Kottke.org Posts and Links for Sep 21, 2024
Hi, Jason here. This newsletter is a digest of posts and links from kottke.org, published every Tuesday and Friday. It's not absolutely everything from the site, but it's durn close. Unsubscribing is easy if you'd like to get off this ride. As always, you can read kottke.org on the web, via RSS, on Bluesky, on Mastodon, and in several other ways. Ok, onto the links!
It's my unfortunate duty to inform you that, once again, It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. [mcsweeneys.net]
The FDA has approved a nasal flu vaccine that people can administer to themselves at home. (Prescription required, order it online, ages 2-49, available next year.) [npr.org]
Did Shohei Ohtani just play the single greatest baseball game ever? "He went 6-for-6, slugged three home runs, drove in 10 runs and swiped two bases — in a game that clinched a postseason berth." [nytimes.com]
What impacted the Earth 66 million years ago at Chicxulub and caused the extinction of 75% of all species of life? A new analysis suggests it was an asteroid from the outer reaches of the solar system. [badastronomy.beehiiv.com]
Which Came First? A quiz from Google Arts & Culture in which you guess which historical event took place first. [artsandculture.google.com]
London's clean air zone was meant to reduce car pollution but also had another effect: more active kids. "Instead of being chauffeured to school by their parents, the students started walking, biking, scootering, or taking public transit." [grist.org]
The Toll of America's Anti-Trans War. "Anti-transgender legislation and rhetoric is reshaping all of our lives, from bodily autonomy to education, privacy and the access and use of public spaces. Are we paying attention?" [19thnews.org]
"A previously unknown piece of music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart when he was probably in his early teens has been uncovered at a library in Germany." 12 minutes of new Mozart in the 21st century, what a time to be alive. [theguardian.com]
The newest season of The Great British Bake Off premieres on Netflix next week (Sept 27). Look at all those fresh faces — I love them already. [eater.com]
The Breakthrough That Could Unlock Ocean Carbon Removal. "How Equatic solved seawater's toxic gas problem and delivered a two-for-one solution: removing carbon while producing green hydrogen." [heatmap.news]
A gorgeous tour of Antartica by drone. [kottke.org]
Visualizing Ship Movements with AIS Data. "Explore the beautiful, intricate paths of ships over a year — tracked from America's busiest ports to the open ocean via AIS marine tracking data." [beautifulpublicdata.com]
A famous lecture given in 1982 by computer science pioneer Grace Hopper, "Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People", has long been publicly unavailable but is now on YouTube. [arstechnica.com]
Horndog, a rotating hot dog robot that scrolls photos of bread on "Instagrain". It's art! [instagram.com]
I love these cover designed by Rodrigo Corral for Nathaniel Mackey's poetry collection Double Trio. [kottke.org]
Monopoly, But COMMUNIST? No Rolls Barred, a YouTube Channel about board games, has a series of videos featuring Monopoly but with different rules. [youtube.com]
Ian Bogost on the death of the "perfect vehicle", the minivan. "It is useful because it offers benefits for families, and it is uncool because family life is thought to be imprisoning." Conversely, SUVs & trucks offer a sense of freedom. [theatlantic.com 🎁]
Oh hey, a new book from Oliver Burkeman coming out soon: Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. [amazon.com]
Taffy Brodesser-Akner on the kidnapping that inspired Long Island Compromise. "The actual kidnapping is not what this story is about, if you can believe it. It's about surviving what you survived, which is also known as the rest of your life." [kottke.org]
Serena Rios McRae makes hand-carved stamps out of pink erasers and recently stamped all 185 erasers onto one sheet of paper. [instagram.com]
Bong Joon-ho's first film since Parasite is a sci-fi dark comedy film called Mickey 17; here's the trailer. It'll be out in theaters in late January. [kottke.org]
The newest season of the Slow Burn podcast is about the rise of Fox News. "It's this rare institution that hasn't been around for all that long — it launched in 1996 — but has so clearly changed the country and all of us who live here." [slate.com]
Every webpage deserves to be a place. Matt Webb's cursor party feature lets web visitors see other people's cursors on his site. And they can chat with each other and share text highlights. "It should be everywhere. It’s how the web should be." [interconnected.org]
Huge study from The Economist about car bloat in the US. "For every life that the heaviest 1% of SUVs and trucks save, there are more than a dozen lives lost in other vehicles." 'Safety for me, danger for you' is an American motto at this point. [economist.com]
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