May 31
Artist Christo died today at age 84. The Gates in Central Park is one of my favorite public artworks I've ever experienced in person.
Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide. "Here are some of the ways law enforcement officers escalated the national unrest."
May 28
30 Movies That Are Unlike Anything You've Seen Before, incl. The Act of Killing, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Morvern Callar, and The Portrait of a Lady.
More Than 100,000 People Have Died Of The Coronavirus In The US. "Public health experts say the real number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 is likely much higher than the official count."
Adobe is offering their entire 99U Conference online this year for free (it's regularly ~$1000). Talks, classes, and workshops from folks like Kelli Anderson, Taeyoon Choi, Yancey Strickler, and Michelle Rial.
Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First. "It's disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off."
Birding While Black. "I've seen a shit-ton of birds from sea level to alpine tundra. But as a black man in America I've grown up with a profile."
75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice. "40. Don't be silent about that racist joke. Silence is support."
May 27
NVIDIA trained an AI to not only play Pac-Man but to generate a fully functional version of the game. "We were blown away when we saw the results, in disbelief that AI could recreate the iconic PAC-MAN experience without a game engine."
Holy crap, they still make Hypercolor shirts?! "A heat activated unisex color changing tshirt for men that changes color when you touch it or by your surrounding heat."
May 26
A short summary of the current research: what we know and don't yet know about Covid-19. "We don't yet know how long immunity lasts. Once you get it once, will you be immune for a month? A year? A lifetime?"
Tomorrow NASA is launching astronauts into orbit from the US for the first time since 2011. They'll ride in a spacecraft built by SpaceX, which will become the first private company to launch humans into space.
Japan has had success against Covid-19 so far without a national lockdown or mass testing. How did they do it? Early, aggressive, and competent contact tracing & "an expert-led approach" are two reasons.
A low dispersion factor of SARS-CoV-2 may indicate that most people don't spread the disease. "We are certainly seeing a lot of concentrated clusters where a small proportion of people are responsible for a large proportion of infections."
J.K. Rowling has posted online the first two chapters of a new fairy tale called The Ickabog (unrelated to the Wizarding World btw). A book version will be published in November w/ all royalties going to Covid-19 relief.
What happens if Trump tries to cancel the election, shuts down urban polling places, contests the election results, or refuses to leave the White House? He was always going to attempt this stuff – the pandemic just makes it waaaay easier.
May 22
Wearing masks is a public health issue. "No shoes, no shirt, no mask, no service."
"SARS-CoV-2 blocks one virus-fighting set of genes but allows another set to launch, a pattern never seen with other viruses", which allows it to easily spread in the lungs. But, this may also point the way towards a preventative treament.
The 2020 Minnesota State Fair has been cancelled "for only the sixth time in a history that predates the US Civil War." The last time it was cancelled was in 1946 because of the polio epidemic.
May 21
This is weird: John Krasinski sold Some Good News to ViacomCBS "following a massive bidding war" and will no longer host the show. All good things, etc.
A profile of LearnedLeague, the invite-only online trivia tournament, and its founder. "Twelve people have walked on the Moon; only three have won the Commissioner T.A. Integrity Scarf as LearnedLeague Champion."
I am a simple potato guardian who needs my Second Amendment rights. "I can't believe the governor would come for our Second Amendment rights. No potato will be safe then. It's monstrous."
Taking advantage of the empty roads of the pandemic lockdown, the record for the fastest car trip across the US has been broken several times. The current record is less than 26 hours (which means they averaged 107mph across the entire US).
Advice for getting children & their grandparents back together again. "Once you're confident in your family's quarantine vigilance for 14 days, it's less risky to visit an older family member. But go with a plan."
After The Empire Strikes Back opened in 1980 in a few theaters in 70mm, George Lucas *changed the end of the movie* before its wider 35mm release 3 weeks later. "I don't wanna tell you this. We need some more shots for Empire."
May 20
When developing new typefaces, pangrams like "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" are bad for testing out real-world letter combinations & letter frequency. So Jonathan Hoefler wrote some new text that includes dozens of useful common combos.
Ed Yong on America's Patchwork Pandemic. "In a pandemic, the actions of 50 uncoordinated states will be less than the sum of their parts. Only the federal government has pockets deep enough to fund the extraordinary public-health effort now needed."
In less than a week, a grad student casually solved a famous math problem that had gone unsolved for decades. When she told her advisor: "He started yelling, 'Why aren't you more excited?'"
May 19
A Succession insult generator. "FitBit moron whatever people." "He looks waxy, like an unshaven candle."
May 18
Mount St. Helens erupted 40 years ago today. Here are some photos of the eruption and the aftermath.
We should all be required to wear masks in public. "This evidence seems, to me, clear and simple: COVID-19 is spread by droplets. We can see directly that a piece of cloth blocks those droplets and the virus those droplets contain."
Pizza Arbitrage. "If someone could pay Doordash $16 a pizza, and Doordash would pay his restaurant $24 a pizza, then he should clearly just order pizzas himself via Doordash, all day long. You'd net a clean $8 profit per pizza."
