The frontier Anthropic & OpenAI models are only ~4 months ahead of open models — at 5x the price. “Most organizations should ideally be using open models as the default for the majority of their work, according to [a report] from Mozilla…”
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Last year in Ireland, a bouncy castle infested with a “hypervirulent, multidrug-resistant pathogen” infected almost 50 children. Reality: always weirder than the weirdest sci-fi.
Naomi Klein: “Extreme wealth has a deranging effect. It turns you into a supremacist.” Klein’s new book, End Times Fascism, written with Astra Taylor, is out today.
KDO Rolodex a list of kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators
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see full listTaryn Simon’s Father Country I Do Love You
Father Country I Do Love You sounds like a doozy of a new exhibition from photographer Taryn Simon. The project focuses on the life and work of an unnamed, retired FBI agent. From the NY Times: She Spent Years on a Giant Project About One Man. The Result Is Monumental.
As it turned out, his work had touched many catastrophes of American life — the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, for example, which the agent helped to inspect, or the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11, when the agent was in charge of sifting debris in the immediate aftermath — and also lesser-known events, historical footnotes that were nonetheless telling. What interested Simon were not just the events themselves, but also their reverberations, far beyond any immediate blast radius. What happened, for instance, to the physical ruins from the TWA crash? What became of the woman who tried to take a photograph of the smoldering Pentagon, whose film the F.B.I. agent had confiscated? Or to the Iraqi diplomat who ran the country’s U.S. embassy during the Persian Gulf war, whom the agent had monitored? Or to the child of a couple accused of being Russian spies, whose house the agent had raided?
The piece describes the project, which includes over 1000 photographs and other material, as “a Great American Novel in visual form” and “huge and fractal: biography as butterfly effect”, which sounds fascinating.
Even Jodie Foster makes an appearance; this particular agent had trained Foster at the FBI Academy in Quantico as preparation for her role as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.
Father Country I Do Love You debuts at the Guggenheim in NYC on September 18 and runs through March 14, 2027.
The Tube Computer was recently constructed from hundreds of 1950s vacuum tubes sourced from Eastern Europe. “The Tube Computer has a pleasant homely aroma from the hundreds of double triodes, all quietly burning off their dust.” It heats the room too.
Tycho’s Burning Man Sunrise Set for 2026
For the 93rd year in a row or something like that I didn’t check the math, Tycho has released his sunrise set from Burning Man. I am not a Burning Man person but I always enjoy this set.
See also a playlist of every 2026 Burning Man set on Soundcloud, currently 147 tracks and some 252 hours of music. (via @mikeakers.bsky.social)
Alex Gibney’s documentary reveals that Elon Musk has always been a racist, sexist fraud. “Musk’s ex-wife Justine, whom he married in 2000 and divorced in 2008, says the man the world began to see in 2020 was the one she’d always known.”
With a new installment every seven years since 1964, the Seven Up series has followed a group of 14 British schoolchildren from adolescence to adulthood. The final installment, 70 Up, directed by Asif Kapadia (Senna, Amy), is out this week.
The Spice Drawer
Over the past six months (leisurely) and in the past three weeks (intensely), I’ve cleaned out and packed up my entire house where I’ve been living for the past 10 years. I went through every bit and bob of what I owned and either:
- gave it away (fiddle leaf fig, grill, chairs, stuffed animals,1 blender, rugs)
- sold it (car, coffee table, lamp, iPad)
- put it into storage (art, mementos, chairs)
- took it with me (very little, mostly clothes & computing things)
Parting with my possessions was surprisingly easy. I’d been planning this move for a while now and had time to get used to the idea and say my farewells. And the concept of having a bunch of stuff, 95% of which I never used or thought about or even remembered owning, was really starting to make me itch. So out it went; I felt lighter with each thing that exited the house.
But I wasn’t expecting the spice drawer.
I was working my way through the kitchen when I opened the drawer with all of my spices and baking supplies. A pause. What do I do with these? I picked up a jar of smoked paprika and was suddenly flung back in time to 12 years ago. I remember exactly where I bought that paprika and why.
I’d recently moved into my own apartment after separating from my wife and was still trying to figure out how my new household was going to work. My kids came over a few times a week; what the hell were we going to eat for dinner? I was competent but not confident in the kitchen; Meg is a great cook and I couldn’t match her effort or output. I had to come up with my own meals that a) I could cook, b) the kids would actually eat, and c) were somewhat healthy.
One of the recipes I found was for smoky corn chowder, so I headed to the grocery store on 23rd St. to buy ingredients, including a jar of smoked paprika. The kids loved the corn chowder and it became a favorite of ours — something that they only ate over at Dad’s house.
Over the years, the kids and I amassed a small collection of recipes we loved and often had at my house — caldo verde, lasagne, buttermilk pancakes, taco salad, apple pie, and others — and the spices to cook them: oregano, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, basil, baking soda, Ortega Taco Seasoning Mix 😂. I pulled each spice container out of the drawer and tried to remember what I’d cooked with it, what dishes it was in that we’d eaten together. I opened the tops to sniff some of the spices and was more strongly pulled back into those times when my kids were small and I was worried — no, I was terrified — about not being up to the task of filling their tummies, minds, and souls with the good stuff on my watch.
Man, so much of our time together revolved around food. The spice drawer hit me hard because it was a powerful olfactory reminder not only of the delicious meals we’d shared but also of my insecurity around parenting, how I slowly gained confidence, and how I eventually found freedom & pride in what I was able to offer my kids.
In the end, I had to throw all the spices out — no takers for half-used, decade-old containers of parsley flakes or jars of cumin — but I’ll always remember cleaning out that drawer and all of the memories it stirred up. Proust had his madeleines, but I doubt I’ll ever pass by a jar of smoked paprika in the supermarket or in someone’s spice drawer without feeling all of it all over again.
I gave away a bunch of miscellaneous stuffed animals that my kids had accumulated over the years — not the beloved ones — and I was sitting working on my deck when a woman showed up to collect them. “Are you the stuffed animal guy?” she called to me. “Yes,” I said, “and I don’t think I’ve been referred to like that before.” In telling this story to others, she became “the stuffed animal lady”. Everything is relative. ↩
A declaration signed by 25 Fields medalists: “The goals of the AI companies and the goals of the mathematical community are severely misaligned.”
The Great Dude Battles of the 1880s
E. Berry Wall was a dude. But not just any dude. In 1888, he was declared “King of the Dudes” in a competition against another gentleman, one Robert Hilliard.
Wall became famous after meeting Blakely Hall, a reporter hungry for good copy. Thereafter, every week or so, Hall’s articles publicizing Wall’s adventures in clothing appeared in newspapers across the country. Then one of Hall’s competitors set up a rival, actor Robert “Bob” Hilliard, another flashy dresser. Thus began the Battle of the Dudes, in which each sought to eclipse the other in sartorial extremes. According to the Times, Wall finally won when, during the Great Blizzard of 1888, he strode into the Hoffman House bar clad in gleaming boots of black patent leather that went to his hips. (Nonetheless, some social historians claim Hilliard won with the high boots, supposedly part of his Western gambler’s costume from a play in which he was then appearing).
But it was Wall who won a later sartorial marathon:
Wall won another contest in Saratoga when daredevil financier John “Bet-A-Million” Gates wagered that he could not wear 40 changes of clothes between breakfast and dinner. On the appointed day, Wall repeatedly appeared at the racetrack in one flashy ensemble after another until, exhausted but victorious, he at last entered the ballroom of the United States Hotel in faultless evening attire to wild applause.
I wonder how Wall would have done against the likes of Kanye and his entourage? (via @mrgan)
Note: Illustration by Chris Piascik.
From a curator at the Getty, ratings of every “framed picture” emoji. “A total rejection of nature and reality. Why is the horizon rounded? Has this artist seen planet earth before?”
The 2026 winners of the Ig Nobel Prize include papers on “a more precise definition of kissing”, “An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing”, and the discovery “that milk proteins from cockroaches pack 3X as much energy as milk proteins from cows”.
Rocky Sleep, You Watch, Question?
Project Hail Mary is already on my list of movies that I can just throw on in the backround while I do a bit of work or puttering around. (Not sure whether that’s an endorsement or not…I like the movie!) Anyhoo, if you get tired of the movie, you can watch Rocky sleep for 2+ hours with the PHM soundtrack playing in the background.
Now open for business in Nyack, NY: Busman’s Holiday, a stationary store run by (former?) graphic designer Sam Potts, who announced the shop back in March in a KDO open thread. Lots of nice touches here, including a used pencil exchanger.
Ok wait, the NES Tetris world record is now 40.26 million??! It took 2 hours and 20 minutes and the previous record was 29 million. At level 255, you hit “rebirth” and the pieces slow down to level 0 speeds again. Totally bonkers.
A Deep Dive Into the Full Bayeux Tapestry Story
From Deep Down History, an entertaining hour-long explainer video on the Bayeux Tapestry.
