Discover
Wander the web like a shoreline.
Something new washes up every time: pages from all kinds of people, made with all kinds of tools. Beachcomb shows you what it found, then gets out of the way.
Pick a few topics
Watching the World in a Dark Room: The Early Modern Camera Obscura
Centuries before photography froze the world into neat frames, scientists, poets, and artists streamed transient images into dark interior spaces with the help of a camera obscura. Julie Park explores the early modern fascination with this quasi-spiritual technology and the magic, melancholy, and…
From The Public Domain Review
The Alchemical Transformations of the Mutus Liber (1677)
Carl Jung’s copy of the “mute book”, an alchemical manual charting (through a series of images) the “humid way” of forging the Philosopher’s Stone.
Something different
How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole?
Astrophysicist Shep Doeleman explains how capturing the first image of a black hole required a telescope the size of the world, and why the next goal is to create a movie. The post How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Something different
Seeing Circles, Sines, and Signals
a compact primer on digital signal processing
From Explorable Explanations
Witnessory – a signed record of the web's move to post-quantum crypto
58.9% of the top 10,000 sites negotiate post-quantum TLS; 51.3% of SSH servers offer post-quantum key exchange. As of 2026-10-29, from 4 probes; signed readings, recomputable.
From Show HN
A Macro Journey Underwater Reveals the Radiant Geometries of Coral
Filmmaker Sandro Bocci brings us up close with coral reefs and their striking array of color, texture, and pattern. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Macro Journey…
Something different
Entropy Explained, With Sheep
An explorable blog post about entropy, with sheep.
From Awesome Explorables
Trajectory Planning
Explore data and build apps seamlessly with marimo, a next-generation Python notebook.
From Awesome Explorables
How Spiders Spin ‘Silk Dope’ Into Nature’s Toughest Material
By probing its molecular structure, biologists are uncovering how a tangle of unstructured proteins turns into a tough, flexible thread. The post How Spiders Spin ‘Silk Dope’ Into Nature’s Toughest Material first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Something different
GPS - Global Positioning System
A detailed interactive explanation on how the Global Positioning System works.
From Awesome Explorables
Biological Neural Networks
a (very technical) interactive guide to modeling neurons
Something different
Science is fun. Science is when you do an experiment with participants, and then talk with a…
Science is fun. Science is when you do an experiment with participants, and then talk with a participant afterwards, and learn that yeah, actually, doctors are not supposed to give you propophol as a general anesthetic if you have a soy allergy. Which is really good to fucking know. Which is why I…
From Kagi Small Web
how to simulate the universe in 134 easy steps
a talk i gave about systems thinking
Something different
Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours
A recreation of the original 1821 color guidebook.
From Tiny Tools Directory
Image Color Summarizer
RGB, HSV, LCH & Lab image color statistics and clustering
From Tiny Tools Directory
Eastbourne – Perhaps the ultimate damnation of Met Office (lack of) standards.
Image from Google StreetView August 2024 looking directly in the direction of the Eastbourne Stevenson Screen from 13 metres/ 44 feet distance. Tims Channon’s original review of Eastbourne was the longest and most detailed of all those he published. It pre-dated the relocation of the screen to its…
From Kagi Small Web
Virus: The Beauty of the Beast
an interactive documentary on the mathematical majesty of viruses
Something different
Scientific Communication As Sequential Art
a classic science paper, redesigned with interactive graphics
From Explorable Explanations
That's this stretch.
Walk on