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Last Notes

2026-10-29 15:06:01 UTC

The NY Times recently asked readers “what they can no longer afford, or have given up on having”. Among the answers: medication, car repairs, new clothes, having more kids, eating out, and contact lenses. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/10/28/opinion/american-dream-affordability.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MVE.qqs4.0GKU7KOLrbcV

2026-10-29 13:52:01 UTC

Old newspaper headlines about the name doppelgängers of current celebrities, like "Ben Affleck Still Maintains Leadership in World of Cement" (1925), "Blood Donors Sought for Miss Elizabeth Holmes" (1950), and “Charlie Kirk Still Not Available”. https://kottke.org/26/10/old-newspaper-headlines-about-the-name-doppelgngers-of-current-celebrities

2026-10-29 12:56:01 UTC

I made a small tweak to Prometheus (gift link discovery site) that kinda kicks ass: NYT Cooking is now a separate source (which you can filter by). The Rigatoni With White Bolognese recipe is a favorite of mine. 🤌 https://kottke.org/prometheus

2026-10-29 02:24:02 UTC

Remember the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game? Turns out: “Kevin Bacon is not the center of Hollywood. In fact, he never has been, and almost certainly never will be.” https://pudding.cool/2026/10/kevin-bacon

2026-10-28 18:00:02 UTC

“The Moving Image Archive is a searchable library of archival films. The material is drawn from public-domain collections and is free to reuse.” This a collection of over 120,000 clips from almost 2300 archival films. https://kottke.org/26/10/the-moving-image-archive

2026-10-27 15:44:01 UTC

According to a recent survey, Americans are divided on whether empathy is a good thing. 83% of the religiously unaffiliated agreed that empathy is "a foundational moral value that helps build a healthy society” while only 42% of white evangelicals did. https://kottke.org/26/10/the-american-divide-on-empathy

2026-10-22 20:32:02 UTC

The Flipbook of the Rings. More than 1000 artists collaborated to create a hand-drawn, shot-for-shot, animated, flipbook version of the first The Lord of the Rings movie. All 3 hours. Over 120,000 scenes drawn by hand. Watch the first 11 minutes here. https://kottke.org/26/10/the-flipbook-of-the-rings

2026-10-22 18:44:02 UTC

Railpass simulates a train ride in your browser window using real video footage. Choose from trains from around the world or add some weather to the mix. Sound on for the best ride. https://train.samismith.com

2026-10-21 21:12:02 UTC

Bastardica is “a foundry for bastard web fonts. Mix, stretch and/or squish them.” E.g. Nervous Sans: “Arial is stacked five times, pseudo-randomly twitching out of line.” I quite like Impacter. https://bastardica.mitpit.com

2026-10-20 16:42:02 UTC

Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First. “It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off.” https://theonion.com/protestors-criticized-for-looting-businesses-without-fo-1843735351

2026-10-20 12:40:01 UTC

Brewster Kahle argues against news sites blocking the Internet Archive from archiving their sites. “Impeding the Wayback Machine’s preservation work will not prevent powerful AI companies from gathering training data.” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/blocking-internet-archive-will-not-stop-ai/689065?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZ1AS4fIdqjHOc9xe3O3gHT8

2026-10-19 19:34:01 UTC

This is really impressive: a software engineer got a Game Boy emulator running at 30 fps on a tiny e-ink screen. He wrote his own display driver to push the refresh rate beyond the normal 2-3 times per second. https://kottke.org/26/10/a-tiny-24-fps-e-ink-game-boy-emulator

2026-10-19 13:54:02 UTC

Ta-Nehisi Coates calls the most visionary politician of his era. “The example that Trump has set, the scope of what is possible should one embrace the dark powers of the White House, will not dissipate." https://kottke.org/26/10/ta-nehisi-coates-on-the-consequence-of-donald-trump

2026-10-15 18:16:01 UTC

Fishdraw is a single JavaScript file that generates drawings of fish. There’s an option to slow the animation down so you can watch it draw the fish line-by-line. https://github.com/LingDong-/fishdraw

