kottke.org
@kottke.org
home of fine hypertext products since 1998. https://kottke.org
Illustrator and writer Luis Mendo’s second book is out. “The only website that once a year becomes a book.” I have Book One and it’s lovely… [mundomendo.com]
The Mundo Mendo BOOKS SERIES
You don't buy the books, you support the artist.
mundomendo.com
I love these digital illustrations by Adam Fuhrer; he calls them chromatic aberrations. [kottke.org]
Chromatic Inkscapes
I love these digital illustrations by Adam Fuhrer; he calls them chromatic aberrations. It was difficult to narrow them down to the few favorites above. I posted about Fuhrer’s pen plotted art a couple of years ago
kottke.org
Margaret Atwood in 2023: Go Ahead and Ban My Book. “It’s very hard to control what young people get their hands on, especially if they’re told something is too old for them, or too evil, or too immoral.” [theatlantic.com]
Go Ahead and Ban My Book
To those who seek to stop young people from reading The Handmaid’s Tale: Good luck with that. It’ll only make them want to read it more.
theatlantic.com
This woman does some amazing things with a series of white rings — lots of precision optical illusions. It's mesmerizing watching people moving like machines... [kottke.org]
Roooobot. Huuuuuman.
This woman does some amazing things with a series of white rings — lots of precision optical illusions. It’s mesmerizing watching people moving like machines — an interesting psychological thing. Like Avantgarde
kottke.org
The trailer for Blade Runner 2099, a new limited series premiering in late November and starring Michelle Yeoh & Hunter Schafer. [youtube.com]
Blade Runner 2099 - NYCC Trailer | Prime Video
A new world. A new order. A new Blade Runner. Blade Runner 2099, a new limited series, premieres November 25th on Prime Video.
youtube.com
Going 94 MPH on a Skateboard (New World Record). “I cannot believe how closely the camera car is following him — looks like only a few feet away. Bonkers.” The final run is breathtaking. Literally…I was holding my breath, [kottke.org]
Going 94 MPH on a Skateboard (New World Record)
Diego Poncelet recently set a new world record for the fastest speed on a skateboard. The old record was 146.7 km/h (91.2 mph) and he hit 151.8 km/h (94.3 mph). There are a couple of parts you can skip, but watching most
kottke.org
I played (not) solitaire for more hands than I would care to admit. “A multiplayer game where the multiplayer was about companionship, empathy, and comfort, instead of competition or even interaction.” [notsolitaire.com]
(not) solitaire
Play Draw 2 Solitaire alongside other players.
notsolitaire.com
Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · yesterdayI am grateful that, while I did write for many online platforms and publications that did not live up to their promises, for the most part I was paid reasonably well, and my most personal and thoughtful writing wound up being for my friend's eternal website, @kottke.org
A lovely little mountain biking video with some incredible locations and cinematography. The drone piloting is A+. [kottke.org]
Beautiful Seamless Ride
A lovely little mountain biking video with some incredible locations and cinematography. The drone piloting is A+. Also available on Vimeo. (via alastair humphreys)
kottke.org
Is the camera shutter noise the last skeuomorphic element left in iOS? [jarrettfuller.blog]
The Last Skeuomorph in iOS?
Physical shutters and the sound design of taking a photograph.
jarrettfuller.blog
Fishdraw is a single JavaScript file that generates drawings of fish. There’s an option to slow the animation down so you can watch it draw the fish line-by-line. [github.com]
GitHub - LingDong-/fishdraw: procedurally generated fish drawings
procedurally generated fish drawings. Contribute to LingDong-/fishdraw development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
How Hunting Owls Use Sound to “See” Under the Snow. “The owl's large facial ruff, formed of dense feathers, helps amplify sound and funnel it towards his ears.” Wow, it’s basically got a sound cone for a face! [kottke.org]
How Hunting Owls Use Sound to “See” Under the Snow
The great grey owl basically has a sound cone for a face, which helps it hunt down voles burrowing through snow in the winter. The owl’s large facial ruff, formed of dense feathers, helps amplify sound and funne
kottke.org
How many shots are in the average movie? How does it compare to the past? “You might expect the editor to be the most important factor in the number of shots, but in fact, knowing who directed a film accounts for 70% of the variation in its cutting pace.” [stephenfollows.com]
How many shots are in the average movie today?
I counted the cuts in 8,770 films from the last century to find out how many shots a movie has now, and how fast we are cutting.
stephenfollows.com
Big Math: The Hidden Codes That Run Our World. “The epic story of how a handful of surprisingly simple mathematical ideas have sparked today’s technological breakthroughs — from Netflix’s recommendation algorithm to medical imaging to AI…” Interesting! [bookshop.org]
Big Math
The epic story of how a handful of surprisingly simple mathematical ideas have sparked today's technological breakthroughs--from Netflix's recommendation algorithm to medical imaging to artificial intelligence and beyond--while also slipping further and further from our understanding, with potential
bookshop.org
Where You Should Live: Five Factors to Keep in Mind. Like “your 10-minute radius matters more than almost anything else about where you live” and “the best neighborhood amenity might literally just be other people outside”. [kottke.org]
Where You Should Live: Five Factors to Keep in Mind
I ran across this post on Instagram by Bobby in Space (who posts about design and the psychology of place) and wanted to pull it onto the actual internet. Here are some snippets of his “5 hills I will die on as som
kottke.org
Teaser trailer for season three of The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power. Maybe this isn’t the best show in the world, but I have been enjoying it. I thought s02 was better than s01 so at least the trajectory is promising. [youtube.com]
The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power - Season 3 Teaser | Prime Video
Now is the mighty hour. Watch the Official Teaser Trailer to The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3, streaming November 11 on Prime Video.
