I love this: a carpenter fires his nail gun in time to the music of a band practicing or performing next door. Music, artistry, and playfulness is everywhere. Tags: music · video 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The Onion: “The Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns both debuted new commercials Tuesday that attempt to win support for their respective candidates with a supercut of Trump’s most racist comments.” 🎯 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
These “containment cages” used in Texas prison are inhumane — standing-room only cages that prisoners are kept in for days at a time. “Solitary confinement itself was horrific, but these containment cages were catastrophic.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Oh boy, a new book from one of my favorite designers: Kelli Anderson’s Alphabet in Motion, a pop-up book that explains how typography works. Watch the video…this book is bonkers. Instant pre-order for me. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Until about 1885, female newborns in Sweden had a similar risk of dying as 80-year-old women. “This progress has come from improvements in hygiene, clean water and sanitation, vaccination, nutrition, neonatal healthcare, and surgery.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
From The Pudding, more than you’ve ever wanted to know about a game called Crokinole. Like: WTF is Crokinole?? (Partial A: “a mashup of shuffleboard and curling, played on a tabletop board”.) 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Too Much Love is a project from Katja Kemnitz in which she photographs the beloved dolls & stuffed animals of young children alongside brand-new versions of the same toys. Anyone who is a parent or caregiver can relate to the destruction on display here, as well as the difficulty … | Continue reading
Ooh, a preview clip from season three of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I like this crew. Season three premieres sometime in 2025 and, huzzah!, has been renewed for a 4th season. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
From Ryan Broderick’s comments on the state of text based social media, a new life goal for me: “One day you’ll be the last person writing words on the web and wonder where everyone went.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Historian Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny), who studies forced population movements, thinks we aren’t taking the Trump/Vance deportation plans seriously enough. (I agree.) The effects will be familiar to anyone who has read anything about totalitarian regimes and/or caste-based societ … | Continue reading
The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway. 100%. My feeling is that it’s been months since his campaign was about winning the election — they’re focused on the coup endgame. | Continue reading
This TV ad is from 2006 but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. It’s so good though…no reason a deodorant commercial has to go this hard! Tags: advertising · video 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
My 17-year-old took this Street Survival driving skills course this weekend and I recommend it! They learn how to handle their own car, how it feels to stop fast, corner fast, etc. You can see the kids level up their driving throughout the day. 💬 Join the discussion on ko … | Continue reading
From French street artist OakOak, a reminder that art is everywhere and that art comes from everywhere. From their website and Instagram, here are a few more pieces that caught my eye: And ha, I just noticed this one, a riff on Hokusai’s The Great Wave. Tags: art · Mark Rothko · … | Continue reading
A new concept album by Lin-Manuel Miranda & Eisa Davis is a musical based on the 1979 movie The Warriors and “sung by a cast that includes everyone from artists like Lauryn Hill, Nas, Ghostface Killah and Billy Porter to Broadway stars Phillipa Soo…” 💬 Join the discussion … | Continue reading
The Secretive Dynasty That Controls the Boar’s Head Brand. Somehow, not even the CFO seems to know who the CEO of Boar’s Head is. Wild. “Be forewarned: There are a lot of Bobs and Franks in this story.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
A program that pays farmers to flood their fields to create “pop-up wetland habitats” as way-stations for migratory birds is a “rare conservation win”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Walt Whitman: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Marissa Mayer: “I Am Not a Feminist. I Am Not Neurodivergent. I Am a Software Girl.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Marlene Weisman was a graphic designer for Saturday Night Live from 1988–1994, which is the sweet spot of when I was really into the show. So this interview with Weisman by Steven Heller is right up my alley. I did have a close working relationship with Mike Myers, who basically … | Continue reading
Al Green’s cover of The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Foursquare is shutting down their city guide app and website. Sad but I hope this is true: “Foursquare is focused on building even better experiences for you in Swarm.” (I love Swarm and use it every day still.) 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Strolls with stops use more energy than continuous walking, scientists show. “Researchers show more energy needed to get going than later in walks when body is working more efficiently.” 20-60% more oxygen use in bursty tests of stair-climbing. 💬 Join the discussion on ko … | Continue reading
Polostan: Volume One of Bomb Light: A Riveting Historical Epic of International Espionage, Intrigue, and the Dawn of the Atomic Age. I haven’t read every Neal Stephenson book, but I’ve loved those I have (incl. Seveneves). 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
In a continuation and tweak of his Coletivos project (which I posted about previously), Cássio Vasconcellos took aerial photos of scrapyards and arranged the junked cars, planes, trains, and other objects into dense photographic collages. OVER presents a scenario that seems to po … | Continue reading
