Improving Conversation on KDO

I’ve been really pleased with how KDO comments are working lately — you folks have been lively, informative, fun, and pushing conversations beyond what I can individually manage. And the vibe of the threads are more closely matching the vibe of the community guidelines. All good! The one-size-fits-all-ness of social media has its advantages, but some are looking for quieter spaces and more orientation around community and shared sensibilities. Through the comments, KDO has been growing into one of those places.

Prompting as Self-Portrait. “We need the blank page and

Prompting as Self-Portrait. “We need the blank page and the silence to go deeper into our thoughts and our understanding of ourselves and of the world.”

Nearly 4M Records of Enslaved People in 20 Former British

Nearly 4M Records of Enslaved People in 20 Former British Colonies Now Searchable Online. “The Former British Colonies Enslavement Registers contains about 300,000 pages recording enslaved people across former British colonial dependencies…”

Why I Did Not Leave Nazi Germany in Time. “Many of us

Why I Did Not Leave Nazi Germany in Time. “Many of us feared the shock of being uprooted and tried to avoid it if at all possible. But to understand this reaction…I say that nobody could possibly have foreseen the ‘final solution.’”

The Worst Way To Get To Space. I’d never heard the story

The Worst Way To Get To Space. I’d never heard the story of the manhole cover possibly propelled into orbit by a nuclear blast — it was estimated to be moving at ~42 miles/sec. “Some speculated it became the first manmade object to enter Earth’s orbit.”

All the Percents on Star Trek: TNG

I 100% love this video of every time someone says a percentage on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And the word “percent” has lost all of its meaning due to semantic satiation. (thx, caroline) Tags: language · Star Trek · TV · video

My friend Matt was recently here for a week in Tokyo and

My friend Matt was recently here for a week in Tokyo and wrote up his experience and observations. “I don’t think humans were ever meant to experience that many eyes and faces at once, so it was a unique experience.”

Crossword Clues Where It’s Clear the Puzzle’s Creator Got

Crossword Clues Where It’s Clear the Puzzle’s Creator Got Themselves into a Jam Letter-wise. Incl. “Could be found on the second to last line of an optometrist’s vision chart” and “The sound a cow might make when spanked”.

Unseen Places: Rediscovering the Art of Observation by

Unseen Places: Rediscovering the Art of Observation by Anna Kodé. Looking forward to this one…Kodé is one of my favorite journalists covering urban culture. “Observation…is not a passive act, but a powerful and radical way of connecting…”

Every US Electrical Outlet Explained

This video from Practical Engineering was very illuminating to me, a naive person who thought there were only three types of electrical outlets used in the US — the two-prong, the three-prong, and the 240V — and not the real number, which is more than 35 types of electrical outlets! Oh and “two-prong”? Not that plug’s actual name! (via unsung) Tags: electricity · engineering · video

Japanese book rave. A club in Tokyo spread carpets on the

Japanese book rave. A club in Tokyo spread carpets on the dance floor, played ambient music, and invited daytime clubgoers to chill out and read. Would 100% frequent a bookstore/cafe that did this regularly.

Weball allows you to roll up websites into a Katamari

Weball allows you to roll up websites into a Katamari ball. You can even roll up KDO. This is too much fun. See also Destroy Any Website.

Is This Weird Quiz Game the Toughest F1 Video Game Ever?

It might be that this text-only quiz game from 1993 is the most challenging F1 video game of all time. Here are a couple of the 23 questions from Gerhard Berger’s Formula 1 Quiz:

I just went down a rabbit hole of incense seals. So cool

Bill McKibben: I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We

Bill McKibben: I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This. The human nervous system wasn’t designed for the polycrisis. “Among all the other dangers these developments represent, they’re simply wearing us out.”

In 1996, the Blondin family drove all around the US

In 1996, the Blondin family drove all around the US, blogging about it all before “blog” was even a word. “We were doing something that had no name and no manual, and we were doing it over a dial-up modem while living in a motorhome.”

