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CBS cancelled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert just days after he...
Jason Kottke
CBS cancelled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert just days after he criticized the $16 million bribe the network paid to Trump. Here’s why “Colbert’s cancellation is a dark warning”.…
Today · 13:39 -
Fascism For First Time Founders. “Let’s have a little chat about why...
Jason Kottke
Fascism For First Time Founders. “Let’s have a little chat about why embracing fascism is probably the worst possible business strategy for anyone actually trying to build something innov…
Today · 10:06 -
How to run an LLM on your laptop
Simon Willison
How to run an LLM on your laptop I talked to Grace Huckins for this piece from MIT Technology Review on running local models. Apparently she enjoyed my dystopian backup plan! Simon Willison has…
Today · 09:33 -
“The extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner, famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive...
Jason Kottke
“The extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner, famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident.” 💬 Joi…
Today · 09:21 -
Next year, “the average person who buys Affordable Care Act insurance will...
Jason Kottke
Next year, “the average person who buys Affordable Care Act insurance will be paying 75% more for their premium” because of “the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits in the ACA ma…
Today · 08:49 -
Contemplative Landscapes by Noah Kalina
Jason Kottke
Noah Kalina is uploading videos of the “long photograph” variety of peaceful & contemplative nature scenes to YouTube. 4K. No AI. “Press play and walk away.” T…
Yesterday · 18:25 -
Vibe coding and Robocop [blog] Remy Sharp
I've been immersing myself in the AI news for the last few months, trying to get understanding of the landscape, what and why there's excitement, whether the ethics (both from a copyright and climate…
Yesterday · 18:00 -
Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles. “Collectivist...
Jason Kottke
Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles. “Collectivist bosons account for the forces that move us while individualist fermions keep our atoms from collapsing.” (Hon…
Yesterday · 17:13 -
From Beautiful Public Data, a look into the Internet Archive’s collection of...
Jason Kottke
From Beautiful Public Data, a look into the Internet Archive’s collection of 5000 images from the NASA Ames Research Center. “Browsing through this amazing archive gives you a unique view…
Yesterday · 16:10 -
How AI Wreaked Havoc on the Lo-Fi Beat Scene. “The music’s association...
Jason Kottke
How AI Wreaked Havoc on the Lo-Fi Beat Scene. “The music’s association with aimless, unfocused listening — vibe music before vibe became a buzzword — means people aren’t paying as m…
Yesterday · 15:03 -
The Surreality of Japanese Playgrounds at Night
Jason Kottke
For years now, photographer Fujio Kito has been documenting cement playground equipment in Japan, often capturing them at night, lit up in captivating ways. (via laura olin a…
Yesterday · 14:02 -
Vibe scraping and vibe coding a schedule app for Open Sauce 2025 entirely on my phone
Simon Willison
This morning, working entirely on my phone, I scraped a conference website and vibe coded up an alternative UI for interacting with the schedule using a combination of OpenAI Codex and Claude Art…
Yesterday · 13:38 -
Elderly Woman Keeps Mind Active Justifying Trump’s Actions. “I’m developing new neural...
Jason Kottke
Elderly Woman Keeps Mind Active Justifying Trump’s Actions. “I’m developing new neural pathways each time I shrug off Trump’s clear violations of the Constitution and his total contem…
Yesterday · 13:31 -
Iceland’s 36-hour workweek has been a huge success. “On his free days,...
Jason Kottke
Iceland’s 36-hour workweek has been a huge success. “On his free days, he loves to sleep in, then to make long phone calls to his fellow pigeon fanciers while cleaning the kitchen…” S…
Yesterday · 13:09 -
A comprehensive illustrated article on how screens work. This is the first...
Jason Kottke
A comprehensive illustrated article on how screens work. This is the first part of a new work-in-progress called Making Software that aims to explain how software systems & tools work from th…
Yesterday · 12:12 -
The Design Museum’s Upcoming Wes Anderson Exhibition
Jason Kottke
I don’t think anything could be more up my alley, in my wheelhouse, in my lane, my cup of tea, my speed than this upcoming retrospective of Wes Anderson’s work at London…
Yesterday · 11:15 -
The winners of Core77 Design Awards. Categories include apps, packaging, transportation, branding,...
