What is happening? Orcas started wearing dead salmon as hats again and chimps are once again putting grass in their ears. “We were even more shocked that they were doing their own spin on this by also inserting the grass and sticks in a different orifice.”
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.
Entries for December 2025
How Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Are Made
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are probably my favorite big brand candy (perhaps only bested by Reese’s Pieces), so it was a real treat (groan) to see how the company makes them cups.
But did you know Reese’s purposely over-roasts their peanuts just enough to bring out a bold nutty flavor? The extra heat is what gives their peanut butter its signature granular texture and taste fans can’t get enough of it. And funnily enough, this technique was first discovered by accident, thanks to a faulty overheating roster in HB Reese’s original factory. What could have been a ruined batch turned out to be their unmistakable flavor breakthrough they still use to this day.
Spoiler: PBCs are not made by two people bumping into each other on the street, as we were led to believe in the 80s.
MacKenzie Scott announces that she’s donated almost $7.2 billion of her personal fortune to organizations worldwide this year. That brings her total giving up to more than $26 billion.
Shop Around Globally for Better Deals on Streaming Services
A streaming services savings tip from the Nomadico newsletter that I was not aware of:
I’m going to add Apple TV at home after watching only part of Severance on a United flight, but I’ll likely subscribe in Mexico where it’s 28% cheaper than the USA. You can play this arbitrage game with most of the streaming services — I once got HBO on sale for $5 a month. In Mexico you can get the highest tier of Netflix for the price of the middle tier stateside, a 39% monthly savings (with a better studio movie selection too). Shop around if moving around. In Turkey, for example, the highest tier of Netflix with 4K hi-def is less than US$10 per month. Try regional gift cards, signing up while in another country, or using a good VPN for the first transaction.
Anyone else tried this?
Eight Million Ways to Happiness: Wisdom for Inspiration and Healing from the Heart of Japan. “Hiroko awakens readers to the idea of a traditional spiritual flexibility that seamlessly coexists with the modern secular world…”
Liam Neeson Narrates Anti-Vax, Pro-RFK Documentary. In the narration, he calls the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines “dangerous experiments”.
Photographing the Andromeda Galaxy for 10 Seconds vs 10 Hours
This video by Ian Lauer is an excellent accessible explanation of the basics of astrophotography as he runs through the process of how he captures a long-exposure image of the Andromeda galaxy.
This picture is still black and white — and no, the galaxy is not devoid of color. There’s actually color in there, and we’ll get to color in a second. But first, let’s look at what happens when I zoom in on this image.
You can see there’s some graininess in this image, which we call noise. And we hate it because it prevents you from seeing more detail in your image. To combat the noise, we can take multiple images of that same target — so, one after the other — and stack them together using software to average out all of that background noise.
Take a look at what happens when we do that. This image isn’t just a single 1-minute image but 10 1-minute images stacked on top of each other. Look how how much better, how much cleaner, it looks when compared to the single 1-minute image.
There are a bunch more videos on Lauer’s channel to check out, including Shooting the Milky Way from Every Light Pollution Level and The BEST Telescope for Beginners (he recommends the Seestar S50 Astronomical All-in-one Smart Telescope, which many other people recommended on social media instead of anything on this list). Oh, and I’m gonna watch this one about astrophotography with the iPhone 17 Pro right now. (via the kid should see this)
Funniest McSweeney’s piece I’ve read in awhile: The Mastermind Box Cover: What the Hell Were They Thinking? “Warmth is for Sorry! This is not a hug. This is a chess clock in a stranger’s living room telling you your parents are getting divorced.”
90 Minutes of Knitting ASMR
From the V&A Museum, here’s a 90-minute video of someone knitting a pair of gloves using a knitting pattern from the 1940s from the museum’s archive.
Featuring soft-spoken moments, natural yarn sounds, needles gently tapping, and the soothing rhythm of slow, careful making, this video is designed for deep relaxation, calm focus, and background ambience, perfect for studying, crafting, or winding down at the end of the day.
And from the knitting patterns page, some history:
Hand-knitting was at a peak in Britain in the 1940s. During the Second World War, women on the home front were encouraged to contribute to the war effort by knitting for the troops, which was promoted as public duty. Advertising at the time stated: ‘England expects – knit your bit’.
Many knitting patterns were given away free, while wool was also sent to schools so that children could knit gloves, scarves and balaclava helmets for the forces. Wool was also supplied to organisations such as the Women’s Institutes of England and Wales, who made over 22 million knitted garments for the Red Cross (an average of 67 garments per member). Parcels of their knitwear were sent to prisoners of war, as well as to troops.
I know we’ve got some knitters in the group…have you ever tried any of these patterns? If not, report back if you give them a try.
Aging Out of Fucks: The Neuroscience of Why You Suddenly Can’t Pretend Anymore. “…that point in midlife when your capacity to pretend, perform, and please others starts shorting out like an electrical system that’s finally had enough.”
