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Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
Walmart is busy building out their fast EV charger network in the US…currently 73 locations in 17 states. Their eventual goal is install chargers at “thousands of its locations by 2030”.
“Zugunruhe is a German term describing the restless, twitching urge migratory birds feel when caged — and the same primal restlessness humans feel when trapped.”
Participants in a recently published study spoke 28% fewer words per day in 2019 than they did in 2005. (People are spending more time alone and more time digitally communicating.)
The Thomas Crown Affair? Directed by and starring Michael B. Jordan? Ok, I’m in.
Study: Dinosaurs Were Charbroiled After Chicxulub Impact. “The impact would have produced an immense cloud of dust that superheated the upper atmosphere, charbroiling living organisms unable to take shelter and igniting widespread wildfires.”
Why Do We Tolerate Elon Musk’s Racist Commentary? “Musk’s virulent racism and vicious, disturbing views are no secret. He does not hide them. They sit in plain view, easily accessible on the social media website he owns…”
On the experience of the long haul flight. “The meal cart appears two hours in. You can hear it banging into passengers’ knees before you see it, and the sound causes the entire cabin to sit up slightly, like meerkats detecting motion on the savanna.”
“The Booker Prize 2026 longlist has now been announced…” Among the authors nominated are Marlon James, M. John Harrison, Emma Cline, and Elizabeth Strout.
Please Use AI. “Be sure to use AI when planning that next camping trip, the last one you will take with this particular child. Definitely do not text your friend who has fly-fished every river in Pennsylvania and biked every backwoods trail…”
Word nerd Rob Watts explains where the names of all the European countries come from.
Which country is the “land of the rabbits”? Why does Germany have so many different names? Where do the Dutch actually live? What links Croatians and neckties?
(via open culture)
30 notable sales of rare books by AbeBooks over the past 30 years, including first editions of Moby-Dick, Winnie-The-Pooh, and Leaves of Grass.
Here’s a map of the 21 US cities that used to have a population of 100,000 people but don’t anymore. Many of these are Rust Belt cities, in which manufacturing employment fell steeply during the latter part of the 20th century.
The thread at Reddit mentions Detroit and St. Louis as two other cities whose population has dropped during that same time period. Detroit went from 1.85 million in 1950 to 639,000 in 2020 and St. Louis dropped from 857,000 to 300,000 over the same time period:
St. Louis was once the country’s 4th largest city. Worlds Fair and Olympics in 1904. Two Major League Baseball teams. It didn’t boom as much as the Great Lakes cities in between the wars and it declined just as much after.
Tags: demographics · maps · population · usa
How the Words We Teach English Language Learners Changed, and What That Says About Us. “The shifts reflect a life that moved further from its own making: less tied to tools, animals, food…; more tied to global institutions, categories, systems…”
Don’t use AI until you’re 40. “We have been so quick to treat access to new technology as an inevitability that we have failed to question whether every powerful tool should be placed in the hands of every developing mind the moment it becomes available.”
We Used to Be Able to Buy Things in This Country. “Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy.”
“Datatype is an OpenType variable font that turns simple text expressions into inline charts. No JavaScript, no images, no rendering library — just type the syntax and Datatype’s ligature substitution does the rest.”
The Batman Effect: people in an experiment acted more altruisticly when the caped crusader was present.
From the filmmakers who made the excellent Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland comes a four-part series on space exploration, Once Upon a Time in Space. A short trailer is above; here’s a synopsis:
Drawing on intimate, unseen archive and powerful first-hand testimony, this landmark 4-part series tells the human stories behind our quest to explore space, offering a unique perspective on our changing world and where we are headed.
The series first aired on the BBC and the first two episodes are now available on PBS. (thx, mitch)
Tags: Once Upon a Time in Space · space · trailers · TV · video
An Uncomplicated Man, Emily Wilson’s review of Nolan’s The Odyssey. “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script. Sadly, Damon’s Odysseus isn’t complicated or wily or artful.”
Astronauts returning from long missions report a “jet lag of the self”: “a sense of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame”.
Welp, right at the top of the CDC page on autism and vaccines: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” 🫨
New orca behavior unlocked. They’ve been known to sink boats and wear salmon for hats; now they’re ramming fish so hard they explode. “Orcas were observed to hold sunfish in their jaws while a second whale smashed into the target at high speed…”
It’s our ethical duty to understand large numbers. “Our world is increasingly moving towards extreme values: Damages from climate change, deaths due to genocide, wealth that knows no bounds. We can’t tackle them if we can’t wrap our heads around [them].”
