Hey folks. I’m gonna be on vacation with my family for the rest of the week, so I won’t be posting here that much, if at all. September is going to be busy — kids back to school, Ollie applying to college, mtn biking — so I’m gonna recharge the ol’ batts at the beach.
Even though next month will be hectic, I’m looking forward to getting back to mucking about with the guts of the site after taking the summer off from that. I’ve got some rough ideas about improvements for the comments section, adding social features, and a few other things.
Catch you back here next Tuesday!
My pal Craig Mod has a book coming out in May 2025 called Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir. Here’s part of the synopsis:
Photographer and essayist Craig Mod is a veteran of long solo walks. But in 2021, during the pandemic shutdown of Japan’s borders, one particular walk around the Kumano Kodo routes — the ancient pilgrimage paths of Japan’s southern Kii Peninsula — took on an unexpectedly personal new significance. While passing the peninsula’s shrinking villages, Mod found himself reflecting on his own childhood in a post-industrial American town, his experiences as an adoptee, his unlikely relocation to Japan as a student at age nineteen, and his relationship with one lost friend, whose life was tragically cut short after their paths diverged. As the days passed, he considered why he has walked so rigorously and religiously during his twenty-five years as an immigrant in Japan, contemplating the power of walking itself. For Mod, solo walks are a tool to change the very structure of his mind, to better himself, and to bear witness to a quiet grace visible only when “you’re bored out of your skull and the miles left are long.”
The way Craig has gone about writing and publishing this book is unique. In November 2023, he published an exquisitely designed fine art edition with color photography, limited to 2500 copies (of which ~900 remain), and priced at $100. The mass market version, published by Random House, is an expanded version of the fine art edition retailing for $31 ($15 on Kindle). Craig explains:
Wait? Didn’t you already publish this book in November 2023? Yes! Yes we did! (Where we = me, Craig.) That was the fine art edition. Limited in quantity. Printed and bound in Japan, in full color on Heidelberg presses with a silk screened and foil stamped cover. Retailing for $100. This Random House edition is a significant expansion of that fine art edition — more than double the length in text with a dozen additional photographs. There is so much more context about me and my relationship to Japan, and more Japanese historical context as well. The Random House edition is printed and bound as a standard trade hardcover (and retails for $31 USD), with images printed in black and white. I’m tempted — almost! — to call them different books that emerged from the same source material.
It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out.
I just got back from attending the XOXO Festival in Portland, OR. What a whirlwind few days — I talked to more people than I have in literally years. I feel grateful for the opportunity to attend and participate this year, so I wrote some thank yous.
Thanks to Craig Mod for coming all the way from Japan to share the stage with me for a too-brief chat about membership programs. In the run-up to this, Craig and I had three extensive conversations about memberships, the open web, the value of writing your own software, Walt Disney’s corporate strategy chart, and many more things. I wish you could have heard those chats as well. Maybe we’ll have to do another podcast.
Thanks to Matt & Greg for making my dreams come true by taking me to Dos Hermanos Bakery for chopped sandwiches! They were delicious, of course! (A little messy though.)
Thanks to my pal Tim Shey, who shared with me the Japanese word komorebi, which is scattered sunlight that is filtered through tree leaves. Komorebi was the visual theme for this year’s XOXO, as seen in the XOXO Field Notes notebooks.
Thanks to Powell’s City of Books for the reminder that bookstores can be more than just places of commerce. Curated by people who love reading & books & people who read, great bookstores make your brain fizz with ideas just by browsing the shelves. Your algorithm could never.
Thanks to Portland for being so cool + weird. This was my fourth or fifth visit and I gotta say, I was pretty charmed. The food in particular blew me away — I can’t remember eating so well. Luce was a delicious local Italian place — I’d eat here once a week if I lived in Portland. Eem was so good, my favorite meal of the weekend. Solid pies at Apizza Scholls with great company. Ramen at Kinboshi, katsu sandwiches at Tanaka, a gin & tonic at Pacific Standard, and a banh mi at Lardo.
Thanks to Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou for showing their new short film The Second and (and!) their first new Every Frame A Painting video essay in eight years!! EFAP is hands-down one of my absolute favorite things on the web; I’m thrilled it’s back.