Thread: What was typography like in the Soviet Union? “They did not just have 1 font everyone had to use. As a matter of fact, there were 39.”
New evidence suggests that Neanderthals were making fire in the UK 400,000 years ago. The previous earliest date of human fire-making was a mere 50,000 years ago.
Victorian-Era Mourning Objects From the V&A’s Collection
From the archives of London’s V&A Museum, a selection of items that were used by Victorian-era mourners to remember and pay tribute to loved ones who had died, including jewelry with human hair, black dresses, jet black jewelry, mourning cards, and postmortem photography. Victorian fashion was heavily influenced by Queen Victoria, who mourned the death of her husband for decades and set off a trend in Britain (more here):
Victoria’s grief wasn’t only personal but influenced the entire nation. Her strict adherence to mourning attire and jewelry set the tone for the era. Until around 1880, she mandated that only mourning jewelry could be worn in the court. The Queen’s dedication to mourning created what has been described as “the Cult of Mourning,” where societal conventions, fashion, and daily life were infused with the solemnity of loss.
During the Victorian era, mourning jewelry transformed into sentimental tokens for the departed, featuring symbols like willows, angels, clouds, and initials. Women adhered strictly to mourning dress codes, wearing black for the initial “deep mourning” phase lasting two to three years, later transitioning to darker colors. Incorporating the deceased’s hair was common, using materials like jet, vulcanite, and gutta percha. White enamel symbolized the death of an unmarried female or a child, while pearls represented children, signifying tears. Turquoise conveyed the sentiment of “thinking of you,” and affluent families adorned mourning jewelry with precious stones for their loved ones.
A+ to the curators in the video, who understood the fashion assignment in presenting these objects.
Also, I love every opportunity to share one of my favorite Victorian phrases: “got the morbs”, which is defined as being in a state of temporary melancholia. (via colossal)
The trailer for It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, a documentary film about the late singer/songwriter.
Timothy Snyder: “What comes next? For the Nazis, the deportation and the pogrom of autumn 1938 were steps towards creating a centralised national police agency. In the US, something similar is unfolding with ICE.”
Size of Life, a visual comparison of living things from DNA to a quaking aspen clone. Lovely illustrations.
I hate how good this is: Radiohead sings Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (There I Ruined It).
2000 Words for Japanese Rain
From artist Miya Ando, Water of the Sky, A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Rain Words.
Through a collection of 2,000 Japanese words, their English interpretations, and 100 drawings, Ando describes the breadth and diversity of rain’s many expressions: when it falls, how it falls, and how its observer might be transformed physically or emotionally by its presence.
I paged through this at a bookstore recently; it is delightful. From an excerpt of the book, here are a few of Ando’s rain words & phrases:
Tokidoki Niwaka Ame: Sometimes light snow and rain showers
Ama ga Nukeru: The skies open up, it rains like cats and dogs
Shinotsukuame: Intense rain that falls heavily, is very fine and strong like the Bamboo Grove at Shinotake
Giu: False rain
Amadoi: Sliding red beans to resemble the sound of rain
Kōu: Rain that comes exactly when you were waiting for it
Water of the Sky is available at Bookshop, Amazon, and wherever books are sold.
A Charlie Brown Christmas, Live
Listen to jazz trio The Commercialists play Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas live in a small club called The Estate in Milwaukee. That’s this afternoon’s chill work music sorted then.
If you’re anywhere near Milwaukee this month, it looks like there are still tickets to some of their Charlie Brown performances left, although the shows at The Estate look like they’re sold out for the month. (thx, than)
We Asked Critics From Authoritarian Regimes What They Wish They’d Known Sooner. “You cannot make authoritarian leaders the center of your narrative. You have to make the people the center of your narrative, and you have to be passionate about it.”
A “particularly inventive” Rube Goldberg marble run maze. Lots of elements doing double duty.
The 2025 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide
Since 2013, I’ve done a holiday gift guide that’s basically a curated roundup of stuff from the best gift guides I can find. I always do it a little bit differently from year to year, and last year I went with a simple list and it worked well. So I’m doing that again this year. Also: this is a little more spare than I’d like, but I wanted to get something up pronto. I will be updating this every few days for the next week-ish, so check back. Ok, let’s a-go!
1. The guide always starts with charitable giving and so should you. If you can, give cash to your local food bank (and kick in extra around the holiday time). Volunteer. Start with GiveWell’s list of “high-impact, cost-effective charities”. Here are Vox’s 10 guidelines for giving effectively. I personally give to the National Network of Abortion Funds.
