Ross Anderson writes about how scientific empires, from the ancient Sumerians to the Nazis to the Soviet Union in the 1950s, have crumbled (or been willfully dismantled by ideologues) and the clear signs that the same thing is happening here in the United States under the co...
How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic. “Evidence hasn’t emerged” to support that idea that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a laboratory. Here’s what the evidence says.
The Wirecutter’s list of the best canned cocktails. Very interested to hear people’s thoughts on this. None of these are available at my local liquor store, but we do have
Barr Hill’s canned G&T, which is the best canned cocktail I’ve ever tasted.
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
How to Leave Substack. “Unfortunately, Substack willingly platforms, and allows bad actors to monetize, hate speech and misinformation. You should probably leave Substack.”
“Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. It couldn’t have done it without the west’s help. The current hand-wringing by Keir Starmer and other western politicians is empty bluster. They knew what was happening all along.”
Photos: Starvation and Chaos in Gaza. “Israel’s blockade of most food and aid, along with distribution difficulties inside the Gaza Strip, have driven many of Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians to the brink of starvation.”
Covid safety measures drastically reduced flu deaths, but the fatality rate has risen sharply again. “90% of reported pediatric deaths this season have occurred in children who were not fully vaccinated against influenza”.
From Alan Taylor at The Atlantic, whose curatorial eye I’ve always admired, “a grab bag of curious and interesting historical images from the 20th century”, including photos of the world’s largest banjo, diving archery, death-defying photography, and underwater alligator racing.
Tags: Alan Taylor · photography
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
A perfect game in Tetris is defined as achieving the max score (999,999) in the least amount of time possible, meaning you need to score a bunch of Tetrises in a row (and nothing else) at the highest possible starting speed. A few years ago, a player used a tool to develop...
Note to self: spend some time checking out Tapestry, Iconfactory’s universal feed/social reader app. (Old heads will remember FriendFeed…)
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Substack sent a push alert promoting a Nazi blog. “Substack is primarily funded by Andreessen Horowitz, a firm whose founders have pushed extreme far right rhetoric.” There was *an actual swastika* in the push alert!
Trailer for Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse, a documentary film on the comic artist who created the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus.
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
I’m Giving My Kids a ’90s Summer — the 1890s. “Just like the 1890s and the 2020s, they’ll play with the unvaccinated kids down the street and drink raw milk until dark.” Dangerous factory jobs too!
I bought a 15” Apple Macbook Air M4 a few months ago and I love it. Of course, I loved my previous computer (an M1 Macbook Air) too, but bumping up the screen size and quality has been a game-changer for me. More speed and memory is great too for running virtual machines a...
Last week, I linked to a video mashup by Bill McClintock of several metal songs, saying “although the video was posted a day or two before Ozzy Osbourne died, it feels like a fitting tribute to one of metal’s true pioneers”. This morning, YouTube helpfully informed me that McClintock had since done a proper tribute in the form of a compilation of every Ozzy/Sabbath-related video mashup he’d ever done.
Rest in darkness, Ozzy. 🤘
Tags: Bill McClintock · music · Ozzy Osbourne · remix · video
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
XKCD: Kite Incident. “I don’t know. Lemme look up a map of where the jet stream goes.”
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Oooh, George Saunders’ next novel comes out in January. “Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of an epic, complicated life.”
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
An article about The Quintessential Urban Design of ‘Sesame Street’ with a bunch of photos? This is extremely up my alley. One of the show’s big influences when it began was Jane Jacobs’ landmark book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which informed the set des...
Science Is Winning the Tour de France. Data, nutrition, equipment, and training are propelling riders to performances that best the dopers of yesteryear. “In other words, Armstrong on dope then would be an also-ran next to Pogačar today.”
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
An analysis of every word that’s visible on NYC’s streets (from 18 years of Google Street View Data). “The data is astonishing; it feels like sifting through the city’s source code. For example, here’s all 111,290 matches for ‘pizza’, on a map.”
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Season 4 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is going to feature an episode where all the characters are Muppetized (with puppets created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop). I love this show.
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
A list of the top 100 “most innovative, influential, and informative” podcasts of all time. The list includes 99% Invisible, The Big Dig, Code Switch, Heavyweight, In Our Time, Radiolab, Slow Burn, and You’re Wrong About.
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Meet Jackson Goldstone. He’s 6 years old, lives in British Columbia, and is already ripping it up on his bike. Here’s a video of him taking the long way around on his way to kindergarten:
Wow, if he keeps riding and improving, I wonder how good this kid could be? Ok, I’m ...
Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear. “Israeli officials have, for months — indeed, since the start of the war — not only admitted to working to restrict the aid that makes its way to Gaza, but bragged about doing so.”
Another piece from Hitler scholar Timothy Ryback that is uncomfortably resonant today: What Happened When Hitler Took On Germany’s Central Banker.
Subscribe
Featured