Thanks to the folks I saw wearing kottke.org t-shirts, including the guy wearing a design squiggle shirt who I said “nice shirt!” to without any further explanation.
Thanks to Annie Rauwerda of Depths of Wikipedia for the heartiest laugh I’ve had in many weeks. Seriously, she had the entire hall rolling in the aisles.
Thanks to Erin Kissane, not only for her great talk but for her work, alongside Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal, on The COVID Tracking Project. Truly one of the heroic efforts of the pandemic that saved lives and helped millions make safe choices — talk about making a dent in the universe. (An extra thanks to Erin for not laughing too much when I introduced myself as “Erin” when I ran into her at Powell’s. Never meet your heroes…you’ll only make an awkward ass of yourself.)
Thanks to Ed Yong, whose talk was just incredible and the one I most needed to hear this year. Like Ed, I spent a couple of years fully immersed in all things pandemic so that I could keep my readers (hopefully) well informed about what Covid was doing to us and how to stay safe. Even though I didn’t go nearly as deep as he did with his essential reporting, there were many parts of his talk that resonated strongly with me, particularly the burnout part (which led to a sabbatical in both cases). I’m definitely going to link to his talk when it gets posted.
Thanks to…the universe? (This one doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to the thank you note format.) The day after the conference, I walked around Portland for a few hours and thought of Heather, with whom I spent a few lovely days here in 2015. I hope you’ve found your peace, my friend.
Thanks to all the kottke.org readers who came up to say hi during the conference (and at the airport!); I appreciate you all and hope I wasn’t too awkward in response. 😬
Thanks to Neal Agarwal for showing off some of his many web experiments.
Thanks to Nolen Royalty, creator of One Million Checkboxes, for telling one of the wackiest internet nerd stories I’ve ever heard. I hope a recording of his talk or a writeup of it makes its way online…it’s an amazing story and I’ll link to it on kottke.org when it becomes available.
Thanks to my fellow indie media travellers — Platformer, 404 Media, Garbage Day, and Aftermath. I’ve enjoyed watching you folks strike out on your own, supported and trusted by your readers to punch above your weight without corporate heavy-handedness. 👏
Thanks to all my friends who, when I ghosted from a conversation or begged off sharing a meal, understood I needed some time to myself to recharge the ol’ social battery. 🪫
And most of all, thanks to the Andys (Baio, McMillan) for putting on XOXO for all these years. It is a singularly impactful gathering that’s touched/changed/bettered too many lives to even count. XOXO is perhaps the most thoughtful thing I’ve ever experienced — I can’t imagine how difficult it’s been for them to sustain that level of kindness and attention to detail across this many festivals and years. As life’s works go, this one is pretty good. The Andys said this was the last XOXO and I’m inclined to believe them this time — buuuuut if that changes, I will totally come to the next one.
The XOXO Dream is dead. Long live the XOXO Dream.
I just got back from the XOXO Festival and one of things that happened was that Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou showed their new short film The Second and their first new Every Frame A Painting video essay in eight years!! And now the video essay is on YouTube:
It’s a quick one about the sustained two-shot, a type of shot that was used a lot in the olden days but still has its uses today — and gives actors room to actually act.
So happy to see Ramos and Zhou back at it. I’m not sure if I should even say this, but they indicated during their XOXO appearance that there will be more to come (in fewer than 8 years).
Here’s my post about them shuttering the channel and a few of my favorite videos of theirs.
Love these visualizations of the current top 10 men’s and women’s chess players in the world.
Conservation biologist Tim Shields is trying to save the Mojave Desert’s desert tortoise population, which is under threat from ravens, an invasive species brought to the area by habitat-encroaching humans. Working with an engineer, he’s trying to train the ravens to leave the tortoises alone — their work is the subject of the short documentary Eco-Hack!
