The oarfish is a very long fish people don’t normally see on account of it living deep, deep in the deep water, though three have washed up on the shores of Southern California in the last 3 months. The oarfish is referred to as the Doomsday Fish (a very cool name for a fish imo) … | Continue reading
25 years after the much maligned DK Rap premiered to scorn in Nintendo’s Donkey Kong 64, the composer, Grant Kirkhope, has released a remix with the rapper Substantial that whips. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Every day, people go out and do the kind of stuff you’ve never imagined being possible, but they imagined it, and that’s what’s important. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
You still have a couple of days left to back Kelli Anderson’s pop-up book about typography on Kickstarter. It looks incredible. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
So we all know the color purple has always been associated with royalty because the dye used to make it was extremely limited because you could only get it from the Phoenician city of Tyre where a tiny snail lived. Dye makers had to “crack open the snail’s shell, extract a purple … | Continue reading
Asheville, NC has lifted it’s boil water notice after 53 days. Hurricane Helene left high sediment levels contaminating 80% of the city’s drinking water. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Emoji Rain is a visualization of emoji use on Bluesky. “Emojis from longer messages fall more slowly!” 🦋 💧 🌧️ ☔️ 🌈 🦄 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
For The Observer, Carole Cadwalladr published a list of pointers on how to survive in Trumpist America, inspired by Timothy Snyder’s Fighting Authoritarianism: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century that was published in the wake of the 2016 election. Some of these are excellent: 1 Whe … | Continue reading
Premiering this Friday (Nov 22) on FX is a short documentary from The New York Times called Weight of the World about GLP-1 drugs. Here’s the synopsis: As GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic soar in popularity for weight loss, this film follows three people on their own GLP-1 journeys and e … | Continue reading
“On Saturday, more than 50 Jeremy Allen White lookalikes descended on the sledding hill at Humboldt Park to compete for $50 and a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Something I still think about is the “Can a plane take off on a treadmill,” so imagine my glee at discovering these superheroes trying to flip a bike on a moving train. Yes, it’s glee I felt. I’m gleeing all over the place right now. (Not to be violent, but I thought the plane ta … | Continue reading
Christian Right Lobbies To Overturn Second Law Of Thermodynamics. “What do these scientists want us teaching our children? That the universe will continue to expand until it reaches eventual heat death?” | Continue reading
The trailer for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Tom Cruise…still running. I can’t wait to see what he falls off of, clings to, leaps onto, or is thrown from this time! 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
In the MIT Technology Review, Mat Honan makes two points about changes in the world of social media with both Bluesky and Threads seeing massive growth in November accelerated by the election and people leaving Twitter. The era of everyone having a uniform social media experience … | Continue reading
90 seconds of Miss Piggy absolutely roasting Martha Stewart. “Oh, how obsessive!” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
If you need a refresher, here’s the official 2-minute recap of Severance season one from Apple TV+. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
OK, I see you have your hand up with an answer, but I’m going to take this one, alright? Killer whales hunt moose. Right? That’s the most surprising. It is not terribly common, but in the Pacific Northwest, habitats of two of the more massive mammals intersect. Moose will swim to … | Continue reading
“In 2018, Nerds products brought in $40 million in sales. In the past calendar year, the company said, that number jumped to $800 million.” NERDS Gummy Clusters are good as hell and everyone’s talking about them. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Roxane Gay: “To suggest we should yield even a little to Mr. Trump’s odious politics, to suggest we should compromise on the rights of trans people, for instance, […] is unacceptable. It is shameful and cowardly.” Yes, yes, yes, 1000% this. | Continue reading
I honestly did not read most of this article, but I wanted to draw your attention to some facts about the recent presidential election that you might find surprising: While Mr. Trump won the popular vote for the first time in three tries, he garnered just 50.1 percent nationally, … | Continue reading
Hello there everybody. I’m working on some programming stuff to enable some future new features for the site this week, so I’m going to be around a little less than usual. My pal Aaron Cohen (previously) is going to be here to fill in some of the gaps, so be on the lookout for th … | Continue reading
You might be able to fit an entire orange in your mouth. But can you get it out again? “Temporarily blind and gasping in my own private world of consequences, I was unaware of the cone of devastation that I had unleashed…” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
On these downhill skateboarding things, I’m always wondering why there aren’t any cars, but uh, there are cars in this one. Josh Neuman skateboarding down a mountain road while cars come up makes me real nervous! He almost skates into a barrier at 2:07, and towards the end there’ … | Continue reading
