In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress submitted a petition to the UN charging that the “brutality and discrimination” of Jim Crow constituted genocide by the US govt. The US prevented any debate on the petition and CRC leaders were persecuted thereafter.
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Someone in a private forum I belong to mentioned fountain pens and thus I became acquainted with the role of a nibmeister, a person who can remake the nib of your pen more to your liking (different angle, better flow, etc).
Wowsabout!
PBS Kids and The Jim Henson Company have collaborated on a kids special called Wowsabout! that focuses on the experience of wonder.
Wowsabout is rooted in a rich curriculum developed by Dr. Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s foremost emotion scientists and author of “AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.” The special, shot on location in breathtaking Sequoia National Park, aims to help children recognize and name the feeling of awe by experiencing moments of wonder alongside Roxy and Ronald. Through nature, music, storytelling, and friendship, children learn how awe sparks curiosity, creativity, kindness, and a desire to explore and care for the world around them. The special inspires children to notice awe in everyday moments and begin their own “Wowsabouts,” fostering connection to others and to the planet.
The full episode of Wowsabout! is available to watch on YouTube and at PBS Kids.
Dr. Keltner, one of the advisors on Pixar’s Inside Out, outlines “eight categories of experience that set the stage for awe” in his 2023 book on the topic. A summary of the “eight wonders” from a Psychology Today article:
1. Moral beauty. We can feel awe when we observe other people engage in acts of courage or kindness. Moral beauty also describes the experience of seeing someone overcome obstacles, or watching people with rare talents.
2. Collective effervescence. This occurs when a gathering of people is attending to the same thing, moving together, and converging on similar emotional experience. Think attending a concert, dancing in a crowd, or attending or playing in a basketball game.
3. Nature. When we are outside, we can find awe in the sights, sounds, and smells of nature.
4. Music. Both making music and listening to music attune us to what is happening outside of ourselves and connect us with others and a broader expanse of time and place.
5. Visual design. This includes visual art, movies, geometric patterns, even the elegance and complexity of machines.
6. Spirituality and religion. As personally defined by each of us, this might include connection with the Divine, or experiences that transcend our self or understanding.
7. Life and death. We can experience awe when we witness or are connected to birth and death.
8. Epiphany. This includes the experience of uniting facts, beliefs, values, intuitions, and images into a new system of understanding.
Reading through the list, it occurs to me that many of the things I post about on KDO touch on one of more of these elements of awe and wonder. (thx, caroline)
KDO Rolodex a list of kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators
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see full listAn analysis of 18 years of Guardian blind dates. “A surprising number of successful dates include something embarrassing: the bill, a late arrival, a misread moment. Awkward doesn’t mean doomed.”
Pioneering abstract artist Hilma af Klint’s Paintings for the Temple (1906‑1915) will be on display at the Grand Palais in Paris from May 6 - Aug 30, 2026.
The Design Evolution of Screwdriver Handles
Screwdriver handles are sneakily well-designed for a variety of different uses.
I mean, who thinks about a screwdriver? But if you look at the handles, well, that’s a complicated shape. And it lets you do a lot. It’s comfortable to hold, but it won’t roll off your bench. And you can turn it one-handed or use both hands. And you get a couple of different grips. That’s a good design.
In this video, woodworker & tool enthusiast Rex Krueger walks us through the design history of the screwdriver and how it came to have such a distinctive and useful handle.
I grew up helping my dad out in the garage with all sorts of projects, mostly cars, and until watching this video, I had no idea that you could slip a standard wrench over the handle of a screwdriver as a cheater bar. 🤯 (via unsung)
What Can We Do About Partisan Gerrymandering? Jamelle Bouie has been on a tear with his analysis and historical contextualizing of the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
Nolen Royalty: “My latest project is Marc Andreessen Egg Game - a game about drawing on eggs to make them look like venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.”
The 2025 Alaskan Tsunami That Measured 1578 Feet Tall
Last year in an Alaskan fjord, a surprise landslide triggered a tsunami 1578 feet tall. That’s not a typo…the wave was taller than all but 13 of the world’s tallest buildings.
