Full set of Underworld playing live at EDC Las Vegas back in May.

A digital clock where the numbers are made from dozens of analog clock hands. Hard to describe…just go take a look.

Thomas Whichello's YouTube channel aims to make classic literature accessible and enjoyable. He often reads these works in their original languages, dialects, or accents. A particularly popular video features him reciting Book 1 of the Iliad in Ancient Greek. The accompanying translation attempts to closely mirror the original's emphasis, thought division, and phrasing. Line breaks in the translation are designed to reflect the Greek phraseology and the speaker's breath and intonation. This approach allows even non-Greek speakers to infer connections between the original and the translation. The translation is presented in a manner resembling the speaking version of a Loeb Classical Library book. While the video is lengthy, even brief engagement is recommended for the experience. Whichello's complete translation is available on his website for those who wish to follow along. This initiative highlights the enduring appeal of Homer's epic poem.

The Black Jeopardy Misses YouTube channel catalogs just how little Jeopardy contestants know about Black history, culture, and celebrities. (See also, of course, Black Jeopardy, which drives home a similar point in a different way.)

For the first time in centuries, two major collections of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks are now accessible online through Leonardotheka. This monumental effort, spanning a decade and involving multiple institutions, has digitally reunited approximately 3,500 pages. These pages were previously separated and cut apart in the late 16th century by a collector. The project digitally reconstructs some pages, restoring their original appearance and revealing intended connections between text and drawings. This reunification offers new insights into Leonardo's thought processes and creative methods. Leonardotheka brings together 1,119 sheets of the Codex Atlanticus from Milan's Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana. It also includes around 550 sheets of significant figurative, anatomical, landscape, and natural-history drawings from the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. These two significant bodies of work originated from Leonardo's manuscripts created between the mid-1470s and his death in 1519. The result is a unified, cross-searchable digital resource. This platform significantly broadens public access to Leonardo's extensive legacy.

A searchable archive of the almost 5000 TV episodes that naturalist David Attenborough has worked on in his career (1954-present). “Search by animal, habitat, location, natural phenomenon, or theme to find exactly the episode you’re looking for.”

Before making his revolutionary documentary film The Thin Blue Line, filmmaker Errol Morris worked as a private detective. His detective skills came in handy not only in making the film but in actually solving the crime at the heart of the story and freeing an innocent man from a prison life sentence. The Thin Blue Line (1988) not only exposed a miscarriage of justice and freed an innocent man from prison, but created a new genre of movies and forever changed the way Americans view their own justice system. Tags: crime · Errol Morris · movies · murder · video

Andrea Pitzer writes about the forced labor happening in Trump’s immigrant concentration camps and its roots in chattel slavery in the US and in Nazi & Soviet work camps.

Proposed UI rule of thumb: “If I take a screenshot of your app at any moment, it must make sense.”

Is this the sloppiest AI slop video of all time? The AI-generated voiceover (at ~6:45) gets tripped up saying “what WWE” and basically sings Daisy Bell for more than 10 minutes until someone kicks the server.

If I lived in LA, I would go to this concert at the Hollywood Bowl: Music From the Films of Wes Anderson. “Over three nights, musicians including Beck, Jenny Lewis, Jackson Browne, and Mothersbaugh himself perform favorite songs, scores…”

Disclosure Day surely sets a world record for the number of Spielberg Faces.

In this modified scene from Breaking Bad, Walter White’s hat grows in proportion to his ego. YT commenter: “He was just brimming with confidence.” Could be time for a BB rewatch. (via @ernie.tedium.co) Tags: Breaking Bad · remix · TV · video

“Film posters inadvertently photographed by [British] postwar town planners.” Includes posters for Help!, Shaft, Dr. No, Planet of the Apes, and many more.

“If Platner’s past rhetoric about and treatment of women are the natural price of running a working class candidate, isn’t the implication that working class men by nature mistreat the women in their lives?”

A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth. They already have 10K satellites in orbit and they want to add a million more. 🥴

Marconi Union, which you might remember for creating the most relaxing song in the world, has released a new album: Multiforms: Ambient Transmissions, Vol. 3. You can watch the visual album on YouTube or stream it from a variety of sources. This went straight into my Underscore collection. Tags: Marconi Union

The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech. Like: “4. Please, please stop asking me to verify my humanity by clicking on tiny motorcycles.” and “35. To Mark Zuckerberg, specifically: Shut up about the Roman Empire.”