youtube.com
Tiny Little Office is “an office suite with no accounts and no server that holds your work. Every document lives in the address of its page… Copy the link and you have copied the document.” Includes a word processor, spreadsheet, calculator, etc. [tinylittleoffice.com]
Tiny Little Office: the link is the document
A tiny office suite where the link is the document. No accounts. Nothing is saved anywhere unless you choose to keep it on this device.
tinylittleoffice.com
“...the relative tightness of a 20-year-old sphincter…” What an opening paragraph from Caitlin Flanagan’s 2014 piece on The Dark Power of Fraternities. [kottke.org]
The Muffled Thud of Fire in the Hole
From a 2014 article on The Dark Power of Fraternities by Caitlin Flanagan, this is one hell of an opening paragraph: One warm spring night in 2011, a young man named Travis Hughes stood on the back deck of the Alpha T
kottke.org
It’s time to de-privatize the US government. “The problem is not just that privatization is often inefficient because it adds a nontransparent layer of profiteering on top of government functions. The problem is that government loses basic capacity.” [prospect.org]
Time to De-Privatize
When the Democrats take back Congress, we need an agenda to return public functions to government and reverse decades of privatization.
prospect.org
Q: “An AI tool with all your passwords or a bear in the woods?” Signal president Meredith Whittaker: “Look, I know social media wants this. I know you guys want this little clip. But what the fuck? What the fuck?? Both are bad!” [instagram.com]
When @meghamohanauthor sat down with her, to ask some quick fire questions, things didn’t quite go to plan…
“Look, I know social media wants this. I know you guys want this little clip…”
instagram.com
I posted a bunch of photos from my time here in Tokyo so far. Somehow I’m already about halfway through my stay. [kottke.org]
May Peace Prevail on Earth
Here are some photos I’ve taken during my time in Tokyo so far. I’ve been posting new stuff more or less daily to Instagram. Somehow I’m already about halfway through my stay.
kottke.org
“‘Digger’ has a lot of haters. Here’s why they’re wrong.” Digger is fascinating — I can’t remember another big movie where public opinion has been so divided (it’s either genius or garbage). I saw it with a friend and he loved it so much he went again. [grist.org]
‘Digger’ has a lot of haters. Here’s why they’re wrong.
It's a film well-worth seeing — and talking about.
grist.org
Anthropic says that, as of Sept ‘26, they were merging 30,000 code changes per day, a 12-fold increase from just four months earlier. The volume increased so much that they wrote their own Git alternative. [simonwillison.net]
Redesigning source control at Anthropic
Interesting piece from Anthropic describing why and how they built their own custom alternative to Git, based on the dramatic increase in rate of changes to their code after the …
simonwillison.net
Incredible image of the Lion Nebula by the JWST. “The death of the oxygen-rich central star has left behind a white dwarf that is ‘cooking' everything from the inside and producing a bubble of ionized gas...destroying dust that is in its path." [kottke.org]
Whoa, the Lion Nebula!
NASA’s JWST recently snapped this image of the Lion Nebula (NGC 2392). Massive stars undergo supernova explosions at the end of their lives, but these kinds of events are few and far in between. Most of the univ
kottke.org
The Case for Quitting: The Surprising Benefits of Opting Out by Lindsay Crouse. “When perseverance turns against us, quitting isn’t just a way out. Often, it’s the first step to something better. A pivot. A break. A chance to go further — or be free.” [bookshop.org]
The Case for Quitting
"Sometimes the most powerful way forward is knowing when to let go. In The Case for Quitting, Lindsay shows us how." — Allyson Felix, most-decorated Olympic track & field athlete in history "Required reading for anyone feeling trapped by the pressure to push through." — Annie Duke
bookshop.org
“If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.” OpenAI recently released 350+ proofs of mathematical theorems, all in one go. “I imagine many mathematicians, like me, felt like they got punched in the stomach yesterday,” [nytimes.com]
‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI Release
Hundreds of new A.I.-generated findings moved the frontiers of higher math in a single day — dispelling any doubt that the field is forever changed.
nytimes.com
The first trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. I love Gerwig and I know this will be good, but I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be great. (I still forever have “Chronicwhatcles of Narnia” stuck in my head tho…) [youtube.com]
NARNIA: THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW | Official Trailer | Netflix
Only in theaters February 12. Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Greta Gerwig brings C. S. Lewis’ beloved story The Magician’s Nephew to the screen for the first time in a sweeping adventure that invites dreamers of all ages to experience the creation of Narnia. Watch on Netflix: https://www.netfli
youtube.com
Girls is coming back to HBO for a 5-episode run. Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, and Andrew Rannells are all returning. I loved this show and will tune in for sure. [variety.com]
‘Girls’ Shocker: Lena Dunham Sets Revival at HBO With Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke Returning
HBO is reviving 'Girls,' with Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke and Andrew Rannells returning.
variety.com
Japanese photographer Tomoko Sawada works primarily in self-portraiture. For her first project, she took hundreds of photos in automated photo booths of herself done up differently, "a dizzying grid of strangers who are all actually the same woman”. [kottke.org]
So Many Different Mes
Japanese photographer and artist Tomoko Sawada works primarily in self-portraiture. For her first project, she visited ID photo booths to take hundreds of photos of herself, dressed, posed, and presented differently. Eug
kottke.org