Together, they embarked on what Shields calls a campaign of “aversive training” for ravens, which, among the various threats to desert tortoises, he says seemed like the easiest to address. They set about booby-trapping the desert to train the birds to leave the tortoises alone. Their methods seem like a sophisticated version of sitting in the driveway and burning ants with a magnifying glass: placing laser emitters on terrestrial rovers; building and deploying 3-D-printed fake tortoises laced with artificial grape flavoring, which ravens evidently hate. They give their creations proud retro names: the Techno-Tort, the Blastoluxe. “The idea is just to make the haunted landscape where there’s just no relief from the surprises, and all the surprises are bad,” Shields says of the ravens, one of the collective nouns for which is, fittingly, an “unkindness.”
Amazing image at the 10:35 mark of the video btw.
Artist and illustrator Andrew DeGraff makes maps that show where the characters travel during movies — imagine Billy’s trail maps from Family Circus but for films like Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, Pulp Fiction, and Mad Max: Fury Road.
DeGraff collected these maps into a book called Cinemaps: An Atlas of 35 Great Movies.
Not sure why I didn’t know that Chris Ware has released two volumes of sketchbooks, but the third one comes out this fall. “Ware finally succumbs to imaginary public pressure by concluding his tiresome experiment in reader trust…”
Acme Novelty Datebook Volume Three (Acme Novelty Library) · amazon.com
This is lovely: illustrator & cartoonist Stephen Collins drew the progression of shoes worn by each of his three kids.
Back in 2020 we had to chuck the kids’ baby shoes out 😱, so I decided to keep the first ones and draw the rest, in order, starting with pre-walking socks.
When I look at photos of my kids from when they were younger, my eye is always drawn to their shoes and clothes — some of them are so iconic in my mind they almost function as logos for my kids at different stages.
Sacred Sites. “From Machu Picchu to the Louvre — the book journeys through sacred sites in art and ancient history.” I’ve always loved places and architecture that feel awe-inspiring or numinous.
Library of Esoterica. Sacred Sites · amazon.com
I love these isometric cutaway drawings by Japanese illustrator & architect Enya Honami. From Spoon & Tamago:
Honami is a skilled draughtswoman by trade, having obtained an MFA in architecture and working at a well-known Japanese architecture firm. But the grueling hours and workload eventually weighed on her physical and mental state and she fell ill, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Enya’s doctor advised her to take some time off, and find a place where she can relax and warm her body. That’s how she discovered Kosugiyu, her local sento in Koenji. She quickly fell in love with her local hotbath and not only started working there but also began employing her architectural rendering skills to create illustrations of the space. Soon, others began asking her to draw their hotbaths as well and her clientele expanded from sento and even spread to kissaten.
As one of the top trials riders in the world, Danny MacAskill can certainly do a wheelie. In this fun video, he does wheelies all over the place, joined by a bunch of friends. The behind-the-scenes video is just as fun. And I watched the “how to do a wheelie” companion video with interest because I’ve never been able to do a wheelie on a bike for more than a couple of seconds and it’s probably time to learn — even though a manual would be more useful for mountain biking. (via the kid should see this)
I ran across an interesting term/concept in Miranda July’s All Fours: third things. A character in the book attributes it to “the Quakers” and describes it like so:
It’s a topic of conversation that doesn’t belong to either party. The soul, usually so shy, can speak more easily through this Third Thing, at a slant.
It’s unclear if Quaker author Parker J. Palmer coined this term, but his 2004 book A Hidden Wholeness popularized the concept of third things. From The joy of third things:
In his book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life, Quaker writer Parker J. Palmer talks about “third things,” how people can make emotional connections while talking about something they’re experiencing together. This can happen when people attend a concert or play, view a painting or even watch a baseball game.
Palmer believes that the soul is shy and that asking another person to immediately share something very vulnerable can scare them off. Connecting while engaged in third things is a gentler way to communicate.
Many people have fond memories of special conversations that transpired while they were doing the dishes with a parent or going fishing with a friend. This third thing they do together makes it easy and comfortable for them to converse more deeply, often without even making eye contact.
Many of the best conversations I have with my kids are facilitated by third things: watching a movie, playing video games, kicking a soccer ball around, playing mini golf, or running errands in the car. Conversation is no different that any other activity (like, say, shooting free throws or dancing): it’s much easier and open when you’re not actually thinking too hard about it.
