A History of Japan
Bill Wurtz’s History of Japan is the most entertaining history of anything I have ever seen.
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The trailer for Train Dreams, a film adaptation of the novella by Denis Johnson. “In select theaters November 7 and on Netflix November 21.”
kdo rolodex · a list of kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators
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Leslie Harpold (RIP)https://web.archive.org/web/20010216194511/http://www.hoopla.com/nav.html -
Kelli Andersonhttps://kellianderson.com -
Nextdrafthttps://nextdraft.com -
Claire Evanshttps://clairelevans.substack.com -
Brad Graham (RIP)https://web.archive.org/web/20020601183825/http://www.bradlands.com/weblog/index.shtml
refresh for more
Jamelle Bouie: “I’m gonna make a case to you that no matter what you’ve heard about the filibuster, you should want the filibuster to be sent to the ash bin of history.”
Jessica Guo: “If there’s something out there that calls to you, I hope you listen. Give yourself permission to do the thing.” Guo just finished hiking both the the Continental Divide Trail and the Great Divide Trail, solo. 3500+ miles!
The Age of Audio, a Documentary on the History of Podcasting
Here’s the trailer for The Age of Audio, a feature-length documentary about the invention and popularization of podcasting, from Adam Curry to Ronald Young Jr.
I ran across this movie via a clip on Instagram that explains how the word “podcast” came to be; here’s the same clip from YouTube:
Every time there’s a new technology, it always has to be named the dumbest thing.
Whoever came up with the name podcasting, like what a dumbass name.
It’s so funny cuz the podcast community gets very heated about these issues.
Whoever invented the word podcast, I’m going to punch him in the throat.
See also blogging. 🫠
For a More Creative Brain, Travel. “New sounds, smells, language, tastes, sensations, and sights spark different synapses in the brain and may have the potential to revitalize the mind.”
“China’s carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, analysis reveals, adding evidence to the hope that the world’s biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule.”
High Horse: The Black Cowboy
High Horse: The Black Cowboy is a three-part documentary about the culture of Black cowboys & cowgirls and their erasure from the history of the western United States.
From executive producer Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw Productions, the pop culture and historical documentary confronts and reclaims the Wild West while revealing the story of the Black cowboy — a history that has largely been untold. It rides into the forgotten corners of history, shattering myths and celebrating the Black cowboys, farmers, jockeys, musicians, and rodeo champions who built the West — and now takes back their place in the saddle, sitting high atop the horse.
High Horse: The Black Cowboy starts streaming Nov 20th on Peacock.
Going to Art Galleries Can Improve Wellbeing. “Enjoying original works of art in a gallery can relieve stress, reduce the risk of heart disease and boost your immune system, according to the first study of its kind.”
A zoomable, fully searchable archive of every single page of every single issue of BYTE magazine from 1975-1998. “I hope seeing everything in single, searchable place offers a unique perspective.”
Notes on Harold Brodkey’s 1992 essay Notes on American Fascism, which was dismissed at the time but now seems prescient.
Two Hours of Wellness
A two-hour version of the music played in the Wellness Center in Severance. “Please try to enjoy each listening session equally.” See also Severance: Music To Refine To.
✅ Added to my Underscore collection.
A Journey to Vietnam to Uncover the Origins of Phở. “If you want to find the origins, you must go to Nam Ðịnh province and a village called Vân Cù.”
17-Year-Old Biggie Smalls Freestyling
From Freestyle: The Art of the Rhyme, a short clip of a 17-year-old Christopher Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls, aka The Notorious B.I.G.) freestyle rapping on a street corner in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn in 1989.
It’s all there…the talent, the confidence, the skills. Compare with a 17-year-old LL Cool J rapping in a Maine gymnasium in 1985. (via ★interesting)
Update: Biggie was rapping on Bedford Ave between Quincy St and Lexington Ave in Bed-Stuy. Check it out on Google Maps. (thx, debbie)
Coulou’s vinyl cafe (no. 2). “Even though we’re traveling from jazz to funk to middle eastern and Indonesian 70s disco then hip hop, then folk and even more genres, to me this felt like a cool experience of finding the throughline in music…”
“I wish we could ignore Bill Gates on the climate crisis. But he’s a billionaire, so we can’t,” says George Monbiot. “His [recent climate] essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump.”
What Mamdani Learned from His Mother’s Films. “How the ethics of the acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair echo in her son’s politics.”
A Hypnotic Display of Robots Making Tiny Springs
A beautifully shot HD video of machines manufacturing springs and other wire gizmos. I love how all the tools take turns and work together to make the widgets. Imagine the chatter amongst the tools:
“Ok, thanks, my turn.”
