Jason Kottke’s weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
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!
Hey folks. I’m gonna take a break from KDO for the rest the day today (unless we invade Canada this afternoon or something) — I worked for much of last weekend and need a breather.
But I wanted to open up the comments here and ask: How are you doing? What’s your attention on these days? How are you coping with all of this uncertainty? What’s the view from your community? If you’d like to share, the comments are open.
I’ll see you tomorrow, hopefully with some Friday Foolishness.
Tags: kottke.org
I love the international cover for Omar El Akkad’s new book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Bookshop, Amazon). It uses the original text of El Akkad’s tweet about the war in Gaza:
One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.
The US cover, like many American things, is somewhat less subtle & elegant.
Tags: book covers · books · design · Omar El Akkad
From poet Joseph Fasano: For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper. “I know your days are precious on this earth. But what are you trying to be free of? The living? The miraculous task of it?”
“Every time Social Security makes its way into the news is an opportunity to push for a better & more inclusive form of Social Security: one that rewards caregivers, expands benefits, and provides something like an American dream worthy of the name.”
Paris Marx writes that the US is “a rogue state that cannot be trusted” and that our former allies “must form new alliances and end their dependence on US tech in response to Trump’s trade war”.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a YouTube video of Doechii singing and rapping about anxiety over Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know from 2019 that was going viral on Insta and TikTok. Well yesterday, Doechii officially released Anxiety as a single, so you can find it on YouTube (though I prefer the original video), Spotify, Apple Music, and anywhere else you stream or buy music.
P.S. Here’s Doechii doing a CATFISH / DENIAL IS A RIVER medley at the Grammys last month:
And of course, you can check out her Tiny Desk Concert too.
“De-extinction startup Colossal Biosciences has gene-edited mice to have mammoth-like features, creating what the company calls the Colossal Woolly Mouse.” (They eventually want to do the same w/ Asian elephants.)
“The ‘war on woke’ did not suddenly appear. It is an idea deeply rooted in a form of scientific racism that has been laundered into the mainstream over decades by the Pioneer Fund and right-wing activists connected with this group.”