A bunch of people who have never heard of Radiohead listen to Creep for the first time. Some of them were in tears. It *is* a pretty great song. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The Pudding: How do animals sound across languages? “How can cultures hear the same physical sounds yet translate them into language so differently?” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Always a delight to see the newest issue of Laura Olin’s newsletter in my inbox. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
On this day 27 years ago, on March 14, 1998, I started this here website. I’m not sure what there is to say about the ridiculous length of time that I’ve spent doing this “moderately anachronistic thing” that I haven’t already said before: A little context for just how long that … | Continue reading
Wired has a big story (150+ sources) that takes a look Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’. “The next step: Unleash the AI.” 😱 | Continue reading
Sarah Wynn-Williams’s memoir about working at Facebook, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (Bookshop), is on the bestseller charts after Meta tried to get the book pulled from sale. The Streisand effect strikes again. | Continue reading
Ted Lasso is returning for a fourth season. Not every actor is on board (yet)…it’ll be interesting to see where this goes. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Trailer for season two of Poker Face. If you haven’t seen it, it’s directed by Rian Johnson (Knives Out/Glass Onion) and Natasha Lyonne plays an itinerant Benoit Blanc sort of character. Very good. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Harvey Silikovitz tried 10 times to get on Jeopardy! over 24 years and finally made it. (And won!) “He’s pretty sure he has made history as the first Jeopardy! contestant to play with Parkinson’s.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detention Is a Trial Run. “You may believe that Khalil does not deserve free speech or due process. But if he does not have them, then neither do you. Neither do I.” | Continue reading
404 Media has obtained a list of 200+ sites monitored by a contractor for ICE (Amazon, Apple Music, BabyCenter, Bluesky, Facebook, Github, GoFundMe, etc.). They can “pull a target individual’s publicly available data” from these sites “all at once”. | Continue reading
US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms. The Us joins a list of countries with “deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”. | Continue reading
OMG, there’s an “S” in today’s Spelling Bee puzzle! (Is this the first time?) 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Things have been a little weird lately so I missed this when it came out but lolol: mustaaaaaaaaaard! 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Following on from my post this morning, I think this is a good time to step back from the site for a bit and focus on some long-neglected backend things that just don’t get the attention they deserve when I’m busy with the day-to-day posting. There are a couple of projects in par … | Continue reading
The creator of Poetry Is Not a Luxury Instagram account is coming out with a poetry anthology in May: Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Skywriter takes Bluesky threads and makes webpages out of them. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
On Inauguration Day in January, Eliza McLamb wrote about her abstention from social media for a month and the challenge of keeping up with current events “without either turning towards ignorance or overwhelming myself with information”: I’ve been thinking deeply about this idea … | Continue reading
Disney has uploaded the first three episodes of season one of Andor to YouTube: No idea how long they will be up or if they’re visible outside of the US. I started an Andor rewatch last week and I am finding it more enjoyable and interesting than I did the first time around. The … | Continue reading
I ran across this story from Vanessa Guerrero on Instagram recently. She originally posted it to Twitter a few years ago; here’s the full text: Living in LA, I’ve lived in many a neighborhood in which police helicopters circle all day and they don’t do anything except be loud an … | Continue reading
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE is interviewing (current & former) federal workers for a series that “aims to capture both the personal significance of [their] work and its broader impact on the American public”. 8 stories so far — these are great. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
“Covid was a privatized pandemic. It is this technocratic, privatized model that is its lasting legacy and that will define our approach to the next pandemic,” says Siddhartha Mukherjee. “There are some public goods that should never be privatized.” | Continue reading
I Am Trapped in the Criterion Closet. “How long have I been in this place? I cannot say. In the darkness, time has lost meaning. The only days I remember are Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978), the only nights, Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957).” 💬 Join the discussion … | Continue reading
When This [Medical School] Professor Got Cancer, He Didn’t Quit. He Taught a Class About It. “He wanted his students to understand the humanity at the core of medicine.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The latest edition of Jodi Ettenberg’s link-drenched Curious About Everything newsletter just dropped. I was going to steal about a dozens links from this, but you should just go read and subscribe to the source. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Purged gov’t employees, while scrambling to find work & health insurance, face MAGA relatives who are cheering their firing. “Some members of her mostly conservative family have unfriended her on social media. Others are giving her the silent treatment.” | Continue reading
