“The world’s biggest frogs build their own ponds” is art as a headline because it sounds like an adage your grandfather would tell while fishing one afternoon, but also oops the adage has now been corrupted by grind culture tech bros.

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“More than 80 years after it was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a portrait by an Italian master has been spotted on the website of an estate agent advertising a house for sale in Argentina.”

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Just wanting to let y’all know the cops have never had to chase a bear out of my ice cream shop, though I suppose that’s what an ice cream shop would say if they had had to have cops chase a bear out of it at some point.

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Are the AirPods Pro 3 coming soon? Here’s what the rumors say. “Apple is said to be testing a faster audio chip that drives ‘much better’ Active Noise Cancellation than the already‑impressive ‌AirPods Pro‌ 2 manage.”

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This hilarious commercial for a 90s mail-order punk CD is for a compilation with hardly any punk music on it.

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I love these author cards from McSweeney’s in the style of baseball cards. For years you’ve seen athletes, web-slinging superheroes, orcs, and pocket monsters get the trading-card treatment, while you’ve sat in your room hoping upon hope that the heroes of magical realism or giants of New Journalism would get their own. The wait is over, friends. They have three sets: the first set is a part of their 74th issue, series 2, and series 3. The authors featured in the sets include Octavia Butler, Judy Blume, Lauren Groff, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, George Saunders, Sarah Vowell, and Kurt Vonnegut. Tags: books · McSweeneys · remix · sports 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent. It’s nice to hear that ordinary citizens still have some power and some sense in wielding it.

“The evidence for millionaire tax flight is scant. If high earners were truly fleeing high taxes, low-tax states would be swarming with millionaires. Instead, the highest concentrations of millionaires are found in high-tax states.”

A thoughtful post by Philip Bump on the careful use of your power. “[Substack authors] have transferred their power to a company that has used it to promote toxic rhetoric in the guise of ‘having a debate.’”

Rock guitarist Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) has made a playlist called Fuck ICE, “a rocking little soundtrack to enjoy while you drive those bastards out of your neighborhood”. Springsteen, Public Enemy, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, etc.

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Artist Amy Sherald: Censorship Has Taken Hold at the Smithsonian. I Refused to Play Along. “History shows us what happens when governments demand that museums perform loyalty. Nazi Germany weaponized them. So did the Soviet Union.”

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“Welcome to the Atlas of Space — an interactive visualization to explore the planets, moons, asteroids, and other objects in the Solar System.”

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Silicon Valley is full of wealthy men who think they’re victims. “I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity.”

I don’t know exactly what my expectations were of how lettering is painted on city streets, but this was not it. The level of precision and artistry is surprising.

Reminds me of this video of a hand-lettering master at work.

Update: Sure, he’s using a vehicle, but this guy is pretty good at line painting as well.

[This is a vintage post originally from Mar 2014.]

Tags: art · timeless posts · typography · video

The New Yorker’s Alexandra Schwartz profiles Patricia Lockwood. Regarding her forthcoming novel: “‘I wrote it insane and edited it sane’; it is a collaboration between two different people, both of whom happen to be her.”

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Jamelle Bouie on Democratic politicians who maddeningly cannot recognize and acknowledge what is going on in the country.

From my perspective, the story of American politics right now is that the president, who fashions himself a kind of king of America, is attempting to barricade himself in the capital by unleashing a military occupation on its residents. And he’s promised to extend this military occupation to other cities and other states that he views as political opponents.

That to me is the big story of American politics right now: a mad king openly exerting tyrannical power over Americans and threatening further tyrannical power against other Americans, all under a pretext of crime reduction.

Tags: Donald Trump · Jamelle Bouie · politics · USA

Dan Froomkin of Press Watch: “The top story of the moment is the one story that our most influential newsrooms won’t touch: That the United State has become an authoritarian state.”

I disagree with Quentin Tarantino on what his best film is. “So I think Kill Bill is the movie I was born to make, I think Inglourious Basterds is my masterpiece but Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is my favourite.”

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TMAP is a screen reader-friendly tool for creating tactile street maps. Raised lines and textures represent roads, pedestrian paths, and railways.

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Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers? “Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and many other notorious figures lived in and around Tacoma in the sixties. A new book argues that there was something in the water.”

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Video: “Environmental police in Rochedo, Brazil stumbled on an unexpected sight: thousands of orange-and-black bumblebee catfish scaling the slippery rocks behind waterfalls on the Aquidauana River.”

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Now showing at the Brooklyn Museum (through April 2026) and the ICA in Boston (until Spet 1, 2025) is Christian Marclay’s Doors. Like his masterpiece The Clock, Doors is a film montage, this time of people in movies opening and closing doors. In Doors (2022), Marclay stitch...

American Millennials Are Dying at an Alarming Rate. “In 2023 there were about 700,000 “missing Americans” — those who died in 2023 but would be alive if they had lived somewhere else.” And it’s not a pandemic thing.

21 Ways People Are Using AI at Work. A high school music teacher used the prompt “make it more Gen X” for helping her write rejection letters that were direct and “thoughtful, but didn’t sound like Mr. Rogers on molly”. 😂

Still one of my favorite McSweeney’s articles: E-mail Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone. “MikeAtYahooDotCom@hotmail.com”

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From John Ganz in Nov 2024: “a list of things I thought the fascism theory of Trumpism predicted could happen”. Many have come to pass. The obstinance in recognizing what’s plainly happening here is upsetting — it wasn’t hard to see it coming.

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“We’re seeing an escalation of authoritarian power on many fronts that has grown unmistakable.” Trump’s FBI Raid of John Bolton’s Home Looks Like a “Five-Alarm Fire”.

How to Make Sense of Trump’s Voting Rights Chaos. “It matters that when the president reaches for a strategic distraction, he chooses one that matches Project 2025’s goals.” (Maybe DC’s occupation is, in part, voter intimidation?)

Has anyone tried these replacement memory foam ear tips for AirPods Pro 2? Greedy for (even) better noise cancellation and sound quality…

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“For many, the idea of a ‘frog sauna’ might sound bizarre,” but this simple solution is saving some Australian frogs from a deadly fungus.

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