In the early hours of August 10, 2025, an enormous landslide triggered a massive tsunami down the fjord. The tsunami was 1,578-feet-tall, or one-and-a-half times the height of the Eiffel Tower. Fortunately, no one was caught in the wave since it hit around 5:30 a.m. local time. If the tsunami hit later that day, about 20 cruise ships and numerous recreational boaters and kayakers could have been impacted by the giant wave.
In a study published today in the journal Science, researchers studied this “near miss” event, finding that the continued effects of climate change were likely the cause.
The mass of rock that set off the wave contained “a volume 24 times larger than that of the great pyramid of Giza”, with the initial wave moving at ~150mph. Professor Dan Shugar explains what happened on that morning and shows a simulation of what happened:
From this piece in the NY Times:
The Tracy Arm landslide was preceded by an unusually rapid retreat of the South Sawyer Glacier, leaving the rock slope that ultimately collapsed bare and unsupported. That same rearrangement of land elements is increasingly occurring throughout Alaskan fjords and around the world. As glaciers retreat and thawing permafrost lubricates slopes, these giant landslides may become more frequent.
Incredibly, this isn’t even the largest recorded tsunami; a 1958 earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 to 8.3 triggered a rockslide that created a wave 1,719 feet tall in Lituya Bay. If you don’t want to waste a couple of hours, I’d suggest not clicking through to the megatsunami Wikipedia page.
See also When the Mediterranean Sea Dried Up.
Prophecy At 1420 MHz is the first single from Boards of Canada’s upcoming album. (It’s paired with a short intro track, so we’re basically getting the first five and a half minutes of the album here.)
“In nine experiments involving 1,800 participants, researchers found that people consistently underestimated how interesting and enjoyable conversations about boring topics would be.”
Rogue One: The Andor Cut
David Kaylor is re-editing Rogue One into what he calls “The Andor Cut”; the trailer seems pretty compelling and well-done. He says this is Rogue One if it was produced after Andor:
The original version is the events of Rogue One as seen through Jyn’s perspective, and this is through Cassian’s.
The remixed Rogue One will be out on May 25, available in 4K with 5.1 surround sound. Kaylor has previously produced cuts of all three original trilogy Star Wars movies, Star Wars: Episode III - The Siege of Mandalore & Revenge of the Sith (a combo of the third prequel and part of the 7th season of Clone Wars), and Star Trek: Picard: The Last Generation (a recut of Star Trek: Picard’s 3rd season).
This edit is not to be confused with Andor: The Rogue One Arc, which recuts Rogue One into an Andor-like three-episode arc, leaning heavily on Andor’s soundtrack to set the mood.
This edit is kind of an expression of that with a movie I generally really liked - moving its energy from emulating the jaunty, swashbuckling OT, to more in line with its prequel show’s feel.
Up front, I don’t actually think this elevates or changes Rogue One in any meaningful way. The movie is still the movie, still fast paced and action oriented, particularly compared to Andor’s fiercer, slower, and paranoid ethos. But I do think the elements Andor is rooted in become far more apparent foregrounded to this soundtrack. Where the movie somewhat failed to recapture the energy and excitement of traditional Star Wars (and not for lack of Giacchino effort), the places where it takes itself seriously should now feel less dissonant in a [tonal] context that seriously considers them.
I’ve watched The Rogue One Arc and am looking forward to comparing it to The Andor Cut. And I’ve been seriously contemplating yet another rewatch of the TV series.
A brief history: lessons from the rise and fall of Reconstruction. “Must America be forever defined by strict hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth – or can the nation finally realize its promise of egalitarian pluralism?”
The Abolitionist Map of NYC
The website for the Abolitionist Guide to NYC is just getting started, but the site does house an Abolitionist Map of NYC.
The Abolitionist Map of NYC offers a geographic survey of incarceration and anti-carceral resistance in Manahatta from the Dutch colonization of Lenapehoking to the present day. The map highlights some of the first jails and prisons to exist in the area, the movement of facilities from one place to the next, and sites of rebellion against the expansion of the prison industrial complex.
It is meant to serve as a tool for abolitionist resistance grounded in a long view of the struggle, tactics, and goals.
