kottke.org

“In today’s new Gilded Age, the 900-plus billionaires in the US have far too much influence over our elections, our economy, our government policies and our news media, and it’s urgent for Americans to create a movement to curb their power…” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/15/billionaire-curb-power-movement

Recommendations of 25 medieval manuscripts to explore online. “Almost every institution with a significant collection of medieval manuscripts digitizes many of their most significant works and makes them freely accessible online.” https://weirdmedievalguys.substack.com/p/25-medieval-manuscripts-you-can-look

Potoooooooo was an 18th-century British racehorse whose name was pronounced like “Potatoes” (Pot-eight-Os). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potoooooooo

“Presolar grains” (microscopic crystals that are older than the Sun) harvested from meteorites may help determine how our solar system was formed. https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-crystals-older-than-the-sun-reveal-about-the-start-of-the-solar-system-20260302/

“We took an ancient vice…put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?” I *hate* the extent to which gambling has infested everything; it’s not going to end well. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/online-sports-betting-app-addiction/686061/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZ61t-XYqK2yJSwHU1P5JCso

A printable zine: 50 Ways To Meet Your Neighbor. “32. Picking up trash, generally, is a good way to meet neighbors. People notice. 33. Winter: Shovel someone’s sidewalk. It’s also great cardio.” https://millionexperiments.com/zines/50-ways-to-meet-your-neighbor

Courtesy of Cambridge University, high-res photos of the original punches used by 18th-century printer John Baskerville to make his eponymous typeface. https://kottke.org/26/03/the-baskerville-punches

"A new world order is here. States (countries) are no longer the highest form of power globally. Power has shifted to wealthy individuals who work in groups and operate across borders: syndicates of capital." https://kottke.org/26/03/syndicates-of-capital

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). https://kottke.org/26/03/brian-enos-oblique-strategies

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." https://kottke.org/26/03/the-four-rules-for-a-good-walk

De La Soul's Tiny Desk Concert! Stakes is High! Me Myself and I! Enough said. https://kottke.org/26/03/de-la-souls-tiny-desk-concert

A history of Apple's HyperCard ("it was the web before the web"), where it came from, and what happened to it. https://kottke.org/26/03/hypercard-changed-everything

Why Attack Iran? "Two interpretive frameworks: a foreign war as a mechanism to destroy democracy at home; and a foreign war as an element of personal corruption by the president of the United States." https://kottke.org/26/03/why-attack-iran

“For months, callers to the Washington state Department of Licensing who have requested automated service in Spanish have instead heard an AI voice speaking English in a strong Spanish accent.” https://apnews.com/article/washington-dol-spanish-accent-ai-3a1b8438a5674c07242a8d48c057d5a3

A 2-hour mix of music compiled by Thom Yorke that plays before Radiohead’s European shows. https://www.mixcloud.com/thomyorke_/2025-walking-in/

Ann Ballentine bought an old candy factory building in Brooklyn in 1979. She filled it with working artists and became something of a fairy godmother to them all. A lovely little short film. https://kottke.org/26/02/the-candy-factory

Do people still worship the ancient Greek gods? “Hellenism – also called Hellenic ethnic religion, or Dodekatheism – which is the practice of worshipping ancient gods, has been growing in popularity since the 1990s.” https://theculturetrip.com/europe/greece/articles/meet-the-greeks-who-worship-the-ancient-gods

Jimi Hendrix Was a Systems Engineer. “Hendrix’s mission was to reshape both the electric guitar’s envelope and its tone until it could feel like a human voice.” https://spectrum.ieee.org/jimi-hendrix-systems-engineer

Marks found on 40,000-year-old artifacts might be a proto-language. “They found that these sign sequences displayed an information density very similar to the earliest examples of the cuneiform forerunner called proto-cuneiform.” https://www.reuters.com/science/40000-year-old-german-artifacts-may-display-written-language-precursor-2026-02-24/

Better than Apple's manufacturing videos: an engineer explains the ingenious design of the aluminum beverage can. https://kottke.org/15/04/the-ingenious-design-of-the-aluminum-beverage-can

Pope Leo XIV to his priests: stop using AI to write sermons. “‘To give a homily is to share faith,’ he said, and AI ‘will never be able to share faith.’” https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/pope-priests-ai

Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees. “Composition II with Red, Blue, and Yellow is in the U.S. public domain. It has been since January 1, 2026. No amount of Spanish law or invented ‘dual copyright’ theories changes that.” https://copyrightlately.com/mondrian-public-domain-controversy/

The NY Times has added another daily crossword to the line-up: the Midi. “The standard Times daily crossword, you see, is a 15×15 grid. The Mini is 5×5. The new Midi is 9×9, snug in between.” https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/the-new-york-times-is-adding-another-daily-crossword-because-why-not/

During the recent annular solar eclipse on February 17, the ESA's PROBA-2 satellite captured this great shot of the Moon passing in front of the Sun. Cue up the Johnny Cash. https://kottke.org/26/02/satellites-ring-of-fire-solar-eclipse-photo-taken-from-orbit

