Actor-style headshots from the 80s of artists like...
Actor-style headshots from the 80s of artists like Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, and Robert Longo.
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Recently Discovered: an NYC Underground Railroad Stop
The Merchant’s House Museum was NYC’s first landmarked building, but until this year, the function of a small hidden passageway in the house was unknown. When historians and preservationists examined it in detail, they found that it was built by the first owner of the hous...
AI Is Getting Scary Good at Making Predictions ....
AI Is Getting Scary Good at Making Predictions. “From this point on, for as long as we exist, we might be asking AIs what comes next. We won’t always understand how they arrived at their predictions.”
Zoning Out Is Good For You
Tags: neuroscience · science · sleep · video
In case you didn’t realize, ICE is still...
In case you didn’t realize, ICE is still terrorizing communities, kidnapping people off the streets, and destroying property in Minnesota. “The target of the kidnapping was taken away by ambulance.”
Fontemon is the world’s first video game in a...
Fontemon is the world’s first video game in a font. “The entire game is enclosed in fontemon.otf, no javascript, no html, all font.”
The GOP goal of destroying the post office is coming...
The GOP goal of destroying the post office is coming along: the USPS is now so unreliable that newspaper delivery is delayed across the country. (My mail delivery is currently one bundle every week or two.)
Some Site Goings-On
Hey gang. I took a couple of days off at the beginning of the week to visit some colleges with my daughter. She found a potential contender, one that was just fine, and a school that isn’t going to work for her — we both independently zoned out listening to the presentation ...
Everyone’s living a life you know nothing about ....
“We will not achieve any of our ultimate goals...
“We will not achieve any of our ultimate goals without exercising state power, and the most effective way to take state power is through nonviolent but confrontational resistance.”
A recommendation for a recent episode of the Heavyweight...
The Guardian: here’s how Substack makes money...
The Guardian: here’s how Substack makes money hosting Nazi newsletters. These newsletters weren’t even hard to find or subtle: swastikas and in-app recommendations from one antisemitic newsletter to a bunch of others.
How Edo (Tokyo) transformed from a city on the brink of...
How Edo (Tokyo) transformed from a city on the brink of ecological collapse 400 years ago to “one of the most sustainable and efficient cities in history”.
Printing Films is a collection of vintage films that...
Printing Films is a collection of vintage films that showcase the technologies and processes of printing, journalism, and typography.
Why don’t filmmakers just film on location instead...
Why don’t filmmakers just film on location instead of using visual effects? Lots of reasons, including not disrupting communities, control of weather & sun position, or can’t get permission.
Dan Sinker writes about the transformative experience of...
Dan Sinker writes about the transformative experience of seeing a work by Jenny Holzer when he was 14. “Truisms was a revelation. Art could be just words. Art could be just at home slapped on a POST NO BILLS wall as it could in a gallery.”
“How did medieval French handwriting become...
“How did medieval French handwriting become ‘the Nazi font?’ And why did Hitler make it illegal?” TIL that Hitler gave a speech to the Reichstag about how much he disliked blackletter fonts.
Do you remember Oddpost? It was an early email web app...
Do you remember Oddpost? It was an early email web app that used dynamic HTML to mimic the design and functionality of a desktop mail app, 2 years before Gmail launched.
Tinder Hasn’t Worked, So I’m Putting Myself...
Tinder Hasn’t Worked, So I’m Putting Myself on Zillow. “I realize that my late-’80s construction might not land me in the “trending” section right away…”
I’ve always said more popstars should duet with...
I’ve always said more popstars should duet with puppets, so Sabrina Carpenter and Kermit the Frog singing Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s ‘Island in a Stream’ as part of The Muppet Show’s latest special is perfect (to me).
The Triumph of Europe’s Social Democracy
Economist Thomas Piketty, writing for Le Monde (archive) on the success of Europe’s social democratic model and countering “the narrative of a ‘declining’ continent”:
If someone had told the European elites and liberal economists of 1914 that wealth redistribution would o...
Professor Walt Hunter on the merits of challenging...
Professor Walt Hunter on the merits of challenging students: Stop Meeting Students Where They Are. “Whole novels aren’t possible to teach, we are told, because students won’t (or can’t) read them. So why assign them?”
The Mountain That Weighed the Earth . How scientists in...
The Mountain That Weighed the Earth. How scientists in 1774 used a Scottish mountain to estimate the mass of the Earth to within 20% of the modern number by measuring the mountain’s gravitational effect on a precision plumb line.
Keep the Meter Running With Mouhamadou Aliy & Zohran Mamdani
In addition to his great series Subway Takes, Kareem Rahma does another series called Keep the Meter Running where he hops into NYC cabs, interviews the drivers, and asks them to take him to their favorite places.
In the run-up to the NYC mayoral election last year, Rahma j...
Some cool animations made from Japanese receipts by...
Times New Resistance
This is awesome and clever. Minneapolis designer Abby Haddican has made a typeface called Times New Resistance. The letters are identical to Times New Roman (and it even appears as such in font menus, except there’s “an extra space between the words Times and New”) but when you type with it, it autocorrects a list of words: “For example, the word ICE autocorrects to the Goon Squad and the word Trump autocorrects to Donald Trump is a felon.” Here’s a partial list:
The idea is that you install it on your MAGA relative’s computer and then sit back and watch the fun. It even works when you copy/paste text or on pre-existing text. Free to download on Haddican’s website. (via @kylevanhorn)
Tags: Abby Haddican · design · Donald Trump · ICE · politics · typography
10 Movies to Stream for Black History Month , from The...
10 Movies to Stream for Black History Month, from The Flying Ace (1926) to Killer of Sheep (1978) to Moonlight (2016).
Hour-long YouTube training session on how to observe &...
Hour-long YouTube training session on how to observe & record ICE/CBP. “This call will give you the tools to exercise your rights in a moment when federal agents are terrorizing our communities and using excessive force.”
The Strangers’ Case
I don’t normally say this, but if you watch one thing on kottke.org today, this week, this month, make it this speech written by Shakespeare and performed by Sir Ian McKellen on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The segment starts at ~20:00; McKellen sets it up:
It’s al...
The CIA has deleted the CIA World Factbook (a popular...
The CIA has deleted the CIA World Factbook (a popular almanac about the countries of the world) from the web. Fuck this. All these assholes do is pillage & destroy.