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Na Kim is one of the best book cover designers out there, and I love her set of covers for four of Vladimir Nabokov’s books being released in advance of the 70th anniversary of Lolita. Pictured above are her covers for Pale Fire (Bookshop, Amazon) and The Defense (Bookshop, Amazon).
The full official trailer for Tron: Ares. I want this to be good. Can this just be good, you know, as a treat?
Artist Amy Sherald has canceled her solo show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery because “she learned that her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty might be removed to avoid provoking President Trump”.
Slow Light is an animated short film about a man whose eyes are so dense that light needs seven years to travel across them. Everything he sees happened seven years ago, like a very precise, obligatory memory playback.
I feel like this is related to whether or not you can visualize things in your mind and also Braid, a video game where you can collaborate with your past self. (via colossal)
Six Films Better Than the Books They’re Based On. Including Jurassic Park, The Devil Wears Prada, and The Social Network. What are some of your favorite films that hold their own with the books they’re based on?
They’re Made Out of Meat, a classic sci-fi short story by Terry Bisson. “Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal!”
Glacier funerals have been held in countries like Iceland, the US, and Switzerland. These memorial services can help us mourn nature and move through the process of ecological grief.
Over the weekend, I added a new feature to the site that, for now, is only accessible from the front page of the site, right after the third post on the page. It’s a list of websites and people that I follow — “kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators”. It’s a blogroll, but I’m calling mine the Kottke.org Rolodex. Here’s what it looks like:
AI slop content increasingly proliferates on the internet and traffic from large tech companies like Google and Meta continues to fall off. In just the last two days, The Verge and Wired have launched new features that aim to strengthen their direct relationships & trust with their readers. From Wired’s announcement:
The platforms on which outlets like WIRED used to connect with readers, listeners, and viewers are failing in real time; Facebook traffic disappeared years ago, and now Google Search is dwindling as the company reorients users to rely on AI Overviews instead of links to credible publishers. More and more users are also skipping Google altogether, opting to use chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude to find information they once relied on news outlets for. Meanwhile, AI-generated slop and mis- and disinformation are seeping into the internet’s every pore, polluting social media feeds and drowning out news and human-driven storytelling.
At WIRED, our solution to this so-called “traffic apocalypse,” and the AI sloppification of the internet, is simple: connect our humans to all of you humans.
Some of the sites on the Rolodex have been moving in this direction as well — and KDO has too of course: with the membership program, comments on posts, the redesign, and some of the other social features that have been creeping in here and there, as well as some tried-and-true methods of direct connection like the twice-weekly newsletter, the RSS feed, and syndication to social sites that don’t devalue links, like Bluesky and Mastodon.
The Rolodex is part of this “strategy” of relationship-building and strengthening of trusted sources of information. You readers are curious about what I read and pay attention to, I enjoy linking to things I like (duh), and I believe it’s more important than ever for those sites who traffic in knowledge & curiosity and care about humans to acknowledge and stand with each other. As I wrote last year, we are not competitors; we are collaborators:
I love linking out to other sites. The strength of the open web is in its many connections between nodes…the more, the better. Links are the whole goddamned point of the web! I want to send people away from kottke.org to learn something new or have a chuckle and then come back the next day for more. The goal is connection, knowledge, and sharing — I proudly have no competitors in this endeavor, only collaborators.
So pop on in to the front page of the site and scroll down a bit to take a look. Clicking the “refresh” link will load five more sites from the list. I hope you find something you like.
That’s not all I’m hoping to do with the Rolodex, but it’s a good start. Feedback, etc. is welcome.
In her last column for WaPo, columnist Catherine Rampell shares some advice for aspiring pundits. “Know your immovable principles and red lines — journalistically, ethically, ideologically — and why you’re columnizing in the first place.
A lovely trailer for a documentary called The Nettle Dress. “Allan Brown makes a dress by hand just from the fibre of foraged stinging nettles over 7 years. A modern day fairytale and hymn to the healing power of nature and slow craft.”
