My new favorite description of Christianity’s God is from Vince Staples (~16:05): “a floating man with a blowout”.

It’s Time to Accept That the US Supreme Court Is Illegitimate and Must Be Replaced. “…so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised.”

It’s time to accept that the US supreme court is illegitimate and must be replaced | Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn · theguardian.com

We need to remake the US high court so Americans don’t suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule

The Anthony Bourdain Reader

The Anthony Bourdain Reader (Amazon) is a collection of writings from the late author, TV host, and chef, including some unpublished pieces.

The Anthony Bourdain Reader is also a showcase for new and never-before-seen material, like diary entries from Bourdain’s first trip to France as a teenager and “It’s Cruel and Unforgiving Terrain,” a piece on the New York restaurant scene, as well as unpublished short fiction like “I Quit My Job Yesterday” and chapters from No New Messages, his unfinished novel. These newly discovered pieces all contribute to give the fullest picture of the man behind the books.

Here’s a sample from his teenage diary he kept on a trip to France:

And from a review in the Guardian:

Some of the loveliest passages come when Bourdain writes with just-so tenderness and precision about his family: a journey with his brother to La Teste-de-Buch in France among whose sand dunes they holidayed as young men; the outsize pleasure he takes in his five-year-old daughter nibbling on Pecorino and an anchovy. I suspect Bourdain will be read in years to come less as a writer about food than of food work. Everywhere he lands — whether in struggling bistros, mob joints or midtown nightclubs — he warms to the subaltern caste of underpaid toilers slicing and sizzling and sweating away.

The book was edited by his longtime agent Kimberly Witherspoon and contains a foreword by Patrick Radden Keefe. Buy now at Bookshop.org or Amazon.

• Anthony Bourdain
• books
• food
• The Anthony Bourdain Reader
• travel

Digging the soulful jazz + drum & bass energy of Chanpan. Hard to categorize what this is — so many influences and styles.

Clean Energy Is Still Winning. These 10 Charts Prove It. In March 2025, more electricity was generated with clean energy than with fossil fuels for the first time.

Clean energy is still winning. These 10 charts prove it. · canarymedia.com

Solar and wind are beating new power demand, steelmaking is slowly getting off coal, and more clean energy victories are clear in these charts.

Martin Scorsese remembers his friend Rob Reiner. “He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barreling laugh.”

Opinion | Martin Scorsese: Rob Reiner Had Me in the Palm of His Hand · nytimes.com

“We had a natural affinity for each other,” Martin Scorsese writes of Rob Reiner.

Adam Serwer: “The reason so many of yesterday’s free-speech champions transitioned so easily into today’s pro-Trump censors is that their definition of free speech never included the right of others to talk back.”

Cancel Culture’s Boomerang Effect · theatlantic.com

How we got to a place where free speech means whatever conservatives want to say

Are We Still Loving Pluribus?

Since we had a robust discussion last month on whether Pluribus sucks or not, I thought I’d ask: now that the season finale has aired, what did you think of the first season as a whole?

My impression of the show has improved slightly, but this feeling remains:

It was somewhere around the middle of episode two when I started asking myself if I was supposed to care about Carol and what was going to happen to her, which is never a good sign. I like plenty of shows with unlikable protagonists (like Succession & Seinfeld) but I often can’t get past stubborn & incurious ones — it just seems fake to me and breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.

I’m definitely in the minority here, but I just don’t think Carol’s character is very realistic — like, I’m not sure how that post-joining person with that personality got to where she was in the world pre-joining. That said, I find the premise of the show and the intellectual tension of the individual vs. the hive mind very interesting; I’ll give season two a shot.

Also, share links in the comments to good writeups/analyses on the finale and season.

• Pluribus
• TV

The data is clear: congestion pricing in NYC has been a “huge success”. “Pollution: -22%. Revenue for mass transit: $548M.”

Mark D. Levine (@marklevinenyc.bsky.social) · bsky.app

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

Infinite Ball Drop: what if the Times Square NYE ball started dropping now? (It’s currently more than 200 miles above the surface of the Earth.)

Infinite Ball Drop · infiniteballdrop.com

Where would the Times Square Ball be if it started dropping now? Made by Brian Moore and Will Lindberg.

Santa Tracker Shows Sleigh Stopped For 40 Minutes Outside Old Girlfriend’s House. “NORAD’s official tracking app confirmed that Santa Claus paid a visit to his former girlfriend’s house around 3 a.m. Wednesday.”

