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Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vintage Recording from 1913

A century ago, the great French composer Claude Debussy sat down at a contraption called a Welte-Mignon reproducing piano and recorded a series of performances for posterity. The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s playing, including pedaling and dynamics,

Open Culture •

Machine With Concrete

Arthur Ganson is a kinetic sculptor who builds “Rube Goldberg machines with existential themes”. One of his works is called Machine with Concrete, which demonstrates the magic of gear ratios According to a piece in Make , the input shaft spins at 200 rpm, which is reduced by

kottke.org •

Nature: The Best Science Images of 2025

Nature magazine has chosen its favorite science images of the year . I’ve featured a few of these on the site already — Skydiving the Sun , red sprites in the New Zealand sky — so I picked a couple of other favorites to share: The first was taken by Francisco Negroni of the

kottke.org •

The Lies and Falsifications of Oliver Sacks

In a recent bombshell piece for the New Yorker ( archive ), Rachel Aviv explored the personal journals of the celebrated neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. What she found was shocking: he had fabricated and embellished some of his most well-known work — like Awakenings and

kottke.org •

The Birth Keepers

"Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births–now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world."

Longreads •