Kottke.org Posts and Links for Jul 13, 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!

There's a 25th anniversary edition version of Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe coming out. I devoured this book when it first came out and I still have not read an easier-to-understand summary of modern physics and quantum mechanics. [amazon.com]

Gorgeous aerial photograph of sea ice in the Baltic Sea. [kottke.org]

Cyanokites are a collection of five paper kites of different shades of blue, a sly homage to the cyanometer, an instrument designed to measure the blueness of the sky. [kites.playgroup.design]

Printernet: Get a custom print version of your reading list sent right to your door. Each issue has five slots you can fill with any text-based content (articles, etc.) [getprinternet.com]

Molly White: Fighting bots is fighting humans. "Any attempt at limiting bot access will inevitably allow some bots through and prevent some humans from accessing the site, and it's about deciding where you want to set the cutoff." [mollywhite.net]

"The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe; for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them." [kottke.org]

Area codes that are also HTTP response headers. For instance, 404 (Not Found) is an area code in Atlanta and 406 (Not Acceptable) is the area code for Montana. [dougsillars.github.io]

Edith here. Miranda July’s All Fours is one of the must-reads of the summer. I devoured it and drew about it. Have you read it? What did you think? [kottke.org]

This Crystal Fragment Turns Everything You See Into 8-bit Pixel Art, and It’s Fascinating. "The lens minecrafts scenery without electricity." [yankodesign.com]

This clip of Gene Kelly gently refusing Kermit's request to perform Singin' in the Rain on the Muppet Show is just super charming and lovely. (Spoiler alert: he performs it.) [kottke.org]

Enduring 129°F in Death Valley. "The breeze only makes things worse, by blasting apart the thin and fragile atmosphere of cooled air that millions of your pores produce by sweating. Your heart hammers faster and faster. Your cognition starts to blur." [theatlantic.com 🎁]

Ayo Edebiri browses the Criterion Collection closet and picks out some of her favorite movies. She is so joyfully nerdy about film, I love it. [kottke.org]

There's a Devil Wears Prada sequel coming... "Gird your loins." [variety.com]

XKCD wrote A Crossword Puzzle; it's got clues like "Lola, when betting it all on black 20 in Run Lola Run", "8mm diameter battery", and "badbeef + 9efcebbb". [kottke.org]

I've linked to these before, but the Do Not Reply images (which gently dunk on social media reply guys) are now available on their own site — and you can order IRL stickers too. [donotreply.cards]

The Teasingest Teaser Trailer for Severance Season Two. "In season two, Mark and his friends learn the dire consequences of trifling with the severance barrier, leading them further down a path of woe." [kottke.org]

Did you know you can renew your US passport online now? The State Department is beta testing the new online renewal system for the next several months. [travelandleisure.com]

New book out this fall: Comic Sans: The Biography of a Typeface. "Author Simon Garfield tells the story of how Comic Sans emerged from speech bubbles on educational software to become one of the most recognized — and reviled — typefaces on Earth." [amazon.com]

The Science Behind the Emotions in Inside Out 2. "Around 13 or 14, the ability to picture oneself on the outside, to imagine different scenarios, arrives as a result of brain development." Hence, the rise of anxiety, envy, embarrassment, etc. [kottke.org]

The International Astronomical Union is currently running an open competition to name one of Earth's quasi-moons. They're doing this in association with Radiolab — remember their Zoozve episode? [iau.org]

👀 👋 🎉

This has been the kottke.org newsletter for Jul 13, 2024. This newsletter is supported by kottke.org members. If you enjoyed reading this, please forward it to a friend.

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