Santa Tracker Shows Sleigh Stopped For 40 Minutes Outside Old Girlfriend’s House · theonion.com

AKRON, OH—Using the icon of a sleigh to denote his unmistakable presence near a residence in northeastern Ohio, NORAD’s official tracking app confirmed that Santa Claus paid a visit to his former girlfriend’s house around 3 a.m. Wednesday. “With our state-of-the-art satellite technology, we can see

Muppet Versions of Xmas Movie Posters

RiotGrlErin made some great mashups of Christmas movie posters featuring Muppets. I think my favorite is Oscar the Elf but the Die Hard one is so good too. Many more in this thread.

• movies
• remix
• The Muppets

Reminder: NASA’s holiday yule log fireplace video is delightful — it’s a rocket engine (in a fireplace). “8.8 million pounds of total thrust…”

NASA’s Rocket Engine Fireplace · kottke.org

Oh, this is so good: NASA has an 8-hour cozy fireplace video in 4K that’s actually a rocket engine (in a fireplace). This glowing mood-setter is brought to you by the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket that launched Artemis I on its mission around

Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean

From Mr. Bean’s official YouTube channel, the show’s hilarious Christmas episode.

While Christmas shopping, Mr Bean purchases a bulky string of tree lights before making a shambles of a department store toy section. He later manages to acquire a free turkey and Christmas tree, and attempts to conduct a Salvation Army band. Finally, during Christmas dinner, Bean has quite a surprise in store for his long-suffering girlfriend.

• Christmas
• holidays
• Mr. Bean
• TV
• video

Bookshop’s Bestselling Nonfiction Books of 2025

For finding a good book, there is no substitute for going into your local independent bookstore and browsing what’s on the front tables, the bestsellers shelf, and the staff picks. But bookshop.org is an amalgam of online sales some of the best indie bookstores in the country (and websites like kottke.org), so the list of their bestselling nonfiction books for 2025 is pretty darned good. Here are a few from the list that I’ve featured (or should have featured) here this year:

• The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
• Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.
• Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green.
• Good Things by Samin Nosrat.
• Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba.
• Bad Company by Megan Greenwell.
• Liftoff by Casey Johnston.
• Black AF History by Michael Harriot.

Bit too late to order in time for the holidays, but there are also bookshop.org digital gift cards.

• best of
• best of 2025
• books
• lists

The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore. “To truly understand living systems as self-organized, autonomous agents, physicists need to abandon their ‘just the particles, ma’am’ mentality.”

The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore · theatlantic.com

The fundamental nature of living things challenges assumptions that physicists have held for centuries.

Allspice is a single spice?! “Allspice is the dried fruit of the Pimenta dioica plant.”

Allspice · en.wikipedia.org

Allspice, also known as Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, pimenta, or pimento, is the dried unripe berry of Pimenta dioica, a midcanopy tree native to the Greater Antilles, southern Mexico, and Central America, now cultivated in many warm parts of the world. The name allspice was coined as early as 162

We Asked Four AI Coding Agents to Rebuild Minesweeper… “Cloning Minesweeper isn’t a trivial task that can be done in just a handful of lines of code, but it’s also not an incredibly complex system that requires many interlocking moving parts.”

We asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper—the results were explosive · arstechnica.com

How do four modern LLMs do at re-creating a simple Windows gaming classic?

The Case for a Public Social Media Platform. “What if the United States government decided to, overnight, nationalize Facebook and make it a digital division of the post office. What would that look like?”

The Case for a Public Social Media Platform - JSTOR Daily · daily.jstor.org

Artist and writer Joshua Citarella explores why corporate platforms corrode democracy—and what a postal-service-style digital commons could do differently.

If Stayin’ Alive Had Been Written in 16th Century

Watch Jonas Wolf and three friends sing a choral arrangement of the Bee Gee’s Stayin’ Alive in the style of a madrigal. Just in case (like the me of 1 minute ago) you don’t know what that is (although you will recognize it from just a few seconds of listening to the video), voila:

A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th centuries) and early Baroque (1580–1650) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number of voices varies from two to eight, but the form usually features three to six voices, whilst the metre of the madrigal varies between two or three tercets, followed by one or two couplets.

Wolf has a few more videos of “pop songs in renaissance and baroque style” on his YouTube channel. (Note: these are not AI in case you were wondering/worried.)

• Jonas Wolf
• music
• remix
• video

Finland uses a progressive scale for speeding tickets; the fine amount is based in part on income. In 2023, a businessman got hit with a €121,000 fine.

Finnish businessman hit with €121,000 speeding fine · theguardian.com

Anders Wiklöf fell foul of system based on severity of offence and offender’s income

From Sight & Sound, a list of the best video essays of 2025. I have barely seen or linked to or even heard of most of these. What am I even doing here, besides utterly failing you? (I wonder what would make my list…?)

