A generator for VHS slipcovers, cassette tape inserts, CD labels & inserts. You can paste in Spotify URLs, search for movies, etc. Really cool and fun.
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
The Delta Air Lines Seatback Chess Bot Will Destroy You
The chess program available on Delta Air Lines’ seatback screens is an ELO monster that can beat almost all opponents on easy mode. This guy used a series of increasingly powerful bots to see just how good the Delta chess bot is. Can it beat a grandmaster-level bot? (via clive thompson)
What does it feel like to be struck by lightning? “Some have to relearn simple things, things they’ve done their whole life — how to read, how to sing, how to ride a bike.”
KDO Rolodex a list of kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators
refresh
see full listThe Fascinating Engineering of the Titanic: How the Great Ocean Liner Was Built. “Issues of the journal The Engineer published between 1909 and 1911 contain detailed photographs of the construction of both the Titanic and Olympic…”
Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years. “Ms. Murguia and another woman, Debra Rojas, say that Mr. Chavez sexually abused them for years when they were girls, from around 1972 to 1977.”
Riding the Subway to Coney Island in 1987
This is a mindblowing time capsule of ordinary life: video of a group of friends taking the NYC subway to Coney Island in 1987. Because it was before mobile phones, they had to arrange to meet one of the group members in the first car of the train along the way.
The film was shot by Nelson Sullivan, a videographer who recorded the arts, music, and LGBTQ+ communities in NYC in this same ur-vlogging style.
Viewed today, Sullivan’s video record of his life represents a pre-Internet form of vlogging, while his frequently used technique of turning the camera to face himself clearly anticipates the modern selfie.
You can watch hundreds more of Sullivan’s films on YouTube, including a trip to McDonald’s (the most popular video on the channel), several RuPaul videos, a holiday party at Michael Alig & DJ Keoki’s apartment, and Keith Haring’s NYE party. Sullivan sadly died of a presumed heart attack two years later at the age of 41. (thx, caroline)
Jamelle Bouie says the SAVE Act will take us back to Jim Crow South: “a one-party state, backed by the threat of violence, where the law ensures that most people cannot hope for meaningful political representation.”
“This is an interactive story about In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) told from two perspectives: Parent and Child. Select one to continue.”
The Mysterious Redditor Who’s Changing the Way We Do Laundry. “Most of the world uses powdered laundry detergent, which allows for more enzyme flexibility; Americans generally prefer liquid, which doesn’t always contain these precious enzymes.”
Vertical Societies
Am I a sucker for these kinds of ultra-detailed images by Richard Nadler because I am a fan of Richard Scarry books and Wes Anderson movies or am I a fan of Scarry & Anderson because I’m a sucker for these kinds of ultra-detailed images? (Or is it because I’m aphantasic and require external imagery for this level of detail?)
See also Mark Alan Stamaty’s NYC Illustrations and Infinite Illustrations.
Twin adventurers are cleverly testing modern vs. historic gear. “If they went on an expedition, and Ross wore modern kit while Hugo wore historic replicas, any difference in performance…could be attributed solely to the gear, not genetics.”
The teaser trailer for Dune: Part Three. I am nonplussed by this trailer, both in the traditional and modern senses.
Extreme Macro Photos of Insect Wings. Hundreds of images are stacked to create a deep depth of field that’s impossible to do optically, ensuring everything is in focus.
Planets and Bright Stars ID Chart
I love this planet & stars chart from XKCD because it’s technically correct but also completely useless.
Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity. “You can’t write a compelling narrative about the thing you didn’t build. Nobody gets promoted for the complexity they avoided.”
Battery prices continue to fall. “Lithium-ion battery prices don’t get constantly discussed the way crude is, but these declines add up to a decisive shift that will determine the energy landscape of the next decade.”
“The US is hurtling towards autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey”. The Varieties of Democracy Institute: “Our data on the USA goes back to 1789. What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever…”
Gullible, Cynical America. “They’ll insist that you can’t trust scientists, because they’re part of the conspiracy. The podcaster selling you his special creatine gummies, though? He seems trustworthy.”
