Jason Kottke’s weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
Former NBA star Reggie Miller’s neighbors got him hooked on mountain biking. “I was still in basketball shape. And they destroyed me. Being out there on the mountain bike, I was like ‘oh my God this is so fun!’ And that’s what got me hooked.”
Zadie Smith: “In my experience, every kind of writing requires some kind of self-soothing Jedi mind trick, and, when it comes to essay composition, the rectangle is mine.”
Gooood lord, just look at this exquisite handmade bike, a collaboration between British design collective Tomato1 and Shinichi Konno of Cherubim.
Tags: bicycles · biking · design · Shinichi Konno · Tomato · Underworld
Fantastic essay by Roxane Gay: Civility Is a Fantasy. “Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.”
Historian Thomas Zimmer has left academia, Substack, and the US; now he’s launching his new career as an indie writer with a newsletter about “the ongoing struggle over how much democracy, and for whom, there should be in America”. Recommended!
Steve Mould is always informative and entertaining, so I started watching his video on building the world’s tallest siphon, nodding along to what I thought was the reasonable conclusion. And then the video kicked into another gear — because with science, the simple solution is not always the whole story when extreme conditions are in play. (via the kid should see this)
Tags: physics · science · Steve Mould · video
McSweeney’s didn’t even need to lampoon Trump’s comments about vaccines, autism, & Tylenol…they just printed them verbatim and it reads like the most unhinged parody. “They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies. It’s a disgrace.”
Didn’t think I was interested in a profile of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, but Sam Anderson can write. “It is a smile that makes you feel as if the sun is setting over an undiscovered tropical beach on which 10,000 baby sea turtles are about to hatch.”
Hey folks. I’m very excited to be heading to Japan for the first time next month. I’ll be there from mid-October for 3-4 weeks. The current plan is Tokyo, Kamakura, Kanazawa, Kyoto, Osaka, Koyasan, and perhaps Hiroshima — change my mind? If you’ve been there, please leave your recs in the comments below or drop me an email. If you live there or will be visiting at the same time, let’s meet up!
The photograph above is from Koya Bound by Craig Mod & Dan Rubin. The companion website to the book is great.
Tags: Craig Mod · Dan Rubin · Japan · Jason Kottke · travel
Even after reading a couple of reviews and watching the trailer, it’s difficult to understand what the Austrian film Little, Big, and Far is actually about. So here’s the official synopsis:
Austrian astronomer Karl is at a crossroads in his life and work. He finds his physicist wife growing distant and his job being reshaped by environmental crises as thoughts about science, fascism, and his grandson’s future spin above his head. After attending a conference in Greece, Karl decides not to return home and heads for a small island in hopes of finding a dark enough sky to reconnect with the stars. Abandoned at a remote mountain trail, he ascends and waits for darkness to fall.
Tags: astronomy · Little Big and Far · movies · trailers · video
This morning’s music selection while working: this 1h23m mix by German DJ/producer Parra for Cuva.