2. The Kid Should See This Gift Guide is my #1 source for kids’ gifts. What caught my eye this year: The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide to Inventing the World (Bookshop, Amazon), Kinderfeets multi-use balance board, this portable 1080p video projector for under $90, Teenage Engineering’s pocket operators (Amazon), a set of French, hand-painted, space-themed marbles, and a graphic novel adaptation of The Hidden Life of Trees (Bookshop, Amazon). [via The Kid Should See This Gift Guide]
3. You can give the gift of Kottke! *cringe* There’s The Kottke Hypertext Tee and The Process Tee in light & dark colors. There are kottke.org gift memberships as well starting at $30/yr; check the FAQ on the membership page for more options and details.
π. I love this one: gift audiobooks from Libro.fm (my audiobook store of choice). “You choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobook — all in support of local bookstores.” (And they’re 10% off until Dec 11.)
4. The most popular item by far from the past two gift guides: this Japanese nail clipper. I have one of these and it’s *great*. A significant upgrade from even the Tweezerman ones. Good stocking stuffer!
5. The staples. I upgraded to the 3rd-gen Apple AirPods Pro this year and I use them almost daily; they are comfier with better noise-cancelling than the 2nd-gen ones, which I loved. Almost every book I read, I read on the Kindle Paperwhite — it’s light, waterproof, and very travel-friendly. (Though I am still eyeing the Colorsoft Kindle.)
6. My friend Caroline hiked Vermont’s Long Trail last summer and compiled a small list of outdoors supplies for the gift guide: ThermoDrop Zipper-Pull Thermometer, Opinel wood-handled stainless steel folding knives, Kahtoola MICROspikes, and Smartwool’s Thermal Merino Reversible Cuffed Beanie. And the Cotopaxi Bataan fanny pack, about which she said: “The MVP of my hiking trip. No more fiddling around with side pockets or opening your pack any time you need a snack, to find your your phone or to look at the map.”
7. For the last few years, The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel has recommended the same printer as the printer of the year: whatever HL-L2xxx-series Brother laser printer is on sale. So, here you go: Brother HL-L2405W Wireless Compact Monochrome Laser Printer. (Technically not on sale right now, but at $135 for a rock-solid laser printer, it doesn’t really need to be.)
8. Kelli Anderson’s new popup book, Alphabet in Motion, is completely and utterly ridiculously amazing. When I opened my copy, my jaw dropped lower and lower to the floor as I looked & played through it and that’s been pretty much the reaction of everyone else who has a copy of this. The must-give gift of the season for book, type, and design nerds. (Bookshop, Amazon)
IX. My daughter got me this jar of truffle butter as a gift a few years ago and it’s so good (and it lasts forever in the fridge). Perfect for putting into white, creamy pasta sauces or as a finishing element for a grilled cheese. (Also, you can buy white truffles on Amazon but I wouldn’t?)
10. Richard Scarry-themed temporary tattoos from Tattly. Lowly Worm, Huckle Cat, the Apple Car, Goldbug, and many more of your favorites. (Tattly is shutting down, so get ‘em while you can…)
10.5. Let’s destigmatize the gift card: there is no shame in not knowing what to get someone for a gift, even if you know them really well. This is actually the gift of getting someone exactly what they want. There’s the obvious Amazon gift card but you can also get cards for Apple (use it for Fitness+ or Apple TV+?), Audible, Fortnite, Snapchat, Airbnb, Disney+, Netflix, and Roblox.
10.6. Sometimes people ask me where to buy art online and I always direct them to 20x200. For instance, just take a look at Harold Fisk’s Mississippi River meander maps.
11. kottke.org guest editor Aaron Cohen owns an ice cream shop in the Boston area and they take their merch very seriously. So many t-shirts! Oh and you can find pints of Gracie’s ice cream all over the Boston metro area…as far away as Concord and Beverly.
12. The Colossal Shop is full of “fun things for creative people”, including this beaver embroidery kit, a buttons puzzle, and a ceramic toast candle holder. [via The Colossal Shop’s 2025 Gift Guide]
14. I like getting The Giant Jam Sandwich (Bookshop) as a gift for the little readers in my life.
15. Friends & readers of the site who sell cool shit: Simplebits (shirts, fonts, and more), Wondermade marshmallows, Hella Cocktail Co. (bitters, mixers, canned margs), This is a MomBod (feminist apparel), Jodi Ettenberg’s Legal Nomads shop (food art, totes, shirts) and gluten free translation cards and celiac travel guides, Yen Ha (prints), Spoon & Tamago (Family Mart socks!), Fitz (custom fitted eyeglasses), Field Notes, Pink Tiger Games (“sweet, kind” tabletop games), Storyworth (keepsake books), Christoph Niemann (prints & books), Noah Kalina (photographic prints & books), Jessica Hische (prints, apparel, fonts, etc.), Mike Monteiro (paintings), and Cotton Bureau (t-shirts and more).
16. Twelve South AirFly Duo is a Bluetooth transmitter that you can plug into the jack on your seatback TV on the airplane and then use your Bluetooth headphones to listen to your movie. I have one of these; it works great. Apple AirTags are essential travel infrastructure these days.
