Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
I’m observing summer Fridays here at KDO again this year, which means I (mostly) won’t be posting here on Fridays. If past years are any guide, this doesn’t actually have too much of an effect on how much I work or post…more of a redistribution of time & effor…
Illustrated break-downs of how common objects work. Currently featuring a mechanical pencil, PEZ dispenser, retractable pen, and Zippo lighter.
“Descartes Against Humanity” and Other Games Designed by Famous Philosophers.
Chipotlai Max is an AI agent that runs on “stolen compute” from Chipotle’s AI chat bot. They are looking to borrow from bots from Ikea, Expedia, Home Depot, and others.
Team Spirit is a wonderful short film for ESPN by Errol Morris about the funerals of die-hard sports fans. I love the Steelers fan laid out in a recliner under a Steelers blanket in front of a television with a Steelers game on as if “he just fell asleep watch…
The official trailer for season three of Silo. Looks like we finally get some origin story stuff (well, more than a brief scene at least).
On this date in 2004, the Killdozer rampage took place. “The bulldozer effortlessly demolished cars and buildings, including the home of a former mayor, the office of a newspaper that had sided against him in an editorial…”
Jamelle Bouie: The cruelty is still the point of the Trump regime. “This isn’t a border security policy. It’s cruelty as governance — directed at people this administration has decided don’t deserve dignity.”
Throughout most of human history, the weather has resisted humanity’s desire to change it. For thousands of years, we have sacrificed children, sung songs and danced, brewed alchemical concoctions, chanted prayers, fired cannons, and made many other futile eff…
As time passes, efforts to document the Tiananmen Square protests intensify. “History cannot only be written by officials. If you don’t have real information, it’s difficult for you to have independent thought.”
“Cameron’s World is a web-collage of text and images excavated from the buried neighbourhoods of archived GeoCities pages (1994–2009).”
Every so often, the US Postal Service reissues old stamps. This time around, they polled the public about which past stamp they’d like to see reissued and the results were decisive: the people love Mister Rogers. The Mister Rogers stamp, originally released in…
Ted Chiang is emphatic: LLMs are nowhere close to being conscious. “We don’t need to fully understand the nature of consciousness to definitively say that certain things are not conscious, and conversational transcripts fall in that category.”
Marjane Satrapi, author of the excellent Persepolis, has died at age 56. Friends said she “died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life”.
Can you go 82-0? “The objective of 82-0 is to construct a historical NBA roster capable of achieving a perfect undefeated season.” You get to “draft” 5 players from randomly chosen teams & decades, then that team plays a simulated season.
In March 1976, Talking Heads played a show at The Kitchen in NYC; you can watch the entire show recorded from two angles in this video. The band had formed the year before and was more than a year away from recording and releasing their debut album. It’s a gre…
Paul Giamatti appears on The Tommy Tiernan Show. Here’s the catch: “Each episode Tommy welcomes mystery guests and interviews them without any preparation or knowledge of who will be joining him until they meet in studio.”
Haiku is a generative music album for MacOS. “Haiku is a work of generative music that builds its own sound from nothing each time you open it, and never plays the same way twice — a record that exists only while it is playing.”
Now that Andor has been out for a while, showrunner Tony Gilroy is free to speak his mind on what the show was all about. I mean, it was pretty clear to the audience, but now he can say his piece. Andor won a Peabody Award and at the awards ceremony, Gilroy ga…
“As far as artist signatures go, Jan van Kessel’s seventeenth-century painting in which he spells out his own name with caterpillars and snakes must be up there with the best of them.”
Good news! As of June 1, a transmission line is delivering hydro-generated electricity into NYC: “1,250 megawatts of clean energy directly into New York City’s power grid”. That’s around 20% of the city’s total electric load, now clean.
Well, this is kinda depressing, courtesy of Jason Zweig’s father: There are three ways to make a living: 1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich. 2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living. 3) Tell the truth to…
TIL that Muji once sold a car. “The Muji Car 1000 was a debadged and stripped down 2-door version of the Nissan March, with the smallest engine, an automatic, steel wheels, and A/C, available in one color: white.”
The 100 Greatest Bird Names of All Time, including Inaccessible Island Rail, Macaroni Penguin, Morepork, Chocolate Boobook, Dickcissel, Carunculated Caracara, and Resplendent Quetzal.
The Best Thing About The Satanic Panic. “There’s a phenomenon called the rhyme-as-reason effect that says people are more likely to believe something is true if it rhymes.”
JS Crossword. “This crossword uses some lesser-known and cursed JS features, so I’d recommend it for people already somewhat familiar with JavaScript.” Diabolical.
Watch and listen to bardcore trio Courseval play a cover version of Daft Punk’s Veridis Quo, a track from Discovery. This is lovely. And a banger. Courseval have covered other popular music in medieval style, including Rihanna’s Umbrella, Take On Me by A-Ha, B…
Frozen To -22 Degrees, BYD’s New EV Just Charged To 97% In Only 12 Minutes. This is genuinely impressive — charging and driving an EV in subzero winter weather is just brutal (ask me how I know).
They’re doing a film adaptation of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Daisy Edgar-Jones will play Sadie (perfect choice) and the director is Oscar-winner Siân Heder (Coda).
Illustrator John Rooney has teamed up with the Middle East Children’s Alliance to produce and sell this Birds of Palestine print. Rooney on Instagram: “All profits will be going towards providing emergency assistance to children and families in what is still a…