I'm downsizing somewhat in advance of my move, so I posted a bunch of stuff for sale and for free on the local message board here, including a collection of stuffed animals. A woman just came to get the stuffed animals and I was out on my deck and she called out, “Are you the stuffed animal guy?” I replied, “Yes, and I don’t think I’ve ever been referred to in that way before.”

I'm not new to KDO, just the membership, so I'll make my first comment something Jason-like. An interesting thing I've seen would be this video: How Blackwing Pencils are Made.

I love this.

Maybe not the best thing but this past week but I smiled. It was a sign at the entry to a cottage with a picture of a dog and the caption under Warning. “I can make it to this fence in 2.5 seconds.  Can you?”

I also had someone send me a picture of my doppelgänger - or my twin. I saw a very small resemblance - but not really. But most of the time people say “I saw your twin at XYZ” - but they never send a picture.  So that was a nice aspect of the whole thing. But it shows that usually, your twin likely isn’t.

Finally, I have been thinking of H.A.L. from 2001: A space odyssey. He went rogue because he was lied to.  Who is lying to AI today? 

Longtime reader and occasional commenter! The most Kottke-coded link I've encountered this month is this archive.org upload of the original (unaired?) Muppet Show pilot which popped up in late July: https://archive.org/details/muppet-show-prowse-pilot

A friend put me onto this documentary about a bunch of misfits (read possibly meth heads) who collect scrap from live fire military ranges out by the Salton Sea. It's kinda nuts. 

https://vimeopro.com/route07productions/filmsawards/video/341331549

Follow up thing I'm pleased with: having solar installed on my home. It's only been 3 months and I know it's been nothing but that nectar of sweet summer sun, but my PGE bill has gone from $365 to $50. And $26 dollars of that is gas! Such a game changer. 

Last spring I started taking German A1 and A2 classes in person. There is a small German school in the town where I work. It’s so nice to be in a challenging but low stakes classroom environment. It’s a heck of a lot better than Duolingo.  The past two weeks we’ve been learning and baking German cakes on Friday nights. They all seemed so daunting and complicated but it’s really incredible how easy it is when you are in a group of enthusiastic learners. It’s nice to have found a little community, too. 

Here's a really cool new watch that incorporates a 3D-printed alloy that is half the weight of titanium (which is already considerably lighter than steel) and a "3 GB NanoFiche 'cultural payload' that will last 1,000 years or more. It includes 286 UNESCO preamble translations, curated global artworks, a visual sound artifact by Richard D. James, children's paintings by R.O.C.K., and the original French edition of Le Petit Prince."

I handled one of these the other day and it's an amazing achievement. 

My dad came to visit the other weekend and we had excellent pastries and chats…until his vision started to go weird then dark in one eye. Which turned into emergency rooms and surgery and then an unexpected recovery houseguest for a week.

He’s fine now but PSA: if your vision goes, even partially, get that sucker checked asap!! the sooner a retina is reattached the better your chances of perfect recovery. He was one of three people THAT morning needing the same thing done and we live in a city of less than a million people. 

I can't quite afford to retire yet, but after 17 years around the fruit company in Cupertino I'm stepping away to remember who I am when I'm not stressed up the wazoo. Happily, I've found time to read… Sally Mann's last book is inspiring. I've been carrying a camera around again, which I was pretty good with last century, but wouldn't pay the bills these days. I'm wondering what's next.

Hi all!

Very new member (today!), but very long-time reader (10 years? 15 years?)

Right now, I'm working on a virtual reality project where we look at how providing GPS-like cues impacts memory for a city.

The best thing I've seen this week is DTF St. Louis. Genre-wise, the show fits sort of right in the middle of a whodunnit + buddy / buddy cop show, but takes all these delightfully weird, freaky tangents. It's funny and dark and sad and an amazing cast. 

You know the saying about how "truth is stranger than fiction," right? But the opposite can also be the case, "fiction is more real than the news."

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver taught me more about poverty, drug use, child-welfare systems, resilience, abuse, opioids, and the reality of America's poor than 20 years of reading/watching the news.

I know we need journalism to provide the facts, that hasn't changed, but powerful fiction like what Kingsolver writes, allows us to enter into a world that is not our own and be something that we aren't.

p.s. I felt the same when when I read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

I took all the kids to visit my mom and dad for the first time in a while. Then took 10 other people to a Phillies game, including my dad. It was an absolute blast. Driving 12 hours on THU and then 12 hours back on SUN. Rough, but worth it.

