Trump is a hallucinating LLM. “He answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question…”
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.
“Authoritarian followers share three tendencies: they obey authority figures from their in-group (called authoritarian submission); they punish rule breakers (authoritarian aggression); and they rigidly endorse long-held traditions (conventionalism).”
On working for Andy Warhol. “The year I worked at the Factory felt like the happiest & most exciting period of my life, a whirl of discos, parties, famous people. Yet afterwards, when I looked back, it seemed a dangerously empty, soul-destroying time…”
IL governor J.B. Pritzker urges resistance. “If it sounds like I’m becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated, it’s because… I am. You should be too. They are an affront to every value this country was founded upon.”
Trump’s Already Lost. “You simply cannot impose an autocracy if a clear majority of the country opposes what you are trying to do at the outset, when you are trying to do it.” (Not sure I buy this? But I’d like to?)
The 35th Anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space 35 years ago and in celebration of that milestone, Alan Taylor collected some recent images from the Hubble, whose mission is still ongoing.
This is fun: Jacob Collier Improvises the National Symphony Orchestra. “I was challenged to improvise a piece of music with an orchestra, with no plan, no sheet music, no rehearsal, and no prior discussion. Here’s what happened.”
One Hour of Mon Mothma Dancing
Ok it’s not one hour of Zemo dancing, but I’ll take it. And the YT comments are better:
“Many Bothans died to bring us this beat.”
“Sir, we have located the Rebel bass.”
This isn’t the first time this song has appeared on Andor — it’s an “intergalactic hit” called Niamos! written for the show by composer Nicholas Britell, who lives in this galaxy and was also responsible for the Succession theme song. (via @moleitau.bsky.social)
The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage in 2025. “The annual earnings of a single adult working full-time, year-round at $7.25 an hour now fall below the poverty threshold of $15,650.”
Vystery is a game where you click/tap to enhance sections of an abstract image and try to guess what it is in the fewest moves possible.
My friend Jodi wrote a pretty thorough crash course on how Canadian elections work (and how they compare to US elections). “In Canada, the election or campaign period must be at least 37 days and no more than 51 days.”
Hundreds of Free Images From Studio Ghibli Films
Well this is just wonderful: Studio Ghibli has uploaded hundreds of high-resolution still images from almost all of their films, including all of the major ones: Princess Mononoke, Sprited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, The Boy and the Heron, Howl’s Moving Castle, etc. etc. The images are labeled “solely for personal use by individual fans to further enjoy Studio Ghibli films” and people are urged to “please feel free to use the images within the bounds of common sense”.
Head to the list of Ghibli movies and click through to each film to find & download the stills. (via open culture)
I Just Got Into Harvard. My MAGA Grandparents’ 6-Word Reaction To My Acceptance Devastated Me. “We are not your culture war — we are your kids. We are the future.”
The Snowy Owls of Logan Airport
This is a lovely little short film about the many snowy owls that migrate down from the Arctic and settle at Boston’s Logan airport and the man who safely captures & relocates the owls away from the airport. I love this story about what a fierce hunter the snowy owl is:
A snowy owl, several years ago, took a peregrine falcon. This peregrine came in — it was a young bird — came in, harassed the snowy owl while the snowy owl was roosting and sleeping. Bopped him off the back of the head, woke the owl up. [The peregrine] proceeded to take off and flew into a flock of starlings. It grabbed one of the starlings, it took the starling to the ground. And little did it know but that the snowy owl was right onto its tail. That snowy owl came in and grabbed that peregrine falcon and had him for dinner.
(via, sorta, kottke.org)
A new game from the creator of One Million Checkboxes: One Million Chessboards. “Moving a piece moves it for everyone, instantly. There are no turns. You can move between boards.”
“There are other meat-eating caterpillars that ‘do lots of crazy things, but this takes the cake,’ said study author Dan Rubinoff with the University of Hawaii at Manoa.” I, for one, think it’s cool when bugs wear other bugs.
Silenced Science Stories
Silenced Science Stories is a collaboration between scientists and artists to tell the stories of scientific experts who have been affected by the Trump regime’s purge of their ranks.
We are organizing an illustrated series of portraits and stories of scientific experts whose work is being affected by federal budget cuts and mass firings.
We have over 30 science artists who are volunteering to create these features to communicate the careers and the important scientific research of federally employed and funded scientists.
If you’d like to get involved, they are looking for both artists and scientists with stories to tell. You can read more about the project in Physics Today. (via jonathan hoefler)
Scientists have invented (or discovered?) a new color called “olo”. “Verifying that [the] participants had indeed seen a novel color was tricky. Only one person witnesses the experience of color: the person who sees it.”
Website For MAGA-Friendly Businesses Backfires As People Use It For Boycotts. “Social media posts about PublicSquare have gone viral as Trump critics use it to find companies not to support.”
A year of hate: what I learned when I went undercover with the far right. “Leaders in the far right conceal their true nature to present a more acceptable version to potential voters, donors and sometimes their own members.”