Commodore (you know, the 64 folks) is releasing a flip phone. “No social media, no browser. Runs 99% of Android apps (without Android). T9-style texting adds mindful friction. Audiophile grade HD Audio.”

How The Heck Do Solar Panels Work? “Every hour, the Earth receives enough sunlight to power all of human civilization for a year. It arrives silently, from all directions, at no cost.”

Mad Max creator George Miller wants to make one more Mad Max movie and a TV series before calling it quits.

Randomly thought of Brendan Dassey today. He’s still serving out his life sentence for, IMO, having absolutely nothing to do with the murder at the center of Netflix’s Making a Murderer.

The SpaceX IPO Is A Giant Unworkable Con Orchestrated By An Overt White Supremacist Huckster. “He’s endlessly mythologized by a shitty corporate press, eager to ignore his virulent racism & financial fraud bc he’s accumulated obscene amounts of money.”

Starfront Observatories, located in Rockwood, Texas, offers a unique service for astrophotographers globally. Owner Bray Falls manages a large-scale "telescope ranch" on 40 acres near Brady, Texas, housing hundreds of customer telescopes. The location boasts ideal conditions for stargazing, including extremely dark skies and clear weather. Astrophotographers can remotely control their telescopes from anywhere in the world via the internet. This setup allows them to capture high-quality astronomical images without needing their own dedicated dark sky site. Customers pay a monthly fee, starting at $99, to utilize the facility. The imagery generated from Starfront Observatories is highly impressive. Bray Falls himself discovered a supernova remnant called The Crown of Thorns Nebula. This nebula is notable for its unusual location, far from the Milky Way band where most such remnants are found. Its unique position has prompted scientific investigation, with a professional observatory currently studying the object.

How to get out of bed. “There is no 28 point shot in basketball. The only way to come back from a 27 point deficit is one shot at a time. Two points here. Two points there. A few three pointers sprinkled in.”

DJ Shadow and the BBC Symphony Orchestra will be performing a “collaborative reimagination for orchestra” of his seminal album Endtroducing… in December. Tickets are already sold out, but there will be a recording!

Matthew Butterick's "Extinction-Level Capitalism" explores the societal risks of AI, arguing that focusing solely on technological novelty misses crucial historical context. He contends that AI, like previous capitalist technologies, exacerbates wealth inequality, a trend with long-standing political consequences. As wealth concentrates, liberal democracy erodes because those economically marginalized also lose political relevance. While sensational sci-fi plots focus on extinction, more realistic AI risks involve slow, boring, but deeply damaging economic and political shifts. Butterick suggests AI's impact on jobs will be unprecedented in its scope, affecting highly educated workers alongside others. This widespread obsolescence of skills risks creating significant social and political instability. Success for "Big AI" may involve obliterating existing tech companies by using them for research then taking over their markets. This will not only replace labor but also companies, potentially harming shareholders. Concentrated wealth leads to a struggle for ownership, fostering autocratic or oligarchic institutions. Such elites can suppress opposition and weaken democratic accountability by relying less on citizen taxation. Ultimately, AI, while new technology, is deeply intertwined with historical capitalist evolution and its inherent dangers.

Paul McCartney on Song Exploder. I think he was with The Beatles at some point?

Artist Claire Salvo has created original one-dollar bills featuring the New York Knicks' starting five. These painted bills have been displayed around New York City. Salvo is selling prints of the work and auctioning the original hand-painted bills, with the current top bid at $3200. The legality of altering US currency is also a point of consideration.

Sports but make it wealth inequality: “Brunson…didn’t take an extra $113M so the Knicks could sign KAT, Mikal Bridges and keep OG long term… It’s almost as if sharing wealth leads to better outcomes for all…”

The world’s first trillionaire is a killer. “A year ago, Musk’s actions directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He did it knowingly. And, worse — gleefully.”

Two competing (?) thoughts kept going through my head while reading this: “Not even a celeb like Emily Ratajkowski can find a decent man to date” and “A celeb like Emily Ratajkowski especially can’t find a decent man to date”.

Joe “Handyman” Negri, a Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood fixture, has died at age 99. “He really was like the friendly fellow you might find walking around a neighborhood. He was just incredibly gentle as a person, but also as a musician.”

US Authorities Investigate Huge Etching of ‘8647’ on National Mall Grounds. Bwahaha. Make it a new US National Treasure. An Interior Dept. spokeperson hyperbolically called it a “threat against the president”. 🙄

David Hockney, iconic British artist known for his colorful landscapes and pool scenes, dies at 88. “His work is admired — loved is not too strong a word — by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure.”

