Emptying the Tabs…
Ok, we’re gonna go a little old school today. I’m talking the late 1990s and early 2000s, back before permalinks (sorry), RSS, and social media turned blog posts & tweets into their own little discrete units packaged to be easily passed around and things were less homogeneous. Back then, blogs — at least the ones I loved — tended to be more of a stream of consciousness thing, just an unordered and uncurated list of whatever happened to pop into people’s heads or cross their screens.
So, I’ve currently got at least 120 tabs across 20+ windows open in Chrome. I know, I know, I’ve gotta get a tab manager, but this is where I am right now. Each of these tabs contains something interesting and potentially bloggable, but some of them have been sitting there for months and with moving stuff consuming most of my days right now, I don’t have time to sit down and give them each even a Quick Links treatment. So I’m gonna do them rapid-fire in the hopes that you might find some of it interesting. Here we go, let’s empty some tabs!!
The winners of the 2026 iPhone Photography Awards. Via my pal Jodi, I think. I love this one, which rhymes with this famous photo (Behind the Gare St. Lazare) by Henri Cartier-Bresson:
Ways of Treeing, “Meditations on time and rebellion against the straight line”.
The quiet grief of adult friendship. “Adult friendship became one of the most emotionally significant and least discussed losses of modern life.” (Via swissmiss; have I linked to this one before?)
Hugh Howey (author of the Silo books) on how the self-publishing window has closed (or at least narrowed). “We had less than 20 years of writing being hard and publishing being easy, and we will never get that window back.”
I haven’t done a media diet post since November (and may not again?) but I’ve been eagerly watching s03 of Silo, listening to Toni Morrison read Beloved (great book but what a fucking gift to hear Morrison read it), and enjoyed the new Spider-Man, a series that is at its best when the three leads just chill and talk.
“Artist and researcher Maggie Coblentz fermented miso in orbit, chasing a deeper question: What makes a miso a miso—or a person a person—away from Earth?”
I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World by Sarah Wilson.
Messy Nessy’s Cabinet (always a good source of interesting links) redesigned recently.
These Dutch strip islands are cool.
How art invented humanity (instead of the other way around).
I don’t watch enough videos by Phil Edwards these days: “Why are bowling alleys across America replacing 2,000-pound mechanical pinsetters with nylon strings?”
Is democracy without elections possible? Could a lottery be better? I actually watched this a couple of months ago but never got around to writing it up. More on this from Alex Guerrero.
I really wanted to get to this one but just never could find the time: Historia Civilis on The History of the City.
This might be a minority view, but my YouTube algorithm is actually pretty good at showing me stuff I’m interested in. Case in point: when I was getting the link for the city video above, I noticed a newish video from Tom Scott about Bletchley Park and the secrecy of the Intelligence Factory.
The Spectacle: Has Taking the Perfect Photo Ruined Tourism?
Fordite is an artificial gemstone made up of dozens of layers of automotive paint that built up and hardered over time.
This material is typically found in the paint booths of auto factories, where cars were spray-painted by hand. As the paint sprayed over vehicles, excess paint would build up on the equipment and surfaces around the painting area. Over the years, these layers of paint would harden, creating colorful, agate-like structures.
Fordite is no longer being produced: “The switch from solvent-based paints to more environmentally friendly, quicker-drying paints in modern automotive plants has virtually ended the creation of new fordite, making it a finite material.”
Infinite Digest: a collection of infographics about DFW’s Infinite Jest.
Inge Druckrey: Teaching to See, “a 40-minute crash course in design thinking”. Found this via Edward Tufte.
Debbie Millman on the fleeting euphoria of success (YouTube).
March Forth is a feature-length documentary about Reginald Dwayne Betts, who was incarcerated at 16; “after his release, Betts went on to become an acclaimed poet, author, lawyer, activist and MacArthur Genius Award winner”. Trailer.
The Professor Who Taught People How To Think (1962). This looks great; shades of Feynman.
Screenshots of various operating systems (1983-2005). See also The Virtual OS Museum (“1,700+ pre-installed operating systems, ready to run”).
The Unsolved Mystery of Lorem Ipsum. Got this from Andy so you know it’s good.
Speaking of Andy, he recently posted about Amazon’s decision to shutter Mechanical Turk. Kinda shocked it was still going tbh.
2018 PBS special hosted by Michael Keaton: Why Mister Rogers Still Matters Today. I’m gonna make some time to watch this one after my move is done.
Love the premise of this: Mediocre Movies That Changed My Life. Eddie the Eagle!
Visual Instruments: An Exploration of Making Music Out of Images. This is a fun little web toy to play with.
I wanted to do a whole post on the artist’s palettes they have in the collection at the Met.
A Living Museum of the Comic. “A living museum of where the comic came from — its Western and Eastern roots, the women who drew the early funnies, the Europeans who invented its grammar, and the golden age of the American color cartoon. Every artifact is public domain, restored by us, and free to explore.”