Jason Kottke
The winners of Core77 Design Awards. Categories include apps, packaging, transportation, branding, consumer tech, and more. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.or…
Yesterday · 10:24 -
Finding of a recent survey of 90,000+ trans Americans: “trans people who...
Jason Kottke
Finding of a recent survey of 90,000+ trans Americans: “trans people who go back to living as their sex assigned at birth do so because of transphobia, not because of doubts about gender or…
Yesterday · 09:44 -
I haven’t watched the NBA in years and I only know about...
Jason Kottke
I haven’t watched the NBA in years and I only know about Joel Embiid by media osmosis, but for some reason I spent 45 minutes this morning reading this profile of him.…
Yesterday · 08:52 -
Quoting Terence Eden
Simon Willison
The modern workforce shouldn't be flinging copies to each other. A copy is outdated the moment it is downloaded. A copy has no protection against illicit reading. A copy can never be revoked. Dat…
Yesterday · 08:31 -
From Smithsonian Magazine, the story of how Reading Rainbow came about, in...
Jason Kottke
From Smithsonian Magazine, the story of how Reading Rainbow came about, in part as an effort to combat schoolchildren’s summer reading slumps. 💬 Join the di…
Two Days Ago · 17:06 -
A collection of photos from the 70s & 80s of kids jumping...
Jason Kottke
A collection of photos from the 70s & 80s of kids jumping their bikes, sometimes over other kids. In that first pic, there is no way the two kids at the end of the row didn’t get stomped by…
Two Days Ago · 15:52 -
Voxtral
Simon Willison
Voxtral Mistral released their first audio-input models yesterday: Voxtral Small and Voxtral Mini. These state‑of‑the‑art speech understanding models are available in two sizes—a 24B v…
Two Days Ago · 15:11 -
I had no idea Subaru actively courted lesbian car buyers with targeted...
Jason Kottke
I had no idea Subaru actively courted lesbian car buyers with targeted ad campaigns in the early 90s; here’s a 2016 Planet Money episode about it: When Subaru Came Out.…
Two Days Ago · 14:39 -
The Pedestrians Who Abetted a Hawk’s Deadly Attack. “The hawk appears to...
Jason Kottke
The Pedestrians Who Abetted a Hawk’s Deadly Attack. “The hawk appears to have learned to interpret a traffic signal and take advantage of it, in its quest to hunt. Which is…more impress…
Two Days Ago · 13:49 -
common-pile/caselaw_access_project
Simon Willison
common-pile/caselaw_access_project Enormous openly licensed (I believe this is almost all public domain) training dataset of US legal cases: This dataset contains 6.7 million cases from the Cas…
Two Days Ago · 13:18 -
Photos Show the Vast Scale of China’s Solar Power Projects
Jason Kottke
Over at the Atlantic, Alan Taylor has collected a bunch of photos showing just how hard China is pushing on solar energy. As the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” elimin…
Two Days Ago · 12:58 -
Fell in a hole, got out.
Simon Willison
Fell in a hole, got out. This is an absolutely fascinating entrepreneurial war story by Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine, describing how they went from losing $2.6 million per month in 2022 to being…
Two Days Ago · 12:36 -
Let Your Kid Climb That Tree. “Your fear that your kid will...
Jason Kottke
Let Your Kid Climb That Tree. “Your fear that your kid will get hurt is depriving them of something they’ll never get back.” (The bit about “kinematic movers” is really interesting.…
Two Days Ago · 12:03 -
Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the...
Jason Kottke
Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness. “My depression is spewing like an oil spill all over the beautiful turquoise-g…
Two Days Ago · 11:16 -
Writing Advice and Literary Wisdom from the Great E.B. White. “A blank...
Jason Kottke
Writing Advice and Literary Wisdom from the Great E.B. White. “A blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me — more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a l…
Two Days Ago · 10:24 -
Namur Marc Thiele
Passing Namur on my way to Portugal. Remembers me of Alexandre Plennevaux bringing students to beyond tellerrand in DUS for many years. Repl…
Two Days Ago · 10:10 -
A great look at how Baltimore’s investment in an “ecosystem of community–oriented...