Q. Pal Robin Sloan and his partner Kathryn Tomajan run a tiny olive oil producer called Fat Gold. This year they’re offering a Fat Gold Gift Set of two different extra virgin olive oils and a copy of a “32-page zine that provides a brisk introduction to extra virgin olive oil alongside a stockpile of delicious applications”. Fun! He also recommends Daybreak’s seaweed salt (for extra umami!) and these gorgeous tidelogs. [via Robin’s 2025 Gift Guide]
18. Another great gift list for kids’ stuff: Purdue University’s 2025 Engineering Gift Guide, which is focused on microelectronics gifts (circuitry, robotics, coding & programming) this year. [via Purdue University’s 2025 Engineering Gift Guide]
19. Food/kitchen things that I can vouch for: Xi’an Famous Foods meal kits, pastrami from Katz’s Delicatessen, Ernest Wright’s kitchen scissors, the Ooni Volt electric pizza oven, Headley & Bennett’s crossback apron, and this Zojirushi rice cooker (Neuro Fuzzy!).
20. The end of an era! Almost every year since I started doing a gift guide, I’ve featured this 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant. But Amazon doesn’t sell it anymore. I blame all of you for never buying one!
Twenty one. You know her, you love her: Edith Zimmerman. Her Etsy shop is chock full of prints, cards, and apparel.
22. Stuff from past gift guides: the Keap Wood Cabin candle is my favorite candle, Crayola Palm-Grip Crayons, this cute whale butter dish, and a leather floppy disk wallet.
23. Made right here in VT, Darn Tough socks (Amazon) are the best socks. For one thing, they have an Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee.
24. Tinned fish! I have my eye on the Fishwife Smoky Trio 3-Pack (Smoked Rainbow Trout, Smoked Salmon, Smoked Mackerel).
67. Teens are impossible to shop for. The Strategist always has good gift guides: The Best Gifts for Teenage Girls, According to Teenage Girls; The Best Gifts for Teenage Boys, According to Teenage Boys. The Spikeball set, disco ball, and this Brooklinen robe look promising. And I can recommend the tortilla blanket for ages 0 to 120…everyone loves this thing.
26. Last year, I asked readers for gift suggestions and IMO the resulting thread is even better than the gift guide I put together. There’s some great stuff here: wooden puzzles; colorful, design-y charging stands for Apple things; leather bound notebooks; box cutters; and this vintage shop on Etsy. Go check out the rest here.
This is a living document — I’ll be updating this list with more stuff over the next few days, and I’ll let you know when to check back! To be continued…
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
Colin Furze built a full-suspension bike using powerful magnets instead of shocks or springs.
Looks Like the Supreme Court Will Continue to Overturn the 20th Century. But: “It’s amazing how many of our problems today could be solved by a Congress that was willing and able to legislate in response to national problems.”
Jiggle Cat
This is a pretty good optical illusion. If you’re not on your phone, it also works if you shake your head a little. (thx, caroline)
A guide on how (and why) to quit Spotify. “I am extremely glad I [switched away from Spotify]; it’s been a minute since I’ve felt something approaching genuine delight in discovering a new tech service.”
Huge Collection of Laptop Sticker Art
Stickertop.art is a massive collection of the tops of laptop computers adorned with stickers.
Laptop stickers are more than decoration, they’re a form of self-expression. Each one is a snapshot of a moment, a place, and an attitude. But they’re fleeting; when the technology becomes outdated, the laptops along with the stories stuck to them often end up in the waste pile. I thought it was a shame for something so personal and creative to just disappear, so I created this site to preserve them.
If you’re a laptop decorator, you can upload your sticker collection to the site. (via @juandesant)
Why We Have Two Nostrils Instead of One Big Hole. (Great title!) “The nostrils alternate airflow from one side to the other. This may allow one side of the nose to rest.”
I’m working on the 2025 gift guide right now, but I wanted to separately shout-out my favorite gift recommendation of the year: Kelli Anderson’s incredible popup book about typography & the alphabet, Alphabet in Motion (Amazon).
A video featuring Magnus Carlsen trying to beat a very novice player at chess with increasingly unfair rules (opponent gets two moves per turn, opponent starts with 23 queens, Magnus starts with 1 king and 23 pawns, etc.)
From Nature, a list of 10 people who helped shape science in 2025. “A fired public-health official, a mosquito breeder and a baby with a smile seen around the world. These are just a few of the remarkable people chosen for Nature’s 10.”
The all-out AI race. “They are tearing towards a technology that could, in theory, sweep away millions of white-collar jobs and pose serious risks in bioweapons and cybersecurity. Or it could usher in a new era of abundance, health and wealth.”
Beautiful Drone Videos of Iceland’s Black Sand Beaches
From photographer and videographer Jan Erik Waider, a trio of videos that features the black sand beaches of Iceland from a drone’s vantage point.