2026-10-14 20:34:01 UTC

It’s time to de-privatize the US government. “The problem is not just that privatization is often inefficient because it adds a nontransparent layer of profiteering on top of government functions. The problem is that government loses basic capacity.” https://prospect.org/2026/10/13/time-to-de-privatize-federal-government

2026-10-14 14:56:01 UTC

Incredible image of the Lion Nebula by the JWST. “The death of the oxygen-rich central star has left behind a white dwarf that is ‘cooking' everything from the inside and producing a bubble of ionized gas...destroying dust that is in its path." https://kottke.org/26/10/whoa-the-lion-nebula

2026-10-12 17:58:01 UTC

Nearly 4M Records of Enslaved People in 20 Former British Colonies Now Searchable Online. “The Former British Colonies Enslavement Registers contains about 300,000 pages recording enslaved people across former British colonial dependencies…” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/sep/22/nearly-4m-records-of-enslaved-people-in-20-former-british-colonies-now-searchable-online

2026-10-12 14:30:02 UTC

I 100% love this video of every time someone says a percentage on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And the word "percent" has lost all of its meaning due to semantic satiation. https://kottke.org/26/10/all-the-percents-on-star-trek-tng

2026-10-09 20:38:01 UTC

Unseen Places: Rediscovering the Art of Observation by Anna Kodé. Looking forward to this one…Kodé is one of my favorite journalists covering urban culture. “Observation…is not a passive act, but a powerful and radical way of connecting…” https://bookshop.org/a/2966/9798217177912

2026-10-08 15:50:02 UTC

Mamdani’s “Richard Scarry Socialism” Can Make City Life Simple Again. “It is an astonishing indictment of our times that the cities of our picture books can seem like a radical utopia.” https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/mamdanis-richard-scarry-socialism-can-make-city-life-simple-again

2026-10-08 13:10:03 UTC

The Global Rise of Electoral Dictatorships. Is the U.S. Next? “Electoral dictators — who identify as presidents and prime ministers — hold uncompetitive and unfair elections after aggressively suppressing political opponents.” https://theemancipator.org/2026/10/06/ideas/the-global-rise-of-electoral-dictatorships-is-the-u-s-next-midterms-could-decide

2026-10-08 00:12:02 UTC

“Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon, died Sept. 30 in Cambridge, Mass. She was 90.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/07/obituaries/margaret-hamilton-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HFE.bx1O.RusUdZLMA7_k

2026-10-06 20:18:02 UTC

The trailer for Silent Friend. "In the botanical garden of a medieval German university, a gingko tree hundreds of years old watches its human neighbors through the slip-stream of time.” Like a movie version of The Hidden Life of Trees & The Overstory. https://kottke.org/26/10/silent-friend

2026-10-06 18:32:01 UTC

The Ku Klux Klan is rebranding itself as The Knights Party, centered on “family and faith” along with proud & open white supremacy. 💩🖕 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/5/can-the-kkk-find-a-new-foothold-in-the-us

2026-10-02 21:18:01 UTC

Back in 2005, a group of restorers established a hidden workshop in Paris’s Panthéon and snuck into the building for a whole year to repair an antique clock. “The group managed to connect the hideaway to the electricity grid and install a computer…” Wild! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/26/france.artnews

2026-10-02 18:00:01 UTC

Don’t Cook That: a collection of real recipes that you shouldn’t make. Cholera remedy recipe calls for “equal parts laudanum, rhubarb, double-strength capsicum, camphor and spirits of nitre”. https://dontcookthat.com

2026-10-01 17:20:02 UTC

Map of the Lighthouses of the World. Each lighthouse sweeps out its actual arc and the reach of the beams is true to scale. Very cool. https://kottke.org/26/10/map-of-the-lighthouses-of-the-world