Is It Perimenopause or the Fascist Death Knell of Late-Stage Capitalism? “Is my hair thinning, or am I ripping it out because a thirty-four-time convicted, sexually abusive steak salesman with a Hannibal Lecter fetish is five points ahead in Arizona?” 💬 Join the discussio … | Continue reading
Loving that the FTC has adopted a click-to-cancel rule. “Under the rule, businesses can’t force customers to cancel a subscription using a method different from how they signed up.” So if you sign up online, they can’t force you to call to cancel. 🙌 💬 Join the dis … | Continue reading
Redbox went bankrupt and abandoned their DVD lending machines. Tinkerers have hacked the OS, procured machines from the likes of Walgreens, and hauled them home to repurpose or to get at the sweet, sweet fruit within (aka the DVDs). 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The Biden administration has cancelled $175 billion in student debt for almost 5 million people since Jan 2021. Could have done much more than that if not for Republicans suing to keep people in debt. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
This mashup of Y.M.C.A. by the Village People and a track from Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar soundtrack should not work as well as it does. “Young man, young man” (plaintive). 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
A Weird Form of Dark Energy Might Solve a Cosmic Conundrum. “Estimates of how fast the universe is expanding disagree. Could a new form of dark energy resolve the problem?” (Written by two experts on dark energy.) 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
This video seems like it was made specifically for kottke.org. In the first half of it, you learn how cranberries are harvested. In the second half, there’s gorgeous HD slo-mo footage of wakeskating through a cranberry bog. And with a Tycho soundtrack no less…it’s all too perfect … | Continue reading
Supreme Court Rules 6-3 To Open Evil Tomb Of Batibat. “Contemporaneous accounts provide no evidence the Founding Fathers envisioned a role for the federal government in vanquishing this unholy entity from the face of the earth.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Ok, this is a genuinely shocking thing to hear: “There is a new species of shark or shark relative (skate, ray, or chimera) discovered approximately every two weeks.” —shark expert David Shiffman 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The Binary Game tests you on quickly converting numbers from binary to decimal and from decimal to binary, from 0 (00000000) to 255 (11111111). “Before long you’ll be doing these conversions in your head.” My son turned me onto this — it’s fun! 💬 Join the discussion on ko … | Continue reading
“New research documents accelerating plant growth on the Antarctic Peninsula and nearby islands.” 8000 sq ft of vegetation 40 years ago has grown into 4.6 sq miles. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
From XKCD: Ravioli-Shaped Objects. See also The Cube Rule of Food, the Grand Unified Theory of Food Identification. Tags: food · XKCD 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I think this counts as a FINALLY! Amazon is coming out with a full-color e-reader called the Kindle Colorsoft. You can pre-order it now for $280 and it ships on October 30. This will be great for comics, graphic novels, and books with art & photography. I am a committed ebook rea … | Continue reading
Kasso is a Japanese game show that’s like a skateboarding version of Ninja Warrior. A group of skaters is challenged to navigate a series of obstacle courses that require the street and park skating skills. Some of the obstacles are truly diabolical — to get the gist, check out t … | Continue reading
Reader favorites from 20 years of the NY Times’ popular Modern Love column. “Knowing that someone else had walked this same, very scary path gave me a sense of comfort, which I was then able to pass on to others.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
A comic by Aubrey Hirsch: Miscarriages are incredibly common. Abortion bans have made them less safe. Tags: abortion · Aubrey Hirsch · healthcare 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Jimmy Carter cast his mail-in ballot for Kamala Harris today, two months after stating he wanted to live long enough to do so. Carter was born when Calvin Coolidge was president and was first eligible to vote in the 1948 election (Truman vs Dewey). 💬 Join the discussion o … | Continue reading
Hearing Things is a new site featuring independent music journalism. It was founded by former Pitchfork staffers and will be member-supported. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
So first of all, this mashup of LCD Soundsystem’s New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down and a recording of Miles David from his Elevator to the Gallows score is just great to listen to musically. But the, let’s call it choreography, is brilliantly spare: a pair of YouT … | Continue reading
Ugh, these undecided hobbits! “Both Galadriel and Sauron say the other is a threat to Middle-earth. One has to be wrong, so whom am I to trust?” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win is a NY Times bestseller from Jessica Valenti, who “provides the language, facts, and context readers need to feel confident when talking about the attacks on their bodies and freedom”. 💬 Join the discussion o … | Continue reading
“Flat-rate train ticket reduced Germany’s transport emissions by 5% in first year.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I had no idea there was footage shot on the Moon from the perspective of a lunar rover passenger…basically a lunar rover dash cam. It’s the second half of this short video. Amazing. The first part shows the rover speeding off (at about 6 miles/hr), being put through its paces. Fr … | Continue reading
This is Cabel Sasser’s XOXO talk. Best not to know anything going into it…just watch all the way to the end. “Don’t waste this. Keep everyone guessing. Make me proud.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading