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.
Colossal
• Grace Ebert
Playful Patterns Adorn Ashley Percival’s Collections of Creatures
Ashley 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.
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.
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):

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
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.”
How Blackwing Pencils Are Made
Daring Fireball
• 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/
Longreads
• 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?"
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
Apple Reveals Forensic Evidence From Chang Liu’s MacBook in OpenAI Lawsuit
9to5mac.com/2026/08/31/apple-openai-forensic-macbook-evidence/
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.”
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
Colossal
• Kate Mothes
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.
Work Chronicles
• Work Chronicles
(comic) Safe space
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.”
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…)
Colossal
• Kate Mothes
Watercolors by kelogsloops Traverse the Emotional Terrain of Love and Loss
For 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.
Python 3.15.0 candidate 2 is here!
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
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.”
