Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
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Github’s uptime lately seems…..concerning?
“Billionaires made 19 percent of all reported federal campaign contributions in 2024, a Times analysis shows, and even more in some local elections.” The Scale of Billionaires’ Campaign Donations is Overwhelming U.S. Politics.
The Shape of Paris is a balletic short film of skateboarder Andy Anderson zooming, grinding, spinning, and floating around Paris in the summertime. It is also beautifully shot by Brett Novak; Paris has never looked better. As a YT commenter put it: “bro wtf this is the cleanest footage I’ve ever seen. The cinematography and color grading is insane.”
Also, this is the first skate video I’ve seen with “trick acknowledgements” in the credits. Great touch. (via craig mod)
Tags: Andy Anderson · Paris · skateboarding · sports · video
The Modern Times cafe moved to a pay-what-you-want model during the ICE occupation of Minneapolis. Now the cafe is making it permanent (and pivoting to a nonprofit). “Some had come for a free meal; others were there to pay double or triple their tab.”
“A group of runners starts jogging around a circular track, with each runner maintaining a unique, constant pace. Will every runner end up ‘lonely,’ or relatively far from everyone else, at least once, no matter their speeds?”
Jay Graber is stepping down as CEO of Bluesky to “transition to a new role as Bluesky’s Chief Innovation Officer”. And they’re looking for a new permanent CEO.
“What if we taught students to use AI critically, rather than insisting they ignore it or assume they’re using it to cheat?” asks college freshman Maximilian Milovidov. “Students will reach for these tools, whether universities ban them or not.”
New web game that takes 2 min to play (and perhaps a lifetime to master?): Outsmart. “Five rounds, first to 3 wins. In each round, the higher bet wins. You have 100 total points, so bet wisely. Can you outsmart the machine?”
GPS jamming and spoofing is becoming commonplace in war. “Ships in the region’s waters found their navigation systems had gone haywire, erroneously indicating that the vessels were at airports, a nuclear power plant and on Iranian land.”
The fish doorbell in Utrecht is back for another season! “Did you spot a fish? Press the Fish Doorbell! Then our lock keeper can let the fish through.”
The NY Times went back through a century of women’s obituaries “to re-examine them with the benefit of distance — to see what was emphasized, what was minimized, what might have been left unsaid”. https://bsky.app/profile/prisonculture.bsky.social
Dozens of former employees of Noma tell of abuse & violence at the hands of its chef/owner, René Redzepi. Punching, screaming, shoving, stabbing, slamming, intimidation, ridicule, blacklisting. What an asshole.
The New School Cancelled Their Class on Soccer and World Politics. We Are Going To Teach it Anyway. Enrollment is now open; the class will deal with questions like “Which regimes are using this tournament to launder their reputations?”
SETI might be missing alien signals because “stellar ‘space weather’ may blur ultra-narrow radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations before they leave their home star systems”. SETI usually looks for “extremely sharp frequency spikes”.
“If measles-mumps-rubella vaccination rates decline 1% annually for the next five years, associated medical and societal costs could reach $1.5 billion.” (That 1% is a conservative estimate “given current policy and coverage trajectory”.)
Director Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Poker Face) wrote the review of the Thursday crossword puzzle for the NY Times today. “I love a good Thursday. The baffling special graphics, the wait-that-can’t-be-right puzzlement and that glorious ah-ha moment…”
Earth’s gravity is lumpy. “The gravity in East Antarctica is measurably weaker than anywhere else on the planet.”
This is kind of amazing: World Monitor is a real-time global intelligence dashboard. Includes military activity, climate anomalies, live webcam feeds in warzones, internet outages, active fires, and even the Pentagon Pizza Index.
Yes, let’s retire the restaurant monologue. “The urge to direct diners through every bite of a meal runs counter to what I love about dining out, one of just a few cornerstones of American life that have not yet been optimized into oblivion.”
From ProPublica, a database of financial disclosures from the Trump regime’s political appointees. “Use this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team.”
Web game: list as many animals as you can in 1 minute (but you get more time with correct guesses).