2026-09-30 19:58:02 UTC

“There are more self-storage facilities in the U.S. than there are Starbucks, McDonald’s, Walmart, Home Depot, Domino’s, Dunkin’, and Costco locations combined.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/09/21/the-american-religion-of-self-storage-facilities

2026-09-29 21:10:01 UTC

Kim Tschang-Yeul painted water drops for 50 years. “The waterdrop was the starting point for a singular and iconic body of work, which stands at the confluence of lyrical abstraction, Pop art and Chinese calligraphy." https://kottke.org/26/09/kim-tschang-yeul-water-drops

2026-09-29 20:18:01 UTC

The death of web development education. “The income from my book sales went from being enough for me to live off (2024) to zero (2026).” https://molily.de/web-dev-education

2026-09-29 14:12:01 UTC

Over the past six months, dozens of people pitched in to create the MN Stolen Neighbors Quilt, which is made of 12,500 squares, each one representing an immigrant abducted in Minnesota by the Trump regime’s secret police (ICE + CBP). https://kottke.org/26/09/the-mn-stolen-neighbors-quilt

2026-09-25 00:12:01 UTC

What If We Just Stopped? “We’re in the Looney Tunes stage of the end of social, where we’ve glided well past the edge of the cliff and it’s slowing dawning on us that the only way left is down. Fast.” https://dansinker.com/posts/2026-09-23-stopped

2026-09-24 15:46:02 UTC

Kids who are too young for social media are chatting in the comments section of NPR’s podcasts on Spotify. Kid says: “I think we just like looked for podcasts that didn’t have many comments." Nature finds a way. https://kottke.org/26/09/the-new-social-app-npr-podcasts-comments-section-on-spotify

2026-09-22 15:48:01 UTC

Apple maintains a collection of downloadable dimensional drawings and tech specifications for many of their products, including the iPhone, AirPods, Watch, and iPad. They are beautiful. https://kottke.org/26/09/dimensional-drawings-of-apple-products

2026-09-22 07:44:01 UTC

Ed Sheeran tried to stay neutral on a moving train. “If [celebrities] remain neutral (silent), they won’t offend anyone and they will, hopefully, appeal to everyone. They use the facade of neutrality as shelter, as a place to take refuge.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/opinion/ed-sheeran-macklemore-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DFE.BxEN.ryq4zaO2G918

2026-09-11 12:30:03 UTC

Some personal news: an update on my fiddle leaf fig tree, where I’m living now, and what that means for KDO. “There may come a time when you feel like you need to let your fiddle leaf fig go and that will be ok too." https://kottke.org/26/09/biiiiig-stretch

2026-09-01 22:10:02 UTC

“The president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself." https://kottke.org/26/09/trump-is-in-open-revolt-against-the-constitution

2026-08-25 20:46:01 UTC

In lieu of flowers, Dolly Parton’s family is asking for donations to her Imagination Library, which has distributed over 330 million books to kids. https://imaginationlibrary.com

2026-08-25 18:22:02 UTC

RIP Dolly Parton, a gem and a hero. She died today at the age of 80. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-news/dolly-parton-dead-country-music-1236680877

2026-08-25 11:56:02 UTC

Target’s now-pulled children’s Halloween costume is so unbelievably racist that it had to, on some level, be purposely done by someone in the decision chain and everyone else was like, “seems ok to me”. https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/fact-check-target-removed-kids-194600773.html

2026-08-24 15:00:02 UTC

Meat proxy (noun): “A person who forwards AI-generated text, code, or other output without reading, understanding, or validating it. The person acts only as a relay between the AI system and the intended recipient.” https://sfisms.org/meat-proxy

2026-08-24 12:24:01 UTC

Opinion columnist Karen Attiah won her arbitration against the Washington Post. They are ordered to reinstate her and pay full back pay. The Post fired her almost a year ago for her remarks in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/business/washington-post-karen-attiah.html?unlocked_article_code=1.71A.MIsp.hZLydEMjrl9o

