I needed some new bouncy/chill music today and Tycho’s sunrise DJ set from this year’s Burning Man is doing the trick. I also ran across this playlist with 190 DJ sets from Burning Man this year containing 305 hours of music.

(via @mikeakers.bsky.social)

Tags: music · Tycho

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A new book from photographer Sally Mann: Art Work: On the Creative Life. I really enjoyed Mann’s previous book, Hold Still.

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Dan Sinker recently visited an arcade full of old school vintage arcade games and documented some of the wonderful typography and design of the game cabinet marquees. After a while though, I became captivated not by the games themselves but by the incredible art on th...

Defector is celebrating its fifth anniversary. “This is a website run by people who want to speak — plainly, honestly, passionately — to an audience that we acknowledge as people rather than metrics.” 🎉

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Aubrey Hirsch is an eternal optimist. In her latest comic, she writes/draws about “freaking the hell out” about the current political situation and the limits of optimism.

Here’s a short video by Arthur Brooks (that you are probably watching on your phone) about why you should log off, put your phone down, and let yourself be bored.

You need to be bored. You will have less meaning and you will be more depressed if you never are bored. I mean, it couldn’t be clearer.

See also In Praise of Boredom, In Defense of Boredom, and “Boredom: the great engine of creativity”.

Tags: Arthur C. Brooks · video

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“A growing number of scientists believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may instead be subtly altering our immune systems.” Is Covid-19 to blame for “the global surge in non-covid infections”?

I haven’t watched it yet, but I have seen so many recommendations for this gonzo birdwatching documentary called Listers over the past few days that I wanted to share it with you.

Two brothers travel across the United States in a used minivan on a mission to find as many bird species as they can in a single year.

Yeah, not your typical birdwatching fare…the vibe of the brothers’ quest is more like a surf or skate video. Here’s the trailer:

And the whole 2-hour movie is available on YouTube as well:

I’ve hoping to make some time to watch it this weekend; it looks great. The two brothers have also released a companion book, Field Guide of All the Birds We Found One Year in the United States.

Tags: birds · Listers · movies · trailers · video

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An interview with Rebecca Solnit. “It feels like part of this horrible new culture where you can have any truth you want — as if history began and ended yesterday. Everything’s infinitely revisable, and there’s no accountability.”

Todd Weaver uses analog & in-camera experimental techniques to achieve subtly geometric and colorful surfing photographs. Of one of his photos, Weaver says: This one was taken on my half-frame camera at my favourite place to surf, First Point in Malibu. The colour is a one of a kind. I don’t think I could repeat it in a thousand tries. The stripe is an artefact of my pre-exposing process. You can find more of Weaver’s work on his website and Instagram. If you like these surf photos, you might be interested in getting a copy of Dream Weaver Journal Volume 2. Tags: photography · sports · surfing · Todd Weaver 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Without looking it up, what’s the longest single-syllable English word you can think of? (Here are the answers.)

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It’s getting to be that time again: The 2025 Fall Foliage Prediction Map.

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This is what could happen to a child who doesn’t get vaccinated. “Pneumonia struck first. Then tonsillitis spiraled into sepsis. Malaria battered him next, and after treatment, the other illnesses flared back up again.”

One of my favorite “memes” of all time is Drunk Jeff Goldblum. The first video, a slowed-down ad for Apple from 1999, is still the best. “In ter net?! I’d say In ter net.”

But this new one about PayPal is pretty great too.

“Buying a chair… while sitting in a chair…” (via ★interesting)

[This is a vintage post originally from Oct 2012.]

Tags: Apple · Jeff Goldblum · remix · timeless posts · video

A clicker game where the click reloads the page in your browser. (Let’s see if we can crash the server?)

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Gabriel Bonnin, aka Singer Sound System, plays an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy that’s driven by an old Singer sewing machine pedal.

My instrument is an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy. I just removed the crank and use a Singer machine to drive it :-) It is equipped with four integrated microphones that allow me to process the sound live, especially in Ableton Live.

Some of his most popular recent covers include the Doctor Who theme¹:

Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train:

The X-Files theme:

And Enter Sandman by Metallica:

Oh and Daft Punk!

You can find his stuff on YouTube and Instagram.

1. One commenter on Instagram remarked: “This sounds more like the Dr Who theme than the Dr who theme does”.↩

Tags: Gabriel Bonnin · music · remix · video

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‘It’s Just a Mess:’ 23 People Explain How Tariffs Have Suddenly Ruined Their Hobby. “Many small businesses overseas have stopped shipping items to the United States, and some customers say that their packages are in customs processing hell…”

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The great Ray Hudson is retiring from broadcasting. “His commentary was a gift from the gods, a shooting star from the furthest reaches of the brightest galaxy, that was only meant to rest on planet earth for a short period of time…”

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The trailer for Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out movie; looks like another great prestige caper.

Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns for his most dangerous case yet in the third and darkest chapter of Rian Johnson’s murder mystery opus. Starring Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church.

It’s coming out in “select theaters” on Nov 26 before it’s debut on Netflix Dec 12.

Tags: movies · trailers · video · Wake Up Dead Man

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Congress Plays Keep-Away With Child’s School Lunch. “‘If you want to eat, you’re going to have to jump for it!’ said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), laughing as he dangled the bag above the head of the 4-foot-tall child, who leapt in vain…”

I’m a High Schooler. AI Is Demolishing My Education. “The dominant worldview seems to be: Why worry about actually learning anything when you can get an A for outsourcing your thinking to a machine?”

“A new volunteer-led organization called Grandparents for Vaccines launched Sunday on National Grandparents Day with a mission to share firsthand experiences of life before vaccines were widely available.”

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Zohran Mamdani’s social media team is operating on all cylinders: A Dramatic Reading of The New York Times: How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor? Read by “Railroad Daddy” Morgan Spector.

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How a Deaf Quarterback Changed Sports Forever By Inventing the Huddle. “Concerned that his hand signs were tipping off his plans to the opposing defense, Hubbard summoned his offense and directed them to form a circle around him…”

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The Casual Archivist’s Short History of the Business Card, From Versailles to Microsoft Word. “They’re a precursor and a stake in the ground; the cart before the horse and the name before the face.”

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Watch a man named Ozzie make rope using a very simple hand-cranked machine. The real magic happens starting at about the 12-minute mark, where the three strands of the rope come together — my mouth actually fell open at this point. It’s amazing what you can do with just a simple machine that cleverly leverages the laws of physics and the material’s own properties.

You can order one of these rope making machines from Etsy.

See also How Rope Was Made the Old Fashioned Way, i.e. how rope was made in Edwardian England. (via book of joe)

Tags: how to · video

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49 Literary Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Fall. That seems like a lot! Includes Frankenstein, The Twits (Roald Dahl), various Seuss stories, The Running Man, Train Dreams, Hamnet, etc.

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Whoa, I have not watched this documentary in a loooong time — very interesting to watch in the future this company helped to create, for good and very, very bad. Code Rush is a documentary following the lives of a group of Netscape engineers in Silicon Valley. It covers N...

USGS Unveils New National Geologic Map. “In a significant advancement for geoscience, the U.S. Geological Survey has released the most detailed national-scale geologic map of the country to date.”

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This is the trailer for a documentary celebrating the life and work of actor & comedian John Candy.

I loved John Candy; how could you not? Uncle Buck was my favorite of his movies. I can’t believe he died more than 20 years ago already. (via craig mod)

Tags: John Candy · John Candy: I Like Me · movies · trailers · video

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