After Paramount cancelled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert after he criticized the network’s $16 million bribe to Trump, David Letterman’s YouTube channel uploaded this 20-minute supercut of archival Letterman footage trashing CBS. That’s the stuff.
Wilmer Chavarria, a US citizen from VT, was detained for many hours by US immigration, who suggested his job as a school district superintendent was fake. Chavarria said the ordeal was “nothing short of surreal and the definition of psychological terror”.
This is a great 5-minute mashup of several metal and metal-adjacent songs from artists like NIN, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, KISS, Dio, Black Sabbath, and Soundgarden. Even if you don’t care for metal, I feel confident that you’ll enjoy this anyway — it’s a bop. Here’s the track list:
Nine Inch Nails - Terrible Lie
Rage Against the Machine - Killing in the Name
Dio - Holy Diver
Soundgarden - Outshined
Judas Priest - Hot Rockin’
KISS - All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose
Pantera - 5 Minutes Alone
Black Sabbath - Into the Void
Billy Squier - The Stroke
Judas Priest - You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’
Alice in Chains - Them Bones
Metallica - Sad But True
Although the video was posted a day or two before Ozzy Osbourne died, it feels like a fitting tribute to one of metal’s true pioneers. (via neatorama)
Trump Action Tracker. “Each action is mapped to one or more of five broad domains of authoritarianism, helping to make sense of a deeply concerning political trajectory.”
In this video entitled Rush Hour, cars, pedestrians, and cyclists have been edited together to produce dozens of heart-stopping near misses.
Reminds me of the world’s craziest intersection, traffic organized by color, intersections in the age of driverless cars, and the dangerous dance of NYC intersections. (via colossal)
Author Kate Broad writes about the role of indie bookstores in a time when public libraries are under attack. “This fight for free speech isn’t new, and independent bookstores have been fighting it for a long time.”
I Watched It Happen in Hungary. Now It’s Happening Here. “I came to understand that the real danger of a strongman isn’t his tactics; it’s how others, especially those with power, justify their acquiescence.”
“We’re in a golden age of comedy now where everyone can say exactly what they want, free of the fear of censorship, except by the government. Donald Trump has made comedy legal again!”
Health Insurers Are Hiking Premiums as Their Profits Balloon. “The US’s six largest health insurers reported massive profits last year, doling out billions on stock buybacks and dividends.”
Ozzy Osborne died today at the age of 76. His farewell concert a few weeks ago was the highest-grossing charity concert of all time, raising more than $200 million.
Follow Architectural Digest as they head behind the scenes at the offices of NPR Music to see how the now-iconic Tiny Desk Concerts come together. My favorite bits are the callouts of all the stuff on the shelves behind the artists: Adele’s water bottle, Sabrina Carpenter’s bedazzled martini glass, a Green Bay Packers helmet signed by Harry Styles. And: “Chappell Roan’s wig is actually sitting on Cypress Hill’s skull.”
I stumbled across this July 2019 article by Arthur C. Brooks about professional decline and it gave me lots to think about: Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think. One of the takeaways is that different stages of your life require different approaches; I liked this anecdote:
Recently, I asked Dominique Dawes, a former Olympic gold-medal gymnast, how normal life felt after competing and winning at the highest levels. She told me that she is happy, but that the adjustment wasn’t easy — and still isn’t, even though she won her last Olympic medal in 2000. “My Olympic self would ruin my marriage and leave my kids feeling inadequate,” she told me, because it is so demanding and hard-driving. “Living life as if every day is an Olympics only makes those around me miserable.”
I wasn’t aware of the formal concept of crystallized intelligence, but I was talking to my therapist last week about exactly this:
A potential answer lies in the work of the British psychologist Raymond Cattell, who in the early 1940s introduced the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Cattell defined fluid intelligence as the ability to reason, analyze, and solve novel problems — what we commonly think of as raw intellectual horsepower. Innovators typically have an abundance of fluid intelligence. It is highest relatively early in adulthood and diminishes starting in one’s 30s and 40s. This is why tech entrepreneurs, for instance, do so well so early, and why older people have a much harder time innovating.
