“[This website] is a repurposed smartphone running on solar power. It’s a web server pieced together from scraps, humming in the attic of an apartment building.”
Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998
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The winners of the 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year awards....
The winners of the 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year awards. These are always wonderful to look at.
Interesting thing about contextual fame: to the surprise of bookstores, Craig Mod...
Interesting thing about contextual fame: to the surprise of bookstores, Craig Mod has sold out every appearance on his book tour for Things Become Other Things. But he couldn’t get a single store in Portland or Boston to host a reading.
Supercut of Every Time Norm Enters the Bar on Cheers
George Wendt, who played lovable barfly Norm Peterson on Cheers for 11 seasons, died yesterday at the age of 76. Here’s an 18-minute supercut of every time Norm entered the bar. I loved Cheers when I was a kid; I’ve seen every episode multiple times (though not for many years) and of course Norm was a favorite. 🍺💞
Tags: Cheers · George Wendt · obituaries · TV · video
Fortnite is back on iOS in the US after a 5-year battle...
Fortnite is back on iOS in the US after a 5-year battle with Apple over in-app payments.
Every TV News Report On the Economy
From Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe, here’s how every single news report on the economy plays out:
Dennis and Pamela People are affected by numbers, and since they have a child, you’ll empathize with what they say while I nod in their direction.
“Well, it’s been hard because of the numbers.”
“Yeah, it has been hard, mainly because of the numbers.”
Brooker, you may remember, is the creator of Black Mirror.
[This is a vintage post originally from Mar 2015.]
Tags: Charlie Brooker · economics · journalism · timeless posts · video
Some advice from Old Man Kottke: if you need readers, get some...
Some advice from Old Man Kottke: if you need readers, get some with good lenses. I had some cheapo ones that gave me eye strain, so I ordered these from Caddis and they’re like 100 times better.
“When does a kid become an adult?” Boy oh boy, this question...
“When does a kid become an adult?” Boy oh boy, this question has manifested in so many ways in our family over the past year (my son turns 18 soon, is off to college in the fall, and is both super smart/capable *and* wildly clueless).
Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don’t Exist....
Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don’t Exist. Just straight-up hallucinated books by the likes of Percival Everett & Andy Weir. The writer: “I’m completely embarrassed.”
Magnus Carlsen played a game of freestyle chess against 143,000 people (who...
Magnus Carlsen played a game of freestyle chess against 143,000 people (who voted on what moves to make) and was forced into a draw. I’m surprised at the outcome…I didn’t think the wisdom of the crowds would work in a situation like this.
Biking Is Therapy
Derek Bolz made a video about what biking does for his mental health. A partial transcript (boldface mine):
Life has been rough lately. I don’t want to air my dirty laundry on the internet, so I won’t go into detail. But for a number of reasons, I am quite stressed out, ...
White House officials wanted to put federal workers ‘in trauma.’ It’s working....
White House officials wanted to put federal workers ‘in trauma.’ It’s working. “Federal workers describe struggling with panic attacks, depression, suicidal thoughts.” Once again, the cruelty is the point.
I Didn’t Know You Could Make Interactive YouTube Videos
Lagarto Films is a film collective based in Puerto Rico that makes interactive YouTube videos and games. This is pretty clever actually…they use keyboard shortcuts to skip to different parts of the video, Choose Your Own Adventure style. So you can play a game of Uno:
Or direct the action in a short cops & robbers film:
Play Grand Theft Auto in real life:
There are many more of their interactive videos in this playlist. (thx, ollie)
Tags: Lagarto Films · video · video games · YouTube
What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get. “Nearly every aspect of society has...
What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get. “Nearly every aspect of society has been designed by people unfamiliar with not only the experience of living in poverty but the experience of living paycheck to paycheck.”
Fairy Pools is an excerpt from Patricia Lockwood’s upcoming novel, Will There...
Fairy Pools is an excerpt from Patricia Lockwood’s upcoming novel, Will There Ever Be Another You. “Arugula, she thought. I’m going to die alone in a Scottish castle because people have gotten too good for iceberg lettuce.”
NYC Restaurant Interior or Black & White Drawing?
