Jason Kottke’s weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
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OMG, there’s an “S” in today’s Spelling Bee puzzle! (Is this the first time?)
Things have been a little weird lately so I missed this when it came out but lolol: mustaaaaaaaaaard!
Following on from my post this morning, I think this is a good time to step back from the site for a bit and focus on some long-neglected backend things that just don’t get the attention they deserve when I’m busy with the day-to-day posting. There are a couple of projects in particular that I’ve been noodling with that need some focus, so I’m gonna do that for the rest of the week. I’ll probably pop in with a few links here and there, but for the most part, I will see you back here on Monday. Until then, be excellent to each other and party on dudes!
Tags: kottke.org
The creator of Poetry Is Not a Luxury Instagram account is coming out with a poetry anthology in May: Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons.
Disney has uploaded the first three episodes of season one of Andor to YouTube:
No idea how long they will be up or if they’re visible outside of the US. I started an Andor rewatch last week and I am finding it more enjoyable and interesting than I did the first time around. The writers obviously did their research on how fascism, dictatorships, and rebellions work — in almost every scene, you observe characters reacting and interacting with the constraints of bureaucratic totalitarianism. Very interesting to watch in this political moment. (via @rebeccablood.bsky.social)
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE is interviewing (current & former) federal workers for a series that “aims to capture both the personal significance of [their] work and its broader impact on the American public”. 8 stories so far — these are great.
“Covid was a privatized pandemic. It is this technocratic, privatized model that is its lasting legacy and that will define our approach to the next pandemic,” says Siddhartha Mukherjee. “There are some public goods that should never be privatized.”
Purged gov’t employees, while scrambling to find work & health insurance, face MAGA relatives who are cheering their firing. “Some members of her mostly conservative family have unfriended her on social media. Others are giving her the silent treatment.”
I woke up Saturday wondering how observers of Ramadan time their fasting in polar regions, where sunrise & sunset don’t exist for months on end. “Muslims in the Arctic are generally advised by religious authorities to adopt one of three solutions…”
A forthcoming novel from Patricia Lockwood: Will There Ever Be Another You. Really looking forward to this one — her No One Is Talking About This is a favorite of mine from the past few years.
From Ben Fry, a visualization of the 5,000+ covers of the New Yorker from the past 100 years. “The horizontal line/artifact comes from the way that they re-run their first cover (and more recently, a variant of it) each year on their anniversary.”
This is the dumbest thing but it had me rolling in the aisles this morning: Star Trek TNG Theme but the theme music is coming from the Enterprise-D. It takes a bit to get going, but I laughed so hard when the ship whooshed by for the first time.
The same creator has made a number of videos in this vein, including The Imperial March but it’s coming from Vader’s chest control panel and Star Trek DS9 Theme but the theme is coming from DS9 Ops.
This is fantastic and very much worth your time: Marcin Wichary’s deep dive into a staunchly utilitarian font called Gorton, which you see almost everywhere in American cities, especially NYC. “Gorton is everywhere in Manhattan.”
A few days ago, on March 2, the first lunar lander operated by a private company landed successfully on the Moon. The video of the landing is really something — I wonder if I will ever get accustomed to or tired of watching footage of spacecraft landing on other bodies in our solar system? The answer is a resounding NO so far…this is cool as hell.
You can read more about Firefly’s Blue Ghost on Wikipedia. The mission delivered 10 science and technology investigations to the surface of the Moon for NASA. (via phil plait)
Tags: Firefly Aerospace · Moon · NASA · science · space · video
Dolly Parton has released a new song called If You Hadn’t Been There as a tribute to her late husband, Carl Dean. “If you hadn’t been there / Well, who would I be?”
After 54 years, the organizers of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (which celebrates bad opening lines to novels) have brought an end to the contest. So bummed…a friend and I had a pretty good entry we’ve been workshopping!