Chasing a Plane Across the Moon

Agustín Ferrando Trenchi became a little obsessed with the moon as a kid. As an adult, he’s taken tons of photos and hundreds of hours of footage of the moon. After seeing an airplane fly close to the moon while he filmed, Trenchi began a quest to capture a plane flying across the face of the moon.

Abolish Frat Culture. “This is going to be uncomfortable

Abolish Frat Culture. “This is going to be uncomfortable for anyone with a kid in a fraternity to hear: If your son finds himself in a group that would send a ‘free pussy’ text, it’s too late. The group is the disease, the text is the symptom.”

Any Human Ever randomly picks an average person from some

Any Human Ever randomly picks an average person from some point in human history and tells you about what their life was like. Mine was a woman born in 1547: “Of all the sounds of her life, the loudest were thunder and the church bells.”

Mamdani’s “Richard Scarry Socialism” Can Make City Life

Mamdani’s “Richard Scarry Socialism” Can Make City Life Simple Again. “It is an astonishing indictment of our times that the cities of our picture books can seem like a radical utopia.”

Bertrand Russell Shows How to Respond to Fascists Who Want to Debate

Late in his life, the prominent English mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was subject to an attempt in the early 1960s by Oswald Mosley to provoke him into a debate about the merits of fascism. Before WWII, Mosley had founded the British Union of Fascists.

The Global Rise of Electoral Dictatorships. Is the U.S

The Global Rise of Electoral Dictatorships. Is the U.S. Next? “Electoral dictators — who identify as presidents and prime ministers — hold uncompetitive and unfair elections after aggressively suppressing political opponents.”

A short (too short?) video from Little White Lies on

A short (too short?) video from Little White Lies on designer Saul Bass and his influence on the art of movie title design. They also did videos on Pablo Ferro and Kyle Cooper.

Great Deals on Apple Stuff Today

Just wanted to dip in here to say that Amazon is running another one of their sales for Prime members, which can be a great opportunity to upgrade some tech items at lower prices, especially with the price increases we’ve seen recently. Just a couple of quick things:

“Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that

“Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon, died Sept. 30 in Cambridge, Mass. She was 90.”

Where in the world are typefaces being designed? The US

Where in the world are typefaces being designed? The US, Germany, and France…but also the UK, Netherlands, and Indonesia.

Wildwood

Laika is the stop-motion animation studio that made Coraline & Kubo and the Two Strings. Their newest film, Wildwood, looks pretty incredible; have a look at the trailer.

In 2005, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory calculated that

In 2005, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory calculated that the water stored by China’s huge Three Gorges Dam is enough to increase the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds and move the North pole by 0.8 inches. (A 9.1 earthquake had a bigger impact.)

Lots and Lots and Lots of Control Panels

To go along with my recent post about control rooms, here’s the Control Panels group on Flickr, containing almost 3000 photos of control interfaces for all kinds of things. You’ll see some of the same photos as in the Control Rooms group, but when you get past the first couple of pages, there’s more variety: fiddly knobs, entire walls of nearly identical switches, dials, inscrutable gauges, soda machine interfaces, bump it and you might die buttons, computers with switches, Swinging Fingers (!!), and many more

The Job Trail, a web game about making it through 52

The Job Trail, a web game about making it through 52 weeks as a laid-off creative worker. Based on The Oregon Trail. My first try: “You have died of burnout. Week 13. 51 applications, 1 ghosting.”

Blue Planet III

BBC Earth is returning to the ocean. 25 years after the first installment, the legendary naturalist, presenter, and centenarian David Attenborough narrates Blue Planet III. This first look video, backed by a song Hans Zimmer & Jade Thirwall, is teeming with stunning footage of sea life of all sorts.

118 Things to Do Instead of Doomscrolling. Including “put

118 Things to Do Instead of Doomscrolling. Including “put together a puzzle”, “go for a bike ride”, “hold a plank for as long as you can — even if it’s only a second”, and “make your own limoncello”.

From a tongue-in-cheek Google Japan, a conveyor belt

From a tongue-in-cheek Google Japan, a conveyor belt keyboard, where the keys move and your hand stays still while typing. One of several unusual keyboards released by the company. You can even build your own.

