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Dan’s Polaroids
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12.08.2026

A child and a woman with eclipse-sunglasses on, illuminated by the sun.
Watching the partial solar eclipse.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Why weren’t bicycles invented sooner? “Why...

Why weren’t bicycles invented sooner? “Why was no one…even considering the question of human-powered vehicles until the 1400s? Why weren’t there bicycle mechanics in the 1300s, when there were clockmakers, or at least by the 1500s, when we had watches?”

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Death Cab for Cutie’s Tiny Desk Concert

Death Cab for Cutie rolled into the NPR offices for a Tiny Desk Concert, which featured two new songs from their current album and some oldies: Title and Registration and Soul Meets Body. Gibbard noted:

I’m starting to realize that some of our earlier records came out a similar distance away from, like, the Beatles records when I was a kid.

This is Death Cab’s second Tiny Desk…here’s the first one from 2015:

I took this as an opportunity to listen to my favorite Death Cab song, Transatlanticism. And when are we getting a Postal Sevice Tiny Desk? Come on, we’ve been good! We need this!

Tags: Death Cab For Cutie · music · Tiny Desk Concerts · video

Simone Giertz Updates instantly via WebSub
Video

How I designed my first product

Work Chronicles Valid
Text • Work Chronicles

(comic) Please praise my company

Colossal Valid
Text • Kate Mothes

Suzanne Jongmans Recycles Everyday Materials for Elegant Renaissance-Style Portraits

Suzanne Jongmans Recycles Everyday Materials for Elegant Renaissance-Style PortraitsJongmans' works look to the past but are exquisitely contemporary, prompting us to consider the meaning of value.

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 Suzanne Jongmans Recycles Everyday Materials for Elegant Renaissance-Style Portraits appeared first on Colossal.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
Text

Quoting Florian Herrengt

But then users start to report a weird bug. It's the 4th time your team has been trying to fix it. I mean... asking AI to fix it. Unfortunately, it seems like not even Fable can figure it out.

You go talk to the person who worked on this feature.

"So where does the data come from?"

"Hmm... actually I don't know. Let me ask Claude."

You sit next to each other watching an endless wall of text appear on the screen. Neither of you has any idea whether any of it is true but Claude seems very confident. [...]

This project has become so convoluted, with so many layers and services, that no one on your team could possibly start to understand what's going on.

— Florian Herrengt, AI is removing the middle class of software engineering

Tags: ai-misuse, cognitive-debt, generative-ai, ai, llms, ai-assisted-programming

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
Text

datasette-upload-dbs 0.5a0

Release: datasette-upload-dbs 0.5a0 This plugin has been around for a while - it lets users upload a brand new SQLite database to a hosted Datasette instance, at which point that database will start being served by that instance. It can also be used to atomically swa...

Rick Beato Updates instantly via WebSub
Video

My first ever in-person workshop! #guitar #musician #shorts

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting...

Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same. “A recommender that’s a mediocre predictor of what you’d love in a rich, diverse world becomes an excellent predictor of what you’ll click in the impoverished one it creates.”

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

App Store Scam of the Week: ‘TabControl Extension’ for Safari

lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/8/4.html

Jeff Johnson: These purported reviews, all but one of which is 5 stars, are all in English. Yet none of them is in the US App Store. I also looked at other English-speaking countries such as Australia and Canada but found no reviews. Also suspicious is that the name of e...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Reed Jobs Tells a Neuroscience Story

x.com/sabrinahalper/status/2086964813788258588?s=46

Watch this. No words needed, everyone can feel it. Genes are a hell of a thing.

Link: x.com/sabrinahalper/status/2086964813788258588?s=46

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Nature Is Healing

mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/117073366339407186

Basic Apple Guy:

Apple just dropped the hardest icon glow-up for the new Chess icon in macOS 27 Beta 5.

Comparison of the Chess app icons in MacOS 27 Golden Gate: betas 1/2, betas 3/4, and an all new-icon for beta 5. The earlier ones show a flat brown knight. The new one in beta 5 shows a fully-articulated 3D silvery knight. The new one looks great. The previous ones look like shit.

This is not just a tweak or small improvement. This is the difference between total shit and a really nice icon.

Link: mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/117073366339407186

Colossal Valid
Text • Kate Mothes

Get Up Close to the Sun in the Highest Resolution Image Ever Captured

Get Up Close to the Sun in the Highest Resolution Image Ever CapturedThe U.S. National Science Foundation’s powerful Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope captured details smaller than 12 miles across.

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 Get Up Close to the Sun in the Highest Resolution Image Ever Captured appeared first on Colossal.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

A Collection of Eclipse Glasses (1793-2019)

Oh wow, Williams College’s Hopkins Observatory has a huge collection of eclipse glasses & viewers (and other eclipse ephemera), some of them dating back to 1793. Here are a few of my favorites: (via present & correct) Tags: design · eclipses

Marques Brownlee Updates instantly via WebSub
Video

Google Pixel 11/Pro/Fold Impressions: It Is What It Is

Every year, a new Pixel, and new hopes and dreams...

Protect your new Pixel 11 or old Pixel 10 with dbrand at https://dbrand.com/shop/pixel11

Affiliate Links:
Pixel 11 Pro: https://geni.us/iypnawz
Pixel 11 Pro XL: https://geni.us/Jfybl
Pixel 11 Pro Fold: https://geni.us/XaTcge
Pixel Watch 5: https://geni.us/2s9sEq

MKBHD Merch: http://shop.MKBHD.com

Playlist of MKBHD Intro music: https://goo.gl/B3AWV5

~
http://twitter.com/MKBHD
http://instagram.com/MKBHD
http://facebook.com/MKBHD

Lex Fridman Podcast Updates instantly via WebSub Valid
Audio

#500 – Khabib Nurmagomedov: Dagestan, MMA, UFC, Islam, Conor, Fedor & Football

Khabib Nurmagomedov is one of the greatest fighters of all time, who retired from the UFC undefeated with a perfect 29-0 record. We did this conversation entirely in Russian. It’s translated and dubbed into English. Both language audio tracks (and subtitles) are available on...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Stories that the authors of the Bible borrowed from...

Stories that the authors of the Bible borrowed from other cultures and religions, including the flood myth, the Garden of Eden, etc. I learned about these in a religion & mythology class in college, which cemented my atheism.

Longreads Valid
Text • Seyward Darby

Parting Shot

"Stormy Morse lost two partners to gun suicide. Then the NRA came to collect."

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

ELDA Castle

Author and Ossining town historian Caroline Curvan helps unpack the story of how a castle ended up in the upstate New York woods. And how one wealthy family’s dream home was struck by subsequent tragedies and ultimately abandoned. 


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