Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
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A list of 25 Things to Say to Your Children, including “You can do hard things. I’ve seen you do them before and you can do them again.”; “I’m proud of you.”; and “It’s so brave to feel your feelings.”
Paul Ford on normalized AI & what happens when bubbles burst. “When the bubble is big, every idea feels like a billion-dollar idea. I yearn for cheap ideas from strangers.”
Keene, NH has been replacing their stop-lighted intersections with roundabouts, resulting in big reductions in pollution, accidents & injuries, and costs. “Slowly moving is better than waiting at a light any day.”
Adding to an “overwhelming body of evidence”, a recent study showed that “suicidality scores dropped significantly an average of two years and up to five years after [trans youth] received gender-affirming treatment”.
The Atlantic hurricane season has come to a close and Google’s DeepMind AI-based hurricane model performed really well in predicting track and intensity of storms.
In 2010, Randall Munroe’s fiancée (now wife) was diagnosed with cancer. Every once in awhile, he updates his audience at XKCD on how that’s going. The most recent missive: Fifteen Years.
If you’re not up on XKCD lore, here’s an explanation. 💞
Tags: cancer · comics · Randall Munroe · XKCD
Rebecca Solnit: A Year on From Trump’s Victory, Resistance Is Everywhere. “There has, in fact, been a tremendous amount and variety of resistance and opposition and it’s mattered tremendously.”
Atul Gawande of Harvard’s School of Public Health: The Trump regime’s destruction of USAID “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children”.
I’m still working on the KDO gift guide for this year. In the meantime, here’s the 2024 edition, which has aged well and includes these popular Japanese nail clippers.
“Australia is on course to meet a target of eliminating cervical cancer by 2035, which, if achieved, will make it the first country to do so.” This is due in large part to their HPV vaccination campaign.
It’s been a really tough year for many of us, the citizens of the world. But on this day of thanksgiving in the US, I wanted to ask you all: what are you thankful for today?
I’m thankful that I was able to travel to say goodbye to a friend, thankful for the time I’ve spent with my kids over their holiday break, and thankful for all of you, especially those who support the site with a membership, a small front in what feels like the final stand of the open web. Thank you.
Tags: holidays
“Art is valuable precisely because it is not easy to create. We are interested in art, in any and all of its forms, because humans made it. That’s the very thing that makes it interesting; the who, the how, and especially the why.”
In a London increasingly dominated by rideshare services, some drivers are still opting to study for years for The Knowledge, “the grueling examination that requires applicants to essentially memorize more than 100 square miles of city streets”.
