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Rick Beato
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Goo Goo Dolls John Rzeznik on “Iris” #song #googoodolls #shorts

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Text Jason Kottke

Gina Trapani: The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer...

Gina Trapani: The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer. I’ve always been a little 3D printer-curious and this looks like a good resource to start with.

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Text • Grace Ebert

Playful Patterns Adorn Ashley Percival’s Collections of Creatures

Playful Patterns Adorn Ashley Percival’s Collections of CreaturesAshley Percival imagines fanciful menagerie in which poodles, rotund birds, and boot-wearing insects try on a vast array of vibrant costumes.

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 Playful Patterns Adorn Ashley Percival’s Collections of Creatures appeared first on Colossal.

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Text Jason Kottke

2 Odysseus 2 Ithaca: Emily Wilson is completely...

2 Odysseus 2 Ithaca: Emily Wilson is completely retranslating The Odyssey. “It’s a complete retranslation. It’s not a revision of the old version.” This is the exact opposite of resting on one’s laurels.

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Codex bundles LibreOffice

I was poking around in my ~/.cache/ folder using OmniDiskSweeper when I spotted something interesting. The OpenAI Codex desktop app (since rebranded to just ChatGPT) has 1.7GB of stuff in there in a folder called codex-primary-runtime, including a full Python installation, a full Node.js installation, and native binaries for Poppler, git, and the LibreOffice open source office suite (which forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010):

Screenshot of a macOS disk usage app window in column view, titled "/Users/simon/.cache - 442.1 GB". First column: 356.8 GB huggingface, 82.5 GB uv, 1.7 GB codex-runtimes (selected), 609.0 MB datasette-sqlite, 298.8 MB rod. Second column: 1.7 GB codex-primary-runtime (selected). Third column: 1.7 GB dependencies (selected), 6.3 MB plugins, 4.1 kB runtime.json. Fourth column: 771.0 MB native (selected), 446.4 MB node, 440.6 MB python, 28.7 kB bin. Fifth column: 429.7 MB libreoffice-headless (selected), 187.9 MB poppler, 148.1 MB git, 4.7 MB libheif, 679.9 kB jxrlib.

The ~/.cache/codex-runtimes/codex-primary-runtime/plugins/openai-primary-runtime/plugins/documents folder includes skills which tell Codex how to find and use those binaries.

Tags: codex, generative-ai, openai, ai, llms, openoffice, open-source

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Text Jason Kottke

Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court...

Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court Orders on Voting by Mail. “The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans.”

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Text Jason Kottke

How Blackwing Pencils Are Made

The thing about me is if I see a making-of video for pencils, I’m gonna stop and watch it and then post it to my website, especially if said pencils are Blackwings, made in Japan. Take a first-ever, in-depth look at the Blackwing pencil manufacturing process. This short ...

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Text • John Gruber

Tim Cook’s Departure Memo on His Last Day as CEO

9to5mac.com/2026/08/31/read-tim-cooks-full-memo-to-apple-employees-on-his-last-day-as-ceo/

Tim Cook: There is something truly special about Apple. I am most proud of what an annual report could never capture. This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what we build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the re...

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Text • Cheri Lucas Rowlands

What Happens When a Kid’s Robot Best Friend Dies?

"AI companion toys for neurodivergent children promise connection and therapy, but can they deliver for the long haul?"

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Text • John Gruber

Apple Reveals Forensic Evidence From Chang Liu’s MacBook in OpenAI Lawsuit

9to5mac.com/2026/08/31/apple-openai-forensic-macbook-evidence/

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac: In today’s filing, Apple says that Liu’s lawyers recently handed over his MacBook that he used after leaving Apple. According to Apple, an “initial forensic analysis” of that MacBook revealed four things, quoted from Apple’s filing: Mr. Liu not ...

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Industry Standard Tools . “Every trade has a small...

Industry Standard Tools. “Every trade has a small number of items so entrenched that they’ve become the de facto tool that nearly everyone in that trade uses.”

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Quoting Tarn Adams

They took the letters from me! I have to talk about dwarf behavior now. I can't even talk about dwarf AI. It doesn't exist. It's dwarf behavior, and they misbehave sometimes

Tarn Adams, co-creator of Dwarf Fortress

Tags: ai, game-design

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Text • Kate Mothes

Twelve Centuries of Documents Illuminate Humans’ Quest for Knowledge in ‘World Unfolding’

Twelve Centuries of Documents Illuminate Humans’ Quest for Knowledge in ‘World Unfolding’The five-volume tome features more than 625 illustrations from The Huntington's vast collection.

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 Twelve Centuries of Documents Illuminate Humans’ Quest for Knowledge in ‘World Unfolding’ appeared first on Colossal.

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Text • Work Chronicles

(comic) Safe space

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Text Jason Kottke

This is a fun read: If You Build It, Will They Come? On...

This is a fun read: If You Build It, Will They Come? On the Sperm Racing World Cup. “The cells then race through courses less than a half-centimeter long that are etched into microfluidic silicon chips.”

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Nationally, unsubsidized ACA premiums to jump *another*...

Nationally, unsubsidized ACA premiums to jump *another* ~15% next year. We can’t continue like this (but I feel like this has been the case for the last ~10 years and will in fact likely continue…)

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Text • Kate Mothes

Watercolors by kelogsloops Traverse the Emotional Terrain of Love and Loss

Watercolors by kelogsloops Traverse the Emotional Terrain of Love and LossFor Hieu Thien Nguyen, who works as kelogsloops, death is a constant reminder, but not something to fear.

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 Watercolors by kelogsloops Traverse the Emotional Terrain of Love and Loss appeared first on Colossal.

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Python 3.15.0 candidate 2 is here!

Python 3.15.0 candidate 2 is here! Hugo van Kemenade (release manager for Python 3.14 and 3.15) announces the final release candidate for Python 3.15, scheduled for release in October: Entering the release candidate phase, only reviewed code changes which are clear bug fixe...

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Quoting Andrew Digby

325 #kakapo! The chicks from this year's record breeding season are now juveniles and so have been added to the population. In 1995 there were just 51 kākāpō left. Recovery of critically endangered species is possible with sustained effort.

Andrew Digby, providing the best news of the year

Tags: kakapo

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Text Jason Kottke

Here’s how noise-cancelling headphones work (and when...

Here’s how noise-cancelling headphones work (and when they don’t). “This is why ANC is better suited for reducing low, sustained sounds like those of motors and airplane engines, and it’s why such headphones can’t filter out screaming kids.”