“In today’s new Gilded Age, the 900-plus billionaires in the US have far too much influence over our elections, our economy, our government policies and our news media, and it’s urgent for Americans to create a movement to curb their power…”
The Holocaust History Podcast: “In this episode, I talk with Andrea Pitzer about the long, global history of the concentration camp and its evolution over time. We talk about what the definition is, what qualifies something as a concentration camp…”
The Louvre has the Mona Lisa. Here’s what other institutions consider their Mona Lisas. For instance: the National Portrait Gallery in London has a portrait of William Shakespeare and MoMA has the Gold Marilyn Monroe.
The 20 Best Food Scenes in Movies. Ratatouille, Big Night, When Harry Met Sally, Tampopo, etc. What’s missing?
Tiny Puppet Sound
Would you like to watch a puppet DJ a chill set of French house music in a cool workplace meeting space? Trick question because of course you would. This went right into my Underscore collection. (via undermanager)
“Pay enough, and you can jump to the front of the queue for almost anything.” Concierge Nation: Welcome to White-Glove America. “Exclusivity — even if it comes at the cost of social cohesion — is the business model.”
“This Is Not The Computer For You”
Maybe it’s because I’m a little bit allergic to hype, but I just now got around to reading this review of the Macbook Neo by Sam Henri Gold that absolutely everyone has been recommending and, well, this might be the best product review ever written?
The consensus is reasonable: $599, A18 Pro, 8GB RAM, stripped-down I/O. A Chromebook killer, a first laptop, a sensible machine for sensible tasks. “If you are thinking about Xcode or Final Cut, this is not the computer for you.” The people saying this are not wrong. It is also not the point.
Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. You learn what computing actually costs by paying too much of it on hardware that can barely afford it.
Gold captures something here about every single person I’ve ever known who fell in love with computers as a kid in the 70s, 80s, and 90s experienced — the sense of tremendous possibility represented by these machines paired with the glorious struggle to push them beyond their limits. For many of us, it was our first glimpse of infinity — as long as your curiosity & obsession remained, you could keep going forever.
Unrelatedly-ish, it is also really interesting that Apple’s answer to the AI gold rush is a $499 laptop (Neo price w/ educational discount). I don’t know if it suggests that the multi-trillion dollar, multinational corporation that Apple has become retains some institutional memory of what computing used to mean to people, but it’s something.
The Trump regime is deliberately destroying the scientific community in the US. “This is not efficiency. This is not streamlining. This is the systematic elimination of scientific stewardship at the world’s largest biomedical research funder.”
KDO: 28 Years Later…
It’s getting a little ridiculous, isn’t it? 28 years of kottke.org, as of today. Older than Google. Older than The Matrix. Older than Christopher Nolan’s feature film career. Older than Elle Fanning. Older than Kurt Cobain when he died. 47,300 posts since March 14, 1998. It might outlast American democracy.
KDO retains its old school vibe but with some new tricks. Friends and readers have remarked recently that I seem to be having fun with the site again and that’s true. Still excited by the possibilities of what the site could become. I hope you’ve been enjoying it.
I’d like to once again thank KDO members for supporting the site — I never get tired of the member thanking. They each pay a few dollars a month to keep the site free to read for everyone, regardless of income, something I feel very strongly about in this era of paywalled media. As Hamilton Nolan has noted — his site operates on the same principle — sites/newsletters like these have progressive funding structures, where people’s contributions are based on their ability to pay to help keep the site available to all. If you’d like to help support the site in this mission, you can check out your membership options here. ✌️
P.S. I hope you enjoy the birthday logo and fireworks — they’ll be around until Monday.
For the first time in awhile, copies of two lost episodes of classic Doctor Who have been discovered. Both are from the William Hartnell era and feature the Daleks.
The Great Friendship Flattening. “I amass bits of knowledge about my loved ones — my sister’s boyfriend published a poem; my friend left her job — as a spectator, in the same way that I might learn about an influencer’s favorite books…”
Why Movies Just Don’t Feel “Real” Anymore. “A deep dive into the first principles of movie immersion: on perceptual realism, indexicality, haptic visuality, and cinematic qualia.”