Ian’s Shoelace Site Is Still The Best Site For Tying Your Shoes. However: “What is the point of adding value to the internet if it is only going to rob you? Why do research, make diagrams, and develop new knots?”

“This song has no instruments in it.” This is cool: a song made only from pink noise and an equalizer.

This is clever & depressing: the Apocalypse Early Warning System tracks private jet activity. “In the event of an imminent nuclear apocalypse, we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies…”

Erik Gauger created a comprehensive visual field guide illustrating 176 chili peppers from diverse global origins. Capsaicin, the compound responsible for a chili pepper's heat, evolved to deter mammals while attracting birds. Mammals experience capsaicin as pain, and their digestive systems destroy seeds, making them poor seed dispersers. Birds, lacking the capsaicin receptor, feel no heat and effectively spread seeds away from the parent plant. This natural dispersal mechanism was the original purpose of the capsaicin molecule. Humans later intervened, significantly altering pepper forms, flavors, and distribution. However, the foundational biological logic of capsaicin persists in every pepper, dissuading animals that fail to disperse its seeds effectively. Gauger's guide includes detailed descriptions for each pepper, covering its origin, heat level, and featured hot sauces. Readers can also explore Gauger's related "Hot Sauces of the World" page and poster. These works highlight the intersection of art, food, and illustration, showcasing Erik Gauger's intricate visual documentation.

John Thomson’s photos of China (1860s-70s). “Unlike many other early photographers he didn’t spend all his time photographing palaces and ruins. He also captured a lot of daily life including peasants, merchants, and criminals.”

A close-up look at some of Spain’s oldest & most compelling cave paintings. “We lost the connection they had to this world. They led the way quite nicely and successfully, and we got…distracted.”

For the first time on record, solar overtook coal in the US electricity mix in May 2026. “Solar supplied a record 12.8% of US electricity, while coal fell to 12.2%, its fourth-lowest monthly share ever.”

Released a few days ago, this is the official video for Max Cooper’s Becoming, directed by Brandon Eversole. It’s mesmerizing, trippy, and a little bit glitchy. The video is also notable for being so wide that it breaks YouTube’s desktop layout — anything less than stretching my browser window to the edges of my screen and I can’t read the left-most text under the video. Tags: Brandon Eversole · Max Cooper · mesmerizing · music · video

“It’s so dumb!” I quote this line from Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion like 10 times a day now. Feel free to add it to your repetoire.

Billionaires’ Billions Are Increasing Faster Than Ever. 15 years ago, billionaires had $4.5 trillion. “Now, their combined wealth totals $20.1 trillion — an amount that is equivalent to nearly a fifth of the entire world’s total yearly output.”

The White House’s Top Science Goal Is Ignorance. “The actions are seen as a deliberate attempt to stifle science and ignore the reality of climate change, in order to support the fossil-fuel industry and satisfy the climate denialism of Trump’s base.”

Four Porsche 912s were uniquely customized for Japanese police use in the 1960s, with only one surviving today. This particular 912 served in Kanagawa Prefecture from 1968 to 1973, traveling over 155,000 kilometers and even apprehending a speeder. After retirement due to engine failure, it was displayed at a police academy for decades, leading to significant deterioration. Eventually sold to a scrapyard, the car was recovered after extensive negotiations and was later restored.

Your Search Results Are Getting Sloptimized. SEO (and Google’s embrace of it) has spent the last 25 years ruining the internet and search results. Now it’s GEO’s turn (generative-engine optimization).

The Best Headlights in the World Are Illegal in America. “America’s roads are now full of tactical-grade headlights, and no one is happy about it.”

High-performing engineering teams are navigating a critical transition from traditional development to AI-native approaches. AI enthusiasts are racing against time, recognizing significant leaps in capabilities from teams embracing AI. This rapid evolution suggests a need to act quickly, as delaying adoption could lead to competitive obsolescence. Conversely, AI skeptics are battling against entropy, highlighting the risks of rapid, AI-assisted development. They argue that increased speed can erode trust and institutional knowledge. This can result in systems that are poorly understood and products that become incoherent. The core challenge is that the benefits and costs of these AI shifts are affecting different groups within organizations. Consequently, there is a lack of a natural feedback loop to regulate this transition. Both the enthusiastic embrace and cautious skepticism represent legitimate, escalating threats to company survival. Therefore, teams must find a way to balance innovation with stability in this new AI-driven landscape.