Captured on Iceland’s south coast where a glacial river meets the Atlantic Ocean. The camera observes the slow interplay of water, sand, and silt — an abstract rhythm shaped by tides and sediment flow. Amid these shifting textures, a few seals drift, rest, and return to the current, blending seamlessly into the landscape. A quiet study of movement and stillness, captured from above.
The colors are amazing: the rich yellow of the river’s waters & the turquoise of the ocean against the black sand. You can find many more of his videos on YouTube, including this one of mesmerizing lava flows. (via moss & fog)
Narrative String Theory is collection all known instances in film & TV of bulletin boards covered with investigatory items, “walls and floors littered with paperwork by obsessives”, and so on.
Weird Al Yankovic Covers Killing In The Name by Rage Against the Machine
At a recent Portugal. The Man concert in NYC, Weird Al joined the band on stage for a pair of songs, including a cover of Killing In The Name, Rage Against the Machine’s anthem against police brutality and the military industrial complex. Weird Al, welcome to the resistance. (via @erikahall.bsky.social)
For its 50th anniversary, the original theatrical cut of Star Wars will be released in theaters in Feb 2027 (maybe even IMAX). Han shoots first, no weirdly svelte Jabba.
French electronic duo Air performs a Tiny Desk Concert. Setlist: Le Voyage de Pénélope, Cherry Blossom Girl, Highschool Lover, and Dirty Trip.
Fran Sans is a font based on the display type of SF’s MUNI light rail trains. The N-Judah was my train when I lived there, so I’m very familiar with that display typeface. (Great name too.)
The Land of Giants, a conceptual proposal to build power line towers so that they look like people.
The Fascinating Map of Fungi
From Domain of Science, the Fascinating Map of Fungi.
The zombie ant fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, infects ants by piercing the exoskeleton with enzymes and spreads fungal cells throughout the body. It then secretes special neurological compounds that hijack the ant’s central nervous system, forcing it to climb high into a tree and lock its mandibles onto a leaf with a death grip. This makes a nice stable platform for the fungus to grow a fruiting body to disperse spores in a large area to infect more hosts.
And here’s a video explanation of everything on the map.
See also this Classification of Plants & Fungi poster and its corresponding video explanation.
Bloomberg’s Jealousy List for 2025, a collection of journalism admired by the magazine’s writers and editors.
I’m actually surprised how well Santa answers these difficult questions in the face of a full on press from the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner.
Where Did These Famous Hip Hop Screeches Come From?
Two of the most famous screeches in music history are from House of Pain’s Jump Around and Cypress Hill’s Insane in the Brain — you likely heard both of them in your mind just reading the names of the songs. This short video explains where those samples came from and which one of them is a horse (and not Prince).
Dollar stores are overcharging their customers at checkout. “Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50.”
Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation? “When you consider all the impressive work Generation X has made, it’s funny that one of the most persistent stereotypes about them is that they’re slackers.”
Gemini and Mercury Remastered is “a collection of hundreds of newly-restored images and untold stories from the NASA archives” about the early manned space programs by the person who did the excellent Apollo Remastered.
Really interesting take on Wake Up Dead Man and the other Knives Out films. Benoit Blanc’s primary motivation is not solving the murder but protecting the innocent from the rich and powerful.
Pantone choosing a shade of white for its color of the year is a little too on the nose, especially when you consider they chose a color called Mocha Mousse last year.
Fritolaysia Cuts Off Chiplomatic Relations With Snakistan. “Relations between the two countries grew stale in 1994, when Fritolaysian rufflelutionaries crossed zestablished borders and forced Snakistan to dispatch cheesekeeping forces.”
“Change starts with smaller actions, with going against the odds. And the strangest possibilities can sometimes lead to the biggest gains. So open every door you can to the future that you want to see.”
“The breakneck speed of New England’s transformation makes it the fastest-heating area of the US, bar the Alaskan Arctic, and the pace of its temperature rise has apparently increased in the past five years.”
What ‘67’ Reveals About Childhood Creativity. “Through these quaint ready-made formulas the ridiculousness of life is underlined, the absurdity of the adult world and their teachers proclaimed…and the curiosity of language itself is savoured.”
How Ferrari’s F1 Team Improved Medical Care for Children
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) in London improved their surgery-to-ICU handoff process by observing how Ferrari’s F1 team handled pit stops.
GOSH doctors visited and observed the pit crew handoff in Italy. While visiting the Formula One pit crew the GOSH doctors became interested in the way they addressed possible failure. The crew sat around a big table analyzing and reanalyzing, asking, “What could go wrong?” and “What are we going to do if it does go wrong?” and “How important is it if it goes wrong?” Everyone’s ideas were given equal weight until the group ranked them using the failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA).
