideas I noticed this year:
The Neverending Wake. We got a preview of what death in the celebrity age (more) is going be like when a cluster of notable people passed away this summer. How will we think about death when someone we know or admire dies every day for the rest of our lives?
Machine Gun Photography. Just as the introduction of the machine gun fundamentally changed warfare, so the affordable high-resolution digital video camera will change photography. Now you don’t have to wait for exactly the right moment for the perfect shot; just take 10 minutes of HD video and find the best shots later. Photography was always really about the editing anyway, right?
Too soon for that title? Anyway, Hitfix takes an early look at the Oscar contenders for 2010. Among them, Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, Star Trek, Where the Wild Things Are, Malick’s The Tree of Life, The Road, Amelia, and The Lovely Bones.
Lettercult has a round-up of some notable “custom letters” from the first half of 2009…hand lettered type, calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti….stuff like that. This is one of my favorites:
(via do)
Stay Connected