Cool hack: NASA plans to extend Voyager 2's mission for a few more years by diverting power set aside for a non-critica
19th Century Ornamental Granite Tiles
From 1898, an album of ornamental granite tile patterns available from Threlkeld Granite Co. Ltd. The company was l
Two Quick Links for Thursday Noonish
Former NBA star Dwyane Wade, a Florida sports legend whose daughter is trans, revealed he moved out of the state in par
Knit Grotesk, a Typeface for Hand Knitting
Knit Grotesk is a typeface based on Futura that's designed specifically for hand knitting. It comes in three differen
Pepperoni Hug Spot
I'm not going to make a habit of posting AI generated video and photography here (mainly because most of it is not tha
Two Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish
Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen has kinda sorta retired from the world championship of chess — "I simply feel that I d
Timelapse Video of a Massive Cruise Ship Being Built
So you've seen how an 18th century sailing battleship was built. But that was for a vessel 227 feet long that could ca
Emily Wilson's Translation of the Iliad!
Emily Wilson's eagerly-awaited translation of Homer's Iliad will be out on September 26 and is finally available for p
Cardboard Animal Sculptures
Josh Gluckstein makes these remarkably detailed sculptures of animals out of cardboard and paper.
Inspired by my ex
Two Quick Links for Tuesday Noonish
The Financial Times attempts to explain the economics of Succession, including who owns how much of Waystar Royco. "Nug
Tiny Illustrated Sci-fi Stories
Over on Twitter, @smllwrlds is publishing a new tiny illustrated sci-fi story every day of 2023. (via linkmachinego
How to Carve Marble Like Italian Master Donatello
In a video for the Victoria and Albert Museum, sculptor Simon Smith shows us how Renaissance sculptor Donatello might
Four Quick Links for Monday Noonish
I've featured this on the site before, but Toshi Omigari's book Arcade Game Typography: The Art of Pixel Type is so goo
The 13 Levels of Complexity of Turntable Scratching
My post last week about The 13 Levels of Complexity of Drumming got me interested in Larnell Lewis, but I also started
Channel Drift (Or: Why Cable TV Networks Are All the Same Now)
MTV used to show music videos. Bravo was home to opera and jazz programming. The Learning Channel focused on education
Five Quick Links for Friday Noonish
Footage from Billie Eilish's first festival appearance in 2017 - there aren't more than a dozen people in attendance. F
Fractured Ice Sheet Portraits
During the course of my online travels, I see a lot of cool and interesting things, but this one really stopped me in
The Slow but Inevitable Overwhelm of Consumer Capitalism
In his animated short film Five Cents, which was inspired by his student debt struggles, Aaron Hughes deftly (but gent
How the Legendary Chuck Jones Became a Great Artist
Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos are back with another installment of Every Frame a Painting. In this one, they examine the e
Five Quick Links for Thursday Noonish
We've Been Measuring the Economy All Wrong. Current models assume a competitive economy but ours is more monopolistic,
Two Quick Links for Thursday Morning
"Earlier this month, Twitter quietly removed transgender-specific protections from its hateful conduct policy."
This is
Three Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish
The Washington Post peeked inside the training data set used for LLMs from Facebook and Google and found Russian propag
Three Quick Links for Tuesday Noonish
Woo, David Grann's newest book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, is out today!
This might be my next
In Anxious Anticipation
What I like about the still image above, along with the rest of the images in a project called In Anxious Anticipation
The Fictional Brands Archive
The Fictional Brands Archive is a collection of fictional brands found in movies, TV shows, and video games — think
A History Of The World According To Getty Images
An extraordinary amount of human history — cultural, scientific, artistic — is held in private hands, unable to be vie
Concerning Rogue Waves
Tsunamis, tidal waves, storm surges, and other hazardous aquatic events can all unleash the great power of the sea on
Two Quick Links for Friday Night
Good thoughts from Annalee Newitz on Substack. They're not neutral - they pay and promote writers. "Substack has promot
The Lisa Personal Computer: Apple’s Influential Flop
The Apple Lisa was the more expensive and less popular precursor to the Macintosh; a recent piece at the Computer Hist
Two Quick Links for Friday Noonish
How to help when someone is having a panic attack. "As a support person, you need to find your own stillness, so that t
“What’s the Healthiest Way to Handle a Creeping Feeling That the World Is Ending?”