Crystallized intelligence, in contrast, is the ability to use knowledge gained in the past. Think of it as possessing a vast library and understanding how to use it. It is the essence of wisdom. Because crystallized intelligence relies on an accumulating stock of knowledge, it tends to increase through one’s 40s, and does not diminish until very late in life.
Anyway, the piece is interesting throughout and one I’ll be returning to as I ponder whatever’s next for me.
P.S. I included the illustration by Luci Gutiérrez from the article because I think it perfectly captures the gist of it. That’s me on that 50 stair!
Since 2004, new editions of the Choose Your Own Adventure books have included branching diagrams of all of the possible paths through the books.
I love the look of this black & white animated video made by Anthony Dickenson from thousands of hand-painted frames for Rival Consoles’ song Soft Gradient Beckons. Stick around after the song ends for a behind-the-scenes look at how it was made.
If I plan too much, it’s often disappointing. It’s much nicer if I just let it go the way it wants to go. But obviously sometimes it just doesn’t work and, you know, that’s okay. Sometimes, the mistakes are the bits that really reveal kind of new techniques. I love these little moments of imperfection. Otherwise, you know, you might as well just build it in AI.
The skateboard dolly! (via colossal)
Programmer Przemysław Dębiak recently defeated an advanced OpenAI model in a coding competition. “The contest echoes the American folk tale of John Henry, the steel-driving man who raced against a steam-powered drilling machine in the 1870s.”
Anil Dash on seeing Wu-Tang Clan in 2000, the last time all nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan appeared together on one stage together. “At the time of the performance, [O.D.B.] had been on the run…”
Today (July 22) will be the second-shortest day since 1973. “The difference will be just 1.34 milliseconds less than the standard 24 hours.” (Also, the Earth is spinning faster and we don’t really know why?)
XKCD mapped the most observed plant and animal for all 50 US states as reported by iNaturalist users. I had no idea bumble bees were such a popularly observed animal — the common eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) is most-observed in Vermont, Wisconsin, Maine, Connecticut, Illinois, and Minnesota. Also popular: white-tailed deer, bison, milkweed, honeysuckle, and robins.
A look at 40 years of Rembrandt self-portraits. “Rembrandt documented his face as it aged through time, from the fresh-faced playfulness of youth to his careworn old age.” He did about 100 self-portraits in total.
A few weeks ago, a pair of icebergs drifted close to Innaarsuit, Greenland. Photographer Dennis Lehtonen captured the visit — you can see the photos on Instagram or in the Arctic gallery on his website. From Colossal:
A couple of weeks ago, Lehtonen and locals spotted an iceberg floating a few miles away, and even from the distance, he could tell it was large. Days later, it — actually a pair — slid into Innaarsuit, dwarfing the fishing village’s modest wooden houses.
The municipality was warned to be careful when on the coast and not to travel in large groups. Fragments occasionally broke off as the iceberg moved, creating a reverberating sound akin to thunder. Many locals also documented the phenomenon, despite being more accustomed to icebergs. “They would also tell me that this is the highest they have ever seen an iceberg rise above the houses,” Lehtonen says. “So it was definitely a special event.”
The images, especially the first one with the icebergs in the fog, reminded me of an alien visitation, like in Independence Day or, especially, Arrival. Cue the Jóhann Jóhannsson. (via colossal)
Gregor Formanek is likely the very last SS guard of a concentration camp to be charged by German prosecutors. “Did he enjoy the power he had? Did he care? Did he find it boring? Did it make him uneasy?”
In Florida, flooding is a huge cause of death and destruction from hurricanes. This video looks at how a town called Babcock Ranch was designed to withstand hurricane flooding through some smart engineering.
Yet this one town, Babcock Ranch, has been hit by four hurricanes and basically came out unscathed. There was no flooding at all. So we asked the engineer who helped build this town to break down its hidden designs.
Related: John Seabrook’s piece in this week’s New Yorker, In an Age of Climate Change, How Do We Cope with Floods? (archive).