The map is available as a PDF and as an interactive version. (via @prisonculture.bsky.social)
Chess Peace is an iOS puzzle game where you have to place chess pieces on a board so that none of them attack each other. Simple + clever!
One of the coolest things about honey is its theoretically infinite shelf-life. 3000-year-old jars of still-edible honey have been found in Egyptian tombs — they used it medicinally for all sorts of things.
Animated Artemis II Photos Reveal Satellites Buzzing Around Earth
Ok, this is incredible: this person on Reddit discovered that if you take a bunch of the sequential photos of the Earth captured by the Artemis II crew and animate them, you can see that some of what appear to be stars are actually satellites, buzzing around the Earth like flies. You can see them really clearly in Seán Doran’s remastered animation. Totally totally gobsmacking. Literally awesome.
“Podcast sloplords” are flooding the zone with AI-generated podcasts. By one count, almost 40% of new podcasts are written by AI chatbots and presented by “AI voice synthesizers [that] can sound eerily humanlike”.
A supercut of context-free intertitles from Adam Curtis documentaries. Even if you don’t know who Adam Curtis is, this is entertaining.
New episode of Great Art Explained on Francis Bacon. “A new generation was starting to ask - who gets to decide what is right? And who has the authority to tell us how to live?”
20 years ago: a guy interviewing for an IT job gets pulled onto live TV. “Mr. Goma is being celebrated as a folk hero of sorts for anyone who has ever found themselves ill-equipped for a challenge in the workplace.”
Jon Krakauer writes about what has changed about climbing Mt. Everest since he wrote Into Thin Air. “The deadly hazards I wrote about attracted novice climbers to Everest like gamblers to a slot machine.”
Infants are dying because parents are opting-out of vitamin K shots. “In the hopes of safeguarding their newborns from what they see as unnecessary medical intervention, they have shunned fundamental and scientifically sound pharmaceutical intervention.”
My pal Matt Haughey recut the first season of Apple TV’s Murderbot into a 3.5-hour-long movie. “I did it fast so there are a few jarring cuts, but I now have an entertaining as hell movie with zero interruptions.”
This is nuts: Fred Again has uploaded a video of every single show he did during his USB002 tour (except Mexico City) — it’s four and a half days long. “im told this is the longest video on YouTube ever?”
Movie Posters by Eric Rohman
Some nice work here from Swedish designer Eric Rohman, who designed thousands of movie posters in the early-to-mid 20th century. (via meanwhile)
The official trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was just released. Really looking forward to this.
What now-familiar domain names looked like before they were bought by big-time companies, e.g. openai.com was “the personal homepage of a guy named glenn”, doordash.com was a porn site, threads.com sold spools of thread.
Pocket forests. “The Miyawaki method of reforestation inserts small, densely packed wild acreage into urban environs. It’s proving wildly successful.” The key is densely planting diverse & native species…this isn’t just planting some trees.
Could This Fish Be a Notebook? “David Byrne learns how fisheries from Iceland to the Great Lakes are using 100% of their catch — and shares his tips for making fish head soup.”
A24’s Young Anthony Bourdain Movie
Huh. A24 is coming out with an Anthony Bourdain biopic that focuses on the time period around the chef/writer’s college years, when he first started working in kitchens. Directed by Matt Johnson, who co-created Nirvana the Band the Show and directed BlackBerry. Could be good. (via rex)
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in black & white with the Japanese audio track “becomes the best ‘Space Kurosawa’ movie ever made”.
Microshifting. “From a creativity standpoint, it’s good to take breaks. When you stop thinking about a task is when your best ideas come to you.” This is how I’ve worked for the past decade+…bursts of work throughout the day & week.
The Booksellers is a 2019 feature-length documentary film about antiquarian and rare book dealers; you can watch the whole movie for free on YouTube.
New Banksy: Blinded by Nationalism
The artist Banksy has installed (without a permit, one assumes) a new statue in London that depicts a man in a suit marching off off a ledge, blinded by a flag.
The artwork has been dubbed Blind Patriotism, although Banksy, enigmatic as always, doesn’t explain the meaning of his latest work. However, many have interpreted it as satirising the rise of nationalistic fervour in the UK, typified by the populist politician Nigel Farage and other forces on the far right.
