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Text • Jason Kottke

Meet the Ukrainian Stunt Pilot Who Shoots Down Russian Drones

Timur Fatkullin is a Ukrainian flying ace who uses his acrobatic flying skills honed before the war to shoot down Russian drones. When I fly close to the target, I can’t engage because there’s houses or infrastructure underneath. So we keep flying, keeping it in the searc...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Amazon Made AI Podcasts for Products

businessinsider.com/amazon-ai-generated-podcasts-products-2026-4

Katie Notopoulos, a month ago at Business Insider:

Amazon has launched a new feature that uses AI to generate a short, podcast-like audio segment where two “hosts” discuss the merits and reviews of a specific product.

I think it could be one of the funniest, closest endpoints to human civilization we’ve seen yet in our new AI-enabled world. If this sounds a little confusing, here’s an example. I tried it out for diaper rash cream, and, voila! A podcast! (Sound on.)

I don’t know what’s worse: that anyone at Amazon thought actual people would really listen to these, or if actual people really are listening to them.

Link: businessinsider.com/amazon-ai-generated-podcasts-products…

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Text • Jason Kottke

Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World ....

Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World. “A collection of the greatest political maps in history and how these images have an unmatched power to influence our thinking — and our world.”

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

“ Serena Williams has announced her sensational...

“Serena Williams has announced her sensational return to professional tennis at 44 years old next week at the Queen’s Club in London.” Yessss.

Work Chronicles Valid
Text • Work Chronicles

(comic) Decision criteria

xkcd.com Valid
Text

Sunbeam

While weather control is typically thought of as a superpower, the unconscious ability of astronomers and astrophotographers to summon clouds is more properly classified as a curse.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The Illuminated Windows of NYC

For his project Windows, Dave Krugman took photos of hundreds of NYC apartment windows at night and stitched them together into ever-shifting typologies. What’s going on in each of those apartments? Tags: Dave Krugman · NYC · photography

Colossal Valid
Text • Kate Mothes

‘Keith Haring in 3D’ Highlights the Artist’s Prolifically Art-Filled Life

‘Keith Haring in 3D’ Highlights the Artist’s Prolifically Art-Filled LifeA new exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art surveys the artist's art-everywhere approach.

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 ‘Keith Haring in 3D’ Highlights the Artist’s Prolifically Art-Filled Life appeared first on Colossal.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Legendary film editor Marcia Lucas died last week ....

Legendary film editor Marcia Lucas died last week. Lucas edited Star Wars (won an Oscar for it), Taxi Driver, Return of the Jedi, and American Graffiti. It was Marcia that suggested to George Lucas that Darth Vader kill Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell Updates instantly via WebSub
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The Deadliest Year of Your Life

Which year of your life is the most dangerous? For many people, it’s not old age but infancy. Where you're born can dramatically change your chances of survival, and millions of child deaths are still preventable today. #kurzgesagt #inanutshell #kurzgesagt_inanutshell #lear...

Exclusive | The Verge Valid
Text • Lauren Feiner

Microsoft could be the next Big Tech antitrust target

Over the past several years, Microsoft has largely managed to withstand populist calls to break up Big Tech while peers faced sweeping lawsuits. But a probe by the Federal Trade Commission suggests that grace period could be nearing an end. Earlier this year, Bloomberg outlined the contents of civil investigative demands (CIDs) - similar to […]

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Text • Jason Kottke

Roost is a messaging app where messages aren’t...

Roost is a messaging app where messages aren’t instant; they travel between users at the speed of whichever bird they use to send it. Note sending is limited by the # of birds in your rookery…if they’re all out, you have to wait until one returns.

Longreads Valid
Text • Carolyn Wells

What happened to Borat’s village?

Sacha Baron Cohen turned Glod into a punchline.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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May 2026 newsletter

I just sent out the May edition of my sponsors-only monthly newsletter. If you are a sponsor (or if you start a sponsorship now) you can access it here.

This month:

  • Al got expensive, and Anthropic had a really good month
  • The model releases were a little disappointing
  • Conferences and podcasts
  • I launched Datasette Agent and made a lot of progress on Datasette
  • What I'm using, May 2026 edition
  • Miscellaneous extras

Here's a copy of the April newsletter as a preview of what you'll get. Pay $10/month to stay a month ahead of the free copy!

Tags: newsletter

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

Beyond the Game: LA's Kuruvungna Sacred Springs

Eight thousand years ago, this land’s first inhabitants built a village around a sacred spring. And today, in what is now Los Angeles, CA, their descendants still work to protect the site.

Learn more about the Gabrielino-Tongva Springs Foundation: http://gabrielinosprings.com/wpsite/

This episode is part of our ongoing coverage of the soccer world championship. In each episode, we take you beyond the stadium, and to a nearby wonder that’s off the beaten track.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

exe.dev

exe.dev/?df

My thanks to exe.dev for sponsoring last week at DF (with a very cool graphic ad — just love the way it looks). exe.dev is a cloud for the agent era — it gives you a pool of VMs with SSH, root, and web auth by default. Secrets injected at the network edge stay out of the LLM’s hands. Persistent servers, internal tools, vibe coding, disposable devboxes, whatever. You can share your web server as easily as you can share a Google Doc, and your VMs share CPU/RAM — you pay for underlying resources, not per VM.

It’s just a computer.

Link: exe.dev/?df

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Text • John Gruber

The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2026: Tuesday June 9

ti.to/daringfireball/the-talk-show-live-from-wwdc-2026

Location: The California Theatre, San Jose
Showtime: Tuesday, 9 June 2026, 7pm PT (Doors open 6pm)
Special Guest(s): For sure
Price: $45

The annual live audience episode of The Talk Show during the week of WWDC. If you can make it, you should come. You’ll even enjoy the prelude, mingling with fellow DF readers and listeners.

Also: at least one sponsorship slot is still available. If you’ve got a product or service you’d like to see me promote at the start of the show, shoot me an email.

Link: ti.to/daringfireball/the-talk-show-live-from-wwdc-2026

The Rewatchables
Audio

‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ With Bill Simmons, Steven Spielberg, and Sean Fennessey

Bill and Sean open up the pod bay doors with director Steven Spielberg to revisit one of the greatest films of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, and William Sylvester.

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

The Ringer is committed to responsible trading. Please visit https://fanduel.com/predicts to learn more about the resources and helpline.
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Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Take Two

x.com/markgurman/status/2061236259843182813

Mark Gurman, on Twitter/X (XCancel link)

Kelsey Peterson, the Apple AI employee who introduced the never-launched Siri revamp in 2024, just started at OpenAI — so we’ll be getting someone new next month for Attempt 2 at WWDC.

Pretty sure we were going to get someone different for the second crack at a next-gen Siri introduction at WWDC no matter what. If they had made a Titanic II, they would have hired someone new to host the christening.

Link: x.com/markgurman/status/2061236259843182813

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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datasette 1.0a32

Release: datasette 1.0a32

A minor bugfix release. Fixes a bug with INSERT ... RETURNING queries via the new /db/-/execute-write endpoint and a bunch of base_url issues which showed up when I was experimenting with Service Workers yesterday.

Tags: datasette, annotated-release-notes