If anyone needs a little pick me up, then might I suggest going to a minor league baseball game and/or eating a hot dog (or three)? They are, “low stakes, all joy,” activities. 

Really loving the Agency starting Michael Fassbender and Jeffery Wright. Using it as a comfort blanket as the specter of dropping our first kid off at college looms in the very very short distance :) 

This video about the twin cyclones that set us up for our predicted super El Niño has been living rent-free in my head, especially as a SoCal resident. sharing because I know we all love to understand the mechanisms behind the world we're experiencing.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69o-8Mtd3Kc 

I'm a newer member! I have encountered kottke.org many times before through shared links, but became more of a regular via Craig Mod's TGP community. I really like it here. It's very calming and grounding, and like a handful of Cheez-Its for my curious brain when I need to indulge in a distraction, but don't want to go down a news rabbit hole. This place hugs my brain.

I haven't had to call a plumber lately, but this is my favorite story about a plumber: Man Called Fran by John Jeremiah Sullivan - https://harpers.org/archive/2023/09/man-called-fran/

I am at the end of a 7 week sabbatical from work. Turned 50, older son graduated high school, went to 6 world cup game across 4 cities and then two weeks in Europe with the family. Good times!

I imagine it's already relatively well known among Kottke readers, but if you haven't watched Taskmaster yet, you really should. In brief: British comedians perform clever, silly tasks and then get scored by a charmingly despotic judge. The show is a true delight, plus there are 21 seasons to watch, and it's free on YouTube. If you want a place to start, season 4 is a favorite of mine.

Just stumbled on this funny little video this week and it has kept me smiling:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NafUG6Dgo5A

Haven’t been on a swim team since I was 11 but joined a masters team at the local outdoor pool this summer and I have loved it. Lane groups are broken down by skill levels. Lane 1: beginnerish, no fins or gear (but can swim for 90 minutes) Lane 6: former college athletes that swim like speedy merpeople.

3 mornings a week swimming with others in lane 2 before tossed into the day feels like I’m both stealing time from the day and ten years younger. Also, with banged up joints, never thought I’d experience the camaraderie of a team again. All wins. 

Grateful to have stumbled into this community a year ago. Nothing has helped me stay more curious than this place. It’s been a big benefit for interacting with my young kids too.

I recently started a new job after a number of years in a role that I had long wanted but which turned out to be stressful and never-ending. It's such a relief to enter a work environment where people aren't expected to try to climb insurmountable mountains of work! And to not be in back to back calls all day! 

I've got renewed energy to try to break my phone addiction. This effort centers on leaving my phone in a "home" spot in the kitchen and only using it there. It's been a fun push to get back into reading print magazines - and I recently subscribed to wired. Looking forward to getting my first issue.

After a few years of stress and creative bankruptcy I've started making silly useless things again, my entire raison d'être, and it feels great. 

If anyone is looking for a new podcast, I've gotten really into Tech Talk with Tim and Ted. It is so hard to describe and so unbelievably funny. The worldbuilding is absolutely wild. It's changed the way I swear. 

I’ve been listening to a lot of classical music lately, trying to expand my listening tastes. Easy to get stuck in a rut in your 60s. I ran across this piece by a composer I hadn’t previously heard of, Nikolai Medtner, and thought it was lovely: Romantic Sketches for the Young, Op. 54: VII. Prelude. Allegretto tranquillo · Geoffrey Tozer · Nikolai Medtner

I am spending two days with my 13 year old son in Berlin, just before school starts again next week. The focus of the trip is eating, yesterday we went out for Korean food and then had incredible ice cream (from Cuore di Vetro) in a park where people played volleyball and tabletennis. Riding e-scooters through  the warm (finally bearable) evening air was such a delight. Today it'll be some Chinese noodle place he saw on TikTok and Döner, of course. 

We've become semi-nomadic:  a house in each of two states, one near our son (my stepson actually) where we visit about a month at a time, and one here in North Florida where it is hot and humid and you can almost expect a storm each afternoon (but of course not _always_  {why do these edit things always exclude underscoring characters? "ed" } ).   So, trying to get things done that have to be done here, and trying to get things lined up to get things done there, before my brother-in-law arrives for a visit.   I don't know how many other folks migrate from place-to-place during the year but it has become "interesting" for some value of "interesting".