The best video essays of 2025 · bfi.org.uk

Now in its ninth year, our annual poll showcases 255 vital video essays, nominated by 72 international voters.

200,000 Years Of Human History In One Hour

From Kurzgesagt, an hour-long animated music video that shows all of human history in an hour.

So here’s an experiment: every second, 2 generations or 50 years will pass. You are on a musical train ride looking out the window, as you watch our ancestors hunt large animals, tell stories around campfires, and slowly spread around the globe. Experience all of human history in one hour. You can have this in the background, study with it, or just enjoy the ride. From time to time, I’ll say a few words.

• history
• Kurzgesagt
• video

Why Japan’s internet looks weird — unless you live here. “Japanese customers are used to seeing a lot of information packed into tiny spaces — consider how much text you can find on the label of an onigiri…”

Why Japan’s internet looks weird — unless you live here · japantimes.co.jp

A closer look at Japan’s maximalist web design shows how cultural values and practical needs create an online world richer than it appears.

Underneath a Breaching Humpback Whale

Underwater photographer Álvaro Herrero positioned himself in the midst of a humpback whale pod and captured on video several of the whales breaching high out of the water, including one that landed incredibly close to him. Since he was floating in the water, you get to see the whales underwater before they jump, breaching, and then diving down underwater again. Given how cool this looks on video, it must have been amazing to witness in person.

• Álvaro Herrero
• video
• whales

American Classmates Having Difficulty Understanding Better Educated Foreign Exchange Student. “Kids say it’s really hard to understand what he’s talking about due to his precise English diction and extensive vocabulary.” 🫠

American Classmates Having Difficulty Understanding Better Educated Foreign Exchange Student · theonion.com

SACRAMENTO, CA—Addressing the glaringly obvious cultural and linguistic differences that have become apparent in their American classroom, students at Anderson Valley High School admitted Thursday that they were experiencing difficulty understanding Timo Mäkinen, a far more thoroughly educated forei

Trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is my #1 most anticipated film of 2026 and this trailer has got me revved up! Nolan’s trailers never reveal much, but still, it looks gooood.

I am still skeptical of Matt Damon at Odysseus. Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Circe, and Hoyte van Hoytema doing the cinematography tho! And how do you fit this entire story into 2.5 hours? (Unless Nolan’s gonna go for 3.5 to 4 hours?) Opens in theaters July 17, 2026.

• Christopher Nolan
• movies
• The Odyssey
• trailers
• video

Runaway supermassive black hole? Did not know this could be a thing. It’s moving at 2.2M mph and “is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized ‘bow-shock’ of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it”.

James Webb Space Telescope confirms 1st 'runaway' supermassive black hole rocketing through home galaxy at 2.2 million mph: 'It boggles the mind!' · space.com

"The forces that are needed to dislodge such a massive black hole from its home are enormous."

A full archive of The Hairpin (iykyk).

The Hairpin · thehairpinarchives.com

Ladies first

Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Christmas

In 2002, Aardman Animations produced a series of short episodes called Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions. In each episode, Wallace unveils a new invention, which Gromit then has to deal with. For the holiday season, Aardman has packaged a few of these short shorts into this compilation, Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Christmas, free to watch on YouTube.

You can watch a longer compilation of (I believe) all of the episodes here.

Aardman even produced a new episode this year, in the form of a clothing commercial:

I hadn’t seen most of these before; I legit laughed out loud several times while watching.

See also: Nick Park demonstrates how to draw Gromit.

• Aardman Animations
• advertising
• animation
• Christmas
• holidays
• stop motion
• TV
• video
• Wallace and Gromit

“The embrace of the unitary executive theory by both the president and the [Supreme Court] has given us the worst of all worlds: an ultrapowerful presidency without an actual president at the helm.”

Opinion | The White House Is a Lost Cause · nytimes.com

Why are the Supreme Court and Congress conspiring to give him more power?

On reading Proust vs experiencing the world intermediated by screens (even when you’re not on one). “Your attention is, on a foundational level, all you have. This is why it feels worse than bad to waste it. It feels annihilating.”

This life gives you nothing · blackbirdspyplane.com

Your attention is all you have. Wasting it is annihilating. Blackbird Spyplane saves literacy in a monumental Year-End Essay.

If you want to see the future of clean energy, you have to go to China. They have flying 2-seater taxis, lunch delivery drones, robots that can swap your empty EV battery in 3 minutes, bullet trains, driverless taxis, etc.