This Five-Hundred-Word Bumper Sticker on My Tesla Explains Why I’m Not a Bad Person. “Trust me, I feel the sting of every single disapproving glare like a thousand needles. My soul trembles and withers. It is an unbearable burden.”
The Courage to Be Decent. “What matters is that acts we once took for granted as virtuous, routine, and safe — telling the truth, representing those oppressed by the state, … basic journalism — now carry some risk. They now require some courage.”
The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen. “It’s a machine designed to be extremely basic, extremely customizable, and extremely affordable.” It’s also designed to patina (i.e. age gracefully).
“If the Trump administration can get away with violating the Constitution because it knows the courts will be too slow to prevent it, then those constitutional rights simply no longer exist.”
Rediscovering the Place That Made You Give a Damn
For his most recent video, Beau Miles (who you might remember from his “Mile an Hour” Marathon or Four-Day Commute to Work Via Kayak) returned to a pair of places (both outdoor camps) where his life took a significant turn.
I think we all suspect that world view comes from every day of your life in combination and all those experiences. But where are the moments where you thought, “Oh, here’s a big bloody fork in the road. There’s a powerful day of inspiration or a day of tragedy or something that is going to change your course”?
I’ve talked before about one of the big inflection points in my life:
When I tell people about the first time I saw the Web, I sheepishly describe it as love at first sight. Logging on that first time, using an early version of NCSA Mosaic with a network login borrowed from my physics advisor, was the only time in my life I have ever seen something so clearly, been sure of anything so completely. It was a like a thunderclap — “the amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending” — and I just knew this was for me and that it was going to be huge and important. I know how ridiculous this sounds, but the Web is the true love of my life and ever since I’ve been trying to live inside the feeling I had when I first saw it.
I’d have to think hard about whether that was the moment or if it actually happened earlier, like going off to college (which was revelatory to me and opened me up to so many possibilities I didn’t even know existed) or deciding on physics as a major or even, much later, moving to NYC and finally feeling at home somewhere. (via sean breslin)
“In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They’ll still charm your socks off.”
The Trailer for Pee-wee as Himself, an HBO Documentary Series About Pee-wee Herman
A few months ago, I wrote about Pee-wee as Himself, a two-part HBO documentary about the life and career of Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) that had then just premiered at Sundance. Now we’ve got a trailer and a premiere date: May 23.
It’s weird to be in this situation, having a documentary made, because I’m used to having control of my alter ego.
The Process for Getting a Ph.D. in the US Has Changed
Randall Munroe notes that the typical path to getting a Ph.D. at an American college or university has changed somewhat in the past few months. In the alt-text for the image, he notes: “Rümeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street in my town one month ago.”
Öztürk is still being held without evidence and a federal judge recently ruled that she must be returned to Vermont while her detainment is being challenged.
As part of their Smithsonian purge, the Trump regime is dismantling and removing the Woolworth’s lunch counter (a key artifact of the Civil Rights Movement) from the NMAAHC and returning other artifacts to their owners.
Twins Speaking Twins Speaking in Unison in Unison
Earlier this week, Aaron found this clip featuring a set of twins who were eyewitnesses to an accident and who also speak mostly in unison.
This short clip reveals more about the Powers sisters’ unusual way of communicating (“we don’t know why, but we have tried to talk separately, but it’s not ourselves, it’s not us”):
This synchronicity between twins is uncommon but not unique. In fact, Werner Herzog is filming a movie called Bucking Fastard right now that stars Rooney and Kate Mara as a pair of inseparable twin sisters based on the true story of Freda and Greta Chaplin.
Here’s how Herzog describes the Chaplin twins:
In 1981 they had a short run in the British ‘red tops,’ or tabloid newspapers, and were famous for a few weeks for being the ‘sex-crazed twins’ who were so infatuated with their neighbor, a lorry driver, that he took them to court and had a restraining order taken out against them. Their story is unique. They are the only identical twins we know of who speak synchronously.
We know that twins sometimes develop their own secret language when they are all alone by which they can exclude the rest of the world, but Freda and Greta spoke the same words at the same time. I have had the experience where they open the door, greet me, and ask me inside, all completely synchronous in word and gesture. I suppose this type of a conversation could be a ritual developed by practice. But later on, they answered questions they can’t have been expecting absolutely in unison. Sometimes they spoke separately, then Freda, for the sake of argument, would speak the first half of a sentence, at which point Greta would chime in with a word or two in unison, and then bring the sentence to a conclusion herself. Or the other way around. They wore exactly the same clothes, hairstyles, shoes. Their handbags and umbrellas were identical; they were as coordinated as a Rorschach test ready to be folded in two at any moment. When they walked, they didn’t walk in step like soldiers, left-right, left-right, but they had their inside feet together and kept time with their outside feet. It was the same with their handbags, which they didn’t both carry in their left hands; they carried them in their outer hands and their umbrellas with their inside hands. You could have folded a picture of them, and the two halves would have matched. Their gestures were synchronized, their physical awareness of each other continuous. Who was left and who was right in sitting or walking was for me the only way of telling which one was Greta and which was Freda at our early meetings.
