Normal People TV Series
The BBC and Hulu are producing a 12-part TV series based on Sally Rooney’s book Normal People (which I excerpted here). The first trailer is above and I have to say, color me intrigued. (via the recently relaunched recs)
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kottke.org posts about video
A Night at the Opera
One of my favorite video series is Estelle Caswell’s Earworm for Vox — you can check out my posts about it here. It had been a few months since the last episode, so I went to see if she’d made any other videos in the meantime and, lo, Caswell produced a video about the Metropolitan Opera’s production of the opera Akhnaten by Philip Glass, one of my favorite composers.
The video above gives a behind-the-scenes look at the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Akhnaten. We follow Anthony Roth Costanzo, who plays Akhnaten, through the various phases of rehearsal, from working with his vocal coach in a Manhattan apartment to taking the stage for a dress rehearsal in a costume covered in doll heads.
I’ve only seen one opera at the Met (years ago) and was blown away by the production. I remember walking out of there thinking, “Do people know how good this is? Why isn’t opera a massive thing?” (Although I guess I answered my own question by not ever going back?)
Milk - White Poison or Healthy Drink?
When humans domesticated barnyard animals (goats, sheep, cows) starting around 10,000 years ago, they stumbled upon one of the most amazing schemes of all time. Instead of relying on the few human-edible plants scattered around for their energy needs, humans could raise animals that ate the plain old grass that was growing anywhere & everywhere and converted it into ultra-nutritious and energy-rich superfoods like meat and milk. Land back then was plentiful and the scheme allowed humans to produce many more calories with less effort using an energy source (the grass) that they didn’t otherwise have much use for.
But how does milk fit into the picture these days? It’s still a superfood that’s very beneficial to people in many parts of the world where adequate nutrition isn’t available from other sources. But as Kurzgesagt explains in this video, our land use has changed in the past 10,000 years, and cow’s milk production is a major source of carbon emissions (when compared to foods w/ similar nutritional value):
And don’t forget to check out the list of sources they used in producing the video.
Darth Costanza
The premise is pretty simple and there’s no need to oversell it because you can imagine what this is going to sound like going in and it delivers perfectly: George Costanza’s father’s voice dubbed over Darth Vader’s dialogue in Star Wars. Serenity now!
(Quickly: Luke = Jerry, Han = George, Leia = Elaine, Chewie = Kramer. Does that even work? (Obi-Wan = Uncle Leo? Is 3PO Newman?))
Scary Sea Monster Really Just Hundreds of Tiny Fish in a Trench Coat
As a defense against predators, these juvenile striped eel catfish from Jemeluk Bay near Bali organize themselves into an ambling, pulsating sea creature that looks like something out of a Miyazaki film. The Kid Should See This:
Try rewatching the video, picking one fish and following it the entire time. Then pick another fish and watch the video again. The juvenile striped eel catfish seem to cycle through positions within the school as the entire swarm moves forward.
Like riders in a peleton, each taking their turn braving danger at the front.
See also A Talented Pufferfish Creates an Underwater “Crop Circle”.
Pandemic - How to Prevent an Outbreak
With the Wuhan coronavirus in the news, this is a timely release from Netflix: Pandemic is a 6-part series on the inevitable worldwide disease outbreak and what’s being done to stop it, or at least to mitigate its effects.
Parasitic Fake ATMs
This is a few years old, but is it ever clever: some thieves in Brazil put an entire fake ATM interface (screen, card reader, keypad) over the real ATM to skim card numbers and PINs.
Krebs on Security wrote up a report on the scheme:
Interestingly, much like grammatical and spelling errors that often give away phishing emails and Web sites, the thieves who assembled the video for the screen for the fake ATM used in the April robbery appear have made a grammatical goof in spelling “país,” the Portuguese word for “country”; apparently, they left off the acute accent.
Most skimming attacks (including the two mentioned here) take place over the weekend hours. Skimmer scammers like to place their devices at a time when they know the bank will be closed for an extended period, and when foot traffic to the machine will be at its highest.
This is like when the T-1000 in Termintor 2 can impersonate any person that it touches, except with cash machines. (I would read a book entirely composed of clever thieves’ inventions and techniques. I assume this already exists?)
The Lost Central Park Neighborhood of Seneca Village
In the 1850s, the well-heeled residents of Manhattan were convinced the city needed a grand park like the European capitals had. And so, a park located in the middle of the city was proposed, a Central Park, if you will. The only problem? There were people living in the park’s proposed location, including Seneca village, a small, integrated, predominately black neighborhood.
It’s a story that goes back to the 1820s, when that part of New York was largely open countryside. Soon it became home to about 1,600 people. Among them was a predominantly black community that bought up affordable plots to build homes, churches and a school. It became known as Seneca Village. And when Irish and German immigrants moved in, it became a rare example at the time of an integrated neighborhood.