Vermont feels like the frontier of climate change in the Northeast. Farmers in the bottomlands, who previously planted wheat and barley, are beginning to plant rice, which can be underwater for two days without damage to the crop. The old roads that early Vermont settlers hacked out on hilltops, which lasted for more than two hundred years, are melting back into the forest. Extreme-rain events scour the roads down to bedrock ledges, rendering them impassable, and, because no one then uses them, any blown-down trees don’t get cleared. The next storm brings more blowdowns. A road that I went mountain biking on ten years ago, when it was a distinct pathway with old-growth trees on each side, lined by aged stone walls, is now such a tangle of fallen trees, branches, and rocks that it’s hard to tell a road was ever there.
Vermont is the second least populated state, after Wyoming, with fewer than six hundred and fifty thousand residents; it is also the fourth highest in disaster-relief funding per capita, nearly all of it flood-related. Washington County ranked first nationally in disaster declarations between 2011 and 2024. Annual precipitation in the state has increased six inches since the nineteen-sixties, and heavier-than-normal rain events in the Northeast are expected to increase by as much as fifty-two per cent by 2100. Vermont is a laboratory for the study of intense rainfall in steep terrain, and a proving ground for scientists, policymakers, regulators, and land-use planners who are on the front lines of a recurring catastrophe that traditional methods of prevention — dredging a river’s bottom, armoring its sides, berming its banks — have only made worse.
I live in Washington County so how communities are attempting to mitigate flooding is of great interest to me.
“The Alamo announced Friday a whimsical and nostalgic new addition to its growing collection: the original, screen-used stunt bike from the beloved 1985 film Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.” Round of applause for everyone involved.
Catherine Lacey’s The Möbius Book is both a memoir and a novel, does not have a beginning or an end, and is “readable from either side”.
I am totally smitten with the intricate drawings of Japanese artist Shunshun. It’s worth clicking through to see them in detail. Here’s a look at his process:
You can follow Shunshun on Instagram.
“Terrible night’s sleep? Here’s how to make it through the day…” Maybe hold off on caffeine, limit carbs + easy energy, “snack” your exercise, get out in the sun, nap (but not too long), and head to bed at your normal time.
A remake of The Thomas Crown Affair with Michael B. Jordan, Danai Gurira, Kenneth Branagh, and Lily Gladstone? Yeah, I’m into that.
CBS cancelled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert just days after he criticized the $16 million bribe the network paid to Trump. Here’s why “Colbert’s cancellation is a dark warning”.
Fascism For First Time Founders. “Let’s have a little chat about why embracing fascism is probably the worst possible business strategy for anyone actually trying to build something innovative.” 💯
“The extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner, famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident.”
Next year, “the average person who buys Affordable Care Act insurance will be paying 75% more for their premium” because of “the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits in the ACA markets”.
Noah Kalina is uploading videos of the “long photograph” variety of peaceful & contemplative nature scenes to YouTube. 4K. No AI. “Press play and walk away.”
Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles. “Collectivist bosons account for the forces that move us while individualist fermions keep our atoms from collapsing.” (Honestly, same.)
From Beautiful Public Data, a look into the Internet Archive’s collection of 5000 images from the NASA Ames Research Center. “Browsing through this amazing archive gives you a unique view of decades’ worth of breakthrough research.”
How AI Wreaked Havoc on the Lo-Fi Beat Scene. “The music’s association with aimless, unfocused listening — vibe music before vibe became a buzzword — means people aren’t paying as much attention to what’s real and what’s not…”
For years now, photographer Fujio Kito has been documenting cement playground equipment in Japan, often capturing them at night, lit up in captivating ways.
(via laura olin and present & correct)
Elderly Woman Keeps Mind Active Justifying Trump’s Actions. “I’m developing new neural pathways each time I shrug off Trump’s clear violations of the Constitution and his total contempt for our system of checks and balances.”
Iceland’s 36-hour workweek has been a huge success. “On his free days, he loves to sleep in, then to make long phone calls to his fellow pigeon fanciers while cleaning the kitchen…” Sounds like a dream!
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