You can see them speaking & interacting in this 1987 short documentary about the twins, A Pair of One.
I had no idea Logan was lousy with snowy owls. “Known as the ‘owl man of Logan airport’, the raptor researcher has caught and released into the wild more than 900 snowy owls that decided Boston Logan was their Boca Raton.”
Hmmm! Ken Burns & Lynn Novick are doing a 6-hour series on LBJ & the Great Society (to air in 2028). LBJ “voted against every civil rights bill during his tenure as congressman, then spearheaded the greatest civil rights measures since Reconstruction”.
Baby Steps is a forthcoming walking simulator game from the makers of QWOP (a ridiculously hard sprinting game) in which you walk around an open world.
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s 2019 sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, is getting a Hulu TV series of its own.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! Photos of NYC Protests, 1980-2000.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! is an exhibition of photos of protests in NYC taken from 1980 to 2000 by dozens of photographers.
New York’s streets were turbulent in the 1980s and 1990s, as residents marched, demonstrated, and rioted in response to social changes in their city as well as national and international developments. The profoundly unequal economic recovery of the 1980s, dependent upon investment banking and high-end real estate development, led to heated contests over space and city services, as housing activists opposed gentrification and called attention to the plight of thousands of homeless New Yorkers. Immigration made New York City much more diverse, but a significant proportion of white New Yorkers opposed civil rights and acted to maintain racial segregation.
Attempts to combat the high crime rates of the 1970s and early 1980s exacerbated concerns about police brutality, as innocent black and Latino New Yorkers died at the hands of the police. The culture wars wracking the nation had particular resonance in New York, a center of avant-garde art as well as of gay and lesbian and feminist activism, on the one hand, and home of the Vatican’s spokesman in the U.S., Cardinal John O’Connor, and a significant culturally conservative Roman Catholic population on the other.
The photos are grouped by subject: race relations, police brutality, war & environment, AIDS, queer activism, abortion rights, housing, education & labor, and culture wars. (via the morning news)
Boston’s MFA had been working on transferring their Benin Bronzes back to their land of origin. But instead, the wealthy donor of the bronzes is taking them back and the gallery will close.
NYC People-Watching at 780 Frames Per Second
Filmed at 780 fps with a Phantom Flex from the back of a moving SUV, James Nares’ Street depicts people walking New York streets in super slow motion.
The film runs 60 minutes (depicting about three minutes of real time footage), Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore did the soundtrack, and it’s on display at The Met until the end of May.
Update: Here’s another short clip of the full film from the National Gallery of Art.
Trump Wants You to Think Resistance Is Futile. It Is Not. “There was no deal you could cut to save your Cloud City. You could either submit or resist. It is in the last two months that we have finally begun to see resistance.”
“Monarch Waystations are places that provide resources necessary for [monarch butterflies] to produce successive generations and sustain their migration.” Over 50,000 waystations (w/ milkweed & flowers) have been built by volunteers since 2004.
Timothy Ryback on Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs. “By seeking to ‘liberate’ Germans from a globalized world order, the Nazi government sent the national economy careening backwards.” Hmm, sounds familiar…
Trump ‘Alarmists’ Were Right. We Should Say So. “Put simply: It is that bad. Liberal democracy is in danger. Fascism is a reasonable term for what we’re fighting.”
Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile. “From the hosts of The War on Cars podcast, a searing indictment of how cars ruin everything, and what we can do to fight back.”
How I’d Fix Atlanta. “In each of these essays, a citizen of Georgia’s capital argues for one way we could make our city better.”
4x3 is a Connections-like game invented by Hank Green where you sort 9 words into 4 categories. Crucially, “one special word belongs to all 4 categories”.
Ryan Coogler’s next project is an X-Files reboot. “We’re going to try to make something really great, bro, and make something for the real ‘X-Files’ fans and maybe find some new ones.”
Oscilloscope Music — What You See Is What You Hear!
This is a visualization created on the screen of an oscilloscope by a musical piece:
Primer is an introduction to oscilloscope music, a genre and art form where vector visuals are formed by the music itself. The image is produced by using the left audio channel to control the beam on the X axis, and the right audio channel to control the beam on the Y axis.
Once I wrapped my brain around what was happening here, I found this to be quite an impressive achievement: creating beautiful & coherent visuals from non-discordant music. (via waxy)
Tool libraries offer community members access to “power washers, hammers, drills, cameras, lawn mowers, pet carriers, grills” and such to help with project. “There are no tariffs on sharing. The more we share, the more we have.”
Say the Words: American Concentration Camp. “What is happening now is not a deviation. It is an expansion. The tools were always there. The tools were always sharpened on Black bodies. They are merely being used more broadly now, and with less pretense.”
Out today from chef, humanitarian, and activist José Andrés: Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs.
Columbia Canceled My Course on Race and Media. I’m Going to Teach It Anyway. “This is not a time for media literacy or historical knowledge to be held hostage by institutions bending the knee to authoritarianism and fear.”
Stay Connected