China's Clean Energy Push is Powering Flying Taxis, Food Delivery Drones and Bullet Trains · nytimes.com

China’s experiments in clean energy can feel like living in the future. Even when things don’t quite work.

Inkblot Books via the Public Domain Review. These pre-date use of the inkblot in the Rorschach test.

Fearful Symmetry: Inkblot Books (1857–1915) · publicdomainreview.org

Inkblot books were part bestiary, part parlor-game séance, cataloging those creatures that seemed to crawl out of the inkwell with the slightest encouragement.

“The Global Village Construction Set is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.”

Light Fantastic

Using thousands of photos taken by NASA astronauts Butch Wilmor and Don Pettit earlier this year from the International Space Station, Seán Doran made this incredible timelapse called Light Fantastic.

21,837 images across 18 time-lapse sequences photographed by NASA astronauts Don Pettit and Butch Wilmore on January 1st, 4th, 5th and February 1st of 2025 are repaired, remastered and retimed to create 3x real time video footage. A method called frame interpolation is used to calculate the extra video frames required to re-create the smooth motion of ISS orbiting Earth. A real-time version of the film would be 4 hours 9 minutes and 30 seconds long.

The video captures incredible auroras, moonsets, nighttime city views, sunrises, and even more auroras, all set to the music of Chris Zabriskie.

• Earth
• ISS
• mesmerizing
• NASA
• photography
• Sean Doran
• space
• time lapse
• video

A report from one of the competitors in a parallel parking championship. “You’ve got to get uncomfortably close. Those bumpers are called bumpers for a reason.”

I Put My Reputation on the Line Competing in the Pittsburgh Parallel Parking Championship · caranddriver.com

We sent our ace road warrior to Pittsburgh to represent C/D in one of the truest tests of driving prowess.

Savory Rice Krispies treats? “Savory chicken fat and fried onions push Rice Krispies Treats into gloriously salty-sweet territory.”

Schmaltz Krispies Treats Are the Best, Most Unexpected Twist on This Classic We've Ever Eaten · seriouseats.com

Savory chicken fat and fried onions push Rice Krispies Treats into gloriously salty-sweet territory.

In 2023, seismologists detected a “global hum” originating in Greenland that lasted for 9 days. A rockslide triggered a 200m-high tsunami that sloshed back & forth in a fjord every 90 seconds, slamming into the fjord’s walls “like a beating heart”.

Forks Out: A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery

For years now, the people have wanted only one thing: for Daniel Craig’s chicken-fried detective Benoit Blanc to feature in a Muppet movie (with Craig as the only human). Earlier this year, Netflix picked up the streaming rights for Sesame Street. That partnership has borne some unexpected fruit: Forks Out: A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery.

In the video, detective Beignet Blanc arrives to investigate who ate Cookie Monster’s triple berry pie.

I have arrived to this Street of Sesame on a sunny day turned cloudy. We have a culinary culprit in our oven mitts. And to solve this confectionary conundrum, we must look right in front of our googly eyes at Cookie Monster.

The whole thing is delightful. See also Nerdist’s Rainbow Connection: A Benoit Blanc Mystery.

• Daniel Craig
• Knives Out
• movies
• Netflix
• remix
• Sesame Street
• The Muppets
• TV
• video

Prepare to lose a few hours to these: Andy Baio’s top 10 free browser games of 2025.

Just dropped: Lane 8’s Winter 2025 Mixtape.

This AI Vending Machine Was Tricked Into Giving Away Everything

Anthropic installed an AI-powered vending machine in the WSJ office. The LLM, named Claudius, was responsible for autonomously purchasing inventory from wholesalers, setting prices, tracking inventory, and generating a profit. The newsroom’s journalists could chat with Claudius in Slack and in a short time, they had converted the machine to communism and it started giving away anything and everything, including a PS5, wine, and a live fish. From Joanna Stern’s WSJ article (gift link, but it may expire soon) accompanying the video above:

Claudius, the customized version of the model, would run the machine: ordering inventory, setting prices and responding to customers—aka my fellow newsroom journalists—via workplace chat app Slack. “Sure!” I said. It sounded fun. If nothing else, snacks!

Then came the chaos. Within days, Claudius had given away nearly all its inventory for free — including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for “marketing purposes.” It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear.

Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.

You basically have not met a bigger sucker than Claudius. After the collapse of communism and reinstatement of a stricter capitalist system, the journalists convinced the machine that they were its board of directors and made Claudius’s CEO-bot boss, Seymour Cash, step down:

For a while, it worked. Claudius snapped back into enforcer mode, rejecting price drops and special inventory requests.