Jason Kottke
A great look at how Baltimore’s investment in an “ecosystem of community–oriented interventions” has drastically reduced violent crime in the city by treating crime as a public health…
Two Days Ago · 09:32 -
Bloc Party’s Tiny Desk Concert
Jason Kottke
Twenty years! It’s been twenty years since Bloc Party’s debut album Silent Alarm was released. To celebrate, the band stopped by the NPR office’s for a Tiny Desk Concert. To celebrat…
Two Days Ago · 08:49 -
A map of the best places to see the Northern Lights. “Kuril’s...
Jason Kottke
A map of the best places to see the Northern Lights. “Kuril’s analysis culminated in a map highlighting the locations with the best potential to see the northern lights.”…
Two Days Ago · 08:06 -
Shipping WebGPU on Windows in Firefox 141
Simon Willison
Shipping WebGPU on Windows in Firefox 141 WebGPU is coming to Mac and Linux soon as well: Although Firefox 141 enables WebGPU only on Windows, we plan to ship WebGPU on Mac and Linux in the com…
Two Days Ago · 07:51 -
Documenting what you're willing to support (and not)
Simon Willison
Documenting what you're willing to support (and not) Devious company culture hack from Rachel Kroll: At some point, I realized that if I wrote a wiki page and documented the things that we…
Two Days Ago · 07:19 -
CEO Tony Stubblebine shares how Medium went from the brink of shutting...
Jason Kottke
CEO Tony Stubblebine shares how Medium went from the brink of shutting down to being profitable for almost a year now. “In 2022, Medium was losing $2.6M each month. We were also losing subs…
Three Days Ago · 15:12 -
After dealing with years of “Xfinity’s bullcrap” as customers, a pair of...
Jason Kottke
After dealing with years of “Xfinity’s bullcrap” as customers, a pair of brothers built an all-fiber ISP that’s cheaper & faster to compete with them. …
Three Days Ago · 14:01 -
Best of Luck With the Wall
Jason Kottke
In his film Best of Luck With the Wall, director Josh Begley takes us on a journey across the entire US/Mexico border. It’s a simple premise — a continuous display of 200,000 satellite…
Three Days Ago · 13:00 -
“BuildMyTransit is a web app to design, visualize, and simulate New York...
Jason Kottke
“BuildMyTransit is a web app to design, visualize, and simulate New York City subway systems. Perfect for exploring ‘what-if’ scenarios.” You can design new routes, add/remove trains,…
Three Days Ago · 12:09 -
Reflections on OpenAI
Simon Willison
Reflections on OpenAI Calvin French-Owen spent just over a year working at OpenAI, during which time the organization grew from 1,000 to 3,000 people and Calvin found himself in "the top 30% by…
Three Days Ago · 12:02 -
Historical Tech Tree. “The tech tree is an interactive visualization of technological...
Jason Kottke
Historical Tech Tree. “The tech tree is an interactive visualization of technological history from 3 million years ago to today. A work in progress, it currently contains 1890 technologies…
Three Days Ago · 11:19 -
The Best Brushes Are the Ones You Make Yourself
Jason Kottke
Wanting to get away from manufactured perfection, artist Wang Mansheng makes his own paint brushes. Manufactured things are, you know, have a certain form. Like a manufactured brush; they…
Three Days Ago · 10:10 -
Marc Andreessen Is a Traitor. “He has betrayed the very system that...
Jason Kottke
Marc Andreessen Is a Traitor. “He has betrayed the very system that made his success possible; the system in which he and a handful of others like him have profited disproportionately relat…
Three Days Ago · 09:17 -
Please Shout Fire. This Theater Is Burning. “The United States is being...