The end of the world is nigh…or at least it feels like that sometimes these days. As historian and archaeologist Ian M
Can Water Solve a Maze?
I saw this video on the front page a YouTube a couple of weeks ago and ignored it. Like, of course water can solve a m
Three Quick Links for Thursday Noonish
An interview with the man ("a guy named Paul") behind the Dril Twitter account. "I do find a lot of aspects of Twitter
Customize Your AirPods Pro for Even Better Sound
Earlier today, I posted a Quick Link to the 2nd-generation AirPods Pro on Amazon because they were $50 off, a good deal
Four Quick Links for Wednesday Noonish
The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is a list that attempts to "categorize every dramatic situation that might occur in
The Visiting Cards of Notable Artists
F. C. Schang collected the calling cards of prominent artists and musicians and in the late 20th century, donated a
Three Quick Links for Tuesday Afternoon
Travelling around Europe by train, eating delicious meals in revitalized dining cars, sounds like an amazing way to spe
Kottke AMA, Round 2
Hey folks, just a short note to say that I’m dropping in to answer some more questions over on the Kottke AMA site this
Three Quick Links for Tuesday Noonish
The Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City is the last USPS facility in the country where unreadable addresses are se
The Smithsonian’s Collection of Online Public Domain Images Swells to 4.5 Million Objects
Back in 2020, the Smithsonian Institution placed 2.8 million high-resolution images and 3D models of objects in their c
Exhibition of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Infographics at Cooper Hewitt in NYC
I’ve written before about the data visualizations created by W.E.B. Du Bois for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. Apparen
The Sound of a Dialup Modem, Visualized and Explained
There are few sounds that can transport me back to a specific time and place like the handshake of a dialup modem. I he
The Sizes of Flying Creatures, Compared
Using 3D models, this video compares the sizes of various flying creatures (insects, bats, birds, dinosaurs) past and
Three Quick Links for Sunday Noonish
The recently rediscovered original recording of the Wilhelm scream, Hollywood's favorite audio easter egg. It includes
Two Quick Links for Friday Afternoon
Andy Baio is colorblind - here's what the world (and some hard-to-use web interfaces) look like through his eyes. "At a
Flip Off Symbolically Powerful Places With Ai Weiwei’s Middle Finger
For his project Study of Perspective, artist and activist Ai Weiwei took photos of himself flipping off “significant
How to Beat Roulette (Without Cheating?)
The arms race between the house and the gamblers over which they openly have the advantage is fascinating. I’ve read ab
Two Quick Links for Friday Morning
Twitter is haphazardly cutting off API access to feedreaders, bot-makers, and would-be competitors. "Overall I'm not su
Five Quick Links for Thursday Noonish
Hot Ones has a genius formula: thoroughly researched, substantive questions, celeb guests off-balance because their mou
Detailed Illustrations of Japanese Maintenance Trains
I’m charmed by these ultra-realistic drawings of Japanese maintenance trains by Masami Onishi.
Japanese trains are re
Edward Burtynsky’s African Studies
I’ve long been a fan of Edward Burtynsky’s photographic surveys of humanity’s impact on our environment, so I was ea
How to Counter the Gish Gallop
I was keen to read that the debating method practiced by Trump, Putin, anti-vaxxers, and climate deniers of flooding th
A “Perfect Scene” from Mad Men
I loved this analysis of a scene from the final episode of season three of Mad Men.
The scene shifts. The partners go
The Joy of Fortnite
This was me a couple of years ago when I first started playing Fortnite, as satirized by Adam Driver and the SNL gang:
Five Quick Links for Monday Noonish
How Paris Kicked Out the Cars. In the past 2 decades, car trips within Paris are down 60%, car crashes down by 30%, pol
Kottke AMA - You Asked, I Answered
Just a quick reminder that I answered a bunch of questions from readers for the inaugural Kottke.org Ask Me Anything. I
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