The best thing on the web, and it isn't close.
Each essay takes one topic — gears, the GPS, light and shadow — and builds a playable mental model of it. Every diagram is a live simulation you can drag.
- No ads, no newsletter popup, no "5 things"
- One post every few months because each takes months
- The sailing one finally made me understand how boats go upwind
It's what the web was supposed to be.
Interactive, scrollable explainers of how physical things actually work.
Related
Every Noise at Once
everynoise.com
A single page that plots every genre Spotify has a name for onto one scatter map — down and left is denser and more atmospheric, up and right is spikier and bouncier. Click anything and it plays. wonky, escape room, vapor twitch, deep discofox — genres you didn't know had names, arranged so neighbours actually sound like neighbours. The whole thing is one guy's side project running off Spotify's audioanalysis data. I've lost whole evenings just wandering it.
Outer Wilds
Mobius Digital
The rare game I wish I could have my memory wiped to play again. The knowledge IS the key item. Do not read anything about it.
The Century of the Self
Adam Curtis
Curtis's thesis — that Freud's nephew rewired consumer capitalism around the unconscious — is either the most important documentary I've seen or elaborate pattern-matching. Undecided, rewatched twice.
Everything in Its Right Place
Radiohead
The two-plus minutes of vocal-sample fog before it resolves is the whole point. It teaches you to wait.