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Tressie McMillan Cottom on AOC’s presumed presidential...

Tressie McMillan Cottom on AOC’s presumed presidential run. “But these are different times. Ocasio-Cortez is a different woman, and Americans love to turn to women when the house is burning down.”

Radiolab Updates instantly via WebSub
Audio • WNYC Studios

Nigel and the Real Gannet

In 2016, Chris Bell, a ranger with New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, was the sole human inhabitant of a small island off the west coast of the country, called Mana Island. He was there to take care of the island’s fragile and recovering ecosystem, including a colony ...

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Text • Carolyn Wells

The Great Romance Slump

"Why are so few young people finding love?"

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Text • Longreads

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Recommending stories from Emi Nietfeld, Brendan Borrell, Boyce Upholt, Fernando Pinho, and Vann R. Newkirk II.

sorry, this post is only available to Longreads members. To become a member, visit longreads.com/join.

The Atlas Obscura Podcast Updates instantly via WebSub
Audio • SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Koutammakou (Classic)

A race is on to save this world heritage site that straddles the border of Togo and Benin. It’s home to remarkable earth tower homes called Takienta, and the Batammariba people, whose existence is threatened by climate change and migration.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/koutammakou-batammariba


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Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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sqlite-utils 4.2.1

Release: sqlite-utils 4.2.1 Fixes a crashing bug in sqlite-utils 4.2. I'd introduced code that looks like this: from typing_extensions import Self It turned out the typing-extensions package was not listed as a dependency for sqlite-utils - it was installed by one o...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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sqlite-utils 4.2

Release: sqlite-utils 4.2

Lots of improvements in this one relating to the table.transform() feature, which adds support for complex alter table operations by creating a fresh table, copying across the data and then dropping and replacing the old one.

transform() now preserves a much larger array of edge-case schema definitions, including check constraints, unique constraints and even comments describing the columns.

There are also new introspection properties for check constraints, and a whole lot of other smaller changes.

Includes contributions from Bunlong Heng, ethanhawkes-gif, Rami Abdelrazzaq, nyxst4ck, and ikatyal2110.

(It later turned out 4.2 had a crashing bug, fixed in 4.2.1.)

Tags: releases, sqlite, sqlite-utils

Rick Beato
Video

Billy Joel talks about how his live songs developed  #piano #billyjoel #shorts

The Rewatchables
Audio

‘About Last Night’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Mallory Rubin

Bill, Chris, and Mal head on over to Mother’s for a quick boilermaker or two after revisiting the 1986 romantic comedy ‘About Last Night,’ starring Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Jim Belushi, and Elizabeth Perkins.

Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic

LIONSGATE’S MUTINY, STARRING JASON STATHAM, ONLY IN THEATERS AUGUST 21

Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at https://ChatGPT.com by selecting Work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans
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Accidental Tech Podcast
Audio

704: Past the Ternus Horizon

Pre-show: Marco has a rose and thorn Lutron Caséta Fan Control Fanimation Technology Connections video Follow-up: Marco’s favorite feedback (about Myke) was from Analog(ue) 😬 SQLite bug write-up Blackbird Post-show Neutral Professional negotiators / “headhunters...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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alchemy-utils 0.1a1

Release: alchemy-utils 0.1a1

Performance boost for DuckDB exports and CSV imports, see here.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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alchemy-utils 0.1a0

Release: alchemy-utils 0.1a0 I've long pondered what a database agnostic version of my sqlite-utils Python library and CLI utility might look like. This morning (literally a shower project) I tasked Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra with building a prototype: Do a researc...

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Open Thread for August 2026

We haven’t done an open thread for awhile, so… What have you been working on? How are you feeling? What’s on your mind these days? What’s the best thing you’ve seen this week? Have you called a plumber to your home lately?

Are you new here? Introduce yourself if you feel like it. Heck, if you’re a regular commenter, reintroduce yourself if you’d like.

Tags: kottke.org · open threads

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NOAA: Contiguous US Breaks Its Record for Hottest Month...

NOAA: Contiguous US Breaks Its Record for Hottest Month Ever. “It’s not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl…” (This record will be broken several more times in the decades to come.)

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The Moral Unseriousness of Centrist & Conservative Pundits

Jamelle Bouie almost never misses. In this video that’s just shy of 10 minutes long, he chastises American political & cultural pundits for their lack of moral seriousness w/r/t their focus on “wokeness” instead of the real harms being done by the authoritarian Trump r...

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A recently unearthed conversation with Anthony Bourdain...

A recently unearthed conversation with Anthony Bourdain from 2005. “We discuss Tony’s preferred sucker-punch etiquette, his loyalty to cigarettes & the Chateau Marmont, ayahuasca in Peru, and the talk show he dreamed up with Christopher Walken in mind.”

Colossal Valid
Text • Kate Mothes

‘Turn the Volume Up!’ Highlights the History of Speaking Out for Change in America

‘Turn the Volume Up!’ Highlights the History of Speaking Out for Change in AmericaThe exhibition opens at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University on August 27.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Turn the Volume Up!’ Highlights the History of Speaking Out for Change in America appeared first on Colossal.

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Supersonic Trebuchet

Ok so when you woke up this morning, you probably didn’t expect to watch a 20-minute video about a trebuchet — but to be fair, I didn’t either. But Tom Stanton’s build of a fully mechanical trebuchet that propels a tiny plastic pellet faster than the speed of sound (comple...

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Craig Mod wrote about his recent adventures using LLMs:...

Craig Mod wrote about his recent adventures using LLMs: A Swarm of Blood Robots. “I now have a comprehensive family tree, naming the very boats my Italian and Polish ancestors came over on in the late 1800s, the villages a few came from…”

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Text • John Gruber

Ceramic Shield 2 Is the Real Deal

tomsguide.com/phones/iphones/iphone-17-and-iphone-air-durability-testing-heres-how-the-new-iphones-stand-up-to-bending-scratching-and-dropping

Philip Michaels, writing last September for Tom’s Guide: iPhone 17 torture test videos done by JerryRigEverything indicate that Ceramic Shield 2 certainly resists scratching, with scratch testing leaving only light scratches at level 7 on the Mohs scale of hardness. Scra...