2025-01-31 05:15:45
The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World — and Shapes Our Future is a forthcoming book from Sam Arbesman, out in June 2025.
2025-01-31 02:44:02
The Public Domain Review (a true gem of the web) has launched The Public Domain Image Archive, “a curated collection of more than 10,000 out-of-copyright historical images, free for all to explore and reuse”.
While The Public Domain Review primarily takes the form of an “arts journal”, it has also quietly served as a digital art gallery, albeit one fractured across essays and collections posts. The PDIA sets out to emphasise this visual nature of the PDR, freeing these images from their textual homes and placing them front and center for easier discovery, comparison, and appreciation. Our aim is to offer a platform that will serve both as a practical resource and a place to simply wander — an ever-growing portal to discover more than 2000 years of visual culture.
The “infinite view” is particularly fun…you can just pan & scroll and let the whole collection wash over your visual cortex. (via colossal)
2025-01-31 01:50:58
“A Dyson tree is a hypothetical genetically engineered plant (perhaps resembling a tree) capable of growing inside a comet. Plants may be able to produce a breathable atmosphere within the hollow spaces of the comet.”
2025-01-31 00:48:35
In deciding the Oscar Best Picture winners from 1927-2023, let’s say you relied on the contemporary ratings of films on Letterboxd instead of the Academy vote totals of the time. Sometimes, you’d get the same answers but rarely. You’d get lots more foreign films from directors like Ozu, Kurosawa, Truffaut, Leone, Bergman, and Tarkovsky. You’d get Best Picture wins for The Empire Strikes Back (over Ordinary People), Do the Right Thing (over Driving Miss Daisy), and Brokeback Mountain (over Crash). And Paddington 2!
Looking at just one year, 1999 was a good one for movies but the Oscar nominees were on the safer side:
American Beauty
The Cider House Rules
The Green Mile
The Insider
The Sixth Sense
Here’s the Letterboxd list from 1999, ranked by rating (more than 1K ratings):
Fight Club
The Iron Giant
The Green Mile
Magnolia
All About My Mother
The Matrix
The Straight Story
Beau Travail
The Insider
Being John Malkovich
American Beauty and The Sixth Sense are further down the list and The Cider House Rules is nowhere to be found. Anyway, interesting to compare!
Tags: best of · Letterboxd · lists · movies · Oscars · video
2025-01-30 23:52:51
Muji has opened its first food market in the US at its Chelsea Market location.
2025-01-30 22:53:20
Reuters made a cozy game about cozy games. “Wolfe would put on cozy game music as she worked on the cozy game about cozy games, and she could feel her own stress and anxiety ebb away.”