kottke.org

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• Three Quick Links for Tuesday Noonish
• American Gothic + 1 and Other Restored Masterpieces
• Sheep Herding Patterns from Above
• Developing 120-Year-Old Photos Found in a Time Capsule
• Four Quick Links for Monday Noonish
• Where Did SARS-CoV-2 Come From?

Three Quick Links for Tuesday Noonish Posted: 29 Jun 2021 09:52 AM PDT An interesting thread detailing many of the engineering tricks Disney uses in building their theme parks, e.g. using smaller bricks at the top of buildings to create "forced perspective" and make them look taller. [twitter.com] "Kids are cute but they're not really eco-friendly. One less baby helps the planet more than giving up meat, car." Was surprised to learn this was actually published in a real newspaper and not The Onion or something. [instagram.com] You Look So Serious, an entire album of songs based on looped samples from a cassette copy of Enya's 1988 album Watermark. [enmossed.bandcamp.com] --- Note: Quick Links are pushed to this RSS feed twice a day. For more immediate service, check out the front page of kottke.org, the Quick Links archive, or the @kottke Twitter feed.

American Gothic + 1 and Other Restored Masterpieces Posted: 29 Jun 2021 09:44 AM PDT Last week I posted about the digital “restoration” of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch with the help of an AI program. Using a contemporary copy of the full scene painted by Gerrit Lundens and an AI program for getting the colors and angles right, the Rijksmuseum has “restored” The Night Watch, augmenting the painting with digital printouts of the missing bits. Edith Zimmerman got access to this technology and ran some of her own experiments of famous artworks. You may be shocked and delighted at what she found. Tags: art   Edith Zimmerman   Rembrandt   remix

Sheep Herding Patterns from Above Posted: 29 Jun 2021 06:50 AM PDT Drone photographer Lior Patel has spent the last several months capturing the movements of a flock of sheep in Israel as they move from their winter to summer pastures. (via colossal) Tags: Lior Patel   video

Developing 120-Year-Old Photos Found in a Time Capsule Posted: 28 Jun 2021 12:07 PM PDT In a family house, Mathieu Stern found a box of treasures hidden away by a little girl some 120 years ago. Inside was a pair of glass plate negative images of some pets, which Stern developed using the cyanotype technique. Film development is just straight-up magic. See also I Found a Mystery Film in a 60-Year-Old Camera. Tags: Mathieu Stern   photography   video

Four Quick Links for Monday Noonish Posted: 28 Jun 2021 09:52 AM PDT Women Are Having Fewer Babies Because They Have More Choices. "Thanks to feminist cultural shifts, and better access to contraceptives, more women now approach childbearing...as a choice weighed against other desires, assessed in context." [nytimes.com] YouTube's complete disregard for the rights of people to use music that's either allowed by fair use or in the public domain really sucks. Eventually, laws will either be changed to follow YT's practice or (hopefully) prevent this garbage behavior. [blog.dbmiller.org] According to LA's public health department, since Dec 2020, 99.6% of the city's Covid cases, 98.7% of Covid hospitalizations, and 99.8% of Covid deaths were among people who were unvaccinated. These safe vaccines work. Period. [deadline.com] The results of a new study suggest that the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines create a durable immune reaction in the body that may last for years or even a lifetime. [nytimes.com] --- Note: Quick Links are pushed to this RSS feed twice a day. For more immediate service, check out the front page of kottke.org, the Quick Links archive, or the @kottke Twitter feed.

Where Did SARS-CoV-2 Come From? Posted: 28 Jun 2021 08:59 AM PDT Over the past several months, I’ve read several pieces about the possible origins of SARS-CoV-2 and have been frustrated with the certainty with which folks who should know better have embraced the “lab leak hypothesis”. So, I was happy to see Zeynep Tufekci’s characteristically even-handed and comprehensive overview of the evidence about the virus’s origins in the NY Times. While the Chinese government’s obstruction may keep us from knowing for sure whether the virus, SARS-CoV-2, came from the wild directly or through a lab in Wuhan or if genetic experimentation was involved, what we know already is troubling. Years of research on the dangers of coronaviruses, and the broader history of lab accidents and errors around the world, provided scientists with plenty of reasons to proceed with caution as they investigated this class of pathogens. But troubling safety practices persisted. Worse, researchers’ success at uncovering new threats did not always translate into preparedness. Even if the coronavirus jumped from animal to human without the involvement of research activities, the groundwork for a potential disaster had been laid for years, and learning its lessons is essential to preventing others. Is it possible that SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab? Yes. Is it probable? We can’t know that right now. It’s a tantalizing puzzle involving a possible cover-up, but irresponsibly assigning certainty to the situation does no one but attention-seeking pundits any good. Tags: Covid-19   medicine   science   Zeynep Tufekci

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