From Kurzgesagt: The Impenetrable Barrier Trapping Us in the Solar System. “From the vast empty space to the laws of physics themselves, there are many reasons why the dream of space travel might stay just a dream.” Alt title: Why Humanity Will Never Leave The Solar System.
The Dingo Fence | The Longest Fence in the World. “In the heart of Australia, the continent has been cut in two by the longest fence in the world in a bid to protect livestock from dingoes. Dingoes have divided the nation for the past 150 years, but with new research coming to light, is it time for this to change?”
“I rebuilt 1901 by Phoenix from scratch to figure out what makes it so good.” I love this song and will make time to watch this soon.
The Deadly Legacy of HIV Truthers (2015). “Even as the medical community reached a consensus that HIV caused AIDS, a counter-movement was emerging, claiming that HIV didn’t exist, or that the virus existed but was harmless. The symptoms of AIDS, according to some of these people, were actually caused by HIV therapies themselves.”
Recent Howtown: So… did NASA find life on Mars? “Awkwardly, we’ve now collected the most promising extra-terrestrial biosignature in a tube that might spend the rest of eternity sealed inside a dead rover.”
I love these little icon collages and creations from Font Awesome (FA serves the icons I use on KDO). Starry Night! Sudoku! Chef Vader! Business Fett!
More than 200 Ansel Adams photos, mostly of National Parks, that are free to view & download. Via Open Culture, one of the gems of the open web.
The Crazy History of the Shower. I think that’s self-recommending.
Jamelle Bouie saw The Odyssey and shared his thoughts about it on YouTube. From his Letterboxd review:
The Odyssey or, what if you did THE DARK KNIGHT in ancient Greece?
This, to be clear, is not a bad thing. Nolan is covering the same thematic territory he did nearly 20 years ago and more recently with OPPENHEIMER. And it is compelling! A kind of Burkean liberalism that sees the heroism of “great men” as a necessary bulwark against disorder and chaos but understands the great men as merely men — who themselves bear some responsibility for the chaos — and sees heroism as a terrible burden to bear, more akin to a curse than a crown. There are no parades or honors. In the end you bear the scars and fade away, an exile remembered in legend.
Anyway, I am glad Hollywood keeps giving the man hundreds of millions of dollars to make his didactic and idiosyncratic blockbusters. Keep ‘em coming!
Yeah, exactly. I feel like most pans of The Odyssey fell into two main buckets: 1) it wasn’t long enough — pacing off, didn’t include my favorite scene, etc. — which was entirely due to 3-hour runtime constraints of IMAX projectors, and 2) I wish Christopher Nolan hadn’t made a Christopher Nolan movie.
Debbie Millman again: Is the World Getting Uglier? First brand she mentions is a Tesla Cybertruck, a completely tasteless monstrosity designed by Elon Simpson that I still laugh at every time I see one on the road.
Due to drought in Britain, you can see “gardens that disappeared hundreds of years ago starting to show themselves again through the grass”.
Artisans make punchcards by hand for the looms that weave beautiful banarasi sarees.
Ok, that’s all for now. I didn’t close all of the open tabs though…maybe I’ll do some more in a few days. How about you? Do you have anything interesting to share with the rest of the class that’s been languishing for a few weeks in a browser tab?
Comments 8
thread
latest
popular
Not quite on topic but… all those tabs in Chrome?! Doesn't that kill your computer? I had to switch to Safari because 20 windows with 20 tabs each was a long and painful death whenever I tried that lifestyle in Chrome. Any secrets to making it work?
The secret to making it work is, as you've discovered, to switch to Safari. Or Firefox. They are slicker than Chrome and have at least a modicum of respect for your privacy.
Hey, this was great! Make it easy on yourself when the whole post thang isn't flowing or time isn't spacious.
Sending good move wishes! 💖
Heavens to Betsy, I have a similar enormous reservoir of "evergreen" links that I've tucked away for possible future sharing, and the links flow in more rapidly than out. A few years back I spent a few hours moving all of those tabs to a folder in my bookmarks, and now I move things there if they linger too long in the tab bar. A few examples, just for fun:
Good luck with the move!
Link to Is the World Getting Uglier?: https://time.com/article/2026/08/18/is-the-world-getting-uglier/
Post links to the previous Letterboxd article.
This is great Jason! I backlogged a bunch of the videos and articles to watch/read later.
I miss the media diaries — I hope that wasn’t the last one!
Another one from Open Culture is Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc.
All About Birds from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a free reference on any bird you want to know about and will help you ID a bird you've seen.
And let's not overlook the promotional videos for the Turbo Encabulator and its modernized version, the Retro Encabulator.
This is how I've been approaching my blog over the last few months and it's been incredibly rewarding. I think of it more like issues of a zine that looks random but there's an emergent curation that reveals itself over time.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
In order to comment or fave, you need to be a kottke.org member. Check out your membership options.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions. Or try logging out and then back in. Still having trouble? Email me!