Dec 2, 2024 · Always Interesting: “52 Things I Learned in 2024” Tom Whitwell just sent along his annual list of the 52 things he’s learned in the past year. As usual, there’s lots of fascinating things in there…here are some of my favorites: 3. There are just 16 trademarked scents in the US, including Crayola crayons, Playdoh, an ocean-scented soft play in Indiana and a …

Dec 8, 2024 · Just updated the 2024 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide with suggestions from Kottke readers, a surprisingly popular Japanese nail clipper, a bonkers Criterion Collection box set, and a very unique timepiece.

Will McDonalds be the first fast-food chain to hop on the electronic gaming bandwagon in a big way? The hamburger king has approached Atari about the possibility of designing a computerized video monitor. The device would take the meal order and then help the customer pass the wait pleasantly by playing a videogame. One potential hitch: What happens if a player is on a hot streak when the Big ...

Oct 8, 2024 · I really liked this entertaining short film by Eric Kissack (editor & producer for The Good Place), in which a couple moving int

Oct 19, 2009 · Every issue of Life Magazine until the end of 1972 is available on Google Books for free. This archive joins Google’s alread

Mar 1, 2023 · Why Did Everything Get So Expensive? From Vox, an inflation explainer video that sums up the three primary explanations for the current rise in prices worldwide — Too much money, supply shocks, massive markups (aka corporate price gouging) — …

Oct 24, 2024 · “How you love, how you give, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are.” Maria Popova reflects on 18 years of her excellent website, The Marginalian. Learning to carry one’s vulnerability is one hell of a reframing.

Dec 6, 2024 · After almost 25 years, Paul Krugman is retiring as a NYT opinion columnist. Krugman: “I decided to leave in search of more freedom in terms of both style and content.”

Dec 31, 2024 · Well, I really don’t know what happened here. One minute it was the second week of January 2024 and the next minute we&#82

Jul 2, 2024 · “The Last Rave” I just found out over the weekend about my pal Emily Witt’s new book, Health and Safety, and lo, there’s an excerpt of it in the fiction issue of the New Yorker. I didn’t know what to include here, so I just took the opening paragraphs…the rest of it is pretty intense. On March 6, 2020, Andrew and I went to a rave. If …