kottke.org

What Training My Chaotic Dog Taught Me About Power, Control — and Human Beings. “As any parent of a toddler knows, being morally liable for something that is incapable of moral liability is a fraught and stressful business.”

Building a World Map With Only 500 Bytes.

From the Brooklyn Public Library, a list of “the 250 most influential books in United States history”. Incl. Neuromancer, The Fire Next Time, Nickel and Dimed, The Power Broker, and The Snowy Day.

New-to-me podcast that looks really interesting: Time Sensitive, “a podcast featuring candid, revealing long-form conversations with leading minds about their life and work through the lens of time”.

Uncovered, a site for judging books by their first pages. “No cover. No bestseller sticker, no celebrity book club, no BookTok trend. You read the opening of a real book, blind, and answer the only question that matters: would you keep reading?”

The Resonant Computing Manifesto. “We can now build technology that adaptively shapes itself in service of our individual and collective aspirations. We can build resonant environments that bring out the best in every human who inhabits them.”

What would a rainbow look like if we had two suns (like on Tatooine)?

A few highlights from a collection of lovely woodblock-printed sugoroku game boards from Japan. “The gameboards use stories and maps to teach children history and geography.”

Legibility of effort in the LLM age. “What software (and writing, to an extent) is missing now is legibility of effort - the ability to tell at a glance whether something took a human meaningful work.”

Ted Gioia: “Works like the Odyssey are ritualistic and trance-inducing. They are propelled by music and driven by rhythm. They cross a border beyond literature, and enter something more transcendent and metaphysical.”

Good interview with Craig Mod about how he uses LLMs: “using AI as a research assistant, why he keeps a tech-free zone in the mornings for deep thinking, and why he’s resisting the pull of the ‘mainlining’ AI era”.

The Moist Towelette Online Museum. Live moist and prosper. 🖖💦

The Types of People to Keep Around, including “people who text you to look at the moon”, “the friend who commits to the bit”, and “relentlessly creative folks”.

100000% this: I Hate The Way We Talk Online. “Let’s discuss topics without feeling the need to win a non-existent argument. Hot takes? No. Engage with nuance. Show the grace you would extend offline to those you meet on these virtual streets.”

Robert Eggers continues his run of One Word Title Films Featuring Very Strange Men with Werwulf. I’m not a horror guy but I was pleasantly surprised by Nosferatu, which I quite liked.

Trump Dismantled a Federal Climate Website. These Women Rebuilt It. “It’s not a pretty picture for climate communication and climate journalism right now.” You can check out the new site at climate.us.