Silent Friend

Silent Friend is a historical drama written and directed by Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi. Here’s the description: In the botanical garden of a medieval Ger

Things That Are Good to Do. Including “admit what you

Things That Are Good to Do. Including “admit what you don’t know”, “put the cart away”, “rest before you’re exhausted” (I often get this one wrong), and “walk home if you can”.

The Ku Klux Klan is rebranding itself as The Knights

The Ku Klux Klan is rebranding itself as The Knights Party, centered on “family and faith” along with proud & open white supremacy. 💩🖕

Watch One of Radiohead’s Best Live Shows: Bonnaroo 2006

Back in ~2008, right on the cusp of stardom, Lady Gaga did a crate-digging video in a London record shop and named Radiohead’s set at Bonnaroo 2006 as her favorite show she’s ever been to. A post-fame Gaga reaffirmed her choice in this 2018 Vogue interview. Many share her opinion. Here’s the official concert video of that Bonnaroo show so you can judge for yourself. The setlist for the show: There There 2+2=5 15 Step Weird Fishes/Arpeggi Exit Music (For a Film) Kid A Dollars & Cents Videotape No Surprises Paranoid Android

An interesting long profile of Mark Zuckerberg. “Mark is

An interesting long profile of Mark Zuckerberg. “Mark is the fucking Terminator. He’s actually not an asshole, which is interesting. He’s not a miserable fuck. But his source of advantage is he’s never happy. He just doesn’t fucking stop.”

The Best Sandwich Shop in America?

YouTuber Rob Martinez travelled to Columbus, Ohio to tell the story of what he calls the best sandwich shop in America, Wario’s Beef and Pork. Here’s part of the transcript of owner Stephan Madias talking about the restaurant:

Richard Linklater is directing a film adaptation of the

Richard Linklater is directing a film adaptation of the Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along. Shooting started in 2019 and will continue until 2040 to match the musical’s 20-year period. (Linklater’s Boyhood was shot over 12 years.)

Mapsnap is a program designed to take old Sanborn

Mapsnap is a program designed to take old Sanborn insurance maps (block-by-block maps of every US city from 1870-1960) and aligning them with modern maps.

JumpStar is the world’s strongest Chinese Checkers AI

JumpStar is the world’s strongest Chinese Checkers AI engine. Designed to emulate AlphaGo and Stockfish but for Chinese Checkers. The model was trained entirely on a M4 MacBook. You can play it online or on iOS.

Random TV Time: watch old TV pulled from the Internet

Random TV Time: watch old TV pulled from the Internet Archive. 17 channels to surf, including cartoons, 1960s TV, and one that’s only old commercials.

Designer Giorgia Lupi: In Defense of the Detour. “I fear

Designer Giorgia Lupi: In Defense of the Detour. “I fear that A.I. is undermining what makes us most human — the ability to translate lived experience and nuanced thoughts into a unique point of view…”

Stalin Boys is a short documentary about a Joseph

Stalin Boys is a short documentary about a Joseph Stalin-obsessed middle-schooler from a tiny Texas town who writes a play about the Soviet dictator and enlists his three friends to stage it for the Texas State History Fair. Free to watch online.

Nappy is a site offering free stock photos of Black and

Nappy is a site offering free stock photos of Black and brown people. (The site says they’re going offline in a few months due to a falloff in demand bc of AI. Maybe Internet Archive can do their thing here?)

I can’t remember where I heard about this, but judging by

I can’t remember where I heard about this, but judging by the trailer, Hope by Korean director Na Hong-jin looks pretty good.

When’s the Last Time You Cried?

For New York magazine, Emily Gould writes about her quest to cry again: I Miss My Tears (archive). I looked over at my husband, Keith, whose eyes were red, and felt … nothing. Not a clench in my chest, not a pang, not an incipient burning behind my eye sockets. It wasn’t totally surprising; by this point, I hadn’t cried for more than three years. I’d started to suspect that something was wrong with me when a friend I’d known since childhood died and I didn’t shed a tear.

Chimpanzees use tools to collect food and deliberately

Chimpanzees use tools to collect food and deliberately teach other chimps (often their offspring) to use them for ant dipping, algae fishing, and termite fishing.