Lessons from a First Time EV Owner. This jibes with my experience. Home charging is key, cold weather is tough to deal with, and long-range trips can be challenging. But you get used to it and I don’t ever want to own an ICE car again.
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Recently Active Comment Threads
What's Happening Now That Might Only Make Sense in 1,200 Years?
End-Stage Poverty Is Killing People in Safety Net-Free America
Welcome to Choppke's, Your Wich Is My Command
"May thy knife chop and shatter." A quick update on Choppke's (my...
90 Women Photographers Celebrate Jane Goodall’s 90th Birthday
In honor of Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday, Vital Impacts organized a fundraiser selling 90 prints from 90 women photographers. The collection includes some of Goodall’s own work and 60% of the proceeds to the Jane Goodall Institute.
I’ve selected a few of my favorites above — photos by (from top to bottom) Hannah Le Leu, Jane Goodall, Tiina Itkonen, and Luisa Dörr (see also Female Bolivian Skateboarders Shred in Traditional Dress). (via colossal)
New favorite vocabulary word: wankpanzer (basically, “tank for jerks”). “A pointlessly large and overpowered 4x4 vehicle, usually purchased as a boost to driver’s ego who is likely to have some kind of inferiority complex.” Like the Cybertruck.
“May thy knife chop and shatter.” A quick update on Choppke’s (my chopped sandwich restaurant chain): a new ad that features one of our snazzy looking hoodies.
High-Diving Penguin Chicks
When emperor penguin chicks go for their first swim, they usually jump a few feet into the sea. The group of chicks in the video National Geographic video above decided to leap off of a 50-foot ice cliff for their first trip out.
It’s not unusual for emperor penguin chicks to march toward the ocean at a young age, even when they’re just 6 months old. They jump just 2 feet off the ice to take their first swim, according to National Geographic.
Others have jumped from a much a higher altitude, heading to “sheer ice cliffs” knowingly to make the first jump. Satellites have recorded the death-defying jumps since 2009, but what happens next has remained a mystery until now.
Having watched the video, “leap” and “jump” are charitable descriptions of what the penguins are doing here. “Flop”, “plop”, and “fall” might be better…penguins are all kinds of cool, but no one has ever accused them of being graceful out of the water.
Love this Letterboxd movie list title: “Definitely there was love, oh but the circumstances”. Films include Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Past Lives, Normal People, Brokeback Mountain, Titanic, and Lost in Translation.
US courts & legislatures are giving women the curse of time travel into the past. “Can you hear ragtime music? Can you see the stars without satellite interference? / No, everything is the same, except, for some reason, the laws governing my body.”
End-Stage Poverty Is Killing People in Safety Net-Free America
Many Patients Don’t Survive End-Stage Poverty by Dr. Lindsay Ryan is a great/upsetting piece about how the poverty many Americans are subjected to in America is killing them. Many people die here in the world’s richest country not because they are sick but because they are poor and our systems of government, justice, business, and health care don’t do enough to help them (or, more cynically and perhaps truthfully, actively work against helping them).
This is one of those pieces where I want to quote every single paragraph, but I’ll start with this one (bold mine):
Safety-net hospitals and clinics care for a population heavily skewed toward the poor, recent immigrants and people of color. The budgets of these places are forever tight. And anyone who works in them could tell you that illness in our patients isn’t just a biological phenomenon. It’s the manifestation of social inequality in people’s bodies.
I have not been able to stop thinking about this phrase since I read it: “Illness in our patients isn’t just a biological phenomenon. It’s the manifestation of social inequality in people’s bodies.”
Medical textbooks usually don’t discuss fixing your patient’s housing. They seldom include making sure your patient has enough food and some way to get to a clinic. But textbooks miss what my med students don’t: that people die for lack of these basics.
People struggle to keep wounds clean. Their medications get stolen. They sicken from poor diet, undervaccination and repeated psychological trauma. Forced to focus on short-term survival and often lacking cellphones, they miss appointments for everything from Pap smears to chemotherapy. They fall ill in myriad ways — and fall through the cracks in just as many.
You should read the whole thing yourself (NY Times gift link). Her argument about the need to expand/shift the definition of what healthcare is (e.g. housing is healthcare) reminds me of this more progressive idea of freedom.
Always a good day to read Daniel Radcliffe’s open letter to J.K. Rowling on her anti-trans nonsense. “It’s clear that we need to do more to support transgender and nonbinary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm.”
A Pareto analysis of the best driver/kart build you can drive in Mario Kart 8. “The Pareto efficiency is an objective criteria to filter out suboptimal choices, but you still need to make up your final decision.”
As optical illusions go, this is pretty good.