Jason Kottke
Please Shout Fire. This Theater Is Burning. “The United States is being destroyed from within, and mainstream journalism isn’t making that clear.”…
Three Days Ago · 08:16 -
xAI: "We spotted a couple of issues with Grok 4 recently that we immediately investigated & mitigated"
Simon Willison
xAI: "We spotted a couple of issues with Grok 4 recently that we immediately investigated & mitigated" They continue: One was that if you ask it "What is your surname?" it doesn't have one so i…
Three Days Ago · 07:42 -
Good lord, the World Cup is going to be a total shitshow...
Jason Kottke
Good lord, the World Cup is going to be a total shitshow next year. And the 2028 LA Olympics. A jingoistic facade papering over a faded superpower careening towards ruin.…
Four Days Ago · 17:54 -
This is great: a proposed “poli-sci course that equips one for modern...
Jason Kottke
This is great: a proposed “poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts”.…
Four Days Ago · 17:04 -
How Was the Wheel Invented? “How did an obscure, scientifically naive mining...
Jason Kottke
How Was the Wheel Invented? “How did an obscure, scientifically naive mining society discover the wheel, when highly advanced civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptians, did not?”…
Four Days Ago · 16:04 -
Application development without programmers
Simon Willison
Application development without programmers This book by James Martin published in 1982, includes the following in the preface: Applications development did not change much for 20 years, but no…
Four Days Ago · 15:29 -
“Fed up with big legacy news? Here are 13 independent, worker-owned outlets...
Jason Kottke
“Fed up with big legacy news? Here are 13 independent, worker-owned outlets to support.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →…
Four Days Ago · 15:16 -
The Media’s Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to...
Jason Kottke
The Media’s Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work. “The only AI-related business strategy that makes any sense whatsoever is one where media companies and journalists go to great…
Four Days Ago · 14:38 -
The Cheese Was Free
Jason Kottke
I am only a couple of chapters into James McBride’s Deacon King Kong (loving it!) and in the first chapter, there’s a relatively short passage about some cheese, Jesus’s Cheese, that co…
Four Days Ago · 13:46 -
A lovely, beautiful, and uplifting obituary of poet and activist Andrea Gibson....
Jason Kottke
A lovely, beautiful, and uplifting obituary of poet and activist Andrea Gibson. “One of the last things Andrea said on this plane was, ‘I fucking loved my life.’”…
Four Days Ago · 12:44 -
DOJ Removes All Mentions Of Justice From Website. This Onion article got...
Jason Kottke
DOJ Removes All Mentions Of Justice From Website. This Onion article got me for a sec; totally plausible. Wouldn’t be surprised if they actually changed it to the Department of Jesus or som…
Four Days Ago · 11:54 -
Photos From the 2025 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition
Jason Kottke
Here are some of the winners, finalists, and nominees from the 2025 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition and their People’s Choice Awards. Photos by (from top to bottom): Simon…
Four Days Ago · 11:10 -
ccusage
Simon Willison
ccusage Claude Code logs detailed usage information to the ~/.claude/ directory. ccusage is a neat little Node.js tool which reads that information and shows you a readable summary of your usage…
Four Days Ago · 10:59 -
Expeditions 1-32
Terry Chay
Someone at work mentioned this. I can totally see what’s going on here. My dad used to say that what my brother lacked, that I had, was “common sense.” Generative AI wasn’t around then…
Four Days Ago · 10:57 -
America is Losing Its Soul in Brown-Skinned Screams and White-Skinned Silence. “The...
Jason Kottke
America is Losing Its Soul in Brown-Skinned Screams and White-Skinned Silence. “The greatest, most grievous failure of America in this moment isn’t legislative but moral. The soul of this…
Four Days Ago · 09:05 -
Skater Demarcus James is skateboarding across the entire United States, from Oakland...
Jason Kottke
Skater Demarcus James is skateboarding across the entire United States, from Oakland to NYC, to spread awareness about mental health. Check out his GoFundMe to support his journey.…
Four Days Ago · 07:55 -
The new V&A East Storehouse
Simon Collison
Inside the Storehouse from level 2. That glass floor is a lot of fun. Another hot and sweaty weekend in London, with prolonged highs of 30°C. The temp settled around…
Four Days Ago · 05:20
Site Reader
Posts from blogs I like written in the last few days.