I am still stinge watching my way through the second season of Strange New Worlds, but the third season of the show premieres sometime this summer, so I’d better finish it up before then. Anyway, I love this show and crew and the trailer looks appropriately kooky and wacky so let … | Continue reading
They’re gonna do a season three of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I enjoyed both seasons, but the second one was definitely better. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
There’s a new Frank Lloyd Wright house that was just built in Ohio. The home was constructed according to plans completed by Wright just before his death. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The extended trailer for Mario Kart World, the new Kart title launching on Nintendo Switch 2 in a couple months. Love a new Kart. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
50 Ways to Rest. “Wander slowly around the block. Look at the trees. Look at the clouds. Look at the moon. Stand barefoot on grass.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
NYC is getting a new subway map, based on the 1972 Unimark/Vignelli map. I know this puts me in the minority of design aficionados, but I have never cared for the Vignelli map — too much style over substance IMO. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The championship match of the 2025 Tournament of Books pits Percival Everett’s James against Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! What a matchup! I won’t spoil the result…you’ll have to click through. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Folks, I can’t even today. I gotta tap out. I hope to be back with you tomorrow. Tags: kottke.org · video | Continue reading
M. Gessen: Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived. “The United States has become a secret-police state. Trust me, I’ve seen it before.” | Continue reading
Nature poll of 1600 US scientists: 75% are considering leaving the country, “many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada” or “anywhere that supports science”. | Continue reading
Clickens! Judge paintings of chickens based on characteristics like persistence, altruism, petulance, clairvoyance, and friendliness. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Lots of great comments from students, parents, and faculty in “The End of College Life?” thread about how they’re thinking about the changes to higher education in the US under the Trump regime. | Continue reading
Timothy Snyder: “The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous.” | Continue reading
An E-Bike Transformed My Family’s Life. “I felt connected to our neighborhood in a way I hadn’t ever experienced.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Margaret Sullivan on “the need for straight talk right now. Enough with soft-pedaling from the media. Clarity! Courage! The truth!” | Continue reading
This ProPublica story about ICE deportation flights, with intel from flight attendants who work them, is horrific. “Don’t talk to the detainees. Don’t feed them. Don’t make eye contact.” The Trump admin is treating these people like animals. | Continue reading
Oh man, rest in peace to Val Kilmer. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
“Watch the moment when Cory Booker ended his more than 25-hour long Senate speech.” | Continue reading
On April 5th, a group of prominent national organizations (including 50501, Indivisible, Hands Off, MoveOn, and Women’s March) and many local organizations are all coming together for a day of nationwide action and protest. This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most braze … | Continue reading
A two-part online training event on the Fundamentals of Organizing. It kicked off tonight at 5:30pm ET and part 2 is on April 8. | Continue reading
The record for the longest individual speech in the Senate belongs to segregationist Strom Thurmond. He spoke for 24 hours & 18 minutes in a racist and futile attempt to prevent the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from passing. | Continue reading
Mercator Extreme is a fun tool that you can use to choose any point on Earth as the pole and then view the resulting ultra-distorted Mercator map. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
With a headline this this, how can you resist? On the Best (Worst) Best Man Speech Ever (at My Super Mario-Themed Wedding). “After he finished his speech, he received applause and cheers from one and a half tables and dead silence from the rest.” 💬 Join the discussion on … | Continue reading
“A fragile 13th century manuscript fragment, hidden in plain sight as the binding of a 16th-century archival register, has been discovered in Cambridge and revealed to contain rare medieval stories of Merlin and King Arthur.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
No One Is Safe From America’s Abusive Immigration Authorities Anymore. “Immigration agents are increasingly using the full statutory powers that they always had, choosing to detain, abuse, and deport these tourists & workers instead of working with them.” | Continue reading
Historian Heather Cox Richardson says that Facebook is removing her posts. Her two most recent posts, both critical of the Trump regime, are not on the platform anymore. | Continue reading
From Aubrey Hirsch, It Could Be Much, Much Worse, an illustrated guide to what health care and insurance was like in the US before the ACA. You can also find this guide on Instagram. Tags: Aubrey Hirsch · comics · healthcare · politics 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org … | Continue reading
Of Course Trump Will Tank the Economy. It’s What Republicans Do. “They screw up the economy. Later down the line, Democrats get elected and have to fix everything.” | Continue reading
In this 10-minute video, John Lithgow reads each of the lessons from Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Bookshop). Number two: defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak o … | Continue reading
Tressie McMillan Cottom: AI is mid tech for mid tasks. “The use cases for artificial intelligence across every domain of work and life have started to get silly really fast.” | Continue reading
Senator Cory Booker is holding the floor of the Senate and says he “will speak for as long as I’m physically able to lift the voices of Americans who are being harmed and not being heard in this moment of crisis”. | Continue reading
If you need a distraction: 368 Chickens. Line up the chickens to rescue them. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The United States Disappeared Tracker is “tracking persons politically arrested, detained, or disappeared by the Trump regime since March 9, 2025”. | Continue reading
The view from Europe, courtesy of Zeit Online: Thanks America, That’ll Be All. “Now that lunacy has installed itself in Washington for the next four years, the time has finally come for Europe to once again try its hand at hosting the spirit of the age.” | Continue reading
With the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and, especially, again in 2024, the adjacent possible of American society has shifted dramatically. For the Washington Post, Philip Bump asked a number of people who study systems of government and the erosion of democracy the following q … | Continue reading
White House Correspondents’ Dinner Scraps Host In Favor Of Terrified Silence. “While we respect the legacy of a presidential roast, if you so much as cough, you will be forcibly removed.” Please enjoy each autocratic shift equally. | Continue reading
A thread from Berkeley political science professor Omar Wasow about how protests are effective actually. Cites research about the Women’s March, BLM protests, the Muslim ban protests, etc. | Continue reading
I have one kid entering college this fall and one a few years away, so I’ve been thinking (with fury and sadness) about the effect that Trump’s authoritarian regime is having on American colleges and universities. They’re pulling funding from schools; schools are cancelling progr … | Continue reading
DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Code Base in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse. This will not work — ok, actually it will totally work to achieve the long-time conservative goal of gutting the US social safety net. | Continue reading
Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman are buying The Rumpus. “They are committed to staying true to the magazine’s core mission of publishing both emerging and established risk-taking writers and artists…” Gay was a founding editor of the magazine. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke … | Continue reading
“The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up.” | Continue reading
From the Center for Third World Organizing, an Organizing 101 bootcamp, “a multi-day day intro to organizing training designed for organizers, activists and community leaders”. | Continue reading
Multi-Player plays a grid of multiple copies of a single YouTube video, each with a slight additional delay. The site requires a bunch of bandwidth, but the effect is trippy when it works. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
This excerpt from Conan O’Brien’s acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is quite good. Twain was suspicious of populism, jingoism, imperialism, the money-obsessed mania of the Gilded Age, and any expression of mindless American might or self-importance. Ab … | Continue reading
Rembrandt to Picasso: Five Ways to Spot a Fake Masterpiece. I’ve always loved this sort of thing, even before I owned a probably-fake Basquiat. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
TV Garden: stream television channels from all over the world for free. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
In a stage production that premiered last year in London, Steve Coogan played four roles (Dr. Strangelove, Captain Mandrake, President Muffley, and Major TJ Kong) in an adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. The play was adapted for the stage by Armando Iannucci and Sea … | Continue reading
March 2025 Anti-Trans National Risk Assessment Map. “The risk level for transgender youth and adults has significantly deteriorated in the latest update. Most notably, the United States has now been designated “Do Not Travel” for foreign citizens.” | Continue reading