“Here, hold this while I turn it. Alright, we’re out.”
“Lemme just bend that a little for you.”
“Outta the way, I just gotta twist this for a sec.”
(via @pieratt, who says to substitute Steve Reich for the provided music)
“A trio of photographers in New Zealand have captured images of ‘red sprites’, or red lightning, one of the rarest light phenomena in the world, in which luminous crimson flashes appear in the sky.”
“Members of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra playing Tango Jalousie while eating the worlds hottest chili peppers” (ghost peppers, Carolina Reapers). This is what elite professionalism looks like.
I Visited Every Country in the World Without Flying. Here Are Eight Things I Learned. “What you want and what you need are not the same thing.”
Mushrooms Playing Music
Bionic and the Wires connects sensors to plants and fungi to help them play music.
The attached sensors measure bio-electrical fluctuations in the mushroom. The fluctuations are converted into signals that control the robotic arms. The keyboard is playing a synth in Ableton Live.
What are the chances it’s just saying “uh, can you get these things off of me?” Top YouTube comment tho: “Play that fungi music.” (thx, pascal)
New exhibition at the British Library in London: Secret Maps. “Some of the maps on display reveal hidden landscapes, offering insight into places long forgotten or erased from official histories. Others are purposefully deceptive…”
Royal Family is a daily game where you have to position six chess pieces on a board so that none of the pieces attack each other and there’s only a single piece in each marked zone.
TIL: “Key man risk refers to the potential threat a company faces when a crucial employee, often a key executive or expert, is no longer available.” I think KDO has key person risk, although maybe I overestimate my VORP.
Cole Escola (Oh, Mary!) is writing the screenplay for a Miss Piggy movie. Jennifer Lawrence & Emma Stone are producing. (Crossing my fingers for a Pigs in Space scene…)
The Daft Punk Experience in Fortnite
Speaking of Daft Punk, did you know they released some new music recently? Ok well, that’s not quiiiite true, but in late September, Epic launched the Daft Punk Experience in Fortnite and IMO it’s a) extremely cool, nd b) should be considered a part of the group’s official discography.
For a taste of what it’s like, here’s the seven-minute intro to the experience:
I watched this live when it launched, on a big TV and with the sound turned up, and it was awesome. Again, no new music, but definitely a new music video experience.
During the intro, you can control your player slightly but the game mostly moves you through it. After you’re inside the pyramid though, there’s a lot to do. The main event is a concert playing some of the songs from their Alive 2007 tour; here’s what that looks like from start to finish (33 min):
You can move freely around and dance, including with other players who are in the pyramid with you. During some songs, you can bounce really high on the dance floor or fly around the room.
Off of the main pyramid are four smaller interactive rooms (in order of coolness):
- Dream Chamber Studios: You can choose from almost two dozen Daft Punk songs and mix them together, adjust tempos, etc. This room alone makes the whole experience worthwhile…it’s the easiest way to create DP remixes.
- Around the World. You and up to three other players work to recreate and then customize the iconic Around the World music video. Oh, and you’re all Lego characters.
- Daft Club: Dance to music from Random Access Memories. (You can see the full Daft Club sequence in the latter part of this video.)
- Robot Rock Arena: You and some teammates join forces to defeat robots using musical weapons.
In all, that’s six new interactive audiovisual experiences from Daft Punk, featuring 31 songs from their discography. It’s huge.
The easiest way to see/experience all of this is to play the game…the Daft Punk Experience is still playable afaik. Fortnite is a free download and the DPE is free as well. If you’re a Daft Punk fan, it’s worth checking out for sure.
Space Type Generator is “a kinetic type generator” that’s a hell of a lot of fun to mess with.
Low Skilled Workers Are a Myth. “[Minimum wage jobs] are not low-skill. They simply require different skills, ones that not just anyone possesses.”
How Marlon Brando Changed Acting
In his most recent video, Evan Puschak takes a close look at Marlon Brando’s face and gestures in a scene from On the Waterfront to explain how Brando changed film forever.
And this is what makes Brando a genius: when his eyes betray his words. His voice says, “What do you really care?” But his eyes say, “Please care. Please show me that you care.”
Welp, time to watch On the Waterfront, I guess.
Earth’s got a new moon! (Sort of.) “This asteroid is part of an elite cosmic club which acts like moons but aren’t.” If asteroid, why moon acting?
Aiming for Fullness
After completing another long solo walk, Craig Mod wrote about fullness:
This is why I always say: Aim for fullness if you want happiness. If the creator itself came down from the sky at the end of a big walking and photographing and writing day and asked: Did ya do all ya could today? I’d be able to answer, without hesitation, heck yes. I suspect we’re “programmed” to feel good about this, and this is, fundamentally, how we emerged from the muck, how we walked out of Africa, how we engineered the miraculous (and horrific) bits of modern humanity. Fullness feels good because DNA knows fullness pushes us ever “forward” (to better, more efficient, more fail-safe means of replication).