“Eclipses have been connected with the fate of rulers since at least ancient Mesopotamia, around 4,000 years ago.” But more recently: “In 1581, Queen Elizabeth I of England made it a felony to use horoscopes to predict her death or her successor.” https://theconversation.com/for-thousands-of-years-solar-eclipses-have-been-associated-with-the-fate-of-rulers-275515

Calculating the longest line of sight on Earth: 530km (329 miles) between “an unnamed Himalayan ridge near the Indian-Chinese border and Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan”. https://tombh.co.uk/longest-line-of-sight

“x86CSS is a working CSS-only x86 CPU/emulator/computer. Yes, the Cascading Style Sheets CSS. No JavaScript required. What you’re seeing above is a C program that was compiled using GCC into native 8086 machine code being executed fully within CSS.” https://lyra.horse/x86css/

Ali Akbar, the last newspaper hawker in Paris, has been awarded a knighthood by French president Emmanuel Macron. “Macron went on to refer to Akbar as ‘the most French of the French — a Voltairean who arrived from Pakistan.’” https://www.npr.org/2026/02/20/g-s1-110565/france-paris-newspaper-seller-knighthood-chevalier-ali-akbar

Elizebeth Smith Friedman: The Codebreaker. The details of her remarkable career sound a bit outlandish: broke Enigma codes, developed many of the principles of modern cryptology, testified against Al Capone, J. Edgar Hoover took credit for her work... https://kottke.org/26/02/elizebeth-smith-friedman-the-codebreaker

How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account. “The answer to why powerful people in some other parts of the world face consequences, while in America they rarely do, is that elite impunity is now an American national project.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/elite-accountability-powerful-impunity/686134/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8ImCAJzfV2R8UlH_eHGQVjM

Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers (free WSJ piece at MSN). “Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression: More people moved out than moved in.” https://www.wsj.com/us-news/americans-leaving-the-us-migration-a5795bfa?st=9EzjFX&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

An Archive of Commercial Illustration (c. 1950-75). So much throwback inspiration here! https://kottke.org/26/02/an-archive-of-commercial-illustration-c-1950-75

Kansas Sends Letters To Trans People Demanding The Immediate Surrender Of Drivers Licenses. “The letter…marks one of the most significant erosions of transgender civil rights in the United States to date.” https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sends-letters-to-trans-people

“The CyberTruck is 17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto”, a 70s automobile that put the “car” in “exploding car”. https://fuelarc.com/evs/its-official-the-cybertruck-is-more-explosive-than-the-ford-pinto/

I Am a 15-year-old Girl. Let Me Show You the Vile Misogyny That Confronts Me on Social Media Every Day. “I frequently feel objectified, dehumanised and disgusted by the hate towards women I see online.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/23/15-year-old-girl-misogyny-social-media-online-abuse

Top tier nerd shit. “WalkmanLand is a tribute to the long forgotten portable music players from the 80-90s. The Walkmans.” https://walkman.land/

The Color Game. “Humans can’t reliably recall colors. This is a simple game to see how good (or bad) you are at it. We’ll show you five colors, then you’ll try and recreate them.” I scored 39/50 but got a perfect score on one color. https://dialed.gg/

A list of all the media (movies, books, TV shows, plays, etc.) consumed by Steven Soderbergh in 2025. https://extension765.com/blogs/soderblog/seen-read-2025

Searching for Birds, an engaging visualization of eBird and Google Trends data that reveals human curiosity about birds. https://searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com/

Vintage art house movie posters by Peter Strausfeld, "highlighting works by now-famous directors like Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda, and Satyajit Ray". https://kottke.org/26/02/vintage-art-house-movie-posters-by-peter-strausfeld

Current is an interesting new RSS reader that doesn’t function like an email inbox. “There is no count because counting was the problem.” https://www.terrygodier.com/current

The 19 richest Americans hold more than 2% of the total US holdhold wealth. That figure has roughly doubled in the past 5-6 years. “The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering.” https://bsky.app/profile/gabrielzucman.bsky.social/post/3mevrpi22nc2o

Fun fact of the day: at the height of his quadruple axel, Olympic figure skater Ilia Malinin is spinning at 350 rpm, “about the same as a kitchen stand mixer”. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/ilia-malinin-olympic-figure-skating/685766/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZ-f0uIN6_rGx1n0bRpeI4hA

The Guardian: here’s how Substack makes money hosting Nazi newsletters. These newsletters weren’t even hard to find or subtle: swastikas and in-app recommendations from one antisemitic newsletter to a bunch of others. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-substack-makes-money-from-hosting-nazi-newsletters

“How did medieval French handwriting become ‘the Nazi font?’ And why did Hitler make it illegal?” TIL that Hitler gave a speech to the Reichstag about how much he disliked blackletter fonts. https://weirdmedievalguys.substack.com/p/how-did-medieval-french-handwriting