KDO members can now freshen up their profiles with a profile pic or a short bio. "The idea with this feature is to provide a lightweight way for KDO members to get to know who they're conversing with in the comments." (It's Just Enough Social...) [kottke.org]
Let's-a-fucking-go
Lots of great defecation physics here: “66 percent of animals take between 5 and 19 seconds to defecate. It’s a…small range, given that elephant feces have a volume of 20 liters, nearly a thousand times more than a dog’s, at 10 milliliters.” [pbs.org]
The New School Cancelled Their Class on Soccer and World Politics. We Are Going To Teach it Anyway. Enrollment is now open; the class will deal with questions like “Which regimes are using this tournament to launder their reputations?” [karenattiah.substack.com]
SETI might be missing alien signals because “stellar ‘space weather’ may blur ultra-narrow radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations before they leave their home star systems”. SETI usually looks for “extremely sharp frequency spikes”. [seti.org]
Colonel Sanders visited a KFC with a NY Times food critic in 1976 and had nothing good to say about the food. "This ain't no goddam Tennessee Fried Chicken, no matter what some slick, silk-suited son-of-a-bitch says." [kottke.org]
The Met Introduces High-Definition 3D Scans of Dozens of Art Historical Objects, including Egyptian temples, Greek oil flasks, van Gogh paintings, and cuneiform tablets. [thisiscolossal.com]
“If measles-mumps-rubella vaccination rates decline 1% annually for the next five years, associated medical and societal costs could reach $1.5 billion.” (That 1% is a conservative estimate “given current policy and coverage trajectory”.) [beckershospitalreview.com]
Director Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Poker Face) wrote the review of the Thursday crossword puzzle for the NY Times today. “I love a good Thursday. The baffling special graphics, the wait-that-can’t-be-right puzzlement and that glorious ah-ha moment…” [nytimes.com]
Earth’s gravity is lumpy. “The gravity in East Antarctica is measurably weaker than anywhere else on the planet.” [popularmechanics.com]
Arresting Photos of Big Tuskers. "The term 'Big Tusker' refers to an elephant with tusks so large they scrape the floor." There are only ~25 of these elephants left in the entire world. [kottke.org]
This is kind of amazing: World Monitor is a real-time global intelligence dashboard. Includes military activity, climate anomalies, live webcam feeds in warzones, internet outages, active fires, and even the Pentagon Pizza Index. [worldmonitor.app]
Yes, let’s retire the restaurant monologue. “The urge to direct diners through every bite of a meal runs counter to what I love about dining out, one of just a few cornerstones of American life that have not yet been optimized into oblivion.” [archive.ph]
From ProPublica, a database of financial disclosures from the Trump regime’s political appointees. “Use this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team.” (via @dansinker.com) [projects.propublica.org]
I don't check in everywhere, but I still use Swarm on a weekly basis! swarmapp.com
The Internet Archive has a ton of old HyperCard programs that you can run right in your browser, including Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, the Whole Earth Catalog, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ebook, and The Manhole (Myst precursor). [kottke.org]
Possibly using Alto? alto.so
"This blog is authored in Apple Notes..." I'd like to hear more about this, @aresluna.org! unsung.aresluna.org/a-more-eager...
Web game: list as many animals as you can in 1 minute (but you get more time with correct guesses). [rose.systems]
The Four Rules for a Good Walk. "There needs to be a proper reason to walk, the walk has to be safe and feel safe, the walk has to be comfortable, and the walk has to be interesting." [kottke.org]
Legendary computer scientist Donald Knuth: “Shock! Shock! I learned yesterday that an open problem I’d been working on for several weeks had just been solved by Claude Opus 4.6.” [www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu]
“The entire Sun oscillates in a globally coherent way, and the oscillations are formed by sound waves trapped inside the Sun that make it resonate just like a musical instrument.” [404media.co]
From late January, a 40-minute talk by Rick Steves on “how lessons learned on the road can help Americans better understand and meet the challenges facing Democracy in the USA.” [youtube.com]
oh no they're onto me
Timothy Snyder on strongmen. “Once you accept that Trump is strong, you are accepting that you are weaker than Trump. And once you accept the strongman form of politics, you no longer have recourse to laws, or norms, or even basic ideas of decency.” [snyder.substack.com]
De La Soul's Tiny Desk Concert! Stakes is High! Me Myself and I! Enough said. [kottke.org]
Rebecca Solnit's new book: The Beginning Comes After the End. "In her telling, the current rise of authoritarianism is the dying gasp of an old world order, and we are on the precipice of living in a multicultural and interconnected world." [kottke.org]
TIL about babysitting co-ops. “The premise is simple: Families in the co-op provide each other with free childcare. A point system…ensures that everyone contributes their fair share. Every half an hour is worth one point…” [reasonstobecheerful.world]
just float y'all