This anticipatory planning made the pit crew more prepared than the medical team whose strategy tended to be waiting until something went wrong to work out what they should have done. Observing the pit crew, the GOSH doctors noted the value of process mapping, process description, and trying to work out what people’s tasks should be. They learned the keys to a successful pit stop:
– The routine in the pit stop is taken seriously
– What happens in the pit stop is predictable so problems can be anticipated and procedures can be standardized
– Crews practice those procedures until they can perform them perfectly
– Everyone knows their job, but one person is always in charge
Among their findings that led to improvement:
While the main theme changes were more sophisticated procedures and better choreographed teamwork, another aspect of the Formula One handover process easily transferred to the hospital setting. The lollipop man is the one who waves the car in and coordinates the pit stop. He maintains overall situation awareness during the pit stop. In the old hospital handover there was no one like the lollipop man so it was unclear who was in charge. Under the new handover process, the anesthetist was given overall responsibility for coordinating the team until it was transferred to the intensivist at the termination of the handover. These same two individuals were charged with the responsibility of periodically stepping back to look at the big picture and to make safety checks of the handover.
According to this video about the hospital’s study, they were able to reduce the number of errors in the handover by 66%.
(thx, meg)
Really interesting post about Hammersmith Bridge, which has been closed since 2019, a presumed “loss” of 25,000 daily car trips. “The local economy has adapted, air quality has improved, and overall traffic congestion has lessened.”
To Grow, We Must Forget… but Now AI Remembers Everything. “What if human forgetting is not a bug, but a feature? And what happens when we build machines that don’t forget, but are now helping shape the human minds that do?”
Sound Designing a Life
This is a charming short film on how a Foley artist would sound design a day in an ordinary life. Running hands through spaghetti noodles stands in for hair washing, a spray bottle sounds like rustling sheets, that sort of thing.
See also this fascinating short documentary about what a Foley artist does.
Matthew Rhys & Netflix are plotting an adaptation of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. The consensus is that The Power Broker is unadaptable. But, the consensus also was that a 50-billion-page book about Robert Moses was not going to work but here we are.
How MacKenzie Scott is giving away her billions. “Once you begin to see Scott as [Toni] Morrison’s mentee — rather than as a certain Amazon founder’s ex-wife — you can’t unsee it. She gives more like an artist would.”
An irresistible video title: Army of Crabs Protect Spy Robot From Stingray. “A 4-meter stingray can eat 50 crabs a day.”
Sweats & Swots
“Ugh, this kid is so sweaty!” my son exclaimed as he came under attack in some game he was playing. This was a few years ago; my ears perked up and I asked him what he meant. He explained that “sweaty” was a derogatory term for gamers who were trying super hard to win. Such players were referred to as “sweats”.
Recently I read something — can’t remember what — and came across the word “swot”. I hadn’t heard that before, so I looked it up. “Swot”, a dialect variant of “sweat”, is a derogatory word in informal British English meaning “a person who studies hard, especially one regarded as spending too much time studying”.
I wonder if these two meanings evolved independently from each other; that would be super interesting. Know Your Meme traced “sweaty” back to its use among those who played the FIFA game series in 2014. It’s possible that British gamers smuggled “swot” into gaming terminology and it quickly evolved into “sweat”. I’m not sure how common “swot” is in Britain…or if “sweat” is used interchangeably with “swot”. But if I had to guess, I’d say they weren’t related. If any etymologists out there are looking for a challenge…
How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life. “It’s like Zen. There are times when it is just very relaxing to be standing in front of the machine and slowly cleaning it, tweaking the adjustment so visually things start to really line up.”
An Online Collection of Found Cassette Tapes
Intertapes is a collection of found cassette tapes — some contain music and others voice memos. Each entry includes images of the tape, a description/track listing, and the actual audio (on Soundcloud).
This one was recorded off of a NYC radio station in 1994 and includes tracks from Mary J. Blige, Wu-Tang, Snoop Dogg, and Heavy D.
This tape found recently in Berlin was also recorded in 1994 by someone named Sven and includes tracks by Underworld & Laurent Garnier.
“If new proposals detailed in an FDA memo are put into place, experts told me it would mean the end of annual flu shots. And end of most vaccines for pregnant people. And maybe the end of updates to pneumonia vaccines. And more.”
I love the remix of Radiohead’s Everything In Its Right Place in the midst of Kelly Lee Owens’ Boiler Room set (~33:50 mark). Had me chair dancing this AM!
Janet Sobel, a Forgotten Pioneer of Abstract Art
The painting above was made in 1945 by self-taught artist Janet Sobel; it’s called Milky Way. Sobel was a Ukrainian-born artist who was a pioneer in abstract expressionist art and in drip painting; her work directly influenced that of Jackson Pollock. From Why This Pioneering Abstract Painter Disappeared From the Art World at the Height of Her Fame:
The next year, Sobel had her first solo show at New York’s Puma Gallery, where the legendary art critic Clement Greenberg visited — with Pollock. In an update to his essay “American-Type Painting,” Greenberg wrote that they “admired these pictures rather furtively,” adding: “Later on, Pollock admitted that these pictures had made an impression on him.”
