A few weeks ago designer James Barnard made this TikTok video about what seemed to be a few mistakes in HBO’s logo. He got a bunch of crap from commenters arguing that they weren’t mistakes at all. Then he heard from the designer of the original version of the logo, from the 1970s.
Hello fronds and anemones. Tomorrow is my birthday so I am taking today off. I’ll see you back here on Monday.
But before I go: I pushed some changes to how videos work on the site (after a bunch of feedback). The default behavior is now: you click on a video and it plays. If you hold “b” (for lightbox) while clicking, the video will play in a widescreen lightbox. Also, the escape key will now close the video and the lightbox is better about resizing so that the bottom of the videos don’t get cut off (thanks to Christophe for the CSS fix).
I don’t think this is the forever solution (it doesn’t address folks who want to open the videos on YouTube or Vimeo in a new tab), but I wanted to get something out there while I figure out the rest.
Tags: kottke.org
Radiolab
• WNYC Studios
nytimes.com/2025/09/25/technology/trump-tiktok-ban-deal.html
For more than a century in the 18th & 19th centuries, an edited version of Romeo & Juliet, with “a 67-line final conversation between Romeo and Juliet”, was more popular than Shakespeare’s original.
A four-year-old mystery finally solved: who was the awkwardly tall stranger at our wedding? “Who was the tall man in a dark suit, distinguished by the look of quiet mortification on his face?” Love the reason he was there.
Citation Needed
• Molly White
Democratic lawmakers sound corruption alarms while crypto PACs gear up for the midterms
From Eater, a list of the 38 most essential & influential US restaurants of the past 20 years. The list includes Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Via Carota, Husk, Alinea, Nong’s Khao Man Gai, Mission Chinese Food, and Gjelina.