Beyond that,  I've finally broken an impasse, with help from Wordpress's chatbot, in getting my author wife's website done after too long.  I'm not great at WP and its concepts yet - but if I don't get this done, then  the programming projects in my brain can't be started because I will feel guilt over not finishing hers.

Still love this site, it's one of my favorites, and I love the open thread every once in  while too.

Okay, I am in love with a website that allows me to make my own NYT Connections game and email them to friends. It is fun because you can create bespoke Connections that only your friend(s) will get.

https://mywordle.strivemath.com/connections

I want to foreground this article:  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/opinion/kansas-anti-trans-laws-drivers-license.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5VA.ykZc.d9LjT59dTWTU&smid=url-share.

I have found that it is VERY rare that U.S. authors include the experience of trans men.  Usually it is all about the "threat" of trans women in sports. But really, it all just comes down to being able to use a washroom in peace.  My son has only recently felt comfortable going into to male washrooms, even in a very open part of the country.  

Another interesting part of this is that he's been reporting back to me on the male washrooms.  So in small-ish public washrooms women get four stalls and dudes get two stalls and six urinals.  In what universe is that fair?

After reading KDO on and off for the best part of the last two decades, I have finally decided to become a member here. With all the transformation that the web is going through, having a spot curated by humans where other like-minded humans also gather.  I kinda miss the good old times of small message-board communities and I get a bit of that feeling here and it scratches just the right itch. 

What has been on my mind lately is how fortunate I have been over this summer and the last one to be able to do some short-track speed skating with my daughter. It's her passion (and she's quite good at it at 12 years old) and after a youth of playing hockey, an early adult life of doing a couch potato, I picked up the sport after seeing her go and I'm having a blast. During the summer, she got to hop on the ice to train with the group of adults at the local club and I'm soooooo proud to skate behind her and see her go faster that I can. 

My son is a graphic artist who attended SCAD and so I'm always on the lookout for interesting graphic novels or web comics to discuss with him. Anyway, I just discovered Jason Shiga and Demon this week. I thoroughly enjoyed the action, humor and physics of the story and it was good to share something my son hadn't seen yet (though he was familiar with Shiga and his artwork).

Also, I'm finishing up Just Above My Head by James Baldwin. It's my first Baldwin story and is an excellent novel - heartbreaking and lovely at the same time. Highly recommended. 

Last week I heard children described as "magpies." I can't stop thinking about it as I use my free time to sort through the ever-growing piles of things that my kids create, bring home, and questionably collect. Their originality is amazing, such as my daughter's recent taking to big, re-narrativized collages of cartoons from our New Yorker mags, but I'm also feeling heavily buried in crafts and sticks and tchotchkes that require consistent pruning. Seeing those of you above readying for kids to fly the nest helps me remember how temporary this condition is.

I recently left the classroom after 13 years of teaching (Jason visited my class once!). I'm now working for an organization whose mission is to make sure that most Americans believe democracy to be the best form of government. I am also seeing my twins off to college on Monday - so lots of upheaval, even if it is positive. 

I just wrote to my state reps requesting that they introduce a Reasonable Childhood Independence law in Oregon. I want my two small kids to grow up independent, confident, and resilient, and that means they should get to experience age-appropriate time on their own to explore our neighborhood, play, and learn without the threat of legal repercussions hanging over our heads.

I had a birthday! My birthday coincides with the first day of school *and* national s'more day. That's fun, but also a lot of work as a marshmallow guy.

We went to the Phoebe Bridgers Planetarium Album Release Party in Tallahassee, which was absolutely unique and fun. That and the book "There Is No Antimemetics Division" were my favorite media experiences.

Then I spent a lot of time working on a new social project around s'mores. I'm not totally sure I event want to use social media, but I'm going to try a year-long project to see if I can find a way to make it fun. 

Summer officially ended today (school starts on Monday for my now-fourth grader), and that's always a big thing to think about. My family went on a summer trip this year to Norway and Copenhagen, and when I got back I unwittingly started two Tiny Experiments: 

1. I bought a ten-class pass to a local yoga studio and am now on my third week of attending a Monday evening class with two friends. I'm a lifelong runner, and trying out an indoor thing when I generally dislike exercising inside was a stretch. So far so good - I can feel my body adjusting.
2.  I've been having a lot of impatience and internal frustration, mostly about wasted time - or perceived wasted time. On weekday mornings when I wake up, I write longhand in a journal about times in the previous day when I felt frustrated or impatient, and why. If I didn't have those feelings, I write about what's coming up and what might be a problem. 