2026-08-20 20:26:02 UTC

Anil Dash built a standalone Touch ID sensor to use with your Mac if you don’t have a newer Apple keyboard. It’s open-source…the code and instructions are on Github. https://www.anildash.com/2026/08/20/introducing-dashboard-touch

2026-08-20 19:36:01 UTC

Analysts Warn U.S. Economy Becoming Overly Dependent On Anne Hathaway. “We estimate that Anne Hathaway films currently account for a staggering 63% of all U.S. exports.” Zendaya is the other 37%. https://theonion.com/analysts-warn-u-s-economy-becoming-overly-dependent-on-anne-hathaway

2026-08-20 13:34:01 UTC

Long past time to quit X. “Those who continue to post on X — in particular those X users who are not racist psychopaths — are enhancing the site’s usefulness to [Musk] as a propaganda tool by drawing more eyes to the platform… “ https://publiccomment.blog/p/it-is-past-time-for-you-to-quit-elon-musk-s-x

2026-08-18 14:52:08 UTC

Whoa, Columbia House (12 cassettes for 1¢) is finally going out of business after 71 years and several pivots (records to reel-to-reel to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs to VHS to DVDs to Blu-ray). https://gizmodo.com/r-i-p-columbia-house-heres-how-it-improbably-survived-this-long-2000799621

2026-08-18 14:02:02 UTC

The area known as Tornado Alley continues to shift eastward (from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas to Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin) due to “a warming climate that helps transport warmer and more-humid air farther north and east than in the past”. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2026/08/14/881534.htm

2026-08-17 19:34:01 UTC

“Sand temperatures above 29°C now produce 95–99% female sea turtles instead of the historical 50–50 ratio, creating a reproductive bottleneck that could collapse populations within two generations.” https://mazingamazingly.blogspot.com/2026/08/sea-turtle-sex-crisis-why-99-are-now.html

2026-08-17 17:34:03 UTC

Unwinding the Great Tech Power Grab. “If tech seeks to replace democratic governance itself, then the response has to be more democracy, not less.” Lots of related links in this piece too. https://rebeccawilliams.info/unwinding-the-great-tech-power-grab

2026-08-17 13:30:02 UTC

Yale study: “A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace.” https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/universal-health-coverage-could-save-one-trillion-dollars-and-114000-lives-every-year

2026-08-13 16:48:01 UTC

Supersonic Trebuchet. Tom Stanton’s build of a fully mechanical trebuchet that propels a tiny plastic pellet faster than the speed of sound (complete with tiny sonic boom) is genuinely fascinating to watch. https://kottke.org/26/08/supersonic-trebuchet

2026-08-12 18:40:02 UTC

Why weren’t bicycles invented sooner? “Why was no one…even considering the question of human-powered vehicles until the 1400s? Why weren’t there bicycle mechanics in the 1300s, when there were clockmakers, or at least by the 1500s, when we had watches?” https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle

2026-08-12 17:50:01 UTC

Attention Gen X: Death Cab For Cutie Tiny Desk Concert! Ben Gibbard: “I'm starting to realize that some of our earlier records came out a similar distance away from, like, the Beatles records when I was a kid." https://kottke.org/26/08/death-cab-for-cuties-tiny-desk-concert

2026-08-11 13:34:02 UTC

“Since 1974, vaccination has averted 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years… For every death averted, 66 years of full health were gained on average, translating to 10.2 billion years of full health gained.” https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2824%2900850-X/fulltext

2026-08-10 20:38:02 UTC

Stories of “people finding weird, wild and defiant ways to avoid using AI in their professional lives”. Like: “I keep a to-do list in a paper notebook, but my boss believes I have an AI task-keeping assistant via Claude.” https://aftermath.site/ai-resistance-tips-workforce-llm-workers

2026-08-10 13:10:02 UTC

Socialists Are Winning Because They Listen to People (and don’t just treat them like ATMs). “The best of them are running campaigns that acknowledge that to win, Democrats are going to have to organize voters — not just fund-raise off them.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/08/opinion/socialist-wave-democratic-party.html?unlocked_article_code=1.31A.5ouo.lGyV52V9VFDz

