This question from Ta-Nehisi Coates in his recent conversation with Ezra Klein re: Charlie Kirk’s death jumped out at me: “But was silence not an option?” Too much attention-seeking and not enough meaning-making by our media & punditry.
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The Future Was Then: an Exhibition of Fascist Italian Posters
Speaking of Benito Mussolini and fascism, the excellent Poster House museum in NYC has a new exhibition on for the next few months: The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy. It features “some of the best posters produced during the worst period in modern Ita...
How to actually live like a local. “The thing is, nobody ever...
How to actually live like a local. “The thing is, nobody ever actually wants to ‘live like a local’ when they are traveling. Instead, they want to live like a romanticized, idealized version of a local that they have in their head…”
A long profile of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the WWW. “Tim...
A long profile of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the WWW. “Tim Berners-Lee may have the smallest fame-to-impact ratio of anyone living. Strangers hardly ever recognize his face; on “Jeopardy!,” his name usually goes for at least $1600.”
Mister Rogers Visits Sesame Street (1981)
On May 22, 1981, for the finale of the show’s 12th season, Mister Rogers visited Sesame Street. With apologies to the Avengers, this has to be the greatest crossover event in history.
In the episode, Rogers agrees to judge a race between Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus, a ...
New book from Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing, Empire of Pain): London...
New book from Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing, Empire of Pain): London Falling, “a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.”
Yes, this exactly: “The government is already shut down, and has been...
Yes, this exactly: “The government is already shut down, and has been for several months, as the Trump administration initiated an assault on this system of government.”
An oral history of Deltron 3030’s stupendous debut album....
Huh, the original version of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears fairy...
Huh, the original version of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears fairy tale is a bit different: “An impudent old woman enters the forest home of three anthropomorphic bachelor bears…”
A Tour of the New David Bowie Archive
A few days ago, I linked to a NY Times piece about the V&A’s 90,000-piece archive of David Bowie stuff — costumes, photos, drawings, lyrics, etc.
The David Bowie Centre is a working archive with new reading and study rooms. The archive contains over 80,000 items, inclu...
They’re bringing back Reading Rainbow, hosted by Mychal the Librarian....
Mussolini: Son Of The Century
Antonio Scurati’s 2018 “documentary novel” M: Son of the Century was a worldwide bestseller about the early political career of Benito Mussolini and the rise of fascism in post-WWI Italy. Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Darkest Hour) has adapted the book into an 8-...
Natalia Newsome is a 5’11” sophomore volleyball player for SMU; she’s got...
Natalia Newsome is a 5’11” sophomore volleyball player for SMU; she’s got a 40-inch vertical and can touch almost a foot above a regulation basketball hoop. It is bananas how high she rises when spiking the ball.
Bisa Butler, Hold Me Close
Bisa Butler makes quilted portraits and recently debuted a show with some of her newest work called Hold Me Close. From her artist’s statement:
This body of work is a visual response to how I am feeling as an African American woman living in 2025. We lived through COV...
Ismail Ibrahim worked as a fact checker for an unnamed magazine (it...
Ismail Ibrahim worked as a fact checker for an unnamed magazine (it was the New Yorker). “Friendly members of the editorial staff informed me that some of my older colleagues were calling me a terrorist sympathizer.”
In post-Soviet Russia, Sauron is good actually? “It became a story about...
In post-Soviet Russia, Sauron is good actually? “It became a story about hobbits, elves, dwarves, and men oppressing the not-so-evil Sauron and his nation of Mordor.”
M. Gessen: This Is the Feeling of Losing a Country. I Know...
M. Gessen: This Is the Feeling of Losing a Country. I Know It Well. “When your country strips you of rights and protections, it tells you that it no longer recognizes you. Other times, you realize that you no longer recognize your country.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones on the bipartisan tributes of Charlie Kirk & the mainstreaming...