See also ‘The City Needed Them Out’.
The Short Student Film That Became Napoleon Dynamite
While in film school at BYU, Jared Hess made a short film called Peluca in just a couple of days for under $500. Two years later, Peluca and its main character (played by Jon Heder) became the basis of Napoleon Dynamite. Here’s the original short — the main character’s name is Seth instead of Napoleon but the moment he speaks his first line, you know it’s the same exact character:
See also The Case of the Napoleon Dynamite Problem. (via open culture)
10-Year Time Lapse of US Weather Radar
Sometimes I load up the US map on Weather Underground just to watch storm systems tumbling and swirling across the country, so this 2-hour time lapse of the last 10 years of US weather radar is riiiiight up my alley. You don’t have to watch the whole thing — even dipping in here and there for a couple of minutes is really gratifying. Can you get ASMR from a weather map? (thx, benjamin)
An Astronomer Explains Black Holes in 5 Levels of Increasing Complexity
In this video from Wired’s 5 Levels series, NASA astronomer Varoujan Gorjian explains the concept of black holes to five different people, ranging from a five-year-old to a college student to a Caltech astrophysicist.
A research astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Grojian specializes in — and I’d just like to pause here to emphasize that this is the official title of his research group at JPL — the structure of the universe. Which means the guy not only knows about event horizons and gravitational lensing but stuff like tidal forces (what!), x-ray binaries (hey now!), and active galactic nuclei (oh my god!). Seriously, the guy’s knowledge of black holes is encyclopedic.
Gorjian lost me somewhere in the middle of his conversation with the grad student.
Dozens of Classic Interviews from The Dick Cavett Show
Open Culture’s Josh Jones takes us on a tour of the amazing YouTube channel for The Dick Cavett Show. The show ran from 1968 well into the 80s and Cavett was known for having on big name guests and getting them to talk about important and interesting topics, making the show a more serious older sibling to The Tonight Show. Jones says Cavett “had a way of making everyone around him comfortable enough to reveal just a little more than they might otherwise”.
The show’s YouTube channel contains dozens and dozens of interview clips, including Marlon Brando talking about rejecting his Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather:
Some of the other videos feature John Lennon on why The Beatles ended, Jimi Hendrix talking about performing at Woodstock, Orson Welles recounting a dinner with Adolf Hitler, Janis Joplin’s final TV interview, Joni Mitchell, Jefferson Airplane, and David Crosby fresh off of their appearances at Woodstock, Robin Williams on depression, and Carly Simon talks about stage fright. Check out the post at Open Culture for more or cross-reference this Wikipedia list of the show’s most memorable moments with the YouTube videos.
Kenobi, a Star Wars Fan Film
Although the announced Disney+ series about Obi-Wan Kenobi may shed some light on the matter, we don’t know too much about what “Ben Kenobi” was up to on Tatooine after the events of Revenge of the Sith, besides keeping an eye on Luke. This short film made by a group of Star Wars fans as a “love letter” to the series shows what may have happened after the Empire makes its presence known when Luke is just a young boy. (via kevin kelly)
Goldman v Silverman
Filmed during Uncut Gems, Goldman v Silverman is a short film by the Safdie brothers starring Adam Sandler & Benny Safdie as dueling street performers dressed up in metallic paint. In addition to the paint, Sandler has a mask on and doesn’t really talk, so no one in Times Square realizes it’s him. (via gothamist)
How 1917 Was Filmed to Look Like One Long Continuous Take
1917 is the latest in a string of one-shot movies, where the action is presented in real-time and filmed to look as though it were done in one continuous take. This video takes a look at how director Sam Mendes, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and editor Lee Smith constructed the film. In this interview, Smith & Mendes say that the film contains dozens of cuts, with shots lasting anywhere from 39 seconds to 8 & 1/2 minutes. My favorite parts of the video are when they show the camera going from hand-held to crane to truck to cover single shots at a variety of speeds and angles. It’s really impressive.
But — does the effect work to draw the audience into the action? I saw 1917 last night and was distracted at times looking for the cuts and wondering how they seamlessly transitioned from a steadicam sort of shot to a crane shot. Maybe I’d read too much about it going in and distracted myself?
The First and Last Time Mister Rogers Sang “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” on TV
Including special shows, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood ran for 912 episodes and at the beginning of each one, Rogers sang “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” while putting his sweater on and changing his shoes. In the video above, you can compare his rendition of the song from the first episode (February 19, 1968) and the final episode (August 31, 2001). It would take a significant effort (and might actually be impossible because he sings the song at a different pace each time), but I’d love to see someone cut together a version of this that features all 912 openings strung together chronologically, so you can see Rogers get older as he sings (a la Noah Kalina’s Everyday).