2026-08-06 23:12:05 UTC

Are these photos of Europa or frying pans? "One of these is Jupiter’s moon Europa, the rest are frying pans." https://kottke.org/15/08/europa-or-frying-pan

2026-08-06 20:30:02 UTC

The End of Google Search. The internet giant is “changing the formula” of its products and media folks are beginning to assume that there will be no search traffic in the future…and fretting about their survival. https://www.theringer.com/2026/08/04/tech/google-search-ai-internet

2026-08-06 19:20:01 UTC

Media Matters: “ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 194 segments about the three major heat events” that hit the US this summer and not a single one of them mentioned climate change. Not one! https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/abc-cbs-and-nbc-aired-nearly-200-segments-about-three-us-heat-events-without

2026-08-06 15:46:01 UTC

25 things that explain America, including personal injury lawyer advertisements, Crest Whitestrips, Costco rotisserie chicken, and the Pizza Hut lamp. “The T-shirt cannon merges three American obsessions: guns, sports and freebie giveaways.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/08/04/opinion/museum-of-america.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3VA.lKkx.zvAtnYyVdcYv

2026-08-06 13:08:02 UTC

This guy hooked his hamster’s wheel up to Strava — Mollie is logging 5-6 miles per day. https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a73355106/hamster-wheel-strava-running

2026-08-05 19:32:01 UTC

The Computer That Helped Win World War II. “…it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the fascination of a Colossus at work: its sheer bulk and apparent complexity; the fantastic speed of thin paper tape round the glittering pulleys…” https://spectrum.ieee.org/colossus-computer-ieee-milestone

2026-08-05 17:10:01 UTC

Lidar and other discoveries continue to show that the Amazon rainforest was home to a “sprawling ancient civilization much bigger than researchers expected” (possibly up to 3 million people around 100-300 CE). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mysterious-shapes-hidden-beneath-the-amazon-canopy-reveal-a-sprawling-ancient-civilization-much-bigger-than-researchers-expected-180989236

2026-08-04 19:52:02 UTC

I loved The Pudding’s post about optimal lawn mowing paths and why some people mow a lawn better than others. “It’s not about thinking more or faster, but when thinking happens." https://kottke.org/26/08/are-you-good-at-mowing-lawns

2026-08-04 16:44:02 UTC

Using high-definition open source videos and photos from NASA and his own music, John Boswell (aka Melodysheep) created this mesmerizing eight-minute video recap of the Artemis II mission. So well done. https://kottke.org/26/08/an-8k-cinematic-tribute-to-the-artemis-ii-mission

2026-08-04 13:52:02 UTC

Work vs gym: a simple way to decide whether to use AI for a task. “At the gym, it makes no sense for that robot to lift weights for you. The point of weightlifting isn’t to move heavy things across the room; it’s to actually lift those heavy things.” https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/07/should-you-use-ai-for-a-task-heres-a-simple-way-to-decide.html

2026-08-03 20:34:01 UTC

“Long live Hyrule jazz!” The Z Suites is “a modern jazz reinterpretation of the music from The Legend of Zelda”. https://casimirliberski.bandcamp.com/album/the-z-suites

2026-08-03 13:46:01 UTC

Google Earth stupidly launched an AI image-gen feature with no guardrails then put it on pause after a huge outcry. “Tonight I typed just one sentence into Google Earth and put refugees near the Mexican border. Then I planted a nuclear plant in Iran.” https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/how-to-plant-a-nuclear-plant-in-iran

2026-07-30 16:52:01 UTC

The hardened lava flows in this photo of a volcano look like dozens of doomed souls being sucked into hell or the damned escaping the underworld. https://kottke.org/26/07/the-hell-mouth

2026-07-30 14:16:01 UTC

The trailer for Wicker (starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki). “An outcast in a fishing village commissions a husband for herself made out of wicker.” Looks unhinged (complimentary). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP0BWBWn14I