Nikole Hannah-Jones on the bipartisan tributes of Charlie Kirk & the mainstreaming of extremist, bigoted speech. “You know, the Good Book, the Bible, says you judge a man as he lived, not as he died.”
An asteroid discovered in 2024 has a small chance of hitting the...
An asteroid discovered in 2024 has a small chance of hitting the moon in 2032. “Lunar ejecta could increase micrometeoroid debris flux in low Earth orbit up to 1000 times above background levels.” Scientists say we may be able to nuke it.
Taking the Day
Hello fronds and anemones. Tomorrow is my birthday so I am taking today off. I’ll see you back here on Monday.
But before I go: I pushed some changes to how videos work on the site (after a bunch of feedback). The default behavior is now: you click on a video and it plays. If you hold “b” (for lightbox) while clicking, the video will play in a widescreen lightbox. Also, the escape key will now close the video and the lightbox is better about resizing so that the bottom of the videos don’t get cut off (thanks to Christophe for the CSS fix).
I don’t think this is the forever solution (it doesn’t address folks who want to open the videos on YouTube or Vimeo in a new tab), but I wanted to get something out there while I figure out the rest.
Tags: kottke.org
For more than a century in the 18th & 19th centuries, an...
For more than a century in the 18th & 19th centuries, an edited version of Romeo & Juliet, with “a 67-line final conversation between Romeo and Juliet”, was more popular than Shakespeare’s original.
A four-year-old mystery finally solved: who was the awkwardly tall stranger at...
A four-year-old mystery finally solved: who was the awkwardly tall stranger at our wedding? “Who was the tall man in a dark suit, distinguished by the look of quiet mortification on his face?” Love the reason he was there.
Engineering Lego Cars to Climb Increasingly Tall Walls
I haven’t gotten my Brick Technology fix in awhile, so here’s a video featuring a series of more and more capable Lego vehicles climbing over taller and taller walls. As I have written before, here’s what makes these videos so compelling:
They’re not even really about Leg...
From Eater, a list of the 38 most essential & influential US...
From Eater, a list of the 38 most essential & influential US restaurants of the past 20 years. The list includes Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Via Carota, Husk, Alinea, Nong’s Khao Man Gai, Mission Chinese Food, and Gjelina.
How to Be a Good Literary Citizen (in Seven Easy Steps). “The...
How to Be a Good Literary Citizen (in Seven Easy Steps). “The most important rule of literary citizenship is to show up. Showing up can mean a number of things: attending events at your local bookstore or library, volunteering…”
The Black Hole That Could Rewrite Cosmology. Astronomers may have found a...
The Black Hole That Could Rewrite Cosmology. Astronomers may have found a primordial black hole, perhaps formed by quantum fluctuations during post-Big Bang inflation “before any stars had yet appeared”.
Former NBA star Reggie Miller’s neighbors got him hooked on mountain biking....
Former NBA star Reggie Miller’s neighbors got him hooked on mountain biking. “I was still in basketball shape. And they destroyed me. Being out there on the mountain bike, I was like ‘oh my God this is so fun!’ And that’s what got me hooked.”
The Music of the Everyday
Artist and composer Matthew Wilcock looks for patterns in the everyday and creates music from them. It’s easier to quickly watch an example than to explain:
Instantly thought of the video for Star Guitar by The Chemical Brothers, directed by Michel Gondry. They also see...
Zadie Smith: “In my experience, every kind of writing requires some kind...
Zadie Smith: “In my experience, every kind of writing requires some kind of self-soothing Jedi mind trick, and, when it comes to essay composition, the rectangle is mine.”
The Hummingbird Bike
Gooood lord, just look at this exquisite handmade bike, a collaboration between British design collective Tomato1 and Shinichi Konno of Cherubim.
- Karl Hyde and Rick Smith of the electronic group Underworld are Tomato co-founders. I found my way to this bike after watching Underworld’s recent Boiler Room set.’↩
Tags: bicycles · biking · design · Shinichi Konno · Tomato · Underworld