Papyrus 2: A Bold New Look for Avatar
Ryan Gosling was on Saturday Night Live this weekend and they did a sequel to one of my favorite SNL sketches (which is completely dorky in a design nerd sort of way) ever: Papyrus. Behold, Papyrus 2:
Avatar spawned worlds, right? Every little leaf of every little flower, every little eyelash of every little creature: thoroughly thought out. But the logo: it’s Papyrus, in bold. Nobody cares. Does James Cameron care? I don’t think so.
So kottke[dot]org had some significant downtime this weekend but it seems to be humming along nicely now. In celebration, we’re not planning on having any significant downtime today! 🤞
Proudly Second Best!
A clever ad campaign by an Ikea franchisee highlights how their products for kids can’t quite replace the support and comfort offered by their caregivers. (via @gray)
Starting in 1978, a high school science teacher told his students that he was throwing a viewing party for the 2024 solar eclipse. More than 100 of them showed up.
Liam Neeson is starring in a Naked Gun reboot? Why? Is it because his name sounds like Leslie Nielsen’s? (Nielsen? Neeson. Neeson? Nielsen.)
Mount Etna Volcano Blowing Perfect Smoke Rings
My current natural obsession is Mount Etna, a volcano in Sicily that blows perfect smoke rings like it’s frickin’ Gandalf with a pipe-full of Old Toby or something.
It is a relatively rare phenomenon caused by a constant release of vapours and gases. The gaseous mass ascends rapidly through the central part of the conduit, promoting the formation of rings by wrapping the gas upon itself in a vortex motion.
Puff on, Etna, puff on.
Why don’t we have solar eclipses every month? Because we don’t deserve them! (Ok no, it’s that the orbital planes of the Earth and moon are skewed slightly relative to each other.)
Jamelle Bouie on the inappropriate use of the presumed intent of the long-dead framers of the Constitution to determine how we live today. “They cannot justify the choices we make while we navigate our world.”
20 Minutes of Charles Schulz Drawing Peanuts Comics
This is wonderful: a collection of video clips of Charles Schulz drawing his iconic Peanuts comic strip — “everything I could find of Charles Schulz drawing his Peanuts characters” in the words of the compiler.
Unfortunately, I’m not highly educated. I’m merely a high school graduate. I studied art in a correspondence course because I was afraid to go to art school. I couldn’t see myself sitting in a room where everyone else in the room could draw much better than I and this way I was protected by drawing at home and simply mailing my drawings in and having them criticized.
I wish I had a better education but I think that my entire background made me well-suited for what I do. If I could write better than I can, perhaps I would have tried to become a novelist and I might have become a failure. If I could draw better than I can, I might have tried to become an illustrator or an artist and would have failed there. But my entire being seems to be just right for being a cartoonist.
Charles Schulz: Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In his lane. Focused. Flourishing.
See also a 90-minute compilation of cartoonists working (from the same YT channel) and Chuck Jones demonstrating how to draw Bugs Bunny and other characters. (via open culture)
Moira Donegan: “OJ Simpson died the comfortable death in old age that Nicole Brown should have had.” He abused, stalked, terrorized, and then killed Nicole Brown & Ronald Goldman. Finally, a truthful obit of OJ.
This “overexposed” photo of the total eclipse by Randy Olson is just all kinds of wonderful. “I didn’t realize the overexposed frames had this much detail.”
The UN’s climate chief says governments, business leaders and development banks have two years to take decisive action on climate change. “Yet last year, the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions increased to a record high.”
Viral Videos I Missed: Is This Available? (Attorney General)
I missed this when it first came out — way back in 2021 — but my friend shared it in a group chat the other day, and it made me laugh out loud. It has 9 million views; where have I been?? But in the spirit of “sharing stuff I love, even if it’s old,” I post it here anyway. The 15,000-pound horse one is also great. Even … catchy? Creator Lubalin is a “regular” musician, too. (Thanks, Lucy!)
(To make sure Jason hadn’t already blogged about this, I searched the site for “attorney general,” lol. There were posts. But not about this.)
Take a Letter Maria, the Live Audience Music Video
R.B. Greaves’ 1969 hit “Take a Letter Maria” has been in my head for weeks now, and while this might be too much of a stretch, I’m realizing it shares something with “Jolene” — both are odd, wonderful songs sung to an initially unromantic female character. Maybe? Anyway, I was pleased to discover this live-audience version on YouTube. Also, is “Maria” due for a cover, or an update? Take a letter, Alexa…
What’s Happening Now That Might Only Make Sense in 1,200 Years?
This morning I mentioned to Jason that I was still thinking about the Mayan calendar/Julian calendar overlap thing — did both cultures really record the same solar eclipse?! — and how mind-blowing it is to even contemplate. We then talked about how crazy it must have been to live back then (in 790 AD) and see the sun just casually disappear, etc.
