The thing about me is if I see a making-of video for pencils, I’m gonna stop and watch it and then post it to my website, especially if said pencils are Blackwings, made in Japan. Take a first-ever, in-depth look at the Blackwing pencil manufacturing process. This short ...

Industry Standard Tools. “Every trade has a small number of items so entrenched that they’ve become the de facto tool that nearly everyone in that trade uses.”

This is a fun read: If You Build It, Will They Come? On the Sperm Racing World Cup. “The cells then race through courses less than a half-centimeter long that are etched into microfluidic silicon chips.”

Nationally, unsubsidized ACA premiums to jump *another* ~15% next year. We can’t continue like this (but I feel like this has been the case for the last ~10 years and will in fact likely continue…)

Here’s how noise-cancelling headphones work (and when they don’t). “This is why ANC is better suited for reducing low, sustained sounds like those of motors and airplane engines, and it’s why such headphones can’t filter out screaming kids.”

Google Maps Changes Lake Ontario to Lake America. Totally pathetic and stupid. Maps are wayfinding tools and this toadying political change will help no one find their way.

Ahhh, relax with the sights and sounds of the Windows 98 Disk Defrag Simulator.

Voting is now open for the 2026 Tiny Awards, featuring 10 sites that celebrate “the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web”. You have until Sept 25 to vote.

Heat waves are disproportionately harming people with schizophrenia. “The bodies of people with schizophrenia, especially those on medication, simply regulate temperature very differently than others do.”

Ok, we’re gonna go a little old school today. I’m talking the late 1990s and early 2000s, back before permalinks (sorry), RSS, and social media turned blog posts & tweets into their own little discrete units packaged to be easily passed around and things were less homoge...

On the fifth episode of her late 80s variety show Dolly, Dolly Parton was joined by Kermit the Frog for a lovely rendition of Sly and the Family Stone’s 1968 hit Everyday People.

You can also watch the clip on Instagram and Reddit. The full episode, which features special guest stars Delta Burke, Terence Trent D’Arby, and the Oak Ridge Boys (in addition to Jim Henson as Kermit), can be seen on YouTube (not very good quality unfortunately).

Tags: Dolly Parton · music · The Muppets · video

In lieu of flowers, Dolly Parton’s family is asking for donations to her Imagination Library, which has distributed over 330 million books to kids.

RIP Dolly Parton, a gem and a hero. She died today at the age of 80.

“Ultimately there are people who want to live, not in a world of reconciliation, but in a world without repercussions.”

“At least 1-in-4 of all the people who have played in the NFL might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy [CTE], according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.”

More Fucked Today than Yesterday. “I keep wanting to write a post showing off my latest graphics along with the latest data and forecasts, because the picture they paint is one of a truly fucked planet.”

Flock banned Benn Jordan from their recent convention (they even emailed his hotel to cancel his room) but, taking a page from law enforcement & Flock itself, he electronically surveilled the whole thing from outside, sniffing Wifi, Bluetooth, mics, etc.

Target’s now-pulled children’s Halloween costume is so unbelievably racist that it had to, on some level, be purposely done by someone in the decision chain and everyone else was like, “seems ok to me”.

Homing pigeons may sense the Earth’s magnetic field using superparamagnetic macrophages in their livers. So metal! 🤘

Just quickly reupping this post to remind you things might be slower than usual around here for the next few weeks…moving crunch time is here. (I’ll still be posting though…it’s nice to sit down and flow state through some links occasionally.)

Meat proxy (noun): “A person who forwards AI-generated text, code, or other output without reading, understanding, or validating it. The person acts only as a relay between the AI system and the intended recipient.”

Why Are Rivers So Mathematical? “Any stream, from the littlest brook to the mightiest river, has a length that’s proportional to its drainage area raised to the power of 0.6.”

Opinion columnist Karen Attiah won her arbitration against the Washington Post. They are ordered to reinstate her and pay full back pay. The Post fired her almost a year ago for her remarks in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder.

Jodi Ettenberg on living grief and a serendipitous discovery. “Living grief lacks the tapestry of rituals, language, and social permissions around grieving that a person is offered with death.”

Walking the Length of Manhattan. I did this, solo, right before I moved out of NYC. Loved it. Will do it again someday.

“When Jason Ganos was asked to help sell an old box full of NES cartridges…” How 97 Copies of an Unreleased Version of Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt Were Discovered in a Wisconsin Warehouse.

What a great idea for a book: Cookbooking: A Fan’s Guide. “An eclectic, visually stunning pop-history, Cookbooking explores the most influential and beloved cookbooks through photographs, listicles, graphics, and snappy writing.”

“The principal aim of President Trump’s second term is revenge,” says Jamelle Bouie. “Revenge shapes the president’s priorities, drives his actions and structures the decisions of his government.”

Holy moly, NPR’s Tiny Desk has been going for a long time. Weird Al Yankovic first stopped by the desk in 2010, so early that they didn’t even have it on YouTube until more recently. And the other day, they had him back for a second session! Yankovic focused on originals...

Anil Dash built a standalone Touch ID sensor to use with your Mac if you don’t have a newer Apple keyboard. It’s open-source…the code and instructions are on Github.