2026-07-30 13:40:03 UTC

The coffee shop where 162 regulars have their own mug (1977). “The cups may not be such a small thing after all. They are a town register and a history and a confirmation that life goes on in a small American town.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmPVVpkJPQ

2026-07-29 21:00:01 UTC

It’s Cool to Be Weird. "Before Prince was Prince, Prince was *weird*. Everybody loves to clap at the end — and most of the time we are clapping for the wrong reasons. We live in a culture that loves final products." https://kottke.org/26/07/its-cool-to-be-weird

2026-07-29 14:20:02 UTC

Here’s where we’re at in 2026: because of federal funding cuts, scientists are turning to OnlyFans to fund their research. Scientists tracking marmot populations launched OnlyMarms on the adult platform, inspired by Margo’s Got Money Troubles. https://kottke.org/26/07/onlymarms-funding-science-research-on-onlyfans

2026-07-28 20:26:01 UTC

Please Use AI. “Be sure to use AI when planning that next camping trip, the last one you will take with this particular child. Definitely do not text your friend who has fly-fished every river in Pennsylvania and biked every backwoods trail…” https://shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/please-use-ai

2026-07-28 16:16:01 UTC

19th Century Japanese Woodblock Prints Creatively Illustrate the Inner Workings of the Human Body. Love these. https://www.openculture.com/2026/07/japanese-woodblock-prints-illustrate-the-human-body.html#google_vignette

2026-07-27 15:58:02 UTC

An Uncomplicated Man, Emily Wilson’s review of Nolan’s The Odyssey. “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script. Sadly, Damon’s Odysseus isn’t complicated or wily or artful.” https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

2026-07-27 14:24:01 UTC

“The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies..." https://kottke.org/26/07/trumps-assault-on-science-continues

2026-07-23 21:22:01 UTC

A Teen Reporter Searched for His Community in the Epstein Files. Adults Freaked Out. “Once everyone was back at school on Tuesday, the high schoolers lawyered up during their lunch hour.” https://www.wired.com/story/epstein-files-redwood-bark-school-newspaper

2026-07-23 18:54:02 UTC

Rebecca Solnit on the Tate brothers, The Odyssey, and the misogyny of classical literature & the contemporary world. “Classical culture is a lot of things including, literally, rape culture.” https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/listening-to-cassandra-misogyny-classical-and-modern

2026-07-23 16:28:01 UTC

We’re Squandering LEDs’ Potential to Save Our Night Skies. “Our main failure isn’t a technical one. It’s that we have yet to revise our thinking about lighting at night. We use LED technology just as we did the old sources of light.” https://spectrum.ieee.org/led-light-pollution

2026-07-23 14:18:02 UTC

“This map shows the predicted density of underground networks created by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These networks form one of Earth’s circulatory systems, moving massive amounts of carbon, nutrients, and water across plant communities.” https://a-hidden-infrastructure.spun.earth/story/mycorrhizal-infrastructure-map

2026-07-22 19:18:01 UTC

A list of Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail, including an Apple Powerbook 100, a SGI R4000 Indigo, the Motorola Envoy (PDA), and some Thinking Machines CM-5s. “This is a Unix system, I know this!” https://fabiensanglard.net/jurrasic_park_computers/index.html

2026-07-20 20:12:01 UTC

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay is making a documentary about the 14th amendment, “spotlighting America’s long running and sometimes bloody battle with itself over who is a citizen and how much freedom they get”. https://deadline.com/2026/07/ava-duvernay-netflix-citizenship-documentary-14-amendment-1236983852

2026-07-20 15:32:01 UTC

I love the 1-bit aesthetic of this story-driven city builder game called GlagStone. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4198840/GlagStone

2026-07-16 20:12:02 UTC

What Training My Chaotic Dog Taught Me About Power, Control — and Human Beings. “As any parent of a toddler knows, being morally liable for something that is incapable of moral liability is a fraught and stressful business.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/25/what-training-my-chaotic-dog-taught-me-about-power-control-and-human-beings

