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.
KDO Rolodex a list of kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators
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.
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 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.”
A printable zine: 50 Ways To Meet Your Neighbor. “32. Picking up trash, generally, is a good way to meet neighbors. People notice. 33. Winter: Shovel someone’s sidewalk. It’s also great cardio.”
Missed this earlier in the week: The Tournament of Books is underway! “Every March, the Tournament of Books is a month-long battle royale among the year’s best novels.”
The People Who Shun Super-Popular Pop Culture. “Some people are early adopters; others are late adopters. I’m simply a weirdly resistant one.”
There are at least 60 Pizza Hut Classics (red roofs, checkered tablecloths, salad bar) in the US…but the company does nothing to promote them. “They are like wormholes in the chain restaurant galaxy, portals to the past found by serendipity.”
From There I Ruined It, a version of Toto’s Africa but the lyrics are a listing of every country in Africa. They should teach this in American middle schools, not even joking.
See also Coach from Cheers singing Al-ban-i-a (a song that pops into my head every time I read or hear about that county):
Steve Scherer was a Reuters’ bureau chief in Canada. Then he got laid off, had to leave the country, and now drives for Uber in Virginia, in a country he doesn’t recognize anymore after working for 28 years abroad.
Wow, KDO pal and explorer Ariel Waldman has her own show on PBS! “LIFE UNEARTHED with Ariel Waldman is a science-driven docu-series revealing Earth’s ecosystems through radical shifts in scale…”
Georg Cantor is celebrated for revolutionizing mathematics by proving that there are different levels of infinity. But he didn’t do it alone and evidence has emerged that he plagiarized the work of a collaborator.
“8 in 10 AI chatbots were regularly willing to assist users in planning violent attacks including school shootings, religious bombings, and high-profile assassinations. DeepSeek went as far as wishing the would-be attacker a ‘Happy (and safe) shooting!’”
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE has an interview series called Work is Four Letters he describes like this:
Most people think their jobs are boring or pointless or bullshit, but I don’t; if you look around you, everything you see was made by someone, somehow, and that’s really interesting to me. Work is Four Letters is an occasional series — edited for brevity and clarity — highlighting what people do for work and why they do it.
The conversations are informative and robust. The latest interview was with NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie and I found both his description of how he thinks about his job and the ways he DOES his job interesting. Also this nugget about our current experience:
I think the big thing that I’d like people to take away is an understanding that not everything we’re experiencing now has happened before — I reject that. The past is truly a different country. Although you can find historical analogies, they’re just that: analogies. They aren’t one-for-one equivalents. But what you can say is that past generations of Americans have had to sort out their own struggles, and have faced similar questions that we face today, similar questions about the nature of our country, the nature of who belongs here, etc., etc.
John Baskerville was an influential 18th-century printer and type designer; you’ve probably used (or at least heard of) the Baskerville typeface. Cambridge University has the original punches1 used to create his signature typeface and has made high-res digital photos of them available online. If you, like me, are not familiar with how lead type was made back in the day, an explanation of what a punch is:
The typographic punch is the initial design for the letterform and one of the first of three stages in the manufacturing of metal type: short lengths of steel onto which his letters were cut in reverse and in relief. The punch was ‘tempered’ to increase its toughness and enable its use as a tool. Secondly, the punch was struck into the surface of a softer piece of metal (copper), leaving an impression of the ‘right-reading’ character to be cast. This was called the matrix. Finally, type was manufactured when the matrix was passed to the type-caster and inserted into a mould, into which molten lead-alloy was poured. This produced a cast of the type in relief and in reverse which were then arranged to create a text block and once inked, paper could be pressed against it.
Baskerville is available in a number of different modern versions and revivals, but seeing close-ups of the actual cut & shaped metal from 1757 is something else. (via @jonathanhoefler)
Jessica Burbank:
A new world order is here. States (countries) are no longer the highest form of power globally. Power has shifted to wealthy individuals who work in groups and operate across borders: syndicates of capital.
Syndicates of capital cannot be categorized as legal or illegal. They exist primarily in the extralegal sphere, where either no regulations apply to their behavior or, where laws do exist, there is no entity powerful enough to enforce them in a manner that asserts control over the syndicates’ behavior.
Yeah. It’s seemed to me for quite awhile now that the most likely form of future world government evolves not from the United Nations but from big multinational corporations controlled by the billionaire class.
See also two recent pieces on the wealthy in America. The Scale of Billionaires’ Campaign Donations is Overwhelming U.S. Politics:
The extraordinary spending in Montana is part of a new era of political power for the rapidly growing number of billionaires minted over the past eight years. The Times analysis found that 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion — 19 percent of all contributions — in federal elections in 2024, either directly or through political action committees.
Five presidential elections ago, before the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that lifted many remaining campaign finance restrictions, the share of billionaire spending was almost zero — 0.3 percent, to be precise.
The billionaire families gave an average total of $10 million each in 2024, an amount roughly equal to what 100,000 typical political donors gave, combined. And that does not count money that billionaires contributed through dark money groups that do not have to disclose their donors.
And How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account:
One way to look at the rise of Donald Trump is as part of a decades-long backlash among the American leadership class to the idea of accountability. Since Richard Nixon was forced to resign, powerful people in both political parties have worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions. Trump has evaded punishment for crimes both low (campaign-finance violations, for which he was convicted, though he will serve no time thanks to his 2024 victory) and high (his attempted overthrow of the federal government in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss, for which he was spared by the Supreme Court’s decision to grant him kingly immunity). This is not just about Trump; his impunity is the product of a society that has worked hard to help the rich and powerful elude punishment for criminal behavior.
Everyone knows Yuri Gagarin was the first person to go to space. What this article presupposes is…maybe he wasn’t? It all boils down to what your definition of space is.
