USGS Unveils New National Geologic Map. “In a significant advancement for geoscience, the U.S. Geological Survey has released the most detailed national-scale geologic map of the country to date.”
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Entries for September 2025
John Candy: I Like Me
This is the trailer for a documentary celebrating the life and work of actor & comedian John Candy.
I loved John Candy; how could you not? Uncle Buck was my favorite of his movies. I can’t believe he died more than 20 years ago already. (via craig mod)
Yesterday, Jackson Goldstone won the 2025 Downhill Mountain Bike World Championship. Here’s the POV of his winning run down the *very* steep course in Champéry, Switzerland. (This is *bananas*!)
Forthcoming book by Bernie Sanders: Fight Oligarchy. “Sanders explains how the United States today is an oligarchic society in which a small handful of multibillionaires exercise enormous economic and political power.”
Why more and more people are tuning the news out: ‘Now I don’t have that anxiety’.
Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children. “Florida is the first state to take the courageous step toward decluttering itself of excess children, but under the inexpert guidance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., other states may follow.”
How Are You Supposed To Get The COVID Vaccine Now? An Explainer. “If you are not in one of the 16-ish states requiring a prescription for a COVID vaccine, you should be able to self-report a condition and receive your vaccine.”
The Persisters
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, British American artist Jo Hay began a series of engaging portraits called Persisters “that depict contemporary, trailblazing women in pursuit of civil rights and justice”. Pictured above are her paintings of Letitia James, Elizabeth Warren, Greta Thunberg, Christine Blasey Ford, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Marie Yovanovitch. The portraits are quite large, as you can see in this photo of AOC’s painting.
I also quite like Hay’s other portraits, including this poignant one of Anne Frank.
“I almost admire the confidence it must take to tell people what to do online. But I long for the days when the internet wasn’t just lists of bossy self-optimisation plans.”
Meet the Man Doing a 10-Day, Self-Supported Swim Across a 140-Mile Lake
Shane Schieffer is attempting to swim the entire 140-mile length of Lake Powell in 10 days, self-supported. Yeah, that means he’s dragging 215lbs of gear behind him on a paddle board while he swims. He’s documenting the whole thing on Instagram; here’s a video where he explains all the gear he’s taking with him.
I’m attempting to be the first person ever to swim across Lake Powell. Here’s how I’m preparing for this massive journey-
I will be swimming from Hite Crossing Bridge in Utah to Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. This means that I will need to swim 140 miles in just 10 days. Ambitious, I know.
This journey will be completely unassisted. My safety crew will not be offering me food, navigation, or pacing.
To carry my gear, I’ve designed a floating rig from an inflatable paddle board with solar power, water filtration, and dry boxes for food storage, gear, and human waste (yes, I will be leaving NO trace).
Schieffer, 49, is going to be consuming 8000 calories each day on his journey and told a local TV station that “I’ve anticipated about 200,000 rotations of the shoulders out there in the water”.
He started on Sept 2, so this is day 3 of the trip. Again, you can keep up with the whole thing on Instagram.
The Rise of the Traveling Third Space. “Traveling third spaces are not physically fixed; they move across cafes, malls, restaurants, and host various programming for a singular community in a particular city.”
The Official Map of the Star Wars Galaxy
Lucasfilm recently released an official map of the galaxy that Star Wars takes place in. And it’s huge.
The map is slightly interactive; you can zoom and scroll it, but you can’t search or, say, click to highlight all the star systems featured in Andor. But you can do manual lookups using this massive 59-page PDF listing of Star Wars star systems.
A thoughtful essay about e-bikes as a metaphor for AI, augmentation vs amputation, and the bargain of innovation. “We often consider what technology promises to enable for us, without considering what it will almost certainly disable.”
From Lewis Hine, a photograph of Clyde Bradford. Hine’s photos of child laborers resulted in some of the first laws in the US against child labor.
U2 and a Harlem Choir Sing ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’
In 1987, choir director Dennis Bell arranged a version of U2’s #1 hit I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For for his choir, the New Voices of Freedom. After hearing a recording of the arrangement, U2 asked Bell & the choir to join the band for an upcoming show at Madison Square Garden in NYC. Before the show, the band and the choir rehearsed together at Greater Calvary Baptist Church in Harlem:
Here is some behind-the-scenes footage of the rehearsal (more); Bono’s arm is in a sling for some reason?