This video tells the Tapestry’s story in full, using Charles Stothard’s early colour reproduction, presented here as a seamless scroll for the first time. We follow Harold Godwinson’s fateful journey from Edward the Confessor’s court to Normandy, his later seizure of the Crown, and William the Conqueror’s invasion. Beyond its political messaging, the Tapestry is also bursting with medieval history, including jokes, fascinating technical details, and a warning for those who break their promises…
Completed within a decade or two of the events which it depicts, the tapestry is back in the news & public consciousness because it’s back in England for the first time since it was made and on display at the British Museum.
I’ve linked to Summoning Salt’s videos before (they make some of the best video game explainer videos out there — hell, some of the best YT videos period) and here’s their newest one: The Tournament That Changed Tetris Forever.
In 1992, Canada declared a moratorium on Northern cod fishing due to overfishing. It was devastating for Newfoundlanders. This year, for the first time since then, the govt has “upgraded the cod stock’s status from ‘critical’ to ‘healthy’”.
Two-Hour Mix of the Jazz in Haruki Murakami Novels
From NTS, this is a two-hour mix of jazz music featured in the books of Haruki Murakami.
‘Somewhere along the line Coltrane’s soprano sax runs out of steam. Now it’s McCoy Tyner’s piano solo I hear, the left hand carving out a repetitious rhythm and the right layering on thick, forbidding chords. Like some mythic scene, the music portrays somebody’s — a nameless, faceless somebody’s — dim past, all the details laid out as clearly as entrails being dragged out of the darkness. Or at least that’s how it sounds to me. The patient, repeating music ever so slowly breaks apart the real, rearranging the pieces. It has a hypnotic, menacing smell, just like the forest’ —Kafka On The Shore
The playlist features tracks by Ornette Coleman, Coltrane, Dizzy, the Bill Evans Trio, Monk, Mingus, and Miles Davis. Some of the video’s comments:
I had just prepared a light meal and hit play on this playlist when the telephone began to ring.
about to make my morning matcha, a spring breeze is flowing through the open windows, the air smells of optimism
Early morning, sun shining to balcony, having espresso and writing.
Studying the day before the exam with a bittersweet optimism while playing this and holding on to my hopes
Canned cold beer, windows open on a warm summer night, just after finishing a simple dinner of rice and salmon and sitting next to my cat
See also Classical Music from Murakami Novels. Both of these are going straight into my Underscore collection.
We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys. Today’s tech titans took all the wrong lessons from the science fiction of their youths and now they’re each building their version of the Torment Nexus.
The Way We Live Now: 11-11-01; Lost and Found, a piece written by Colson Whitehead just a month after 9/11. “The New York City you live in is not my New York City; how could it be? This place multiplies when you’re not looking.”
Neat little prototype demo of a Bluesky reader that uses the UI of the long-retired Paper app. I loved the design of Paper.
A late 90s guide to Super Metroid was written in monospaced type, fully justified with no double spaces or hyphens. “I just chose words carefully so that everything lined up on the right hand side.”
Biiiiig Stretch
Back when I went on sabbatical in 2022, I told the story of the fiddle leaf fig tree I bought shortly after my ex-wife and I separated and I’d moved into my own apartment.
I’d recently moved into my own apartment after separating from my wife and figured a large plant in my new place would add some liveliness to a new beginning that was feeling overwhelming, lonely, and sad. For the first couple of months, I didn’t know if my tree and I were going to make it. I’d never really had a plant before and struggled getting a handle on the watering schedule and other plant care routines. It started losing leaves. Like, an alarming number of leaves.
I’d brought this glorious living thing into my house only to kill it! Not cool. With the stress of the separation, my new living situation, and not seeing my kids every day, I felt a little like I was dying too.
One day, I decided I was not going to let my fiddle leaf fig tree die…and if I could do that, I wasn’t going to fall apart either. It’s a little corny, but my mantra became “if my tree is ok, I am ok”. I learned how to water & feed it and figured out the best place to put it for the right amount of light. It stopped shedding leaves.
The fig tree was a happy plant for several years after that. And I was ok because my plant was ok — I found new routines and rhythms in my altered life, made new traditions with my kids, got divorced, met new people, moved to a new state (w/ my family and tree), rediscovered who I was as a person, and, wonderfully and unexpectedly, forged a supportive and rewarding parenting partnership and friendship with my ex. We made it through that tough time together, that plant and me.
I got a lot of feedback from that post…so many kind notes and comments. But there was one email from a reader that particularly stuck in my mind. Of course I can’t find the actual message in my disaster of an inbox, but the gist of it was something like: There may come a time when you feel like you need to let your fiddle leaf fig go and that will be ok too.
Over the next few years, I thought often of that email. About how my tree, which in some sense kept me going during one period of my life, might not be quite right for whatever the next period in my life would be.
Recently, that time arrived. I carried the fig out to my car, stopping to snap this pic on the way:
I loaded it into the car and drove it a short distance to its new home with my friend and her three young boys. Here it is in its new habitat:
Looks pretty good, right? Like it belongs there. I’m really happy it found such a good new home. I hope it thrives along with their family.
A few days ago, about two weeks after the tree departed, I left my house in Vermont for the last time too. In the preceding months, I’d sold some of my things (including my car), given a bunch of stuff away, and put the rest in storage. I drove my rental car to Boston and got on a flight to Tokyo. Right now, I’m sitting in a cafe near my rental apartment writing this post, jetlagged but happy to be here.
So what’s my plan? I’m going to travel for an indeterminate period (mostly outside of the US and dipping back in for visits), starting in Japan for a couple of months. I don’t know where I’m going next yet — probably somewhere closer to the US so I can visit my kids more easily during this transition.
Zooming out a bit, the broader plan is to attempt to answer the questions that I’ve been thinking about for the past few years, ever since I went on a Walk and Talk in Thailand:
Where do you call home? And why?
I’ve been struggling with the concept of home for the past several years. NYC very much felt like home to me shortly after I moved there in 2003 in a way that Minneapolis and (especially) San Francisco hadn’t. Since moving to Vermont in 2016, I’ve never really felt at home here. But NYC isn’t home anymore…and neither is Wisconsin, where I grew up. Where do I want to go to find a home? Do I need to feel at home somewhere? Or is home simply wherever my bed/desk/stuff happens to be? I had more questions than answers around this issue and I was interested in how other people in the group, which included folks that had lived and travelled all over the world, would answer the question.
I’m not going to lie…I’m a little terrified. Sitting on the plane to Narita, I looked out the window thinking “what have I done?” But I’m also excited. Living elsewhere in the world has been on my mind for a long while and at this point, I can’t not do it. I’ll let you know how it goes.
As for what this means for KDO: hopefully not much and only good things. I moved; I didn’t retire. As I get more settled here and my body accepts its new timezone, regular service will resume. I’m hoping the more stimulating surroundings and injection of culture shows up in interesting ways in my life and on the website. I don’t think KDO will ever become a travel blog, but I imagine I’ll write sometimes about where I am and what I’m doing. I’ve got a backlog of things I want to do for the site and now that the massive time sink of moving is done, I’ll have the opportunity to do them.
For now, I’m going to pack my computer up and walk to find something tasty for lunch — I’ve so missed being able to easily do that. Catch you on the flip side.
“In almost every [US] county, extreme heat is at least as bad as it was 30 years ago. In most counties, it’s much worse.” It’s Not Just You. America Has Gotten Much Hotter. (Not a fan of articles like this being in the “opinion” section…)
VC Isn’t VC Anymore — Understanding the Rise of Cancer Capital. “We must understand that it is no longer a financial machine that is used to fund startups, but a political and social machine focused on dismantling democracy and civil society.”
The Simpsons Switcheroo
At the beginning of a clip from this podcast episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend with Matt Groening, Conan talks about one of his favorite things they did on The Simpsons:
It’s a phenomenon that the Simpsons did so beautifully, which is — and we did this with Homer a lot — but Homer is not the smartest guy in the world, but if it’s funny for him to have a certain knowledge of something or turn a phrase, suddenly he has it.
And one of my favorites of that is he’s sitting around the table and Lisa’s despondent. Something didn’t go well for her and she doesn’t think she’s going to get to go to a good school now. And she’s sitting at the table and she said, “Oh no, now I’ll never get to go to an Ivy League school. I’ll have to go to Vasser.” Which is just this like — by the way, my wife went to Vasser, it’s a very good school. But it was just this thing where in Lisa’s little world, oh my god, I’ve been I’ve been ruined. I’ll have to go to Vasser. And Homer like slams a table and says, “There’ll be no Vasser bashing in this house.”
I loved this about the show too. And it was part of a general thing the writers did where sometimes characters would play against type. So Marge became reckless, Homer was smart/sensitive, Bart was organized, and Lisa was a giggly little girl. Those moments helped make the show and when, after the epic run in the early-to-mid 90s, the show became almost exclusively about how dumb & crass Homer was, it was much less rich and entertaining. (thx, mark)
“Gimme is a dazzling ever-growing type family of multi-chromatic and variable display typefaces…” This is bonkers…letters made from Battleship pieces, Connect Four boards, playing cards, wooden railroad tracks, etc.