Haymarket Books is giving away 10 free ebooks that meet this moment in US history, including titles by Rebecca Solnit, Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Jason Koebler at 404 Media: The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet. He also explains why he’s bullish on Bluesky and not Mastodon (“difficult to make a diverse and active feed”) or Threads. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
This is an astute observation about the conservative sense of permanent resentment: “They’re seeking political power as a substitute for cultural power, and it’s never going to give them what they actually want.” | Continue reading
Scientists have found an individual coral colony that’s large enough to be seen from space. “Given its size and the slow speed at which corals grow, this individual is likely several centuries old.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Writing for The Awl, Jeb Boniakowski shares his vision for a massive McDonald’s complex in Times Square that serves food from McDonald’s restaurants from around the world, offers discontinued food items (McLean Deluxe anyone?), and contains a food lab not unlike David Chang’s Mom … | Continue reading
You’ll soon be able to watch your local PBS station & PBS Kids through Amazon Prime. There will also be a dedicated Reading Rainbow channel. All of free…no Prime membership needed. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
“…trans posters were the earliest adopters of Bluesky and were able to forge the platform into what it is today: funny, frequently horny, and with very strong moderation tools. If you like Bluesky’s vibe right now, thank a trans person.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.or … | Continue reading
Today’s Google Doodle is a celebration of the kayak, illustrated by Inuit Nunangat artist Natashia Allakariallak. “These small and narrow watercraft were created thousands of years ago for hunting, fishing, and transportation.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
In a piece for Vogue, Edith Zimmerman writes about trading one addiction for another: A Former Drinker Asks, Am I Addicted to Running? And running is good. I don’t have to lie about it or hide it. It makes me happy, and it makes my life better. There are little parallels between … | Continue reading
A report from the American Immigration Council on Trump’s mass deportation plan. “There is no way to engage in mass deportation without fundamentally changing the federal government, the national economy, and, ultimately, America itself.” | Continue reading
California Department of Insurance investigators watched the footage of a bear damaging the inside of a car because who wouldn’t watch that kind of video if it was submitted to them in a work setting, I know I sure would, but the thing is when the CDI investigators watched the fo … | Continue reading
The Violin. “A stack of hundred-year-old photos lead to the discovery of a family treasure hiding in plain sight.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
You know me, I love a good gradient. These watercolors are from a series called Strata by Mikael Hallstrøm Eriksen, an artist who uses “repetitive and accumulative mark-making” in his work. The works in the Strata-series are inspired by geological and natural phenomena — sediment … | Continue reading
This is how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear on live television in 1983. This was a *huge* event in my childhood and I am thrilled to finally learn how it was done. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
In 1976, 20th Century Fox released a teaser trailer for a little film called Star Wars…aka “the story of a boy, a girl, and a universe”. No James Earl Jones voiceover for Vader, no John Williams score (which wasn’t finished until just two months before the film premiered), but th … | Continue reading
I’ve seen a lot of these bouncing ball videos (balls double until my PC crashes, etc.) but this one is absolutely mesmerizing. So many more of these on Slightly Satisfying’s TikTok. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The Guardian on why they’re not posting on Twitter anymore. “The benefits…are now outweighed by the negatives and…resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.” (If your org can’t stop, at least post elsewhere first.) | Continue reading
The Threat of Trumpism Is Real. So Is the Need for Rest. “If we don’t seek out pleasure, comfort, companionship, and laughter, numbness becomes our only protection. And fascism thrives when we are dead inside.” | Continue reading
Today I learned about evacuation aprons, which places like maternity wards use to rescue infants and toddlers in case of emergency or fire. Or as this labor & delivery nurse on Threads put it: …the goal is to grab your vest and just stuff as many babies as humanly possible in its … | Continue reading
Actually not an Onion article: The Onion Says It Has Bought Infowars, Alex Jones’s Site, Out of Bankruptcy. They’re going to relaunch the site as “a parody of itself” with Everytown for Gun Safety as an advertiser. | Continue reading
Is the love song dying? Or has the definition broadened? The Pudding investigates. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how. “I’ll read news, not other people’s reactions to news.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
In this video from Pianote, the multi-talented Jon Baptiste hears Green Day’s Holiday for the first time (drum & vocals only) and is challenged to come up with a piano accompaniment for it — and he really really gets into it. (How do you find a song that a musical encyclopedia li … | Continue reading
Oooh, Casey Johnston is coming out with a “memoir and manifesto” about weight lifting: A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting. (I am inching ever closer to taking up lifting myself…) 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Huge if true: “Triangles were long believed to be related to squares, but genetic analysis proves that they are actually very pointy circles.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading