• They don’t make biographies like this anymore: Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma.
• A map of Europe, every one-hundred years, from the year 1 to the year 2000.
• The Ladies’ and Gentleman’s Model Letter-Writer: A Complete Guide to Correspondence On All Subjects with Household and Commercial Forms
• How disco became house: this documentary traces Chicago’s founding role in the music (house music is named after an old Chicago club, the Warehouse).

Frequency of the bass strings and high shutter speed of the camera lead to this suprising string-wobble footage.

There is no slow-mo applied to the take. Sound is original.
Video was filmed with a Canon 5D Mark II, Nikon 50mm lens on 1,8f.

There has been some discussion about what we are actually seeing here—whether it’s due to a strobe effect between the shutter speed and the string vibration, or it’s caused by the rolling shutter of the camera itself.

It’s both, to an extent. There are some other tests out there (1, 2), and notice at the end of the second clip, when the string is almost horizontal, the chaotic wobble is nearly gone. A cool effect of the rolling shutter.

You may have seen the rolling shutter effect in a video like this involving an airplane propeller. Here’s a handy simulation of exactly how that happens.

In 1943, Woody Guthrie made some new year’s resolutions, or, as he put it, his New Year’s Rulin’s. All worthy goals, and I’ve included the list below, but it’s best read straight from his notebook page with accompanying doodles.

1. Work more and better
2. Work by a schedule
3. wash teeth if any
4. shave
5. take bath
6. eat good – fruit – vegetables – milk
7. drink very scant if any
8. write a song a day
9. wear clean clothes – look good
10. Shine shoes
11. Change socks
12. Change bed clothes often
13. Read lots good books
14. Listen to radio a lot
15. Learn people better
16. Keep rancho clean
17. Don’t get lonesome
18. Stay glad
19. Keep hoping machine running
20. Dream good
21. Bank all extra money
22. Save Dough
23. Have company but don’t waste time
24. Send Mary and kids money
25. Play and sing good
26. Dance Better
27. Help win war – beat fascism
28. Love Mama
29. Love Papa
30. Love Pete
31. Love Everybody
32. Make up your mind
33. Wake up and Fight

Google’s Art Project is amazing. Collaborating with museums around the world, they’ve already brought a large number of extremely high-quality images online. Using some Google Maps functionality, you can even browse the museum rooms themselves (for example, Versailles). That part seems a bit clunky, actually, but once you’re looking at a painting, the zooming ability is fantastic.

If you didn’t notice the thumbnail, above is a close detail of The Starry Night. The Birth of Venus is also stunning, along with many, many more. Finally, a short making-of video.