The live recording of the song from that MSG show appeared on their next album, Rattle and Hum; here’s the (music-only) video from U2’s YouTube channel:
And here’s an actual video of the MSG performance (taken from the Rattle and Hum DVD):
You can also find the MSG version of the song (and the rest of Rattle and Hum) on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
Bell and the New Voices of Freedom recorded their own version of the song, which you can listen to on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
P.S. That same day, the band walked around Harlem and stumbled across street musicians Satan & Adam; a clip of their song made it onto the album and DVD.
(via laura olin)
A list of 29 heroes and interesting people that few people have heard of. I’ve only heard of one or two of these folks.
The Baltimore Museum of Art is exhibiting Amy Sherald’s American Sublime show after Sherald pulled it from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery due to attempted censorship. I saw this in NYC; it’s fantastic.
3books, a site that features the books recommended by guests at the end of each Ezra Klein Show podcast. Built by my pal Michael Sippey.
Great interactive feature on how former world record holder Max Park solves the Rubik’s Cube. You scroll through his slow-motion solve — he makes 12 moves in the first second. “It’s like playing chess at the speed of ping pong.”
I loved this: The History of The New Yorker’s Vaunted Fact-Checking Department. “The writer had already engaged in the charm and betrayal inherent in reporting. We were in the harm-reduction business.”
The Baseball Photographer Trading Cards, 1975
In the mid-70s, Mike Mandel traveled around the United States photographing photographers as if they were baseball players, capturing the likes of Imogen Cunningham, Ed Ruscha, William Eggleston, and Ansel Adams.
I photographed photographers as if they were baseball players and produced a set of cards that were packaged in random groups of ten, with bubble gum, so that the only way of collecting a complete set was to make a trade. I travelled around the United States visiting about 150 photographic “personalities” and had them pose for me. I carried baseball paraphernalia: caps, gloves, balls, a mask and chest protector, a bat, as well as photographic equipment, and made a 14,000 mile odyssey. Out of this experience came 134 Baseball-Photographer images. I designed a reverse side for the card which would allow for each photographer to fill in their own personal data that in a way referred to the information usually included on real baseball cards: Favorite camera, favorite developer, favorite film, height, weight, etc. I used whatever information each photographer provided me.
You can hear Mandel talking about the project in this SFMOMA video — the gum he included in the packages of cards was donated by Topps:
You can find some of the cards on eBay for around $10-50 apiece and a complete set, signed by Mandel & Imogen Cunningham, can be had for $3,650. (thx, duncan)
How the Richest People in America Avoid Paying Taxes. “The country’s billionaires pay lower tax rates than many of its millionaires do. Indeed, they pay lower tax rates than many middle-class professionals.”
Abstract Popular Science
I ran across this delightful account that explores and explains everyday scientific questions through maddeningly catchy songs. Like why a cast saw cuts through plaster but spares your skin:
How working principle of an electric kettle is another banger:
My gateway into this account was why are steel coils placed upright when trucks are hauling them:
These will get stuck in your head. Available on YouTube and TikTok (e.g. how is a football made).
Thetrusize.com, by James Talmage and Damon Maneice, is a website that lets you move a country or state around a Mercator projection map of the world so you can see how big or small a country really is.
One Teen’s Incredible “Mental Time Travel” Memory System
A paper recently published in a behavioral sciences journal describes a high school student’s hyperthymesia, an extraordinary ability to retrieve autobiographical memories. Teenager With Hyperthymesia Exhibits Extraordinary Mental Time Travel Abilities:
The subject of the study, referred to as TL, was a 17-year-old high school student in France when she came to the researchers’ attention. She had long known her memory was different. As a child, she would casually mention her ability to mentally revisit past events to check for details, only to be accused of lying by her peers. Eventually, she disclosed this ability to her family at age 16.
TL’s recollections were not merely accurate — they were structured. She described a highly organized internal world where memories were stored in a large, rectangular “white room” with a low ceiling. Within this mental space, personal memories were arranged thematically. Sections were dedicated to family life, vacations, friends, and even her collection of soft toys. Each toy had its own memory tag, including information about when and from whom it was received.
Importantly, these recollections were not purely factual. They carried emotional weight and vivid perceptual details. TL could mentally relive events from both her original perspective and from an outside observer’s view. She described, for instance, her first day of school in striking detail: what she wore, the weather, and the precise visual memory of her mother watching her through the fence. These experiences were accompanied by a strong sense of re-experiencing.
