Powers of 10, a classic video made in 1977 gives a very humbling overview of our place in the world. As it is over 30 years old it stops short of modern understanding by several orders of magnitude.
(via thoughtware)
Jun19
“When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating day and night, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody again.” This all too familiar quote describing WWII in reverse, from Slaughterhouse-Five, had left quite an impression on me. It is difficult to truly appreciate what lengths we go to in producing our infernal machines. (via Jason Kottke)
Jun13
Think technology holds the cure to all of man’s problems? Yeah well, Techno Tuesday knows the score. Techno Tuesday offers a realistic and sometimes depressing perspective on technology.
Jun13
These diagrams illustrate why several dimensionless physical constants could only exist as we know them. All other values cannot support life or information of any kind.
I wish I knew more about where cosmopsis found this, but as Jason Kottke said, no one on Tumblr gives credit these days. (via cosmopsis)
Jun12
Riddles riddle an upscale New York apartment—hidden by an architect for his clients to solve. Parts of this story negate the absurdity of National Treasure. Go figure.
Jun11
Also check out This American Life to hear what it’s like brainstorming ideas at The Onion. (via esbie)
Jun10
“News creates social currency. […] They view news as units of social currency to be used in interpersonal situations, whereby one might use them to sound clever, connect with friends or move up the socio-economic ladder. Shareable information is of key importance. Successful news reportage depends on whether the content is worth sharing to another member of one’s network or not.”From How to Build a Better Content Model for Your Site: Understanding News Consumption Patterns. Emphasis mine. I would argue this is true for all content. Me posting this is proof of that. (via Luke Hoersten)
May24
The Direct manipulation video player emphasizes a sort of goal oriented video seeking, rather than chronological. Because let’s face it, we seek for something—and it isn’t a timestamp that we have in mind (via nelson)
May15
The day there was no news. I have done nothing but read and watch the news for a week and a half. When I saw this video, it really made me pause. Is no news good news? I think so. (via swissmiss)