10 Hours of Ambient Freezer Drone
Some genius has taken an audio sample of the hum of a grocery store freezer, cleaned it up, and extended it into a 10-hour video. The freezer’s hum, variously compared to Brian Eno’s music and “an electrical gong bath”, went viral enough to warrant an article in the Guardian last month:
“Anyone noticed how nice the freezers sound in the eccy road co-op?” someone wrote on the Sheffield Reddit page in January. “It’s like all the fans have been carefully tuned to the calmest droning chord ever, it’s like being in an electrical gong bath.”
Earlier this week, another Redditor shared a video of the freezers in all their aural glory, later earning a huge second audience when reposted to X. A debate ensued. Was it tuned to C# major? Could you hear the opening of Nothing Compares 2 U somewhere in the electronic hum? “I think it’s developed a slight discordant edge over the last couple of months,” one Reddit user wrote. “It’s ageing like fine wine.”
Recommendations of 25 medieval manuscripts to explore online. “Almost every institution with a significant collection of medieval manuscripts digitizes many of their most significant works and makes them freely accessible online.”
The Z9GT model EV from China’s BYD “can be 70 percent charged in five minutes and be almost full in 12 minutes, even in temperatures as low as -30° C” and “has a range of up to 800 km” (~500 miles). The US is sooooo far behind here.
It’s an Open Thread
Since the comments are back open and folks here can now share a little about themselves with each other, I thought I’d open this post up for whatever you guys want to chat about. What are you particularly interested in these days? Working on any fun projects? Got a new hobby? What’s the best thing you’ve seen this week? What’s something you’re struggling with?
Craig Mod is software bonkers. “I’m software bonkers: I can’t stop thinking about software. And I can’t stop building software.”
Balcony solar finally seems to be taking off in the US. “As of Wednesday, Democratic and Republican lawmakers in 28 states and Washington, D.C., have announced their own legislation to make these systems permissible.”
Yet another graph showing that when you control for quality of life (hours/week worked) and wealth inequality, American exceptionalism disappears.
Potoooooooo was an 18th-century British racehorse whose name was pronounced like “Potatoes” (Pot-eight-Os).
“Presolar grains” (microscopic crystals that are older than the Sun) harvested from meteorites may help determine how our solar system was formed.
Lego Sets Remixed
Bradley Barber remixes Lego sets into other things, e.g. the Millennium Falcon from Back to the Future DeLorean parts, an AT-AT into the USS Enterprise, and a Pirates of the Caribbean ship from the parts of a Lego bonsai tree set.
He is not alone in this pursuit; you can find tens of thousands of custom Lego designs at Rebrickable, including dozens of Barber’s designs.
This is great: Channel Surfer is “a retro TV guide that turns YouTube into live cable TV. Each channel plays videos on a deterministic schedule — like real TV, you tune in mid-show.”
coulou’s vinyl cafe (no. 4) - rainy day selections. “what’s up lovely humans, super excited to be sharing this new vinyl sessssion with you all.”
The Void Would Very Much Like You to Stop Screaming Into It. “I think we can both admit at this point that the screaming isn’t working. The screaming isn’t making you feel any better.”
Clive Thompson wrote about coding with AI agents. “Software developers point out that coding has a unique quality: They can tether their A.I.s to reality, because they can demand the agents test the code to see if it runs correctly.”
A Miraculous Escape
A pair of hounds chase a hare across a snowy plain — will it get away? In Mario Kart terms, the dogs have the weight and max speed advantage while the hare is maxed out in acceleration, handling, and traction.
“We took an ancient vice…put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?” I *hate* the extent to which gambling has infested everything; it’s not going to end well.
Ballot Guessr: “GeoGuessr for politics. See a Google Street View image, guess how the county voted in the 2024 presidential election.” (633/1000 on my first try…but I borked one of the guesses bc I forgot there was a time limit. 🙃)
AI Is Rewiring How the World’s Best Go Players Think. “Players now train to replicate AI’s moves as closely as they can rather than inventing their own, even when the machine’s thinking remains mysterious to them.”
Socials & More