Here’s one of Sobel’s paintings circa 1946-1948:
Compare that with Pollock’s first drip painting in 1946. Hmm!
Sobel’s “outsider” status, gender, and age, as well as a move away from NYC and the loss of her primary patron, all contributed to her short career, lack of recognition, and limited legacy (for someone who was described in 1946 as an artist who will “eventually be known as one of the important surrealist artists in this country”).
In 2021, Sobel was the subject of a belated obituary in the NYT’s Overlooked series.
How exactly Sobel entered the art world is a bit of folklore. As one story goes, Sobel’s son Sol was an art student who in the late 1930s threatened to quit his studies at the Art Students League, a storied nonprofit school in Manhattan that counts Norman Rockwell, Georgia O’Keeffe and Mark Rothko among its alumni.
According to historians and family members, Sobel criticized one of Sol’s paintings, prompting him to throw down his brush and tell her to take up painting herself instead.
And here’s a MoMA video about Sobel’s Milky Way:
The best telescopes for astrophotography. Boy, if I needed an expensive new hobby, this might be the one at the top of the list.
What’s the best way to lift people out of poverty? “Cash giving programs believe the people experiencing poverty best understand what they need to escape it.”
A much-touted 4K remaster of Mad Men recently premiered on HBO Max and they forgot to apply digital effects to scenes in some of the episodes so you can see crew in the background, etc.
An Astonishing Graph
For most of human history, around 50% of children used to die before they reached the end of puberty. In 2020, that number is 4.3%. It’s 0.3% in countries like Japan & Norway.
This dramatic decline has resulted from better nutrition, clean water, sanitation, neonatal healthcare, vaccinations, medicines, and reductions in poverty, conflicts, and famine.
Before ~1800, almost every parent lost a child; now it’s such an uncommon experience that people have forgotten and want to ban vaccines.
Very Good Music Fun Facts from Go Jeff Go including: “Hall and Oates never referred to themselves as “Hall and Oates.” All their records say Daryl Hall and John Oates. Also, there is a 9-inch height difference between Hall & Oates.”
Retrospekt refurbs and sells retro technology (VHS tapes, cassette players, instant cameras, typewriters, iPods).
A Line in a Tom Stoppard Play Inspired a New Breast Cancer Treatment
In a letter to the Times of London, Dr. Michael Baum tells how a line in Arcadia by Tom Stoppard sparked an idea which resulted in adjuvant systemic chemotherapy, a therapy Baum helped pioneer which greatly increased the survivability of breast cancer.
Sir, In 1993 my wife and I went to see the first production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (obituary, Dec 1), and in the interval I experienced a Damascene conversion. As a clinical scientist I was trying to understand the enigma of the behaviour of breast cancer, the assumption being that it grew in a linear trajectory spitting off metastases on its way. In the first act of Arcadia, Thomasina asks her tutor, Septimus: “If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose?” With that Stoppard explains chaos theory, which better explains the behaviour of breast cancer. At the point of diagnosis, the cancer must have already scattered cancer cells into the circulation that nest latent in distant organs. The consequence of that hypothesis was the birth of “adjuvant systemic chemotherapy”, and rapidly we saw a striking fall of the curve that illustrated patients’ survival.
Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia.
Michael Baum
Professor emeritus of surgery; visiting professor of medical humanities, UCL
Certainly drives home the value of a robust and diverse culture of humanities in contradiction to the current backlash. (via @harrywallop.co.uk)
I’m in Charge at This Hertz Location, and Buddy, You’re Not Getting a Car Today. “Tell me, honestly, when you reserved a rental car through Hertz, you thought… what? That we were going to set aside a special little car just for you? Seriously?”
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
In just a few days (Dec 5), the entirety of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill duology will be released in theaters as one four-hour-long film. Here’s the trailer:
Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR unites Volume 1 and Volume 2 into a single, unrated epic—presented exactly as he intended, complete with a new, never-before-seen anime sequence.
And there will be an intermission. I haven’t seen KB in awhile and am looking forward to this.
Oh, and QT has a Kill Bill collab with Fortnite? Apparently in the original script, there was a scene where Yuki Yubari (Gogo Yubari’s twin sister) tries to get revenge on Kiddo, but it was cut because the director deemed it “too much to chew” for one shoot. Using Unreal Engine 5, Fortnite characters, and a motion-captured Uma Thurman, Tarantino has finally made the scene a reality. You can find it in the game or watch it on YouTube:
A list of 25 Things to Say to Your Children, including “You can do hard things. I’ve seen you do them before and you can do them again.”; “I’m proud of you.”; and “It’s so brave to feel your feelings.”
Paul Ford on normalized AI & what happens when bubbles burst. “When the bubble is big, every idea feels like a billion-dollar idea. I yearn for cheap ideas from strangers.”