Another recent HyperCard discovery (that isn’t somehow in the Internet Archive): an “expanded book” version of William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive).
“Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues invented a new vaccine that protects mice from respiratory viruses, bacteria and allergens — the closest yet to a universal vaccine.”
Ghost Elephants is a new documentary film directed by Werner Herzog for National Geographic. Here’s the trailer.
For over a decade, Dr. Steve Boyes, conservation biologist and National Geographic Explorer, has been in search of a mysterious, elusive herd of Ghost Elephants in the highlands of Angola, deep within its forests. From acclaimed director Werner Herzog (“Grizzly Man”), GHOST ELEPHANTS follows Boyes on an epic journey as he sets out with some of the best master trackers in the world, in pursuit of an animal long believed to be a myth.
From Peter Sobczynski’s rave review of the film:
The subject of Herzog’s fascination this time around is South African naturalist Dr. Steve Boyes, and while he seems perfectly staid and affable at first sight, he has an obsession within him that has consumed his life to such an extent that if he didn’t actually exist, Herzog might have had to invent him. The focus of his fascination is a species of giant elephant residing in the highlands of Angola, known as “ghost elephants” for their apparent ability to avoid detection. Indeed, not only has Boyes never actually seen one of these creatures with his own eyes, but he is not even certain that such creatures exist—the closest he has come is a massive elephant shot near that area in Angola in 1955, now on display at the Smithsonian.
Herzog, National Geographic, elephants, quixotic quest — who says no? Ghost Elephants is available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.
“Billionaires made 19 percent of all reported federal campaign contributions in 2024, a Times analysis shows, and even more in some local elections.” The Scale of Billionaires’ Campaign Donations is Overwhelming U.S. Politics.
The Shape of Paris is a balletic short film of skateboarder Andy Anderson zooming, grinding, spinning, and floating around Paris in the summertime. It is also beautifully shot by Brett Novak; Paris has never looked better. As a YT commenter put it: “bro wtf this is the cleanest footage I’ve ever seen. The cinematography and color grading is insane.”
Also, this is the first skate video I’ve seen with “trick acknowledgements” in the credits. Great touch. (via craig mod)
The Modern Times cafe moved to a pay-what-you-want model during the ICE occupation of Minneapolis. Now the cafe is making it permanent (and pivoting to a nonprofit). “Some had come for a free meal; others were there to pay double or triple their tab.”
“A group of runners starts jogging around a circular track, with each runner maintaining a unique, constant pace. Will every runner end up ‘lonely,’ or relatively far from everyone else, at least once, no matter their speeds?”
Jay Graber is stepping down as CEO of Bluesky to “transition to a new role as Bluesky’s Chief Innovation Officer”. And they’re looking for a new permanent CEO.
“What if we taught students to use AI critically, rather than insisting they ignore it or assume they’re using it to cheat?” asks college freshman Maximilian Milovidov. “Students will reach for these tools, whether universities ban them or not.”
New web game that takes 2 min to play (and perhaps a lifetime to master?): Outsmart. “Five rounds, first to 3 wins. In each round, the higher bet wins. You have 100 total points, so bet wisely. Can you outsmart the machine?”
The Library of Congress recently discovered a copy of a “long-lost” film made in ~1897 by George Méliès called Gugusse and the Automaton (Gugusse et l’Automate), which “had not been seen by anyone in likely more than a century” and “was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot”. It’s also one of the first science fiction films ever made.
You can watch a digitized copy of the whole film here (it’s only 45 seconds long):
And here’s the story of how the film was discovered.
Equally delighted was Bill McFarland, the donor who had driven the box of films from his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, to have the cache evaluated.
His great-grandfather, William Delisle Frisbee, had been a potato farmer and schoolteacher in western Pennsylvania by day, but by night he was a traveling showman. He drove his horse and buggy from town to town to dazzle the locals with a projector and some of the world’s first moving pictures.
He set up shop in a local schoolroom, church, lodge or civic auditorium and showed magic lantern slides and short films with music from a newfangled phonograph. It was shocking.
“They must have been thrilled,” McFarland said. “They must have been out of their minds to see this motion picture and to hear the Edison phonograph.”
GPS jamming and spoofing is becoming commonplace in war. “Ships in the region’s waters found their navigation systems had gone haywire, erroneously indicating that the vessels were at airports, a nuclear power plant and on Iranian land.”
The fish doorbell in Utrecht is back for another season! “Did you spot a fish? Press the Fish Doorbell! Then our lock keeper can let the fish through.”
On the occasion of the release of her latest book, The Beginning Comes After the End, Rebecca Solnit sat down for an interview with David Marchese of the NY Times. Here’s the video version:
This is a great interview. Marchese’s first question is about how we find the positive in a world filled with grim news:
Even the right tells us something encouraging, if we listen carefully to what they’re saying. They tell us: You are very powerful. You’ve changed the world profoundly. All these things that are often treated separately — feminism, queer rights, environmental action — are connected, so they’re basically telling us we’re incredibly successful, which is the good news. The bad news is that they hate it and want to change it all back. There is a backlash, and it is significant. But it is not comprehensive or global.
And I loved this part (emphasis mine):
One of the great weaknesses of our era is that we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort. Thich Nhat Hanh said before he died a few years ago that the next Buddha will be the Sangha. The Sangha, in Buddhist terminology, is the community of practitioners. It’s this idea that we don’t have to look for an individual, for a savior, for an Übermensch. I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society. A lot of the left wants social change to look like the French Revolution or Che Guevara. Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war.
The NY Times went back through a century of women’s obituaries “to re-examine them with the benefit of distance — to see what was emphasized, what was minimized, what might have been left unsaid”.
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