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Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
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“Local Wikipedia is Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you.” There is also Walkipedia.
Apple Music’s 404 page features a fully functional iPod simulator.
Short video teasing an new collab between Daft Punk and Lego, including a forthcoming Lego set based on this fan-submitted entry.
OMG, the height of these waves hitting a seawall in Taiwan as Typhoon Champi hit the island nation a few days ago. That’s gotta be close to 100 feet. Waves also inundated this 75-foot-tall lighthouse and a crane 164 feet tall, knocking it over.
Michael Pollan reflects on what has and hasn’t changed in the 20 years since he wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma. “Looking at the landscape of food and farming today, I’m sorry to report that things haven’t changed all that much.”
Matt Webb is bunkering down, bracing for more LLM-driven security exploits. “Realistically, let’s say the internet gets infested with AI worms and we need to turn it off and on again, could we do it?” I had not heard of the air-gapped LLM communication 😳
Harry Kane is this year’s men’s winner of the Ballon d’Or. 100% the right choice — he had the best season of anyone. Like, almost ever.
A poignant short documentary about a mother who only knows her son is alive by the new graffiti tags he leaves around town. Eventually, she started tagging back…
From Charles Mann, a quick history of porcelain, which is basically what his pricey induction stovetop is made from. (Fun fact: I went to grad school for ceramic engineering before dropping out after a semester to teach myself web design.)
Ten of the most bizarre films and their posters, as chosen by Eternal Family. I linked to Eternal Family recently and this is a good guide to some of their weirdest stuff.
How Tree Rings Challenged the Myth of American Wilderness. “When one revisits colonial accounts of North America, one finds a striking amount of evidence that Native Americans set fire to the landscape.”
Simon Willison: “Battle Drones is heavily vibe coded — I’ve reviewed almost none of the code, and it’s built in a language (TypeScript) that I’ve hardly used myself.” There’s a French steampunk version too.
This exhibition of ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) by Utagawa Hiroshige at the Tokyo National Museum was great. Awesome to see these prints in person.
How to Install an App on Your Commodore 64. “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll just need to type in the code for that program. There’s an article explaining what MLX is, which you can read really quickly on page 93, and then you’ll find the code for it on page 94.”
The Tiny Computers app lets you play with old computers on the iPhone Duo. Ten machines included: “Macintosh, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Amiga 500, Windows 95, ThinkPad, iMac G3, iBook G3, PowerBook G4 and Windows XP.” XP even crashes sometimes. Love this.
The One Question I Can’t Stand at Restaurants. “The idea of a restaurant I’d never been to using a dossier on me to decide, say, where I should sit, what I was likely to order, even whether I should be given a reservation at all, gave me chills.”
“US households are paying 62% more for drinking water than they did a decade ago — outpacing inflation, grocery prices and household incomes.”
“an interesting linguistics find! so I’m reading this text from 1908 and it keeps referencing ‘hp’ in the context of ‘not being at full hp’ ‘applying your full hp to a task’ etc.” But it’s not hit/health points…
An archive of Omni magazine (1978-1995), courtesy of the Internet Archive. “Omni was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science, parapsychology, and short works of science fiction and fantasy.”
Railpass simulates a train ride in your browser window using real video footage. Choose from trains from around the world or add some weather to the mix. Sound on for the best ride.
This Is What It’s Like to Spend Your Life in Prison. “None of us want to be defined solely by the person we were in our youth, or by the worst thing we ever did. The men serving life without parole feel the same way.”