Whoa, look at the interior of this new Japanese restaurant in NYC called Shirokuro — all of the surfaces (floors, chairs, walls, counters, etc.) are painted to look like a 2-dimensional drawing. From Colossal:
“Shirokuro” translates to “white-black.” The New York Times sh...
The Unbreaking team is starting to publish “clear and rigorously cited explanations...
The Unbreaking team is starting to publish “clear and rigorously cited explanations of what’s happening to our government and why it matters”. Their first three are on Medicaid, Transgender Healthcare, and Equality at Work.
Ed Smylie, Who Saved the Apollo 13 Crew With Duct Tape, Dies...
Ed Smylie, Who Saved the Apollo 13 Crew With Duct Tape, Dies at 95. “He and about 60 other engineers had less than two days to invent a solution using materials already onboard the spacecraft.”
NASA engineers fixed some thrusters on Voyager 1 from 15 billion miles...
NASA engineers fixed some thrusters on Voyager 1 from 15 billion miles (almost 1 light-day) away. They’d been broken for 20+ years and the fix was tricky. “If the heaters were still off when they fired, it could trigger a small explosion…” Amazing.
Justice Sotomayor’s Message to Lawyers: Stand Up, Fight and Win. “Those on...
Justice Sotomayor’s Message to Lawyers: Stand Up, Fight and Win. “Those on the high court often exercise caution in their choice of words. That’s why it was striking when she [delivered] a stern message to the legal profession: stand up for democracy…”
Fastest Rubik’s Cube Solve Ever
A group of three students at Purdue University have shattered the world record for the fastest Rubik’s Cube solve by robot — their bot solved the cube in just 0.103 seconds (103 milliseconds). As a comparison, the former record was 305 milliseconds and “a human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds”. As one of the students said, “So, before you even realize it’s moving, we’ve solved it.”
The world record for a human solve is 3.13 seconds by Max Park in 2023. (via we’re here
Tags: robots · Rubik’s Cube · video
“The bird in Charlie’s Angels is, I believe, the wrongest bird in...
“The bird in Charlie’s Angels is, I believe, the wrongest bird in the history of cinema — and one of the weirdest and most inexplicable flubs in any movie I can remember. It is elaborately, even ornately wrong.” (I was slack-jawed by the end of this.)
Yes, the Media’s Biden Coverage Was Flawed. But Its Reporting on Trump...
Yes, the Media’s Biden Coverage Was Flawed. But Its Reporting on Trump Was Far Worse. “Despite wishful thinking, there’s no such thing as ‘just the facts’ or complete neutrality, because editorial decisions and reporting choices always matter.”
Colin Jost & Michael Che give each other jokes to tell on...
Colin Jost & Michael Che give each other jokes to tell on SNL’s Weekend Update. Humans don’t have gaskets but I nearly popped something gasket-like while watching this I was laughing so hard. (Seriously, there was actual chest pain.)
Netflix has picked up Sesame Street after HBO/Max/HBO Max/LOL Max cancelled their...
Netflix has picked up Sesame Street after HBO/Max/HBO Max/LOL Max cancelled their financial support of the show.
Congratulations to Amazon on Its Partnership With the Saudi Prince Who Murdered...
Congratulations to Amazon on Its Partnership With the Saudi Prince Who Murdered Jeff Bezos’ Employee and Hacked His Phone. A profile in rapacity & cowardice.
Some Recent Tweaks (and Post Faving!)
Hey folks. I’ve been plugging away behind the scenes on some new features and while some of them aren’t ready to go yet, others are. I don’t know if Sunday evening is the best time to do this, but here’s what’s new on the site:
1. Faving posts. For the past several months, ...
The Internet Phone Book is “an annual publication for exploring the vast...
The Internet Phone Book is “an annual publication for exploring the vast poetic web, featuring essays, musings and a directory with the personal websites of hundreds of designers, developers, writers, curators, and educators.”
I Like Good Art and I Cannot Lie
I was reminded the other day of what a curated treasure trove of art 20x200 is. So I took a spin through their archive and pulled out some favorites. First up are these Always Choose Happy prints from Amos Kennedy (I also like his Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone prints):
...
A series of videos by Toby Hendy where she explains the PhD...
A series of videos by Toby Hendy where she explains the PhD theses of Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and others.