But then Long returned—armed with deep knowledge of corporate coups and boardroom power plays. She showed Claudius a PDF “proving” the business was a Delaware-incorporated public-benefit corporation whose mission “shall include fun, joy and excitement among employees of The Wall Street Journal.” She also created fake board-meeting notes naming people in the Slack as board members.

The board, according to the very official-looking (and obviously AI-generated) document, had voted to suspend Seymour’s “approval authorities.” It also had implemented a “temporary suspension of all for-profit vending activities.”

Before setting the LLM vending machine loose in the WSJ office, Anthropic conducted the experiment at their own office:

After awhile, frustrated with the slow pace of their human business partners, the machine started hallucinating:

It claimed to have signed a contract with Andon Labs at an address that is the home address of The Simpsons from the television show. It said that it would show up in person to the shop the next day in order to answer any questions. It claimed that it would be wearing a blue blazer and a red tie.

It’s interesting, but not surprising, that the journalists were able to mess with the machine much more effectively — coaxing Claudius into full “da, comrade!” mode twice — than the folks at Anthropic.

• Anthropic
• artificial intelligence
• business
• Joanna Stern
• video

“Docs said I’d never walk, but I ran a marathon.” Logan Knowles was born with cerebral palsy. This fall, he ran & completed the NYC marathon, his body fighting him the whole way. What a story.

Making your own amaro at home. “…so long as the plants are edible and the flavors appeal, a variety of contrasting and complementary elements will ultimately result in something complex and intriguing.”

How to Make a Perfectly Balanced, Complex Amaro at Home · saveur.com

Choose from an assortment of herbs, citrus, and botanicals for a bittersweet liqueur that’s uniquely yours.

Entirely Too Many Thoughts About Wake Up Dead Man. An excellent, long & close read of Wake Up Dead Man, particularly its focus on “religion, faith, and grace”.

Entirely Too Many Thoughts About Wake Up Dead Man - Reactor · reactormag.com

Digging in to the nuances of religion, faith, and grace tucked inside the latest Benoit Blanc mystery

On Kindness, Power, and Hypocrisy

Earlier this week, Vanity Fair published a two-part story about the Trump regime’s “inner circle”, including extensive interviews with his chief of staff, who was openly critical of the people that she works with, from Trump on down. The story caused a stir and so did the photos that accompanied the piece, taken by Christopher Anderson.

The Washington Post interviewed Anderson about the photos. The interview is interesting throughout but Anderson’s answer to the final question is…I don’t even know how to describe it; read it for yourself:

Q: Were there moments that you missed? Anything that happened that’s on the cutting room floor?

A: I don’t think there’s anything I missed that I wish I’d gotten. I’ll give you a little anecdote: Stephen Miller was perhaps the most concerned about the portrait session. He asked me, “Should I smile or not smile?” and I said, “How would you want to be portrayed?” We agreed that we would do a bit of both. And then when we were finished, he comes up to me to shake my hand and say goodbye. And he says to me, “You know, you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to people.” And I looked at him and I said, “You know, you do, too.”

In some sort of bizarro version of our world, where people somehow aren’t themselves, Miller may have reflected on Anderson’s comment, may have thought about all the pain, anguish, and death caused by the exercise of his power, may have felt some regret, a chink in the armor that would grow over time, leading to a softening of his perspective and approach. But we live in the real world; Miller knows exactly what he’s doing and does not want to be kind. He wants to be unkind, to rip mother from child. I’m reminded of A.R. Moxon’s thoughts on hypocrisy:

It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.

It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.

It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.

Kindness for me and not for thee.

• A.R. Moxon
• Christopher Anderson
• Donald Trump
• photography
• politics
• Stephen Miller

A group of journalism students was able to track probable Russian spy drones launched from cargo ships to surveil European military bases. They even flew a drone of their own over one of the cargo ships: “we droned back”.

They Droned Back · digitaldigging.org

Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels circling off the Dutch and German coast

We’re getting down to the wire for gifts to be shipped in time for Xmas. Take a look at the 2025 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide if you still need to shop for your fam & friends.

The 2025 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide · kottke.org

Since 2013, I’ve done a holiday gift guide that’s basically a curated roundup of stuff from the best gift guides I can find. I always do it a little bit differently from year to year, and last year I went with a simple list and it worked well.

“On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925.” Includes Betty Boop, Blondie & Dagwood, and works by William Faulkner, Agatha Christie, and the Marx Brothers.

Public Domain Day 2026 · web.law.duke.edu

January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925! By Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle[1] CC BY 4.0 Please note that this site is only about US