I’d go so far to say that “full days” is one of the wells from which we derive our humanity.
The modern smartphone, laden with the corporate ecosystem pulsing underneath its screen, robs us of this feeling, conspires to keep us from “true” fullness. The swiping, the news cycles, the screaming, the idiocy — if anything destroys a muse, it’s this. If anything keeps you locked into a fetid loop of looking, looking, and looking once more at the train wreck, it’s this. I find it impossible to feel fullness, even in the slightest, after having spent just a bit of a day in the thralls of the algorithms.
The smartphone eradicates “space” in the mind. With that psychic loss of space, grace becomes impossible. You see the knock-on effects of this rippling out across the world politically.
I haven’t done anything as extreme as Craig over the past few weeks I’ve been in Japan, but I have been spending more time offline, out in the world, walking & biking around, exploring, being curious, and, yeah, I feel more full and less anxious/depressed/_______. It feels really good.
Lego is considering making this fan-created Daft Punk set into an official set. YES PLEASE.
Australia has so much solar that it’s offering everyone free electricity. “The program would require electricity retailers to provide free electricity to everyone for at least three hours a day…”
Macbook Air M4s Are on Sale Again
Apple Macbook Air M4s are on sale again, somehow even cheaper than over the summer. The 13-inch base model is $749 (25% off) while this 15-inch one is $1,149.00 (-18% off). There are other configurations (more/less RAM/HD) too if you click through. Here’s what I wrote a few months ago about the 13-inch base model when it was $50 more:
This is the 13-inch base model and $800 is an absurdly low price for so much computer, especially in the age of the mad king’s tariff scheme.
I have the 15-inch M4 (typing on it now!) and I could not be happier with it. I had a 13-inch M1 Air before that and getting the faster M4 Air with a larger screen has changed where and I how I work, allowing me to be away from my desk a lot more (e.g. at the Tokyo coffee shop I’m sitting in now) but still be productive.
Researchers created a roof paint (a “nano-engineered polymer coating”) “that not only reflects up to 97% of the sun’s rays, but also passively collects water”. And kept the interior of the building 6°C (~11°F) cooler.
New book just out: The Cory Arcangel Hack. “This book explores three dominant arrangements in Arcangel’s work — the flow-break hack, the flow-remix hack, and the flow-parody hack…”
There are some internet projects for which no one is clamoring, but when completed produce a masterpiece of creativity. This Rollercoaster Tycoon video tying the tracks to Defying Gravity (from Wicked) is one such masterpiece.
This Bruce Lee Stamp Kicks Ass!
Speaking of new stamps, these Bruce Lee stamps are pretty great too:
USPS Lowrider Stamps
The US Postal Service released a sneak peek at some of the stamps they’re going to release in 2026. Among them are these lowrider stamps:
Five models grace the stamps: a blue 1946 Chevrolet Fleetline named Let the Good Times Roll/Soy Como Soy; a blue 1958 Chevrolet Impala named Eight Figures; a red 1963 Impala named El Rey; an orange 1964 Impala named the Golden Rose; and a green 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme named Pocket Change. The Gothic-style typography and the pinstriping on the stamps and pane evoke the detailed decoration that is a hallmark of the most celebrated lowrider cars.
Thing I was not expecting: a 4-star review of Predator: Badlands from Matt Zoller Seitz; he calls it “an exceptional sci-fi action thriller with memorable characters, beautiful and terrifying animals (and plants), a structurally airtight script…”
France enshrines need for consent into rape law in wake of Gisèle Pelicot case. The bill states that consent must be “free and informed, specific, prior and revocable”.
Edith Zimmerman: How I Broke My Drinking Habit. “How do you fill your time after deciding to get sober?” See also an extended convo on the How to Be a Better Human podcast.
Berghain by Rosalía, feat. Björk & Yves Tumor
I don’t even know what this is — classical pop? surrealist orchestral? — but it goes hard and is kind of fantastic. Wow. A few comments from YouTube:
This is the most insane lead single from a pop artist I’ve ever come across! I’m absolutely stunned.
The only criticism I’m going to make is that the song should last at least 8 minutes.
I feel this needs to replace whatever was stolen from that museum in France.
Berghain by Rosalía is available to stream or buy on many of the usual platforms.
America’s Dumbest Billionaires Fail to Stop Zohran Mamdani. “…a bunch of rich guys who have been comically out of touch with normal people for many decades, and more recently have blowtorched their brains into a smoking pile of ash on Twitter…”
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