2026-07-15 22:04:01 UTC

A complete digital version of The Naturalist’s Library (1833-43), William Jardine’s 40-volume book series on natural history, including restored versions of each of the 1300+ illustrations in the library. Wow. https://kottke.org/26/07/the-naturalists-library-1833-43

2026-07-14 19:00:02 UTC

Trump Dismantled a Federal Climate Website. These Women Rebuilt It. “It’s not a pretty picture for climate communication and climate journalism right now.” You can check out the new site at climate.us. https://19thnews.org/2026/07/noaa-climate-data-website

2026-07-13 21:36:01 UTC

The trailer for Digger, an upcoming movie directed by Alejandro Iñárritu in which Tom Cruise plays a dipshit oligarch in what appears to be a Dr. Strangelove-style satire/thriller. Looks good! https://kottke.org/26/07/digger

2026-07-08 17:28:01 UTC

The End of Reading Is Here. “The decline of reading will bring about changes of the same magnitude. It will affect our innermost thoughts, our society’s politics and culture, and how we tell the history of our civilization.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZyM-26EN9jpQa5BZoBCHLjE

2026-07-07 21:02:01 UTC

Interviews with some of the dwindling number of survivors of World War II Japanese American incarceration camps, including George Takei. https://age-of-incarceration.longlead.com

2026-07-06 12:16:01 UTC

Five young descendants of Frederick Douglass read his famous “What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?” speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBe5qbnkqoM

2026-07-02 16:46:01 UTC

Hank Green interviews Ze Frank, who kind of invented the modern YouTube format (aka vlogging). “At the episode’s end, Ze lays down some of the best advice Hank’s ever heard.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwIFDv5pHS0

2026-07-02 16:04:01 UTC

Parker Molloy on why the panic about trans women in sports is not actually about fairness or protecting women & girls (in the similar way Gamergate was not about “ethics in games journalism”). https://www.readtpa.com/p/reasonable-concerns

2026-07-02 15:08:01 UTC

The US Constitution Is for Simple Folk Still Burdened by the Belief That Words Have Meaning. “The true Constitution is not a document. It’s more of a gut feeling. It is a shimmering legal gas that settles wherever conservatives need it most…” https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-us-constitution-is-for-simple-folk-still-burdened-by-the-belief-that-words-have-meaning

2026-06-29 13:06:02 UTC

The Writers Who Wrote The Most in History. “Corin Tellado published more than 4,000 novels, mostly under a contract with Spanish publisher Bruguera, which obligated her to deliver a 76-page novel every single week for years.” https://brennan.day/compulsion-the-writers-who-wrote-the-most-in-history

2026-06-26 16:24:02 UTC

The Boeing 747 Begins Its Final Descent. The 747 is being phased out for newer and more efficient jets. Ian Bosost takes a look at how the massive plane, which took flight only 5 months before “Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon”, came to be. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/07/boeing-747-retirement/687304?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZ5JCsAe-wj5z_OJEnNISzlQ

2026-06-26 15:20:01 UTC

It’s America’s Birthday. What Are We Celebrating? Some good thoughts in here from Tressie McMillan Cottom, Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, and Lydia Polgreen. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/25/opinion/america-250-birthday.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tFA.BrlK.byIvU84hXwjv

2026-06-25 21:36:02 UTC

Sad news: long-time tech journalist, blogger, and entrepreneur Om Malik passed away yesterday aged 59. https://om.co/2026/06/24/1966-2026

2026-06-24 16:02:01 UTC

Gerrymandle is a daily game where you “draw electoral district lines to win more seats than your opponents and win the election”. https://gerrymandle.cc

2026-06-23 19:20:01 UTC

Yet another unsurprising article about how bigger SUVs and trucks have resulted in more pedestrian deaths in the US over the past two decades. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv-pedestrian-crashes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sFA.TR0d.kUExs1GP5AMm