Yes, it’s an ad. BUT, it’s also Spike Jonze, so bear with me.
[Update: AdWeek has a great behind the scenes look at this video.]
Category: Videos
Video: Sandman Universe
While I would of course prefer Neil handling further Sandman work, I’m still excited for this, and it sounds like a great set of writers. I’ve always wanted to see more exploring Daniel’s Dreaming, and it looks like these will be set mostly in that period.
Link: The Boho’s Lament
Via Kottke. This is about New York and the Village, but I feel like it’s about more than that. It’s about the homogenization, pacification, and gentrification of the places that were previously the havens of the freaks and weirdos who struggled to fit in anywhere else. It’s about society (and how we interact with it) becoming performative, and anything that deviates from the norm becoming a spectacle for others. You can sense some anger and frustration in this video, and I definitely get why. People who have been outcast, or are considered weird or a freak are people, and shouldn’t be treated as a spectacle or a tourist destination.
Link: Great Balls of Fire
Via BoredPanda and Reddit, Guy Spends Almost A Year Gluing 42,000 Matches To Make A Giant Sphere, Sets It On Fire. Best giant matchstick globe burning you’ll see all day. If you don’t want to bother learning the math and planning behind it, here’s the video on Youtube:
Because Space
Yesterday’s Falcon Heavy launch:
And here’s a stream of a car, in space, in a wide orbit around Earth and Mars for the next billion years:
This is exciting on a lot of levels.
Link: Nerdwriter
Via Kottke.org, I’ve been diving into another film analysis Youtube channel that I’ve been really enjoying, called Nerdwriter. Some of the videos I’ve enjoyed, as a sampler:
Link: Subnormality
In one of the Slacks I’m part of, we were discussing Cracked’s recent decision to pivot back away from video, which led to sharing some favorite videos. One of the videos linked to was an episode of People Watching (fair warning, if you’ve ever dealt with depression and modern dating, this is a goddamn punch in the gut):
That left me floored, and was politely informed that the writer for that also does a rad webcomic called Subnormality, which I proceeded to seek out and devour. It can get a little weird and a little wordy at times, but it’s really, really good. You should check it out sometime.
Ursula Le Guin
To Ursula Le Guin: You were an astounding writer, and by all accounts an equally astounding human being. I’m grateful for your stories and your thoughts, and what you brought to this world. Rest well.
In John Scalzi’s piece on Le Guin’s passing, he said it quite aptly:
Look at the top tier of writers in science fiction and fantasy today — names like Jemisin and Gaiman and Jeff VanderMeer and Catherynne Valente, as well as rising stars like Bo Bolander and Amal El-Mohtar and Monica Byrne — and you see the unmistakable traces of Le Guin in their work. Multiple generations of her spiritual children, making the genre more humane and expansive, and better than it would have been without her. And all with stories of her.
[…]
The speaking of her name and of her words goes on, and will go on, today and tomorrow and for a very long time now. As it should. She was the mother of so many of us, and you should take time to mourn your mother.
Video: Your Attention
This sums up my feelings about a lot of the internet these days.
AI Created Soundscapes
Via Kottke.org, a demo of a deep learning algorithm creating audio soundscapes based on Google Street View. Kinda fascinating:
More about the project (and a usable demo!) here: http://imaginarysoundscape.qosmo.jp.