Physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on who should read books about physics. “The question of ‘What is space-time?’ doesn’t belong only to scientists. It belongs to everyone who has ever wondered about the bigger picture.”

Quaker principles line up quite well with modern parenting research. “Infused in all of these practices is the conviction that children are not lesser proto-adults, but fellow beings worthy of respect and agency regardless of their behavior.”

The Revolt Against the Girl Bosses… “Empowerment won’t fix the mess we’re in. Women know it now. They’re mad as hell. Anyone trying to sell them advice instead of a way to use that anger to build a better world for women deserves to be fired.”

The Night Witches were an all-female Soviet bomber regiment that attacked Nazi forces during World War II. An attack technique of the night bombers involved idling the engine near the target and gliding to the bomb-release point with only wind noise left to reveal thei...

25 Books That Capture This American Moment. They include Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Make the Impossible Possible by Bill Strickland, and Rabbit Redux by John Updike.

Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their Brains. “[Some] developers who use AI at work report that they feel like they are de-skilling themselves and losing their ability to do their jobs as well as they used to.”

On “rich guy has an opinion” journalism, i.e. “entire news stories dedicated to the otherwise unremarkable opinion of a rich person, or news stories that fold the opinions of rich people into their otherwise neutral coverage”.

This World History Timeline (2016) shows how nations, empires, and ruling groups shifted and evolved across the globe from 3000 BCE to the present. It takes a second to understand what you’re looking at — I thought it was a sort of stretched geographical map at first. Get your own here. The chart is based on Joseph Priestley’s A New Chart of History (1769): Priestley is best known for his co-discovery of oxygen. Tags: infoviz · Joseph Priestley · maps · timelines

New York’s Neue Galerie Will Merge With the Metropolitan Museum. “The merger will significantly bolster the Met’s holdings of early 20th-century Austrian and German art…”

The Neanderthal dentist: archaeologists found evidence of a decayed tooth being drilled out with a stone tools 59,000 years ago. “It’s now the oldest known evidence of dentistry — or any direct medical treatment.”

Sarah Rose (who is blind): “Meta glasses are absolute game changers for the blind community…they are completely revolutionary.” And: “It really is incredible to talk to your glasses and ask them what they see and have them tell you.”

One of the biggest assholes in the Trump regime is Russell Vought — and that’s really saying something; it’s a fierce competition. He’s the guy who said in 2023 that he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma”. ProPublica produced a video in Oct 2025 about how Vought is a...

Omg, Amazon Prime inserted an ad for Febreze in the midst of the most famous match cut in the history of cinema (in Kubrick’s 2001, when the ape-thrown bone turns into a spacecraft). I don’t know whether to laugh or cry (rn, it’s both).

A very good, very 2026 headline: Japan Runs Out of Robot Wolves in Fight Against Bears. “Starting at around $4,000, each bespoke Monster Wolf is now equipped with battery power, solar panels, and detection sensors.”

This is a smart piece about where we are in America right now, post-Citizen’s United, post-Voting Rights Amendment, post-Dobbs, mid-MAGA: The VRA Was the Nice Version (archive). First, let’s be honest about what the Voting Rights Act actually was, because everything here...

“I believe in myself. That’s why I commit.” A young skater doesn’t give up trying to land a three-stair kickflip.

Zendaya co-created a new collection for On, the Swiss fashion company, and Spike Jonze directed this cool promotional video starring the actress. I’ve always loved his aesthetic — along with Michel Gondry, no one makes these types of videos seem “hand-crafted” (in a way that is hard to articulate) more than Jonze.

Tags: Spike Jonze · video · Zendaya

The Guardian asked authors, critics, and academics to help compile a list of the best 100 novels of all time. They’ve done 41-100 so far. Selecting a book will show you who voted for it, then click on the voter’s name to see their other choices.

The 2026 National Recording Registry inductees were announced today. “The 2026 selections mark the first recordings by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé chosen for the registry.” Also: music from Weezer, The Go-Go’s, Chaka Khan, and Johnny Cash.

This Tiny Celestial Body Past Pluto Shouldn’t Have an Atmosphere—but Astronomers Say They May Have Detected One.

A Moment That Changed Me: I Saw My First Total Solar Eclipse — and Its Beauty Shook Me to My Core. “I knew the theory, but I was not ready for the experience.”

I loved this post by Kelsey Miller for Cup of Jo about “childlore”. “Remember typing ‘BOOBS’ on a calculator?!” someone will blurt. “Or — or that thing when you’re driving by a cemetery and you have to hold your breath?” I love hearing the tiny differences in details (so...

I Want to Live Like Costco People. “Embracing the Costco lifestyle means accepting the fact that I am, in many ways, becoming my father.”

Robin Sloan writes about the personalized, AI-written, promo emails he’s been getting recently (I have too). “The form is subtler than a one-sized-fits-all promo blast, but it sucks way worse, because it’s fundamentally dishonest.”

Palantir, the data analysis defense contractor co-founded by Peter Thiel, was named after the magical seeing stones from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. This video compares the ethos of the company with that of Tolkien. The palantiri of The Lord of the Rings ar...

Meet the Sad Wives of AI. “Princess Diana famously said there were three people in her marriage. For the sad wives of AI, the third is a chatbot.”

Just dropped: Foo Fighters’ Tiny Desk Concert. The setlist includes Learn to Fly, My Hero, and Everlong.

Two sequences from Dr. Strangelove done in Lego: Muffley’s call to Kissoff on the hotline in the war room and Dr. Strangelove’s increasingly erratic presentation of his plan to preserve humanity in a mine shaft.

This is really well done. (via bb)

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

Tags: Dr. Strangelove · Lego · movies · stop motion · timeless posts · video

Adam Serwer: “Violence serves an authoritarian agenda.”

A map of the regions of the US, as voted on by Reddit users. I think this seems mostly correct? One funny artifact: Washington state got some votes for “Northeast”, probably because ppl confused it with D.C. or with “Northwest”.