Jason Kottke’s weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
XKCD mapped the most observed plant and animal for all 50 US states as reported by iNaturalist users. I had no idea bumble bees were such a popularly observed animal — the common eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) is most-observed in Vermont, Wisconsin, Maine, Connecticut, Illinois, and Minnesota. Also popular: white-tailed deer, bison, milkweed, honeysuckle, and robins.
Tags: maps · Randall Munroe · USA · XKCD
“The Alamo announced Friday a whimsical and nostalgic new addition to its growing collection: the original, screen-used stunt bike from the beloved 1985 film Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.” Round of applause for everyone involved.
Catherine Lacey’s The Möbius Book is both a memoir and a novel, does not have a beginning or an end, and is “readable from either side”.
CBS cancelled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert just days after he criticized the $16 bribe the network paid to Trump. Here’s why “Colbert’s cancellation is a dark warning”.
“The extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner, famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident.”
Next year, “the average person who buys Affordable Care Act insurance will be paying 75% more for their premium” because of “the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits in the ACA markets”.
Noah Kalina is uploading videos of the “long photograph” variety of peaceful & contemplative nature scenes to YouTube. 4K. No AI. “Press play and walk away.”
Tags: Noah Kalina · video
From Beautiful Public Data, a look into the Internet Archive’s collection of 5000 images from the NASA Ames Research Center. “Browsing through this amazing archive gives you a unique view of decades’ worth of breakthrough research.”
I haven’t watched the NBA in years and I only know about Joel Embiid by media osmosis, but for some reason I spent 45 minutes this morning reading this profile of him.
From Smithsonian Magazine, the story of how Reading Rainbow came about, in part as an effort to combat schoolchildren’s summer reading slumps.
I had no idea Subaru actively courted lesbian car buyers with targeted ad campaigns in the early 90s; here’s a 2016 Planet Money episode about it: When Subaru Came Out.