Whoa. The paper’s authors refer to her abilities as “mental time travel”. And this is straight out of Pixar’s Inside Out:
Beyond memory storage, TL described three additional rooms in her internal world, each associated with specific emotional functions. A cold “pack ice” room helped her cool down when angry. A “problems room” was empty but served as a space for pacing and thinking. A more uncomfortable “military room,” associated with her father’s absence due to military service, was linked to guilt. These features suggest a broader internal architecture shaped by emotional needs and reflective processes, not just memory content.
My memory does not work like this and it’s always fascinating to discover how other people think and perceive the world; see Does Your Brain Picture Things? (via damn interesting)
Oh wow, after 26 years and 1000+ episodes, Melvyn Bragg is stepping down from hosting the In Our Time radio series.
Apologies: You Have Reached the End of Your Free-Trial Period of America! “We are retaining some features for premium users. Want rule of law? That’s premium. The right to run your company without government interference? That’s a paid feature now.”
This video features a number of scientists who were working on stuff like HIV treatments and life-saving cancer research but whose work has been shut down or curtailed by the Trump regime cutting their funding.
We’re All in the Network of Time
The Network of Time is a project that links people together, in the style of six degrees of separation, by appearance together in photographs.
Every photo you take with someone else links you into the vast network of people caught together in images.
It’s a collage millions of pictures deep – every actor you’ve seen on screen, every politician you’ve seen in the news, almost everyone you’ve seen in a history textbook.
Network Of Time is the world’s first interactive snapshot of this network.
For instance, LeBron James can be linked to Joseph Stalin in just five photographs.
James appears in a photo with Canadian broadcaster George Stroumboulopoulos, who was photographed with former Canadian PM Jean Chrétien. Chrétien was in a photo with Queen Elizabeth II, who appeared in a photo with Winston Churchill, and Churchill was photographed with Stalin.
The Network of Time is conceptually adjacent to the Great Span.
“New York City is marking its 400th birthday this year and almost no one gives a damn.”
In tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, a choir of 7000+ people sang Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. Lovely.
Hamnet
For her newest film, director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) has adapted Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel Hamnet; both book and movie are about William Shakespeare and his wife in the aftermath of the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Paul Mescal stars as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his wife Agnes. Here’s the trailer.
The film recently premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and the reviews are very good.
Premiering at the Telluride Film Festival ahead of a November theatrical release, Hamnet is devastating, maybe the most emotionally shattering movie I’ve seen in years. The book was overwhelming, too, and going into a film about the death of a child, one naturally prepares to shed some tears. Still, I did not really expect to cry this much. That’s not just because of the tragic weight of the material, but because the picture reimagines the poetic act of creating Hamlet. Shakespeare’s play sits on the highest shelf, fixed by the dust from centuries of acclaim. It is about as unimpeachable as a work of art can be. And yet, here is a movie that dares to explore its inception. The attempt itself is noble, and maybe a little brazen; that it succeeds feels downright supernatural.
The film premieres in the US on Nov 27 with a nationwide release on Dec 12.
Scientists Have Found the First Branch on the Tree of Life. “The sister to all other animals, the first to branch off, and the most genetically isolated animal is … drumroll please … the comb jelly!”
Alexander Chee: How Can I Write At A Time Like This? “We are being hit with what I would call advanced resilience targeting, an attack on our ability to be in community, to be healthy, to make a living, to know our rights, to have a government.”
We Already Know a Way to Save a Bunch of Lives. (Giving wounded people blood earlier, in ambulances, increases their chance of survival. But insurance won’t pay for it so we don’t do it in the US. 🤬)
Eels Shouldn’t be Able to Exist
I didn’t know this about eels:
No one has ever seen an eel reproduce naturally. Not in the wild, not in captivity, not even once. And yet, eels are everywhere. In rivers, in lakes, in oceans, slippery, ancient, and inexplicably present.
For centuries, the world’s greatest thinkers tried to solve the mystery of the eel. Aristotle thought they emerged from mud. Others believe they simply appeared, formed by sunlight and dew. Even today, there’s only one place on Earth where we think all eels are born: somewhere deep in the Atlantic where mysteriously no adult eel has ever been found.
So why are eels like this? What evolutionary advantage lies in such an impossibly complex journey? And why does their life cycle still defy so much of what we know about biology? This isn’t just a story about a fish. It’s a story about a creature that breaks the rules of science.
I found this via Frank Chimero’s short essay on eels.
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