And then I was wondering: What’s happening now that people living in the year 3200 will pity us for not understanding? “Wow, can you imagine living back then and not knowing exactly how [viruses appear/cancer strikes/the Voynich Manuscript came into existence]? Or precisely what happened at Dyatlov Pass, or on board the Mary Celeste?” (Okay now I’m just googling “mysteries.”) Anyway, I’m not high, I swear. But please chime in if anything comes to mind. “It must have been so weird to not know what dogs were saying.”
It’s National Card & Letter Writing Month (🎉), and Metafilter just drew my attention to the American Library Association’s letter-themed games list, from which I learned of the upcoming Curios: Albrecht Manor: “an epistolary horror mystery experience”!
Diary Comics, Dec. 6-8
It’s another Thursday Afternoon With Edith, and here are a few more journal comics from back in December, when I was guest-editing this site and gearing up to have a baby!
What Are the Odds?
Ok, one last post about the total solar eclipse and then I’m done talking about it. (Maybe.)
There are so many mind-blowing things about eclipses but the one I can’t stop thinking about is the nearly impossible coincidence that the sun and the moon are the same relative size in the sky. If the moon were a little bit smaller or farther away, we wouldn’t have total eclipses where you can look directly at the sun, see the corona, the sky goes dark, you see a sunset effect all around the horizon, etc. That is some spooky magical shit. Ted Underwood put it this way:
Random accident that the moon and sun are the same apparent size here. If we had interstellar tourism, this is the One Thing that everyone would know about the Earth, and when they visited they wouldn’t want to see anything else. “We also have museums?” we’d say.
The moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth and total eclipses will gradually get rarer and rarer until, hundreds of millions of years from now, they will stop completely.1 That we’re all here right now, getting to experience this magical thing? Like, what?! If a science fiction writer made this up for a story, we’d say it’s too much.
And yet, for me at least, the coincidences don’t stop there.
When I saw my first total eclipse in 2017, we had to drive for 3.5 hours through three different rainstorms to find some clear skies. When we finally stopped, 40 minutes before totality, it was in a town so small that it’s not even called a town anymore: Rayville, Missouri. Yep, we found the sun in Rayville. What are the odds?
And then this year, on April 8th, the path of totality went right over my house in Vermont. In the past 70 years in Vermont prior to 2024, it’s been overcast about 50% of the time and only mostly sunny in 13 of those years. This year? Not a cloud in the sky when I woke up Monday morning.
I watched with a group of people in a big field in Colchester, including my friend Caroline and her dog, Stella (a name derived from the Latin word for star). There were a bunch of other groups watching in the field too and after totality had thrilled us all, they trickled back to their cars and homes. Our group stayed and I watched the last little bit of the moon slip past the sun through my telescope — it was officially over.
A large nearby group of folks with a couple of dogs left shortly after that. One of the dogs came over for a sniff and one of our party asked the guy what the dog’s name was. “Luna.”
And then Luna departed.
Seriously, what are the odds?
Eclipse photo above taken by my friend Mouser, with whom I witnessed the 2017 eclipse. It’s worth looking at large.
- I am sure, hundreds of millions of years ago, when the moon was closer to the Earth, total eclipses were a whole other level of whoaaaaa — lasting for 10-20 minutes at a time, completely blocking out any light from the sun, total darkness all around, etc.↩
It works! Three men stranded on a tiny Pacific island for more than a week were rescued after the Coast Guard spotted “HELP” written out on the beach in palm leaves. (A similar rescue from the same island happened in 2020 — “SOS” that time.)
How to Be a Climate Activist Even Though You’re Too Shy to Interrupt Anything. “You want to add your voice to the movement, make ‘good trouble,’ and stand for something for once in your goddamn life, but, unfortunately, you’re an introvert.”
I’m the Draft List at This Brewery and No, You Can’t Have a Light Beer. “Sure, we made a ‘normal’ IPA once. But then we were like, why make a beer that’s enjoyable to drink when we could make a beer that’s not?”
The Pyramids of Giza, Shrouded in Mist
Wonderful shots of the pyramids of Giza by Egyptian photographer Karim Amr. From a caption on one of his photos three years ago:
I’m a 21 years old photographer you can see a lot of photos I share at the pyramids cause I just live near the pyramids so it’s easy for me to go and shoot there. I started doing photography to share my thoughts with others it’s how I express my feelings it’s also my escape from life. Life is tough and not easy for some of us and you got to find your place in this world.
Prints of his photos are available and you can follow his work on Instagram.
Capricious social media algorithms are modern-day Greek gods: “Oh my crops failed and my daughter died so that means Athena is angry — maybe??! … Just let us see posts from people we follow instead of telling us we’re praying to the wrong god.”
“Men who say they are pro-life and want to reduce or eliminate abortion are lying. They don’t care about abortion at all, they simply want to control women.” (BTW, I got a vasectomy, it’s great, would recommend, A+.)