The same YouTube channel also edited together the first and last times Rogers sang “Good Feeling”:
(via open culture)
McMillions, an HBO Documentary on the Massive McDonald’s Monopoly Scandal
In July 2018, I posted about the FBI investigation into the multi-million dollar McDonald’s Monopoly fraud.
For years, Jerry Jacobson was in charge of the security of the game pieces for McDonald’s Monopoly, one of the most successful marketing promotions in the fast food giant’s history. And for almost as long, Jacobson had been passing off winning pieces to family, friends, and “a sprawling network of mobsters, psychics, strip club owners, convicts, drug traffickers”, to the tune of more than million in cash & prizes.
In early February, HBO is airing a five-part documentary series on the investigation called McMillions:
Hosting Christmas Dinner for 50 Strangers
Inspired by his holiday solitude in a new place last year, Brad Lancaster decided to host a Vancouver Christmas dinner for people who were going to be alone that day. Word got out, donations poured in, and he ended up hosting 50 people for a baller holiday dinner.
Noah Takes a Photo of Himself Every Day for 20 Years
On January 11, 2000, when he was 19 years old, photographer Noah Kalina took a photo of himself — and just never stopped doing that. Although he’s missed a few days here and there, he’s kept up his daily habit for 20 years. The video above shows all 20 years of his daily photos.
Six years into the project in 2006, Kalina uploaded a video of his progress to Vimeo and then YouTube and it went viral, changing the trajectory of his career and life. The project has exhibited in art galleries around the world and The Simpsons even did a parody of it.
As someone who has done one thing near-daily for 20+ years, I feel a great kinship towards this project. I’ll see you in 2040, Noah.
Update: Kalina did an interview about the project with Van Schneider:
I can basically look at any shot in this project and know exactly where I was. Certain photos provide details and I can recall who I was with or what I was up to. It’s the perfect diary for me since I’ve never really enjoyed writing.
Winners Take All
Winners Take All is Anand Giridharadas’ 2018 book about how “the global elite’s efforts to ‘change the world’ preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve”. For instance, Giridharadas would argue that Jeff Bezos donating a billion dollars to charter schools while Amazon pays no federal income tax is a problem.
Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? His groundbreaking investigation has already forced a great, sorely needed reckoning among the world’s wealthiest and those they hover above, and it points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world — a call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.
The RSA made an animated video of a talk by Giridharadas that distills his central message into about five minutes — it’s a good watch/listen. The full talk is available here. (via aeon)
Woven City, Toyota’s Prototype City of the Future
In early 2021, Toyota plans to break ground on a prototype city of the future located at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan. Around 2000 people will populate Woven City at first, which will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
The masterplan of the city includes the designations for street usage into three types: for faster vehicles only, for a mix of lower speed, personal mobility and pedestrians, and for a park-like promenade for pedestrians only. These three street types weave together to form an organic grid pattern to help accelerate the testing of autonomy.
The city is planned to be fully sustainable, with buildings made mostly of wood to minimize the carbon footprint, using traditional Japanese wood joinery, combined with robotic production methods. The rooftops will be covered in photo-voltaic panels to generate solar power in addition to power generated by hydrogen fuel cells. Toyota plans to weave in the outdoors throughout the city, with native vegetation and hydroponics.
Residences will be equipped with the latest in human support technologies, such as in-home robotics to assist with daily living. The homes will use sensor-based AI to check occupants’ health, take care of basic needs and enhance daily life, creating an opportunity to deploy connected technology with integrity and trust, securely and positively.
The press release and video above are the best sources of info about the city, but there’s also a website with not a lot of info and some weirdly fuzzy low-res icons that I hope are not indicative of the level of effort and polish being put into this effort. Those icons definitely didn’t go through the Toyota Production System.
Air Travel in the Age of Climate Crisis: Is It Wrong to Fly?
Because of the climate crisis, Greta Thunberg doesn’t fly anymore. Neither does climate journalist Eric Holthaus (aside from this recent trip). The flight shame movement and personal reflection on the climate has caused others to limit their air travel.
In this video, Joss Fong and her team at Vox look at the cost of air travel to our environment, investigate electric airplanes, and consider whether it’s wrong to fly in the age of climate crisis.
Climate change implicates us all in a planet-sized injustice. If I fly, if I drive, if I heat or cool my home, if I buy stuff, if I eat stuff, all of this now has a cost that I’m not paying.
Danny MacAskill Joins the Gym
In a video that pokes a little bit of fun at the stationary cycling of Soulcycle and Peloton, trials rider Danny MacAskill joins the gym and practices his own unique brand of bicycle fitness. Stick around until the end to see some bloopers and some more stunts that didn’t make the cut.
