Gullible, Cynical America. “They’ll insist that you can’t trust scientists, because they’re part of the conspiracy. The podcaster selling you his special creatine gummies, though? He seems trustworthy.”

“In today’s new Gilded Age, the 900-plus billionaires in the US have far too much influence over our elections, our economy, our government policies and our news media, and it’s urgent for Americans to create a movement to curb their power…”

The Holocaust History Podcast: “In this episode, I talk with Andrea Pitzer about the long, global history of the concentration camp and its evolution over time. We talk about what the definition is, what qualifies something as a concentration camp…”

The Louvre has the Mona Lisa. Here’s what other institutions consider their Mona Lisas. For instance: the National Portrait Gallery in London has a portrait of William Shakespeare and MoMA has the Gold Marilyn Monroe.

The 20 Best Food Scenes in Movies. Ratatouille, Big Night, When Harry Met Sally, Tampopo, etc. What’s missing?

Would you like to watch a puppet DJ a chill set of French house music in cool workplace meeting space? Trick question because of course you would. This went right into my Underscore collection. (via undermanager)

Tags: music · video

“Pay enough, and you can jump to the front of the queue for almost anything.” Concierge Nation: Welcome to White-Glove America. “Exclusivity — even if it comes at the cost of social cohesion — is the business model.”

Maybe it’s because I’m a little bit allergic to hype, but I just now got around to reading this review of the Macbook Neo by Sam Henri Gold that absolutely everyone has been recommending and, well, this might be the best product review ever written? The consensus is reason...

The Trump regime is deliberately destroying the scientific community in the US. “This is not efficiency. This is not streamlining. This is the systematic elimination of scientific stewardship at the world’s largest biomedical research funder.”

It’s getting a little ridiculous, isn’t it? 28 years of kottke.org, as of today. Older than Google. Older than The Matrix. Older than Christopher Nolan’s feature film career. Older than Elle Fanning. Older than Kurt Cobain when he died. 47,300 posts since March 14, 1998. I...

For the first time in awhile, copies of two lost episodes of classic Doctor Who have been discovered. Both are from the William Hartnell era and feature the Daleks.

The Great Friendship Flattening. “I amass bits of knowledge about my loved ones — my sister’s boyfriend published a poem; my friend left her job — as a spectator, in the same way that I might learn about an influencer’s favorite books…”

Why Movies Just Don’t Feel “Real” Anymore. “A deep dive into the first principles of movie immersion: on perceptual realism, indexicality, haptic visuality, and cinematic qualia.”

Some genius has taken an audio sample of the hum of a grocery store freezer, cleaned it up, and extended it into a 10-hour video. The freezer’s hum, variously compared to Brian Eno’s music and “an electrical gong bath”, went viral enough to warrant an article in the Guardi...

Recommendations of 25 medieval manuscripts to explore online. “Almost every institution with a significant collection of medieval manuscripts digitizes many of their most significant works and makes them freely accessible online.”

The Z9GT model EV from China’s BYD “can be 70 percent charged in five minutes and be almost full in 12 minutes, even in temperatures as low as -30° C” and “has a range of up to 800 km” (~500 miles). The US is sooooo far behind here.

Since the comments are back open and folks here can now share a little about themselves with each other, I thought I’d open this post up for whatever you guys want to chat about. What are you particularly interested in these days? Working on any fun projects? Got a new hobby? What’s the best thing you’ve seen this week? What’s something you’re struggling with?

Tags: kottke.org

Craig Mod is software bonkers. “I’m software bonkers: I can’t stop thinking about software. And I can’t stop building software.”

Balcony solar finally seems to be taking off in the US. “As of Wednesday, Democratic and Republican lawmakers in 28 states and Washington, D.C., have announced their own legislation to make these systems permissible.”

Yet another graph showing that when you control for quality of life (hours/week worked) and wealth inequality, American exceptionalism disappears.

Potoooooooo was an 18th-century British racehorse whose name was pronounced like “Potatoes” (Pot-eight-Os).

“Presolar grains” (microscopic crystals that are older than the Sun) harvested from meteorites may help determine how our solar system was formed.

Bradley Barber remixes Lego sets into other things, e.g. the Millennium Falcon from Back to the Future DeLorean parts, an AT-AT into the USS Enterprise, and a Pirates of the Caribbean ship from the parts of a Lego bonsai tree set. He is not alone in this pursuit; you can find tens of thousands of custom Lego designs at Rebrickable, including dozens of Barber’s designs. Tags: Bradley Barber · lego · remix

This is great: Channel Surfer is “a retro TV guide that turns YouTube into live cable TV. Each channel plays videos on a deterministic schedule — like real TV, you tune in mid-show.”

coulou’s vinyl cafe (no. 4) - rainy day selections. “what’s up lovely humans, super excited to be sharing this new vinyl sessssion with you all.”

The Void Would Very Much Like You to Stop Screaming Into It. “I think we can both admit at this point that the screaming isn’t working. The screaming isn’t making you feel any better.”

Clive Thompson wrote about coding with AI agents. “Software developers point out that coding has a unique quality: They can tether their A.I.s to reality, because they can demand the agents test the code to see if it runs correctly.”

A pair of hounds chase a hare across a snowy plain — will it get away? In Mario Kart terms, the dogs have the weight and max speed advantage while the hare is maxed out in acceleration, handling, and traction.

Tags: dogs · video

“We took an ancient vice…put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?” I *hate* the extent to which gambling has infested everything; it’s not going to end well.

Ballot Guessr: “GeoGuessr for politics. See a Google Street View image, guess how the county voted in the 2024 presidential election.” (633/1000 on my first try…but I borked one of the guesses bc I forgot there was a time limit. 🙃)