For beloved illustrator Alice Provensen’s birthday, her marvelous vintage “interactive” children’s book about the life and legacy of Leonardo. 

The Magic Boat – absolutely amazing 1929 “interactive” picture-book by Freud’s eccentric niece (named Tom!), adapted into animated GIFs.

Leonardo da Vinci’s life and legacy, in a vintage illustrated pop-up book adapted in animated GIFs

What the synapses in your brain actually look like. Pair with Neurocomic, a graphic novel about how the brain works. 

(HT Gizmodo)

Ceno Lodigiani has adapted Disney’s 12 principles of animation into minimalist geometric animated GIFs. 

Pair with Pixar’s philosophy of fearlessness and failing forward.

(via Quipsologies)

A vital reminder from the fifth episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s Cosmos series.

Perhaps Bertrand Russell put it best in his 10 commandments of learning, where he admonished:

Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

Pair with Carl Sagan’s toolkit for critical thinking.

Christoph Niemann’s artwork exploring commoditized warfare for MoMA’s Design and Violence is, as expected, absolutely brilliant.

Pair with Niemann’s equally ingenious Abstract City. 

A conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Pair with Carl Sagan on science and spirituality and a meditation on the subject from Alan Lightman. 

How wine colonized the world – 6,000 years in 40 seconds. Also available as an interactive timeline. Pair with the indispensable scratch-and-sniff guide to becoming a wine expert. 

Happy New Year! Celebrate with some famous resolutions from Jonathan Swift, Susan Sontag, Woodie Guthrie, and Marilyn Monroe, 

The Smithsonian curates the best science GIFs of the year – pictured above, a thought moving through a fish brain. Pair with the best science books of the year.

The Art of Rube Goldberg

Carl Sagan, says one of his colleagues at Cornell, “is very often right and always interesting. That is in contrast to most academics, who are always right and not very interesting. ” In his books or off the cuff, on the lecture platform or sitting across from Johnny Carson, Sagan has a distinctive gift for expressing scientific notions vividly and with infectious enthusiasm.

October 20, 1980: The cover of TIME crowns Carl Sagan the “showman of science.” And for good reason – he had a singular way of enchanting people with the cosmos, knew how to capture the essence of science and its transcendent, spiritual quality, and he even received fan mail from Isaac Asimov.

The Smithsonian has turned this already lovely illustration of the aurora of the southern pole from Jules Verne’s short story An Antarctic Mystery (The Sphinx of the Ice Fields) into an utterly delightful, psychedelic animated gif.

Pair with this fascinating explanation of how the aurora borealis works.

Construction of The Elements of Style paper sculpture, part of this elaborate New York Public Library papercraft diorama celebrating some of the most timelessly wonderful books.