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Text • Arizona O'Neill

“Aren’t the Organs a Silver Lining?”

Complicating a "mixed blessing" of the opioid crisis: a rise in organ donations.

Dan’s Polaroids
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18.05.2026

A puzzle of a turtle underwater.
Finished another side project.

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

The Real Town Behind War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds by Orson Welles is perhaps the most famous radio play on Earth. But what’s left out of the story is where the play was set — a real, little town in New Jersey. It took decades, but the people who live in Grover’s Mill have come to embrace their part in one of the biggest media hoaxes of all time. In fact, they’ve turned it into something to be proud of. 


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Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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The last six months in LLMs in five minutes

I put together these annotated slides from my five minute lightning talk at PyCon US 2026, using the latest iteration of my annotated presentation tool. # I presented this lightning talk at PyCon US 2026, attempting to summarize the last six months of developments ...

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Text • Daring Fireball Department of Commerce

[Sponsor] WorkOS: Agents Need Context. Ship the Integrations That Give It to Them.

workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q22026

The context that actually matters isn’t in your database. It’s in the tools your users live in every day. Multi-stage agents stall the moment they hit a step they can’t see. And every missing integration is a different OAuth flow, a different token lifecycle, weeks of plumbing before the agent reads a single record.

WorkOS Pipes connects your agent to the tools your users live in. Pre-built connectors for GitHub, Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, and more. Pipes handles OAuth, token refresh, and credential storage. You call the real provider API with a fresh token, every time. Your agent pulls context at every step, for as long as the task runs.

Give your agent context →

Link: workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium…

The Rewatchables
Audio

‘Borat’ With Bill Simmons and Kyle Brandt

Comedy month continues as Bill Simmons is joined by Kyle Brandt, who is no. 4 rewatcher in all of Kazakhstan, to revisit Sacha Baron Cohen in ‘Borat.'

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

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Video

Stanley Jordan talks his guitar philosophy #guitarist #guitar #shorts

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

“I have travelled all over the world in the last 30...

“I have travelled all over the world in the last 30 years, and have never seen anything like the density of assholes I just encountered in Japan, [i.e.] tourists being an unbearable menace specifically while on and around their phones.”

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Watching an Art Conservator Restore a Damaged Painting

There’s something so relaxing about watching art conservator Julian Baumgartner restore this damaged painting, a self-portrait by Italian painter Emma Gaggiotti Richards. I love how he paints tiny cracks in the damaged areas to match those in the rest of the painting.

There are many more videos and photos of Baumgartner’s restoration process on Instagram and YouTube. (via the kid should see this)

[This is a vintage post originally from Aug 2018.]

Tags: art · Julian Baumgartner · meditative · timeless posts · video

xkcd.com Valid
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Particle Census

Remember, your answers to the physics census are confidential; we will not be issuing Pauli exclusion principle citations.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Marbles Squared is a puzzle game 30 years in the...

Marbles Squared is a puzzle game 30 years in the making that you can play on the web, Game Boy, ZX Spectrum Next, and Palm Pilot.

Colossal Valid
Text • Kate Mothes

Zendaya Taps into the Creative Process in a Quirky Ad Directed by Spike Jonze

Zendaya Taps into the Creative Process in a Quirky Ad Directed by Spike JonzeThe actor engages in a bit of trial and error in a "dream lab" where anything is possible.

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 Zendaya Taps into the Creative Process in a Quirky Ad Directed by Spike Jonze appeared first on Colossal.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Ben Prunty has composed the soundtrack to a new game,...

Ben Prunty has composed the soundtrack to a new game, Subnautica 2. Prunty did the FTL: Faster Than Light soundtrack back in the day, which I love.

Longreads Valid
Text • Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Roadside Attraction

"The desert has a changeling effect, transforming lights into magic, desert into space, visitors into lovers, me into something apart from what I actually am."

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Jury Rejects Elon Musk’s Claim Against Sam Altman in Unanimous Verdict

nytimes.com/live/2026/05/18/technology/openai-trial-verdict-altman-musk?unlocked_article_code=1.jVA.Cc2V.IwYuu2r4SJfQ

Cade Metz and Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times (gift link): A nine-person jury found that Elon Musk did not bring his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman until after the expiration of the three-year statute of limitations. Mr. Musk filed his suit against t...

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Text • John Gruber

‘John Appleseed’

om.co/2026/04/20/john-appleseed/

Here’s a great take from last month re: the Cook/Ternus transition, from Om Malik: When he took over from Steve Jobs in August 2011, Apple’s market capitalization was around $350 billion. As of this morning, it sits near $4 trillion. That is more than a 1,000 percent inc...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Define ‘Boom’ Please

nytimes.com/2026/04/21/business/how-apple-became-a-4-trillion-company-under-tim-cook.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jVA.MV8m.0JfUOJOME5WH

While I’m linking to pieces on Apple’s CEO transition, here’s an annoying tidbit from Tripp Mickle and Karl Russell’s piece for The New York Times, under the headline “Tim Cook Was Very, Very Good at Making Money” (gift link): Even though it has largely missed out on the...

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Text • Jason Kottke

Perhaps businesses are collecting too much data for...

Perhaps businesses are collecting too much data for their own good. “Each morning at 10am, I get an email from Caroline in the finance team showing the cash we have in the bank compared with the same day last year. This fact offers no hiding place.”

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Glaucous-winged Gull, Brown Pelican, Snowy Egret, Canada Goose

Glaucous-winged Gull, Brown Pelican, Snowy Egret, Canada Goose, in Los Angeles River, CA, US I'm heading home from PyCon US today so I went on a last morning walk to try and spot a pelican. I saw one! Didn't get a great photo of that, but I did see some goslings down by the swan boat lake.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Ted Turner’s Small Apartment Above the Former CNN Center

youtube.com/watch?v=OUIVs58oyPI

Simultaneously audacious and humble, a combination that epitomizes Ted Turner’s entire life. (Shades, too, of Walt Disney’s apartment above the fire department at Disneyland.)

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=OUIVs58oyPI