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
Apple has added the Lumon Terminal Pro computer to their devices lineup, right alongside the iMac and Macbook Air. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
There are so many reasons these days to covet a Swiss passport but let me give you one more: the design kicks ass. First issued in 2022, the document was designed by creative agency RETINAA. Drawing on cartographic tradition yet modern in its use of 3D modeled landscapes, the des … | Continue reading
Finally got around to reading Craig Mod’s “rules” for running his membership program. Two that particularly resonated: “The program exists for the goals, not the members” and “Fundamentally, you are building a community”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The Atlantic handled ‘Signalgate’ with good judgment. “The journalists’ actions ‘could be a college journalism class in careful, ethical handling of sensitive information’, said David Boardman, dean of Temple University’s media school.” | Continue reading
A recent paper found that the time it takes for an animal to move the length of its own body is largely independent of mass. This appears to hold from tiny bacteria on up to whales — that’s more than 20 orders of magnitude of mass. The paper’s argument as to why this happens reli … | Continue reading
Two prominent American scholars on fascism & authoritarianism, Timothy Snyder & Jason Stanley, have recently moved from Yale to the University of Toronto. Stanley: “the primary reason was the deteriorating political situation in the United States”. | Continue reading
For his 8th book, What the Dead Can Say, Philip Graham limited it to a print run of 1000 and distribution was entirely through stashing them in Little Free Libraries around the entire country. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Want to build your own synthesizer? The DIY Synths Database is a “curated collection of 68 DIY-friendly hardware synthesizers and related standalone musical equipment”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
From 2017, Ron Rosenbaum on the newspaper that fought Hitler. “The paper went down fighting a lie, fighting Nazi murderers, refusing to normalize the Hitler regime.” | Continue reading
Wired surveyed 730 coders and developers about how they use AI chatbots & tools. “Freelance coders seem to like AI more than full-time coders.” | Continue reading
I like these collage-like artworks by Tavares Strachan. One of the figures depicted above in the third piece, just above the queen, is polar explorer Matthew Henson, who was the first person (maybe?) to reach the geographic North Pole in 1909 as part of Robert Peary’s expedition. … | Continue reading
Watch All of the Commercials That David Lynch Has Directed: A Big 30-Minute Compilation. “The New York Department of Sanitation engaged Lynch’s services to imbue their anti-littering campaign with his signature high-contrast ominousness…” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.o … | Continue reading
Jess Piper on speaking to people in conservative areas of America about Trumpism. “You are going to have to tell them the truth. You know the truth. We have to be in the streets.” | Continue reading
The Hubble Space Telescope “has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday”. Just enter your month and day of birth to find out what it saw. My birthday image is of the Egg Nebula (shown above): Where is the center of the Egg Nebula? … | Continue reading
Waldo Jaquith on why he works in the open (blogging, open sourcing software, etc.): “I’ve long worked in the open, overwhelmingly for one reason: it increases enormously the surface area for success.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
The Haunting of Verdant Valley is a photo book about Silicon Valley. “Anonymous office parks, pristine corporate campuses, and fading remnants of past industries tell the story of a region built on extraction — of resources, labor, and attention.” 💬 Join the discussion on … | Continue reading
The Atlantic has shared the text messages sent by the Trump regime’s “national security” personnel on Signal. | Continue reading
The Frick Collection is back open after a five-year closure for a renovation. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
Russian hackers find ways to snoop on Ukrainian Signal accounts. (Hmm, 18 people in the Yemen bombing chat, some w/ ties to the Kremlin — what are the odds Russia has ongoing, realtime access to US national security comms via Signal linked devices?) | Continue reading
McSweeney’s is documenting the “cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes” of the 2nd Trump administration. This is a great resource. | Continue reading
World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics (track & field, etc.), is introducing “mandatory testing for anyone entering female competitions to verify their biological sex”. | Continue reading
Frustrated that the US Treasury Department is walking back plans to replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, Dano Wall created a 3D-printed stamp that can be used to transform Jacksons into Tubmans on the twenties in your pocketbook. Here’s a video … | Continue reading
A judge chastised vandals of a Paddington Bear statue: “His famous label attached to his duffle coat says ‘please look after this bear’. On the night of the 2nd of March 2025, your actions were the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for.” 💬 Join the discussion on … | Continue reading
Long waits, waves of calls, website crashes: Social Security is breaking down. A deep-dive into the Trump administration’s gutting of Social Security (a long-time conservative goal). | Continue reading
In this episode of This American Life from a few weeks ago, Masha Gessen read an excerpt from their book Surviving Autocracy about the particular kind of lie used by autocrats like Putin and Trump. Lies can serve a number of functions. People lie to deflect, to avoid embarrassmen … | Continue reading
What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler. This “comical figure” was regularly ridiculed in the German & international press right up until he became chancellor. It did very little to sway his supporters’ fervor. | Continue reading
Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal (No Man’s Land) was attacked by a group of 15 armed Israeli settlers and then arrested by the Israeli army. “They let the settlers attack him and then the army abducted him.” | Continue reading
The expanding size of American cars over the past few decades is increasing congestion by reducing the vehicle capacity of roadways. SUVs are longer, require more braking distance, and drivers behind them need to leave more space to see around them. | Continue reading
A recent study found that Black Lives Matter protests had a “significant and decisive impact” on the 2020 election. “This represents one of the most consequential impacts of a social movement on electoral politics in recent history.” | Continue reading
For some reason, Warner Bros. has uploaded 41 of its movies to YouTube that are free to watch. Among them, Waiting for Guffman, The Accidental Tourist, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Richard Linklater’s SubUrbia, The 11th Hour (Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate change movie), The Science … | Continue reading
Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America by Elie Mystal “reimagines what our legal system, and society at large, could look like if we could move past legislation plagued by racism, misogyny, and corruption”. | Continue reading
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans. “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans…” | Continue reading
Ikea Australia posted an ad referencing Severance — “for work that is mysterious and important” — which features an MDR cluster of four desks. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
I really liked this thread from independent bookseller Charlotte Moore-Lambert; it starts: being an indie bookseller in the helltimes has felt both very stable and very stabilizing, and part of me wishes everyone could be on my side of the counter for a little while, because I th … | Continue reading
Archaeologists have found 1.5-million-year-old bone tools in Tanzania. “This finding has pushed back systematic bone tool production by more than a million years and challenges previous assumptions about the technological capability of early hominins.” 💬 Join the discussi … | Continue reading
A.R. Moxon: It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied. It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination. … | Continue reading
Utrecht’s fish doorbell is up and running again to help spawning fish navigate the city’s canals. “If you see a fish, press the doorbell. This alerts the lock operator to open the lock.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
“A string of high-profile arrests and detentions of travellers is likely to cause a major downturn in tourism to the US, with latest figures already showing a serious drop-off.” | Continue reading
Senator Schumer Votes to Let the Big Wooden Horse into Troy. “Yes, there’s danger in opening our gates to this statue. But there’s also danger in keeping it out… the danger of eroding the sanctity of the gift-giving process.” | Continue reading
Using paint in water to simulate clouds or smoke, Rudy Willingham created these magical scenes of characters from Severance (Instagram). Willingham also created this cool animated zoetrope record with dancing Severance characters. Tags: art · Rudy Willingham · Severance · TV … | Continue reading
An analysis of pop music’s greatest two-hit wonders. “Pop stars are remembered because they are very famous. One-hit wonders are remembered for the opposite. Two-hit wonders are stuck in the middle.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading
What the hell? Saturn now has a total of 274 moons. That’s so many that they may have to relax the naming conventions because there aren’t enough Norse deities to cover them all. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org → | Continue reading