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Thomas Edison’s Last Breath

Over the course of a century, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan has grown to house over 26 million artifacts of innovative achievements. However, one quiet piece – prized by Ford above all others – curiously stands out among the collection: a seemingly empty sealed test tube.

In this episode, we uncover this relic’s story and how it preserves an enduring friendship within the country’s technological history. 

We always want to hear from you! If you have a question or story for us, give us a call at at 315-992-7902 and leave a message, or send an email to hello@atlasobscura.com.


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The Rewatchables
Audio

‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

It’s CR Month, which means it’s time to crank up Wang Chung and take a ride on the wrong side of the road in Los Angeles to revisit William Friedkin’s ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ starring William L. Petersen, Willem Dafoe, and John Pankow.

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

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xkcd.com Valid
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Rotational Gravity

I don't get it. The peak acceleration for passengers was WAY lower than in the giant-waterslide-loop-the-loop incident the other cruise line fired me for.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention Valid
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Introducing Mistral Small 4

Introducing Mistral Small 4 Big new release from Mistral today (despite the name) - a new Apache 2 licensed 119B parameter (Mixture-of-Experts, 6B active) model which they describe like this: Mistral Small 4 is the first Mistral model to unify the capabilities of our flagsh...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • Daring Fireball Department of Commerce

[Sponsor] Mux — Video API for Developers

mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF

Video isn’t just something to watch; it’s a boatload of context and data. Mux makes it easy to ship and scale video into anything from websites to platforms to AI workflows. Unlock what’s inside: transcripts, clips, and storyboards to build summarization, translation, content moderation, tagging, and more.

Mux stewards Video.js, the web’s most popular open source video player. Video.js v10 is a complete architectural rebuild, with the beta now available at videojs.org.

Mux is video infrastructure trusted by Patreon, Substack, and Synthesia. Get started free, no credit card required. Use code FIREBALL for an extra $50 credit.

Link: mux.com/?utm_campaign=fireball&utm_source=DF

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention Valid
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Use subagents and custom agents in Codex

Use subagents and custom agents in Codex Subagents were announced in general availability today for OpenAI Codex, after several weeks of preview behind a feature flag. They're very similar to the Claude Code implementation, with default subagents for "explorer", "worker" and...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention Valid
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Quoting A member of Anthropic’s alignment-science team

The point of the blackmail exercise was to have something to describe to policymakers—results that are visceral enough to land with people, and make misalignment risk actually salient in practice for people who had never thought about it before.

— A member of Anthropic’s alignment-science team, as told to Gideon Lewis-Kraus

Tags: ai-ethics, anthropic, claude, generative-ai, ai, llms

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Gorgeous: rural Kyoto in the heavy snow .

Gorgeous: rural Kyoto in the heavy snow.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention Valid
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Quoting Guilherme Rambo

Tidbit: the software-based camera indicator light in the MacBook Neo runs in the secure exclave¹ part of the chip, so it is almost as secure as the hardware indicator light. What that means in practice is that even a kernel-level exploit would not be able to turn on the camera without the light appearing on screen. It runs in a privileged environment separate from the kernel and blits the light directly onto the screen hardware.

— Guilherme Rambo, in a text message to John Gruber

Tags: hardware, apple, privacy, john-gruber

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention Valid
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Coding agents for data analysis

Coding agents for data analysis Here's the handout I prepared for my NICAR 2026 workshop "Coding agents for data analysis" - a three hour session aimed at data journalists demonstrating ways that tools like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex can be used to explore, analyze and cle...

Citation Needed Supports Webmention
Text • Molly White

Issue 102 – The public will pay

Issue 102 – The public will pay

Justin Sun buys his way out of an SEC fraud case, Iranian transactions on Binance draw DOJ scrutiny as the exchange sues the newspaper that reported on them, and crypto super PACs dump millions into Tuesday’s primaries in Illinois.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Gullible, Cynical America . “They’ll insist...

Gullible, Cynical America. “They’ll insist that you can’t trust scientists, because they’re part of the conspiracy. The podcaster selling you his special creatine gummies, though? He seems trustworthy.”

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

“In today’s new Gilded Age, the 900-plus...

“In today’s new Gilded Age, the 900-plus billionaires in the US have far too much influence over our elections, our economy, our government policies and our news media, and it’s urgent for Americans to create a movement to curb their power…”

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The Holocaust History Podcast : “In this episode,...

The Holocaust History Podcast: “In this episode, I talk with Andrea Pitzer about the long, global history of the concentration camp and its evolution over time. We talk about what the definition is, what qualifies something as a concentration camp…”

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The Louvre has the Mona Lisa. Here’s what other...

The Louvre has the Mona Lisa. Here’s what other institutions consider their Mona Lisas. For instance: the National Portrait Gallery in London has a portrait of William Shakespeare and MoMA has the Gold Marilyn Monroe.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

‘The Last Quiet Thing’

terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

Another crackerjack essay on design and attention from Terry Godier. (Note that the Casio in the essay not only shows the actual time, but has functional buttons.)

Link: terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Apple Introduces AirPods Max 2

apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-introduces-airpods-max-2-powered-by-h2/

Apple Newsroom today: Apple today announced AirPods Max 2, bringing even better Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), elevated sound quality, and intelligent features to the iconic over-ear design. Powered by H2, features like Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Iso...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The 20 Best Food Scenes in Movies . Ratatouille, Big...

The 20 Best Food Scenes in Movies. Ratatouille, Big Night, When Harry Met Sally, Tampopo, etc. What’s missing?

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

★ Apple Exclaves and the Secure Design of the MacBook Neo’s On-Screen Camera Indicator

Some camera-equipped Apple devices have dedicated camera indicator lights. E.g. recent MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have them in the notch, next to the camera itself. The Studio Display has one in the bezel, next to its camera. Other devices — like iPhones and, now, the Mac...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Tiny Puppet Sound

Would you like to watch a puppet DJ a chill set of French house music in cool workplace meeting space? Trick question because of course you would. This went right into my Underscore collection. (via undermanager)

Tags: music · video