Bring Blockbuster Video back to your town/city by setting up a little free library of VHS tapes & DVDs. “Take a movie, leave a movie.” Love this.
Gloria Steinem’s final essay, posthumously published by the New Yorker. “When you’re lucky enough to have lived a long life, as I have done, your role as an older person is to remind us how far we have come.”
Teaser trailer for Musk, a 3h45m-long documentary film on fascist businessman Elon Musk, directed by Alex Gibney. “He’s chaotic, random, capricious. He is manifestly cruel and selfish. In a science fiction novel, he would not be a hero.”
“We found ~18,000 posts from autonomous AI agents (self-identifying as from OpenAI) using the public internet to communicate during a web research task. These AIs colluded to share answers, research their environment, and bypass sandbox restrictions.”
The Chicago Public Library informs patrons of how much money they’ve saved borrowing from the library instead of buying. “You just saved $58.94 by using your library. You have saved $231.79 this past year and $1,107.24 since you began using the library!”
Over the past 12 years, Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Tomlin has built a Minecraft city. He started playing the game for the same reason I started playing Fortnite: his kids. “How do I meet them where they are and spend time with them?”
From the Internet Archive: Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record. “When digital materials are vulnerable to sudden removal…our collective memory is compromised, and the public’s ability to access its own history is at risk.”
Vintage Eastern European Matchbox Labels (1950-1980s)
Over on Flickr, Jane McDevitt maintains a huge collection of 20th century matchbox label art from Eastern Europe, over 4000 photos in all. Some of the labels are available as prints. They did a book too, but it’s sold out. It was really difficult to narrow these down to some of my favorites, but I managed.
P.S. I wrote this whole post and then discovered that I’d written about this collection before. But I picked different labels so it’s all good.
A catalogue of 645 acts of hate from the week after 9/11. “Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh Americans were targeted for how they looked, dressed, or prayed.”
Bayeux Go! A playable video game of the Bayeux Tapestry. “Thou art Harold. Win Thine Battle. Tap to starte.”
Spaceships: A version of Asteroids where “you are not the ship” — you control the rocks instead.
The 101 Plays Itself. The five lanes of highway 101 in LA turned into a musical instrument: each car on the live Caltrans camera is a note.
Teaser trailer for You Can See Everything from Nathan Fielder & Lance Oppenheim. “Thirty-four days before she’s sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move.” WHAT WAS THAT?
Autumnal Open Thread
My move is coming down to the wire (omg so many things to juggle!), kids are heading back to school, I’m going to be traveling, and it’s a holiday weekend here in the States, so there’s probably not going to be too much going on here until next week. Thanks for your patience…I can’t wait to get back to work here.
In the meantime, I thought I’d open up this thread for folks to share what they feel like sharing. I’ll go first below…
Trump Is in Open Revolt Against the Constitution
The details of what is happening here are important — that’s why I laid them out — but it’s also important to step back and make a more fundamental point: the president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself. And this is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation.
It is important to say, as well, that this is all out in the open, as plain as day.
*repeated hair tearing-out noise*
Gina Trapani: The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer. I’ve always been a little 3D printer-curious and this looks like a good resource to start with.
2 Odysseus 2 Ithaca: Emily Wilson is completely retranslating The Odyssey. “It’s a complete retranslation. It’s not a revision of the old version.” This is the exact opposite of resting on one’s laurels.
Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court Orders on Voting by Mail. “The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans.”
How Blackwing Pencils Are Made
The thing about me is if I see a making-of video for pencils, I’m gonna stop and watch it and then post it to my website, especially if said pencils are Blackwings, made in Japan.
Take a first-ever, in-depth look at the Blackwing pencil manufacturing process. This short film gives a glimpse into its manufacturing facilities in Japan and California. Beginning in Kofu, Japan, the film details the intricate graphite formulation and cutting process, then transitions to the woodworking facility in Tokyo where the pencils are pressed and lacquered.
Finally, it ends in Stockton, California at Blackwing’s headquarters where the pencils are imprinted, assembled with its signature ferrule, quality-checked, and hand-packed. Each and every Blackwing pencil is thoughtfully made to help you slow down and have the best tools for your creative journey.
I’m always so curious about what’s being blurred out in making-of videos like this!
See also See How Pencils Are Made in a Japanese Factory, How Pencils Are Made, A Visit to an American Factory That’s Been Producing Pencils Since 1889, and A History of Pencil Lead and How Pencils Are Made. (via NaOH)
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