May 16
May 15
Here's How Time Works Now. "A minute can now either be one hour, or it can take 3.5 seconds. We hope you enjoy this new feature."
The latest issue of the @kottke newsletter just went out. Prince, book recs, Covid slang, and more!
May 14
On March 24, Janice Brown was the first person to test positive for SARS-CoV-2 in her CA town. After recovering, she tested positive for a second time on April 21. "Is it a reinfection or the same infection? We don't know."
May 13
I really enjoyed this discussion between Ezra Klein and Madeline Miller (author of Circe & Song of Achilles). "When you do get everything you want, when you do have absolutely everything, it doesn't make you a good person, actually."
The cast & crew of Back to the Future reunite via video chat, incl. Christopher Lloyd, Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson, Elizabeth Shue, Huey Lewis, etc.
Fascinating & heartbreaking little vignettes from those who are living alone during the pandemic. "I live for the day when I can hold the hands of those I love."
May 12
The only way to order KFC in Gaza is via an ad hoc Instagram service. "The KFC order will only make it to Gaza after crossing checkpoints supervised by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and finally, Hamas."
Little Richard quit rock & roll because "a big ball of fire" appeared in the night sky during a concert, which he took as a sign from God. It was actually Sputnik.
Director David Lynch is doing a daily weather report on YouTube. "Here in LA, we've got clouds and kinda foggy weather with some blue shining through, 62 degrees Fahrenheit..."
Bypassing a theatrical release, the video recording of Lin Manuel-Miranda's Hamilton is coming to Disney+ on July 3. "The 2 hour, 40 minute movie was shot two weeks before the original cast left."
May 11
Virologist Peter Piot, one of the co-discoverers of the Ebola virus, came down with Covid-19 and had to be hospitalized. "Now that I have felt the compelling presence of a virus in my body myself, I look at viruses differently."
An interesting thread about the extensive measures taken by South Korea to stem the spread of Covid-19. In America, we'd rather let hundreds of thousands of people die than submit to something so inconvenient.
May 9
May 8
There is only one known strain of SARS-CoV-2. The term strain is "reserved only for special changes that confer a new property to the virus".
The experience of air travel has long been terrible and the pandemic has made it worse. "At the food court, a shouting match broke out among several stressed-out strangers, and police had to intervene."
Scunthorpe Sans is a font that automatically censors bad language. "Modern fonts can combine letters into a single ligature, usually for things like fi or fl but you can pick anything so we've done it for swears."
May 7
May 6
To deal with the stress, anxiety, and boredom of the pandemic, some are turning to cannabis. "Smoking cannabis has helped people stay inside for generations!"
Tips From Someone With Nearly 50 Years Of Social Distancing Experience. "1. Keep track of something. 2. Keep a routine."
The heavy price of the American brand of freedom & liberty. "This country seems resigned to preventable firearm deaths. It appears that the same is starting to happen with fatalities from the pandemic."
A short piece on what it's like to fly an electric airplane. "For the moment, what gets from a battery to the propeller is about one-fifteenth, per pound, of what we get from avgas."
May 5
An interview with Estelle Caswell, creator of Vox's excellent Earworm video series. The bit about YouTube demonetizing their videos is infuriating. "YouTube's content ID algorithm has no idea what fair use is."
I love this: The Pudding is testing the "infinite monkey theorem" by having a computer program randomly try to play the first notes of familiar songs. The Imperial March from Star Wars took ~1.3 billion attempts to get right.
The Art of the New Deal: Why the Federal Government Funded the Arts During the Great Depression. "He turns the question about who 'deserves' relief on its head. Dance may not be necessary by some people's lights but eating most certainly is."
Not liking the thing that everyone else is (very publicly) loving can be a tough row to hoe. "It seems like everyone in the world loves [Fiona Apple's] "Fetch the Bolt Cutters." So why don't I? On the isolation of disconnection."
Recent testing shows a man tested positive for Covid-19 in France in late December 2019. "The absence of a link with China and the lack of recent travel suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of Dec 2019."
May 4
An honest pandemic Q&A with Dave Eggers. "Having no plan is the plan! Haven't you been listening? Plans are for commies and the Danish. Here we do it fast and loose and dumb and wrong..."
The Man Who Runs 365 Marathons a Year. "People are capable of way more than they think they are."
The problem with "natural" herd immunity & Covid-19 is that millions will die. "If the pandemic went uncontrolled in the United States, it could continue for months after herd immunity was reached, infecting many more millions in the process."
"The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from?" Emissions have only dropped 5.5%. At this pace, even if the pandemic lasted for years, it wouldn't be enough to keep the world under 1.5°C of warming.
May 2
This article's title contains the phrase "Murder Hornet". I needn't say anything more – you're either going to click or not.
May 1
What to Ask Instead of 'How Are You?' During a Pandemic. "Everyone's doing badly. We need better questions to ask."
Zip tie art? Zip tie art!
A visualization of wealth shown to scale. 1 pixel = $1000. Keep scrolling through the wealth of Jeff Bezos (it takes awhile). "Jeff is so wealthy, that it is quite literally unimaginable."