Impossible Foods Announces Their New Impossible Pork Product
Impossible Foods is expanding from faux beef to faux pork. Impossible Pork is their newest product made entirely from plants that is engineered to look and taste as close to the real thing as possible.
From the press release:
Impossible Pork is delicious in any ground meat dish, including spring rolls, stuffed vegetables, dumplings, wontons or sausage links. Like ground meat from pigs, Impossible Pork is characterized by its mild savory flavor, adding delicate depth and umami richness without being gamey or overpowering.
Although they don’t specifically connect the dots, Impossible Pork seems to be the base for another new product of theirs: Impossible Sausage, which is debuting in breakfast sandwiches at Burger King later this month. (I mean, you can’t make sausage without pork, right?!)
In a review of Impossible Pork for The Verge, long-time vegetarian Elizabeth Lopatto says it’s mostly a success, calling it “a savory base of protein for a lot of foods that traditionally call for pork”.
The Final Chart Topper of the Decade Perfectly Summarizes the Current State of Media
The number one song on the UK singles chart for the last week of 2019 was Ellie Goulding’s River, despite it not being available on Spotify, Apple, Google, or anywhere but Amazon (with one important exception). How the heck did that happen? Chart Watch UK has the story.
River was simply a prominent part of just about every “Christmas songs” playlist curated by Amazon themselves, a default choice for everyone muttering “Alexa, play Christmas songs” as they basted the turkey and cursed the sprouts. People have been spoon-fed a contemporary hit single like no other before it, and the result of that has been to propel it almost by accident to the top of the charts.
This is a fitting choice for the final chart topper in the 2010s because it encapsulates a number of trends in media that have played out over the past decade. To wit:
- The song is a remake. Remakes and sequels dominate our viewing and listening.
- It is exclusive to a single platform. The entire media world seems to be headed in this direction.
- The platform is operated by one of the handful of tech behemoths that took control of more and more of the media landscape as the decade wore on.
- Amazon. Arguably the company of the decade. Led by the world’s richest man, a symbol of the decade’s growth in inequality.
- Ok, the song is exclusive to Amazon but is also on YouTube. YT has simply grown so popular for young people listening to music that media companies can’t ignore it, even when they’re direct Google competitors (and who isn’t these days).
- Voice assistant devices were instrumental in making the song popular. Since Siri was first released in 2011, voice assistants have become increasingly embedded in our homes and pockets.
- Amazon’s editorial team added the exclusive song to several of their Christmas playlists. Amazon has access to the song, compiles the playlists, and sells the devices to play them. This sort of BigCo “synergy” became standard operating procedure in the 2010s.
- There was an algorithm involved (Billboard’s). They increasingly determine what we read, watch, and listen to.
- And that algorithm was gamed. See also the role of Facebook’s algorithms in the 2016 US Presidential election (and many many other examples of “impartial” algos being manipulated).
It is tough to imagine a more perfect example of how media functions (or doesn’t) today. (via @tedgioia)
Stella the Talking Dog
Meet Stella and her human, speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger. Using a soundboard of buttons that say words when they’re pressed, Hunger has taught Stella how to talk. Here’s a video from several months ago in which Stella asks to go to the beach, and when rebuffed, asks to play instead:
Stella’s latest progress is documented on Instagram: learning the meaning of “later”, asking where her owners are, and asking for more water and a toy.
Visualizing How Big the Universe & Atoms Are
In this video, the visual effects artists at Corridor Crew help us visualize just how small atoms are and how large the universe is. For instance, if you imagine an atom being the size of a tennis ball, blood cells would be as large as a small town and a penny would be almost precisely the diameter of the Earth. This is like a deconstructed & remixed Powers of Ten. (via digg)
A Machine Dreams Up New Insect Species
Using a book of insect illustrations from the 1890s, Bernat Cuni used a variety of machine learning tools to generate a bunch of realistic-looking beetles that don’t actually exist in nature.
NASA: How We’re Going (Back) to the Moon
Before the holidays, NASA announced their plan for going back to the Moon by 2024.
With the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. We will collaborate with our commercial and international partners and establish sustainable exploration by 2028. Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap — sending astronauts to Mars.
The plan involves many supply runs and a small space station orbiting the Moon so that things like rovers and lunar landers are in place when manned missions need to land on the Moon or even continue on to Mars. You can check out all of the details on NASA’s website.
How to Make Popcorn Using a Blow Torch & Hair Dryer
I love this short little film from the creative duo of Zita Bernet & Rafael Sommerhalder entitled Popcorn.
(via mike essl)
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