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Tarkovsky's films online for free
Mosfilm, one of the largest film studios in the USSR during the Soviet era, has put full-length versions of many of its most acclaimed and influential films on
Jason Kottke
Jason Kottke's daily links and commentary on art, science, technology, design, film, and culture since 1998.
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Visit kottke.org → RSS feedOn Hacker News Jan 2009 – Nov 2026
Society, Policy & Culture 42History & Retro Computing 24Science & Space 21Life, Learning & Writing 21Tech Industry & Business 8Math & Algorithms 7
2
Color Night Vision (2016) [video]
The X27 camera takes videos in darkness that looks like they were shot in the daytime. And they’re in color…none of this black and white, thermal, or infrared s
3
The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online
The Art Institute of Chicago recently unveiled a new website design. As part of their first design upgrade in 6 years, they have placed more than 52,000 high-re
4
If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it
In the early 1960s, Richard Feynman gave a series of undergraduate lectures that were collected into a book called the Feynman Lectures on Physics. Absent from
5
How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
I didn’t know what to expect from this 1937 video explanation of how wire photos were transmitted to newspapers, but a double stunt sequence featuring an airpla
6
A sad update about a scissors maker that went viral
Back in 2014, a lovely short film by Shaun Bloodworth called The Putter went viral. The film shows Cliff Denton making scissors for Ernest Wright & Sons. Denton
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Kottke.org is 25 years old today
I realize how it sounds, but I’m going to say it anyway because it’s the truth. When I first clapped eyes on the World Wide Web, I fell in love. Here’s how I de
8
The myth of NASA's expensive space pens
There’s a story about NASA’s incredibly expensive space pen and Russia’s simpler solution that gets trotted out every time some large organization introduces so
9
The Invention of a New Pasta Shape
For the past three years, Dan Pashman of The Sporkful podcast has been on something of a mission: to invent a new pasta shape. All of Pashman’s hard work has pa
10
RIP the Broccoli Tree
For the past few years, Patrik Svedberg has been taking photos of a beautiful Swedish tree he dubbed The Broccoli Tree. In a short time, the tree gained a healt
11
FedEx shipping damage creates fractured artworks
Since 2007, artist Walead Beshty has been cleverly using FedEx’s shipping infrastructure to create a series of artworks. He constructs glass objects that fit ex
12
The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]
What’s going on in the brains of people who meditate? Anecdotal evidence suggests that meditation does something to people’s minds and bodies…quiets and calms t
13
Nigerian Teens Are Making Sci-Fi Shorts with Slick Visual Effects
For the past year, a group of teens in Nigeria called the Critics Company have been uploading short sci-fi films to their YouTube channel. Using a smartphone wi
14
I’m going to miss you, but I am taking a sabbatical
Hello, everyone. I’m going to be taking an extended break from kottke.org, starting today. I’ve been writing here for more than 24 years, nearly half my life —
15
Benoit Mandelbrot, RIP
Nothing in the news media yet, but many folks on Twitter and colleague Nassim Taleb are reporting that the father of fractal geometry is dead at age 85. We’re n
16
Go Pro on a soaring eagle [video]
What does it feel like to soar majestically like an bird? Maybe something like this video, shot with a camera strapped to the back of an eagle flying near Chamo
17
You commit three felonies a day
In a book called Three Felonies A Day, Boston civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate says that everyone in the US commits felonies everyday and if the governmen
18
Your taste is why your work disappoints you.
I love this observation about taste and creative work from Ira Glass: Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do cr
19
Facebook is wrong, text is deathless
It’s a throwaway line in a longer talk and we probably shouldn’t make too much of it, but I will anyway. In five years time Facebook “will be definitely mobile,
20
Car Bloat: “Huge Cars Are Terrible for Society”
David Zipper, who researches and writes about mobility and transportation, recently did a big thread on Mastodon (and Bluesky) about car bloat: the way in which
21
The Lego Great Ball Contraption
The Great Ball Contraption is a class of machines built with Lego that transport small balls from place to place in many different ways. The otherwise pointless
22
It’s Time for Some Queueing Theory
Queueing theory is the scientific study of waiting in line. It can apply to familiar lines like those at the grocery store or bank but also to things like web s
23
A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]
To celebrate being alive for a billion seconds, Daniel Bruin built a machine with 100 gears with a 10-to-1 gear ratio…meaning that the overall gear ratio is a g
24
Plane Lands/Takes Off in Only 20 Feet (2013)
I posted a video earlier today of a Super Cub airplane landing on the side of a mountain. Super Cubs are ideal for that undertaking because of their low stall s
25
Building Lego Machines to Destroy Tall Lego Towers
Brick Technology’s new video features increasingly powerful Lego machines designed to topple ever stronger towers. I love their iterative engineering videos (an
26
If you watch closely enough, everything is a speaker
Using high speed cameras, it’s possible to record the vibrations of everyday objects caused by nearby sounds and reverse engineer the sounds…essentially turning
27
Picking up glowing hot space shuttle tiles with bare hands (2011) [video]
Space Shuttle thermal tiles conduct heat so poorly that after being in a 2200 °F oven for hours, you can pick them up with your bare hands only seconds after th
28
Why can't all "tech" journalism be like this?
Over at the New Yorker, Ken Auletta has some insight into why Eric Schmidt is stepping down as Google’s CEO. Schmidt, according to associates, lost some energy
29
Jim Lehrer’s Rules of Journalism
The long-time host of PBS NewsHour Jim Lehrer died this week at the age of 85. In this age of news as entertainment and opinion as news, Lehrer seems like one o
30
What America looked like before the EPA, in photos
Popular Science has a series of photos taken by EPA staff in the early years of the agency after it was formed in the 1970s, that have since been digitized. It’