Current is an interesting new RSS reader that doesn’t function like an email inbox. “There is no count because counting was the problem.”

A New Winter is a project from Colombian-American photographer Sofia Jaramillo that seeks to This project revisits the early depictions of skiing, which often portrayed Eurocentric ideals and a narrow vision of who belongs on the slopes. By reimagining the first images...

The goal of the Trump Action Tracker is to “document how the trajectory of Trump’s presidency is aligned with the authoritarian playbook”.

I think I’d heard the term “k-shaped economy” somewhere before but didn’t really know what it meant until I watched this video: American Airlines is changing the layout of some of their aircraft to add 31 first class and premium seats while cutting out 73 economy seats. ...

Why AI Writing Is So Generic, Boring, and Dangerous: Semantic Ablation. “The AI identifies high-entropy clusters — the precise points where unique insights…reside — and systematically replaces them with the most probable, generic token sequences.”

Jesse Jackson on Sesame Street in 1971 doing a call-and-response with the kids of the poem I Am - Somebody.

The 19 richest Americans hold more than 2% of the total US holdhold wealth. That figure has roughly doubled in the past 5-6 years. “The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering.”

In 1964, legendary jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie ran for President as a write-in candidate. Some of the more interesting details about his campaign: If elected, he’d rename the White House to the Blues House. Running mate was slated to be Phyllis Diller. “She seems to h...

Ski Jumping Pairs is my favorite Winter Olympics event. (Video by Riichiro Mashima.)

From designer Beth Mathews, a free “Private Property! No ICE” sign you can print out for your shop or restaurant.

What movies can you brag about seeing during their original run in the theater? Not big movies, more culty ones. I’ve got Iron Giant, American Movie, Run Lola Run, Hands on a Hardbody, and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. 😂

From a draft of the opening narration of Star Trek: “Assigned a five year patrol of our galaxy, the giant starship visits Earth colonies, regulates commerce, and explores strange new worlds…” I’m glad they punched it up.

If what you want is to see tiny people all over your plate, you 100% absolutely have to try Lanmaoa asiatica. The mushroom is a popular food during mushroom season, but if undercooked has the same effect worldwide: lilliputian hallucinations.

I know I probably say this every time I post videos like this, but I wish I’d gotten into art & art history earlier than I did. Channels like Behind the Masterpiece are so good at making this stuff come alive and their Brief History of Japanese Art scratches my recent interest in Japan itch quite nicely. I was lucky to see some of the pieces from the video on my Japan trip last fall, including the Big Buddha in Kamakura, hand scrolls, sumi-e, and so many woodblock prints. (via open culture)

Tags: art · art school · history · Japan · video

On historical accuracy in movies (Wuthering Heights, The Odyssey) and the “anxious, professional monitoring in which the images onscreen must be checked and rechecked for their accordance with the original text and preexisting notions about it”.

The AI hater’s guide to code with LLMs. This is an interesting and thoughtful read.

Recently released: Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play. “What magical mushroom could have turned an unassuming playing card company into one of the dominant cultural forces of the twenty-first century?”

A molly guard is a safety cover that you need to move out of the way before pressing an important button. “Anecdotally, this is named after Molly, an engineer’s daughter who was invited to a datacenter and promptly pressed a big red button…”

Polar explorer and scientist Felicity Aston shares her beauty uniform. “When I come back from an expedition, my hair is in the GREATEST shape. That whole thing about washing your hair less frequently? It’s true.”

Food Is Love is a collection of essays about “how memory, food, and love are all intertwined”. “We are reminded that food is an expression of love, and sometimes the only way people who loved us were capable of showing it.”

14-year old Miles Wu recently won the top prize at a junior innovators competition for an origami shape that can hold 10,000 times its own weight “that could be used to build deployable shelters for emergency situations like natural disasters”.

The 50 Most Underappreciated Movies of the 21st Century. I’ve only seen a few of these; I’ve added a bunch to my to-see list. Any particular faves? Or additions to the list?

As I mentioned previously, comments have been unavailable on the site for the past few weeks: There was a rise in casual negativity that felt too close to how social media feels, i.e. a place where even well-meaning folks are not incentivized to think “this isn’t for me” an...

Fun fact of the day: at the height of his quadruple axel, Olympic figure skater Ilia Malinin is spinning at 350 rpm, “about the same as a kitchen stand mixer”.

If you haven’t seen this or heard about it (or even if you have), the full story of this McDonald’s mural is well worth your time. “Giving that talk…was one of the greatest moments of my life. Bar none.” (Don’t skip the video!)

As you know, I love me some Lego engineering builds. This one is pretty fun: using a large syringe, a Raspberry Pi, neodymium magnets, a controller scavenged from a toy submarine, and a bunch of Lego pieces, Brick Experiment Channel built a remote-controlled submarine. And it works so well! They even tested it by navigating 200 meters in a real stream.

Tags: Lego · video

Spider-Noir is an upcoming live-action series starring Nicolas Cage as his noir Spider-Man character from Spider-Verse. The trailer is available in color and black & white.

The Track is a documentary film about a group of athletes training in post-war Bosnia to make the Olympics in luge. The Track is a coming-of-age journey of three friends chasing their improbable Olympic dreams in post-war Bosnia. Training on a crumbling track left behind...

Fun word search game from Slate: Pears. (I love any Boggle-esque sort of game. Got 433 today.)

“‘CEO said a thing!’ journalism generally involves a press outlet parroting the claims of a CEO or billionaire utterly mindlessly without any sort of useful historical context as to whether anything being said is factually correct.”