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.”
Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
- Public lists
-
Featured
- Fetched
I’m Heading to Japan. What Should I Do?
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
The 25 Greatest Picture Books of the Past 25 Years, including Extra...
Little, Big, and Far
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...
This morning’s music selection while working: this 1h23m mix by German DJ/producer Parra for Cuva.
Some advice: “finishing creative projects is a skill in and of itself....
Some advice: “finishing creative projects is a skill in and of itself. if you want to be able to finish large, complex projects, you have to _practice finishing things_. which usually means doing smaller projects.”
The Trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu
Disney dropped the trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu today, a feature-length film that will debut in theaters in May 2026. As this Star Wars Explained breakdown, er, explains, that the trailer was going to come out earlier but:
Word on the street is that it was suppos...
Super Mario Bros. Remastered
Super Mario Bros. Remastered is an open source, fan-created, remastered version of the original Super Mario Bros. The trailer is above.
The game includes new levels, custom modes and characters, a custom level editor, and more. You need the SMB1 NES ROM to play it — “none of the original assets are contained in the source code, unless it was originally made by us!”
You can download versions for Windows, Linux, and MacOS…check out all the options and details on Github.
Tags: Nintendo · remix · Super Mario Bros · video · video games
Lāhainā Noon (aka zero shadow day) occurs twice a year in the...
Lāhainā Noon (aka zero shadow day) occurs twice a year in the tropics when the sun is directly overhead and vertical objects (like flagpoles) cast no shadows.
Call Me Maybe Mashed Up With NIN’s Head Like a Hole
Weird day (fuck, weird week) but this totally totally made it. Some genius took Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe and mashed it up with Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole:
Totesally amazingballs. Way way better than I expected. (via the verge)
[This is a vintage post originally from Mar 2013.]
Tags: Carly Rae Jepsen · music · Nine Inch Nails · remix · timeless posts
It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to...
It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.”
I’m usually pretty go-with-the-flow as far as OS updates go, but iOS...
I’m usually pretty go-with-the-flow as far as OS updates go, but iOS 26 / Liquid Glass is terrible: incoherent, ugly, and difficult to use. Obviously a massive design effort, but they missed the mark IMO.
Physics of Fluids journal article: ‘Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce’....
Physics of Fluids journal article: ‘Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce’. The authors found the dish entered the “Mozzarella Phase” when starch concentrations (relative to cheese) dropped below 1%, “corresponding to an unpleasant and separated sauce”.
Matt Webb: “Gin & tonic was invented by the East India Company...
Matt Webb: “Gin & tonic was invented by the East India Company to keep its colonising army safe [from malaria] in India. Bet the covid vaccine would have been more popular if it got you drunk.”
A Brief History of The Flatiron Building
A photo of NYC’s Flatiron Building, taken in 1904 by Edward Steichen.
Fun fact: the Flatiron Building was not so named because of its resemblance to a clothes iron. It was actually named after the building’s owner, Archibald W. Flatiron.
Ok, not really. But *puts on mans...
Inside the Top Secret Virgil Abloh Archive. For the first time, a...
Inside the Top Secret Virgil Abloh Archive. For the first time, a look into the fashion collection of the late Off-White and Louis Vuitton creative director.
“AI developers haven’t figured out a way to train their models not...
“AI developers haven’t figured out a way to train their models not to scheme. That’s because such training could actually teach the model how to scheme even better to avoid being detected.” (The same is true for children.)
Damn Interesting celebrates its 20th birthday. “In 2005, YouTube, reddit, and Facebook...
Damn Interesting celebrates its 20th birthday. “In 2005, YouTube, reddit, and Facebook were all still wet and screaming infants.”
Gear Brands With a Lifetime Warranty like Darn Tough Vermont, Osprey, Orvis,...
Gear Brands With a Lifetime Warranty like Darn Tough Vermont, Osprey, Orvis, Patagonia, and Timbuk2.
Crying Glacier
A short documentary with the recorded sounds of a melting glacier.
When you look at this gigantic mass of ice, it’s hard to get a personal relationship to it. So we wanted to document this landscape to give us an idea of what it sounds like inside a glacier. There is also the sadness because you know that all these sounds are disappearing right now. Of course, melting is something natural for glaciers, but the problem is that nothing new is coming back.
Tags: climate crisis · sound · video
A 1965 television interview with a 107-year-old Irish farmer (born in 1858)...
A 1965 television interview with a 107-year-old Irish farmer (born in 1858) on all the changes he’s seen during his life. Q: “What would you say was the biggest change?” A: “Well, machinery.”
The defining experience of fascism is “getting yelled at by dumbasses”....
The defining experience of fascism is “getting yelled at by dumbasses”.
The 2025 Audubon Photography Awards Emphasize Epic and Endangered Migrations. I love...
The 2025 Audubon Photography Awards Emphasize Epic and Endangered Migrations. I love the shot of the acorn woodpecker.
How the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz Survived the Death Camps. “I have...
How the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz Survived the Death Camps. “I have been gripped by a need to understand more not only about the women in the Auschwitz orchestra…but also what hearing music in this inferno meant to the other prisoners.”
Of Oz the Wizard, an Alphabetized Version of The Wizard of Oz
Of Oz the Wizard is the entire Wizard of Oz movie presented in alphabetical order by dialogue. So it starts with all the scenes where Dorothy and the gang say “a”, “aaiee”, “along”, and proceeds through “you’re” and “zipper”. Even the words on each of the title cards are s...
Gina Trapani writes about taking a sabbatical. “Take afternoon naps. Bigger things...
Gina Trapani writes about taking a sabbatical. “Take afternoon naps. Bigger things like foster a box of 6 kittens, do a 10-day silent retreat, quit coffee, start lifting, train for a triathlon, take vacations to explore…”
This sounds like a cool project: Pocket Fiche is a pocket-sized microscope...
This sounds like a cool project: Pocket Fiche is a pocket-sized microscope that comes with a ultra-high resolution, nano-fabricated image. “Think of Pocket Fiche as the Earth bound version of the Voyager golden record.”
Some unusual rocks observed by NASA’s Perseverance rover “could be the clearest...
Some unusual rocks observed by NASA’s Perseverance rover “could be the clearest signs of life ever found” on Mars.
Some KDO Updates: We’ve Got Ourselves a Stew
Hey folks, I know there’s a lot going on these days, but I wanted to update you on a few things I’ve been doing for the site lately. Alright, looking through my Git commits from the last couple of months:
I already told you about the Rolodex. Hoping to provide access to th...
Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night...
Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up.