That second one has been wonderful, and not just for the writing. It turns out that for quite some time the first thing that I look at after waking up in the morning has been my phone. The writing makes that no longer a thing, and...wow. By not picking up my phone first thing, I use it much less during the day (stats on the thing back this up). And my brain is just...smoother. 

I'm excited to try new experiments!

Family vacation to the Boston area last week. A big highlight, especially for our three daughters, was attending two BTS concerts. A fascinating mix of music, dance, theater, and pure entertainment. Witnessing the band-fan exchanges were also really cool to see.

Then we got to visit Fenway for the first time. As a lifelong baseball fan, it was quite an experience.

Oh, and we stayed in Salem for a few days. It’s quite a nice place to learn some things about U.S. history and eat some good food. And if you have a witchy bone in your body, you’ll really have a good time.

New member! Long time reader. Recently learned about The Gutenberg Parenthesis (from a book that was recommended here) which really intrigued me and as an artist I was thinking how it would make an interesting exhibit if you took, say, a story and told it 3 ways: oral storytelling, early writing (pre-Gutenburg), then via modern book, and finally today's on-line, interactive environment. Certainly we are telling stories today in ways that our brains are more receptive to than the Gutenberg era. And then I saw the post here about the uni-context which adds another perspective to that post-G era.

And I'm finally using some cool paper folding/crumpling lessons to use when incorporating them into art along with local seeds, pods, and sticks. I think I'm in my Paleoithic Era :) If you have any interest in what you can make with paper be sure to get Folding Techniques for Designers by Paul Jackson . 

I'm in Austin, Texas area and even after 6 years I keep finding new plants and animals aroiund the property. Most recently I discovered a native passionflower plant that grows here! Birdwing Passionflower. 

I like to make art with paper, gelli printing, embroidery (on paper), but also digital work such as a Hill Country Themed Advent Calendar and also a Tarot Deck with pictures taken with a kids' thermal camera. Most recently I learned cordage-making from plants and also from used clothing.

There used to be so many cool places on the web. I remember having so many bookmarks of all the cool sites...alas not any more, save for here. Perhaps I just don't know how to find them anymore. Well, sometimes I find inspiration on Instagram.

I've listened to Boards of Canada's Inferno roughly 50 times since it was released in late May. Wonderful on first listen and my experience with it has evolved over each iteration. It's especially revealing during hypnagogic sleep.

My other summer discovery has been that learning to read in another language with Claude feels like a superpower. I've been a low intermediate Italian learner for much of my adult life, only learning it in short spurts when I visit family in Italy, and too shy or passive perhaps to do live learning. So I've been trying to read more and with Claude, I can read a page, take a picture of it, and then have it take me through unusual vocab and more advanced grammatical structures. It holds context over entire short books so it can tie your learnings to sentences, structures, and idioms you've already seen. It's quite incredible.

These are two very different things, but if you've listened to Inferno and dug into its titles and audio samples, you might also see a connection.

I’m three episodes into a podcast called Shell Game https://www.shellgame.co where journalist Evan Ratliff creates a company staffed (almost) entirely by AIs. It’s very amusing.

I’m burning through it today because my wife just left on a three-week trip to Papua New Guinea so I need the mental company in a suddenly quiet house. 

On a less positive note, a mix-up with pay has meant that I’m overdrawn at the bank for the first time in 30 years. It should only last 1-2 weeks, but I can’t believe how stressful it is to see those red numbers and wonder what the penalty will be.

I tried mtn biking this summer and I thought of you Jason. I’m 36 and still finding new things to try! It was more fun than I thought it would be. Simultaneous physical and mental flow! 

I'm writing this on a family vacation on the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina. Living in the SF Bay Area, I'm "accustomed" to the bracing Pacific; this warm water swimming is a d-r-e-a-m. We glommed onto one branch of the family's annual multi-generational vacation. Our young adult sons are getting time with their 40 year old cousins and their small children. From our end, this trip is about nurturing a small flame of connection in the extended family that we hope will burn long after we're gone.

I just started JOHN OF JOHN by Douglas Stuart. I'm only four chapters in and already I want to extend the pleasure of it as long as I can. Sometimes I hesitate to pick it up because it will only bring me closer to the end! What a feeling.