Bike Tracks

A Twitter-shaped short story, Google's new Nest, Four Tet's "Thriller" and more in our weekly look at the web

Julian Smith’s “Techno Jeep”—in which he and a group of friends performed a rhythmic jam live only using actual sounds from a Jeep—became a viral hit on YouTube in 2009. In a similar vein, composer Johnnyrandom kicks it up a notch by sampling sounds only from a bicycle, creating a more ambient, harmonic track titled “Bespoken.” From using an EBow on derailleur cables to hitting …

Twitter’s Literary Side

A Twitter-shaped short story, Google's new Nest, Four Tet's "Thriller" and more in our weekly look at the web

The ubiquitous social media platform Twitter is mostly known for short quips, the occasional gaffe or nugget of wisdom. However, author Teju Cole is bringing a more thoughtful, literary tone—all in under 140 characters—with his Twitter-based short story. Cole reached out to friends and followers for help, asking each person to tweet lines of the story, which he then chronologically retweeted to build the full …

Navigating Stuckness

A Twitter-shaped short story, Google's new Nest, Four Tet's "Thriller" and more in our weekly look at the web

Talented artist, writer, speaker and thinker Jonathan Harris beautifully and heartbreakingly describes the familiar feeling of “stuckness” (and everything that goes along with it) in his most recent essay. Chapter by chapter Harris writes about life events and how they affected and motivated (or, indeed, de-motivated) him. It’s universal, the way that “the low points are actually thrilling because the high points are about to …