There’s a Grocery Price Emergency in America. “Our research shows that even relatively well-off families are struggling with high prices… President Trump and Congress are neither investing in long-term solutions nor offering short-term relief.”

A tour of some playgrounds in NYC designed by kids, with features like pollinator gardens, hair-braiding stations, a floor-is-lava obstacle course, and human-sized chess boards. Love it — children should get way more of a say w/ stuff like this.

On decision fatigue: “Why are you so tired? The answer has to do with how many times you’ve had to make a decision throughout the day.” And: “The quality of our decisions deteriorates as we accumulate previous decisions.”

If you’ve never seen it (or even if you have), Christian Marclay’s The Clock will be showing at LACMA from July 26 to August 23, including two 24-hour showings.

Senior living communities generally don’t go viral or gain media attention for positive reasons, so it’s nice to see this story about the University Village Retirement Community in Tulsa, Oklahoma and their champion Wii bowling team. On this recent Thursday in June, their h...

A Retro 70s TV Intro for Andor. “Get ready to travel to a far away galaxy that existed a long, long time ago. It’s the science fiction spectacular…ANDOR.”

On Friday, I got a bee in my bonnet that this t-shirt should exist and so I made it and now you can buy it. The shirt is simple, straightforward, $25 (+s&h), and ships all over the world.

A promotion. Making a new friend. Or the big cork-popping event; you know the one. Today could be the day!

Maybe it’ll even happen before the shirt reaches your mailbox! We should be so lucky.

Thanks to Dan Cederholm at SimpleBits for his Free Lunch font and to Fourthwall for handling the shopping, printing, and fulfillment.

Oh, and I also zhuzhed up the Goods page, where you can still get the Hypertext, Process, and Choppke’s tees. More fine not-hypertext products to come soon.

Tags: fashion · kottke.org

The Writers Who Wrote The Most in History. “Corin Tellado published more than 4,000 novels, mostly under a contract with Spanish publisher Bruguera, which obligated her to deliver a 76-page novel every single week for years.”

Who wins the 2026 World Cup if “not football” decides? This starts with the same 64-team bracket as the actual WC but uses metrics like life expectancy & CO2 per capita to decide matches.

From last month but relevant as Europe is seeing record heat right now: Heatwaves are becoming the norm. This is what Britain will look like in the year 2052.

A story about what being neighborly is all about. “I reported back to the neighborhood text thread, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. What came back, from one neighbor after another, was the same question: what can we do to help?”

The Boeing 747 Begins Its Final Descent. The 747 is being phased out for newer and more efficient jets. Ian Bosost takes a look at how the massive plane, which took flight only 5 months before “Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon”, came to be.

It’s America’s Birthday. What Are We Celebrating? Some good thoughts in here from Tressie McMillan Cottom, Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, and Lydia Polgreen.

A Bob Ross painting of a mountain summit is being auctioned off soon. “Sale proceeds will benefit Ball State University. Ball State University owns WIPB, the PBS station where Bob Ross filmed thirty seasons of The Joy of Painting.” $50-70K esitmate.

“Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other.” Cool feature where people visiting this website can chat in a virtual Town Square: “a small strip populated by stick figures…at the bottom of every page”. See you there?

Sad news: long-time tech journalist, blogger, and entrepreneur Om Malik passed away yesterday aged 59.

“Although fleeting, [sports] have the enduring power to inspire. For a few moments or a few days, divisions crumble, replaced by the beauty of kinship.”

Deep dive: An interactive introduction to the terrific experience of rendering Arabic typography and its technical debt.

Good god, The Complete Kubrick from Criterion.

Collected here for the first time are Kubrick’s thirteen features and three shorts, all restored in 4K, with their original soundtracks alongside the 5.1 mixes, restored and remastered; over twenty-five hours of interviews, documentaries, and behind-the-scenes materials; and deluxe packaging illustrated with rare photographs, artwork, and documents annotated by Kubrick himself, all housed in a singular box inspired by the director’s legendary archive.

Altogether it’s 30 discs, $480 if you pre-order, and it’ll be out in mid-October.

P.S. While it’s not a fancypants box set, the KDO tag page for Stanley Kubrick functions pretty well as “DVD extras” — and it’s free. (via df)

Tags: Criterion Collection · movies · Stanley Kubrick · video

Apple raised their prices on their laptops, iMacs, and iPads today due to the high cost of memory (driven by AI demand). The Macbook Neo’s price went up $100 with most other machines getting a $200-500 bump.

But those prices have yet to take effect at Amazon, where Apple computers are still cheaper than the old prices. Macbook Neo for $590, MacBook Air M5 for $1150, and the M4 iMac for $1150. You can check other models (MacBook Pros, etc.) and their pricing here. Not sure when RAM costs are going to come down…these might be the lowest prices you see on Apple machines for quite awhile.

Tags: Amazon · Apple

Fulfilling the purpose for which it was built almost 2000 years ago, football fans packed the Roman Theatre of Amman to watch the Jordan v Algeria World Cup match. I don’t know whether Roman rulers, builders, and architects envisioned their works would remain standing & useful millennia after their construction, but longevity is certainly not a priority these days.

Here’s a video of Jordan fans watching their opener vs Austria in the amphitheater:

Tags: Jordan · soccer · sports · video · World Cup 2026

Good headline from the NYT for a change: President Narcissus and the Fetid Reflecting Pool.

Mentioned this in passing a few months ago, but wanted to remind you that The Art of Star Wars: Andor is coming out in about a week. Looks great.

Did a medieval flying monk spot Halley’s comet, twice? It’s complicated. Halley’s Comet came around in 1066 and it’s likely Eilmer of Malmesbury saw a different comet in 1018, not Halley’s in 989.

How The New York Times Changed Its Coverage of Trans People. No surprise: it became much more negative, less affirming/protective and more skeptical/restrictive.

Lifts in Film: a collection of movie & TV scenes featuring elevators, including Speed, The Shining, Drive, Mad Men, Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, The Silence of the Lambs, and many more.

Gerrymandle is a daily game where you “draw electoral district lines to win more seats than your opponents and win the election”.

Kelly Hayes interviews Rebecca Solnit. “There is no rewind button on history. Once people have power & agency, and have seen what it’s like to have rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, they’re not interested in going back. And we’re the majority.”

This is one of those videos that you start watching and then can’t really stop until you’ve finished. Cow Trip tells the story of an effort to save a baby cow by driving it (and another baby cow rescue) in a not-huge SUV 600 miles from Vermont to a sanctuary in Maryland.

A calf in Vermont hits the lottery when a farmer decides to save him. But someone has to drive the baby cow 600 miles to his new home. A freshly retired doctor and his filmmaker daughter volunteer for the job, but nothing goes as planned. What emerges is an unlikely story of a community of people who will do anything to give one calf a real home.

I think maybe this needs to be a children’s book?

Tags: video

Tesla Launches New Model Of Explosions. “What’s different about the XP is that they’ve actually borrowed some of the same technology used by SpaceX, incorporating it as well as a whole slew of other safety features that are basically non-existent.”