I woke up Saturday wondering how observers of Ramadan time their fasting in polar regions, where sunrise & sunset don’t exist for months on end. “Muslims in the Arctic are generally advised by religious authorities to adopt one of three solutions…” 💬 Join the discussion o … | Continue reading
A forthcoming novel from Patricia Lockwood: Will There Ever Be Another You. Really looking forward to this one — her No One Is Talking About This is a favorite of mine from the past few years. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
A game called “It is as if you were on your phone” is designed to make you look like you’re on your phone. “You’re just pretending to be on your phone! On your phone!” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
A collection of movie clips containing inaccurate binocular shots, “(i.e., two overlapping circles instead of one, as you would see in real life)” — including Rushmore, Das Boot, Ronin, Chinatown, and Superman. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
From Ben Fry, a visualization of the 5,000+ covers of the New Yorker from the past 100 years. “The horizontal line/artifact comes from the way that they re-run their first cover (and more recently, a variant of it) each year on their anniversary.” 💬 Join the discussion on … | Continue reading
This is the dumbest thing but it had me rolling in the aisles this morning: Star Trek TNG Theme but the theme music is coming from the Enterprise-D. It takes a bit to get going, but I laughed so hard when the ship whooshed by for the first time. The same creator has made a number … | Continue reading
This is fantastic and very much worth your time: Marcin Wichary’s deep dive into a staunchly utilitarian font called Gorton, which you see almost everywhere in American cities, especially NYC. “Gorton is everywhere in Manhattan.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I Took My Work Outside Every Day for a Month This Winter. (“My work” = typing on a laptop.) “Even though I’m not perfectly warm, it lifts my mood to be outside. I can hear the community of songbirds holding their morning conferences, a barking dog…” 💬 Join the discussion … | Continue reading
The 100 Greatest TV Performances of the 21st Century (one per show & actor). Ian McShane (Deadwood), Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), Anna Sawai (Shōgun), Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey), Peter Dinklage (GoT). Who’s your #1? 💬 Join the discussion on … | Continue reading
High up in a pine tree in California’s Big Bear Valley, a pair of eagles guard their nest…and we can watch them live on YouTube. The nest is located in Big Bear Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. It is about 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine tree. It is th … | Continue reading
Some graphs showing how people’s Letterboxd ratings of the Star Wars films have changed over the past few years. The prequels’ rankings have increased while the Rey/Ren movies have fallen. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
A few days ago, on March 2, the first lunar lander operated by a private company landed successfully on the Moon. The video of the landing is really something — I wonder if I will ever get accustomed to or tired of watching footage of spacecraft landing on other bodies in our sol … | Continue reading
Dolly Parton has released a new song called If You Hadn’t Been There as a tribute to her late husband, Carl Dean. “If you hadn’t been there / Well, who would I be?” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
After 54 years, the organizers of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (which celebrates bad opening lines to novels) have brought an end to the contest. So bummed…a friend and I had a pretty good entry we’ve been workshopping! 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The Museum of All Things. “Every exhibit in the museum corresponds to a Wikipedia article. The walls of the exhibit are covered in images and text from the article, and hallways lead out to other exhibits based on the article’s links.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org … | Continue reading
Hey folks. I’m gonna take a break from KDO for the rest the day today (unless we invade Canada this afternoon or something) — I worked for much of last weekend and need a breather. But I wanted to open up the comments here and ask: How are you doing? What’s your attention on thes … | Continue reading
Report: You Live In An Embarrassing Country. “According to a new report published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, you live in a deeply embarrassing and barely functional country.” Evergreen piece from The Onion. | Continue reading
Yesterday’s letter from Heather Cox Richardson is a good one, drawing a line from the Cold War to Putin’s rise in Russia (through “virtual politics”) to Russian interference in the 2016 election to the ongoing coup. | Continue reading
I recently rewatched Glass Onion and had a couple thoughts about it. 1. Before settling in to watch, I’d remembered that Edward Norton’s mega-billionaire character Miles Bron bore some resemblance to Elon Musk, but I’d forgotten that the whole plot of the movie revolves around wh … | Continue reading
How Congress Can Delete DOGE. “DOGE’s parent agency, the US Digital Service (USDS), was never statutorily authorized. In the grand scheme of the appropriations process, DOGE’s budget can be deleted if Congress decides to act.” | Continue reading
Buttondown makes it super-easy to migrate your newsletter from Substack. Plus: “Need help migrating to Buttondown? Just contact our support team and we’ll take care of it for you!” No more excuses. | Continue reading
I love the international cover for Omar El Akkad’s new book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Bookshop, Amazon). It uses the original text of El Akkad’s tweet about the war in Gaza: One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing … | Continue reading