David Byrne’s Tiny Desk Concert
There are a few artists where you hear their name and “Tiny Desk” together and you think, well, that’s going to be great. David Byrne is one of those and his performance does not disappoint.
Though Byrne and his band do normally spread out across large stages, the set design for each show is almost completely bare, without any cables or amps, and the artists wear or carry compact, custom-made instruments to make it easier to move, almost like a marching band.
It’s cozy, but Byrne and his band, in matching, brilliant blue suits, squeeze behind the Desk to perform four songs, opening with the euphoric “Everybody Laughs,” followed by “Don’t Be Like That,” both from his new album. They also perform two Talking Heads songs: “(Nothing But) Flowers,” from the 1988 album Naked, and a show-stopping version of “Life During Wartime,” from 1979’s Fear of Music.
100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025. The big end-of-year lists mostly feature books from big publishers; this list aims to spread the attention to smaller publishers.
Keene, NH has been replacing their stop-lighted intersections with roundabouts, resulting in big reductions in pollution, accidents & injuries, and costs. “Slowly moving is better than waiting at a light any day.”
Why Is Everyone Running In Rom-Coms?
I am not generally a fan of rom-coms so I didn’t think I was going to post Evan Puschak’s newest video, but he’s so good at them. Puschak argues that rom-coms are compelling because they reflect the modern challenge of finding meaning as individuals.
In the modern day, we live in a world without a cosmic moral order, a framework of meaning to which everyone automatically subscribes. We had one for a while. But round about the year 1700, give or take a century, that framework started cracking, fragmenting, losing its authority, and the burden of finding meaning shifted onto individuals. We all became desperate seekers in a confusing and disjointed world.
It’s no coincidence that this shift roughly coincides with the emergence of the novel as a form of storytelling. In a profoundly new way, the novel concerned itself with individuals, ordinary individuals — their internal motivations, their inner lives, their ability to overcome obstacles to achieve a goal. Novels both reflected and shaped the way modern people saw their identities as narratives; as stories with a beginning, middle, and end; as quests for meaning.
And if that’s not interesting to you, turn down the sound and enjoy the kinetic pleasure of watching people — Tom Cruise, Meg Ryan, Dustin Hoffman, Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant — sprinting in a great 4-minute supercut.
I Was Stabbed in the Back With a Real Knife While Performing Julius Caesar. “I realised what had happened while acting out my character’s death, and thinking: I have to lie here until the lights go down.”
On next-gen GLP-1 drugs. “A mere decade ago, obesity drugs powerful enough for people to routinely drop double-digit percentages of their body weight were unheard-of. Today, there are two, and they feel ubiquitous.”
A short video that explains *a lot* about the modern world & conservatism. “They also want to feel normal. They want to walk around and see that most other people have made the same choice they made.” And that last line!
This Is Always Interesting: “52 Things I Learned In 2025”
One of my favorite end-of-year lists is Tom Whitwell’s annual record of 52 things he’s learned in the past year. Some favorites of mine from the 2025 installment:
4. You can unlock the wheels on a shopping cart by playing sounds on your phone. [Joseph Gabay]
5. In the UK, water companies and offshore rigs communicate by bouncing radio waves off trails created by millions of small meteorites as they burn up in the atmosphere. [Meteor Communications Ltd]
14. Nearly 0.7% of US exports, by value, are human blood or blood products. [dynomight]
16. The Ceremonial Bugle is a small plastic device that slides into a real bugle and allows a non-musician to perform at a funeral. It has a discreet switch to select ‘Taps’, ‘Last Post’ or one of ten other calls. [Simon Britton via Nicolas Collins]
27. Researchers at MIT have developed a fibre computer that is stretchable and machine washable with 6 hours of battery life, weighing about as much as a sheet of A4 paper. [Nikhil Gupta & co]
49. Marchetti’s Constant is the idea that throughout human history, from cave dwellers to ancient Greeks to 21st century Londoners, people tend to commute for about an hour a day — 30 minutes out, 30 minutes home. So faster travel leads to longer distances, not less time. [Cesare Marchetti, plus a 2025 update]
Photographing the Microscopic: Winners of Nikon Small World 2025. “Overall Winner: A rice weevil perched on a grain of rice.”
Adding to an “overwhelming body of evidence”, a recent study showed that “suicidality scores dropped significantly an average of two years and up to five years after [trans youth] received gender-affirming treatment”.
The Atlantic hurricane season has come to a close and Google’s DeepMind AI-based hurricane model performed really well in predicting track and intensity of storms.
Q: “Want to Feel Old?” A: “Yes.”
In 2010, Randall Munroe’s fiancée (now wife) was diagnosed with cancer. Every once in awhile, he updates his audience at XKCD on how that’s going. The most recent missive: Fifteen Years.
If you’re not up on XKCD lore, here’s an explanation. 💞
Socials & More