The Function of Colour in Factories, Schools & Hospitals (1930)
If you’re looking for some color palette inspiration, check out these scans from The Function of Colour in Factories, Schools & Hospitals (1930). Which is presumably a book? Whatever…the precision and colors of these illustrations are marvelous.
Adam Moss and the Creative Process
When I quit my magazine job, I decided to try my hand as an artist. … I got frustrated easily and gave up easily, never knowing when to persevere or surrender. …
My curiosity is earthbound: Where do [artists] begin, and what do they do next, and when do they know they are finished? And more crucially: What do they do when they lose faith? Do they lose faith?
In an adaptation from his new book, The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing, former New York magazine editor Adam Moss shares his interviews with Kara Walker, Louise Glück, and Cheryl Pope, about their respective creative processes [Vulture]. My favorite part is the intro, though, where he talks about his own process (“that was the beginning of my torment”).
I’m hoping the answer to the “persevere or surrender” question is in there very explicitly, by the way!
A map of the “foreign” origins of our global diet. “You cannot walk on water or raise the dead. But you can do something that Jesus never did: eat a banana.” (Or tomatoes, potatoes, or chocolate.)
The saga of the Coyote vs. Acme movie and what it says about today’s overly complex media landscape. “Millions of dollars and thousands of hours went into creating something that could simply vanish into accounting.”
I loved reading through this social history of restaurants in NYC — basically who ate where and when. “The restaurants here were great not because of what they were but because of who we were and who we became while we were there.”
What Happens If We Do Nothing About the Climate Crisis?
Let’s say the countries of the world most responsible for the changing climate continue to drag their feet on doing something about it. What is the world going to look like in 20 or 30 or 80 years? This TED-Ed video describes that bleak potential future.
Reports on heatwaves and wildfires regularly fill the evening news. Summer days exceed 40 degrees in London and 45 degrees in Delhi, as extreme heat waves are now 8 to 9 times more common. These high temperatures prompt widespread blackouts, as power grids struggle to keep up with the energy demands needed to properly cool homes. Ambulance sirens blare through the night, carrying patients suffering from heatstroke, dehydration, and exhaustion. The southwestern United States, southern Africa, and eastern Australia experience longer, more frequent, and more severe droughts.
Meanwhile, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan face more frequent heavy rainfall as rising temperatures cause water to evaporate faster, and trap more water in the atmosphere. As the weather becomes more erratic, some communities are unable to keep pace with rebuilding what’s constantly destroyed.
(via open culture)
A new “less competitive” version of Scrabble is coming soon. “Younger people, Gen Z people…want a game where you can simply enjoy language, words, being together and having fun creating words.”
New Japanese anger management technique just dropped: “Writing down your reaction to a negative incident on a piece of paper and then shredding it, or scrunching it into a ball and throwing it in the bin, gets rid of anger.”
Eclipse COMPLAINTS?
Okay, yes, the eclipse was pretty cool, but we weren’t in the path of totality (we were at like 96%), so I didn’t have the Transcendent Experience that some have described. I mean, it was definitely neat. And we did get cute pictures. And it does sort of feel like a little gremlin has been set loose in my soul. But my neck was also sore the day after. Worth it???
The Climate Charts Are Not Okay. “The charts are hilariously underpowered attempts to depict just how out-of-balance we have rendered the world.”
Sherwood has a really interesting & bloggy front page for a news site. Punchy & heavy on images like social media. I feel like this sort of thing rhymes with what I’m trying to do with the ol’ dot org.
The Design of Books: An Explainer for Authors, Editors, Agents, and Other Curious Readers. That’s me! I am curious about the design of books! (Seriously tho, this looks great.)
David Lynch: Depression Kills Creativity
David Lynch is not having any of that “you need to struggle or be tortured in order to be creative” stuff. In this video compilation, the director talks about how poor mental health inhibits art & creativity.
It stands to reason: the more you suffer, the less you want to create. If you’re truly depressed, they say you can’t even get out of bed, let alone create. It occupies the whole brain, poisons the artist, poisons the environment; little room for creativity.
Open Culture has more on how Lynch uses transcendental meditation to improve his mental health…and a great anecdote about the one time Lynch tried therapy:
In one Charlie Rose interview, a clip from which appears in the video, he even tells of the time he went to therapy. The beginning of this story makes it in, but not the end: Lynch asked his new therapist “straight out, right up front, ‘Could this process that we’re going to go through affect creativity?’ And he said, ‘David, I have to be honest with you, it could” — whereupon Lynch shook the man’s hand and walked right back out the door.
Finally: an answer to Aaron’s question about the confusing freezer knob: do you turn it clockwise or counterclockwise for colder? “The knob’s designer should feel bad!”
Hank Green lost his hair during chemotherapy and it grew back curly. Turns out this is a thing that happens to many people: chemo curls!
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