kottke.org publisher

“A new Airbus passenger jet completed an ultra-long test flight between Australia and France lasting more than 24 hours—paving the way for the world’s longest nonstop commercial flights starting up next year.” Wow.

Comedian Mo Welch has a new show on PBS called The Drawing Room, where she interviews people while she draws them (and her guests draw her). What a great idea for a show.

The first three episodes are live already: Brett Goldstein, Sarah Silverman, and violinist Vijay Gupta; here’s the premiere episode with Goldstein:

Each episode is only 10-12 minutes long. The lineup of guests for the rest of the season include Demi Adejuyigbe, Tig Notaro, Adam Conover, and Aparna Nancherla.

Tags: art · Brett Goldstein · interviews · Mo Welch · PBS · TV · video

The Beauty of Doing Nothing Together. “What you’re doing hardly matters. What matters is inviting someone into the ordinary parts of your life instead of waiting for an occasion that feels worthy of an invitation.”

Volcanologist Laszlo Kestay took this photo of a lava skylight in 1996 while conducting field work at Kīlauea on Hawaiʻi. The hardened lava flows strongly resemble doomed souls being sucked into hell or the damned escaping the underworld.

Tags: geology · hawaii · hell · Laszlo Kestay · photography · volcanoes

The legacy of the Luddite movement changes when you zoom out a bit. “The development of cooperatives around the world is another story that should not end too abruptly. We could still be weaving it today.”

The trailer for Wicker (starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki). “An outcast in a fishing village commissions a husband for herself made out of wicker.” Looks unhinged (complimentary).

The coffee shop where 162 regulars have their own mug (1977). “The cups may not be such a small thing after all. They are a town register and a history and a confirmation that life goes on in a small American town.”

I really like what Razaak Eniola has to say here about human difference.

Before Prince was Prince, Prince was weird. And that goes the same for probably any of your favorite artists. Before Erykah Badu was Erykah Badu, Erykah Badu was weird. Before Marc Rebillet was Marc Rebillet, Marc Rebillet was weird.

Everybody loves to clap at the end — and most of the time we are clapping for the wrong reasons. We live in a culture that loves final products.

It’s cool to be weird, as long as it’s rooted and aligned with what’s true and what’s sincere.

I often tell people they’re weird and it’s always a compliment. Before it came to mean odd-looking or “disturbingly different”, weird meant “having power to control fate” — perhaps you could think of it as describing someone who can forge their own way, make their own luck.

Here’s a short quiz to discover your weirdness: You’re Weirder Than You Think.

For whatever reason, this also reminds me of something I read earlier today by Robin Sloan:

We should never forget that the product of work isn’t only the work — it’s also the worker.

(via @witoldriedel & @prisonculture.bsky.social)

Tags: language · Razaak Eniola

Walmart is busy building out their fast EV charger network in the US…currently 73 locations in 17 states. Their eventual goal is install chargers at “thousands of its locations by 2030”.

A terrarium iPhone case that houses actual growing plants and moss.

“Zugunruhe is a German term describing the restless, twitching urge migratory birds feel when caged — and the same primal restlessness humans feel when trapped.”

Something that still blows my mind is that every apple seed produces a new variety. Every single one.

This is a lovely short documentary about a project called Some Interesting Apples, which aims to find apples growing in unusual places (i.e. not commercial orchards but in places where people tend to discard apple cores):

The last three years I have been involved with a project called ‘Some Interesting Apples’, the primary aim of which is to record and, where characteristics make desirable (and sometimes where they don’t), preserve wilding apples, i.e., domestic apples growing on their own roots as the result of a discarded core.

Some of the best apples are then cultivated in an orchard dedicated to wild apples:

The ‘Some Interesting Apples’ project collects apples from wild trees that have been grown using cores thrown away — many from car windows or dropped from walkers and animals.

The wild trees or ‘wildlings’ are trees that grow from those apple cores discarded in hedges and along train tracks, footpaths and roadsides.

Their fruit often goes uneaten or rots — but have now instead be used to create a unique orchard.

The orchard has been developed from dropped fruit from more than 600 apple wildings in Cornwall.

It has now created Wilding Mother Orchard - the first ever orchard in the UK solely dedicated to cultivating wild-grown, chance-seedling apples.

The discovered apple varieties are named for their what3words locations; they have names like Horse Wish Gossip, Panes House Taxi, and Autumn Mushroom Spoke.

Apples are super interesting. I read it years ago now, but I still often think of Michael Pollan’s chapter on apples in The Botany of Desire.

Tags: apples · botany · food · science

Participants in a recently published study spoke 28% fewer words per day in 2019 than they did in 2005. (People are spending more time alone and more time digitally communicating.)

The Thomas Crown Affair? Directed by and starring Michael B. Jordan? Ok, I’m in.

This is an extremely 2026 story (derogatory): because of the Trump regime’s assualt on scientific funding, a group of scientists who has been studying marmot populations in Colorado since 1962 turned to OnlyFans to fund their research this year.

From The NY Times:

In June, Daniel Blumstein, a biologist, sat in a field in Gothic, Colo., waiting to see a marmot. The rodent was elusive, leaving his thoughts to wander.

He lamented a lack of funding for his work amid federal cuts to scientific research. Then he alighted on the television show “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” and that’s when the epiphany came.

Perhaps the show’s plot, about a single mother who, unable to find conventional work, turns to the adult-content site OnlyFans to support herself, could be applied to marmots and research funding.

Back at his lab, Dr. Blumstein pitched the idea (with a wholesome spin) to his colleagues, who offered mixed feedback. But then one of his graduate students suggested naming the profile OnlyMarms.

Here’s the G-rated OnlyMarms account on OnlyFans; you can also donate to the project directly. More from Live Science:

OnlyFans is a subscription platform that allows users to pay creators to see exclusive photos and videos. The platform has become popular with adult-only content creators, but it hosts others too, including musicians, athletes and celebrities — and now marmots.

“We’re trying this out of frustration with an extremely challenging funding environment,” Blumstein said. “If we’re lucky, it can help raise money for supplies and some expenses. But unless we are very lucky, it won’t replace the federal funding that has driven discovery in the US since the 1950s.”

We’ve got GoFundMe for healthcare and now OnlyFans for science funding. The privatization of the United States is coming along nicely and the future looks bright!

Tags: Donald Trump · OnlyFans · politics · science · video

Study: Dinosaurs Were Charbroiled After Chicxulub Impact. “The impact would have produced an immense cloud of dust that superheated the upper atmosphere, charbroiling living organisms unable to take shelter and igniting widespread wildfires.”