Another bullseye for Banksy. 🎯
Designer Jenny Volvovski’s collection of unsolicited book cover designs. “I really wanted to design book covers but didn’t have any book cover work. So I hired myself to redesign my personal library.”
I’m not a fan of the first part of this music video (reminds me too much of dipshits I had to endure at school), but the single-take choreography from ~4:18 is great.
According to this peer-reviewed paper, the “screeching sound of peeling tape” is caused by tiny sonic booms. The speeds at work here are in the range of Mach 0.7–1.8. Supersonic crafts!
NASA has released some 12,000 unseen photos from the recent Artemis II mission; here are some of the best shots.
The Contiguous 41 States
Nowhere on XKCD’s map of The Contiguous 41 States does it say that you need to find the missing seven states, but that’s immediately where my mind went. And it was a little more challenging than I anticipated — all of New England is present & accounted for somehow?
The answer key is here, along with this tidbit:
The United States did have exactly 41 states for a few days in 1889, from the admission of Montana, the 41st state, on November 8, to the admission of Washington (the state, not DC), the 42nd state, on November 11.
See also this super-sized US map with 64 states.
And then after I wrote all of the above, I decided to check and of course I’d posted about this map before, soon after it came out. *sigh*
“They Would Never Use the Death Star on Us”: Alderaan Residents Reflect on Their Support for the Empire as a Large Imperial Installation Enters the System. “The Senate was ineffective, and the liberal Jedi were out of touch…”
The Visual Comedy of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs
I’m gonna call it: Every Frame a Painting, my all-time favorite YouTube channel, is back. Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos stopped producing their fantastic video essays back in 2017 and while they have popped up here and there since then, they’ve mostly stuck to their retirement.
But for the past few months, the duo have been releasing video essays produced in partnership with Criterion: Night of the Living Dead: Limitations into Virtues, The Blade (1995): The Edges of Wuxia, and just yesterday, The Visual Comedy of Isle of Dogs (embedded above).
For the past three decades, Wes Anderson has left a distinctive fingerprint in American comedy, with his penchant for artificial worlds, deadpan performances, literary devices, and snappy narration. But there’s something else. These movies are funny to look at. Over the years, Anderson has experimented more and more with visual comedy. And none of this is more apparent than in Isle of Dogs.
It looks like they’re doing about one video a month. I hope they keep it up…I love their videos.
(Ok, maybe don’t read this bit until you’ve watched the Isle of Dogs video, but did you detect that Zhou’s narration seems to be synced to the mouth movements of the characters in the clips he’s talking over? Such a great little detail of visual comedy…I clapped my hands in glee like a toddler when I noticed.)
How Sylvester Stallone Rescued the First Rambo Film With a Radical Recut, Cutting It From 3½ Hours to 93 Minutes. “The solution that ended up saving the movie wasn’t much less drastic, producing a 93-minute cut that excised most of Rambo’s dialogue.”
Ohhhhh dear, Richard Dawkins: Is AI the Next Phase of Evolution? Claude Appears to Be Conscious. “My conversations with several Claudes and ChatGPTs have convinced me that these intelligent beings are at least as competent as any evolved organism.” 😬
Unruly Play: “A collection of 169 works of play in unlikely places. Games about unusual things. Unexpected encounters.”
Ada Palmer & Bruce Schneier: AI Learns Language From Skewed Sources. That Could Change How We Humans Speak – and Think. “Our sense of the world may become distorted in ways we have barely begun to comprehend.”
Who Merits the Longest NY Times Obituaries?
Using the NY Times Archive API, journalist Ted Alcorn built Below the Fold, a dashboard through which you can explore the last 25 years of Times coverage: 2.2 million articles containing 1.5 billion words. You can slice and dice this data in a bunch of different ways — it’s a fantastic resource.
One of the site’s sections is about obituaries. From that data, Alcorn produced this infographic of whose obits contained the highest word count:
As you can see, it’s a lot of world leaders, religious leaders, politicians, and white men. There only appear to be five women on the list. Notable non-politicians include Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Muhammad Ali, and Charles Schulz.
The whole dashboard is fun/enlightening to explore.
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