For as long as I can remember, Americans have been concerned that the government’s Social Security program will run out of money by the time they get to use it because the Baby Boomers will suck the well dry. But as former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains, Social Security trustees planned for the Boomers but will face a shortfall in the next decade because of increased income inequality in the US.
The Social Security trustees anticipated the boom in boomer retirements. This is why Social Security was amended back in 1983, to gradually increase the age for collecting full retirement benefits from age 65 to 67. That change is helping finance the boomers’ retirement.
So what did the trustees fail to anticipate? Answer: the degree of income inequality in 21st century America.
Put simply, a big part of the American working population is earning less than the Social Security trustees (including me) anticipated decades ago — and therefore paying less in Social Security payroll tax.
Had the pay of American workers kept up with what had been the trend decades ago — and kept up with their own increasing productivity — their Social Security payroll tax payments would have been enough to keep the program flush.
At the same time, a much larger chunk of the nation’s total income is going to the top than was expected decades ago.
Here’s the thing: Income subject to the payroll tax is capped. Every dollar of earnings in excess of the cap is not subject to Social Security payroll taxes. This year’s cap is $160,200.
The first major US retrospective of Vivian Maier’s photography is currently on display at Fotografiska New York through Sept 29. Maier was a street photographer whose work was discovered in 2007 and is now recognized “alongside the greatest masters of the twentieth century”.
You can see much more of Maier’s work on this website of her work.
The Good Milk List. “These locations, around the world, are where happy cheese makers found good milk locally.”
The Good Milk List · cheesemaking.com
Ephemeral tic-tac-toe. Each player’s moves disappear after 4 turns.
In a recent edition of his newsletter, Noah Kalina highlights some responses he got to this question: How many years do you need to live somewhere before you are considered a local? Here’s a sampling of the answers:
My hot take as a military kid who has continued to move around is that I think it’s a little weird how people gatekeep being a “local.” If you’ve lived somewhere long enough that you know your way around, have connected yourself with other locals and the local culture, are invested in the community, & see yourself continuing to stay there long term, I think you’re a local. Local to me is about the relationship to a place, not a chunk of time.
I had a friend move from CA to PA. He told me that people move to CA and build new lives and new families, and generally people are accepting of transplants. Meanwhile, he has a hard time acclimating to PA bc people tend to stick in the area where they grew up - it’s hard to break into an area where everyone’s great grand parents knew everybody’s great grandparents.
I liked this distinction:
Depends on where your heart is. You can be local by proximity, but not necessarily culturally. Like, knowing the area and how to live there. But some of those folks move and want to change the culture of a place. Or they come in and simply don’t honor the history and memories of the place ..and tbh, if you don’t know and honor that, then you don’t actually know the people and therefore, you don’t really know the place….so you local, but not a local.
And I feel this one as someone who currently lives in VT:
In New England, the rule is simple. You are considered a local as soon as you have three grandparents who were born in the town where you live.
I’ve lived here for 8 years now and I could live here for 8 more and not really feel like a local, nor be accepted by actual locals as one. For the first three years I lived in my small town, I felt like people were always looking at me when I went to the grocery store — like, “who’s this new guy in here on a random Tuesday in stick season?” They could smell the NYC on me. I don’t really mind though — I’m in a bit of a weird situation where I don’t actually want to be a local (or even really live here at all (long story)).
I lived in NYC for 13 years and 100% wanted to be there, to be involved, to feel like I had a tiny hand in making the city what it was. Calling yourself a New Yorker while not having grown up there is a bold move, but I dunno, I feel like I’d gotten there before I decided to leave.
Anyway, the full thread is worth a read. See also a related question with many interesting replies: Where Do You Call Home?
The search for Celebrity Number Six. The internet has been unable to identify the 6th celeb pictured on a piece of fabric from the late 00s (others include Adriana Lima & Jessica Alba). Can you help?
Since 1982, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has celebrated the opening lines of imagined horrible novels. The winners of the 2024 competition have been announced and there are some real doozies in there, starting with the overall winner:
She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.
Here are a few of my other favorites:
Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose.
That sweltering Friday evening she not so much walked but slithered into my shabby strip mall P.I. office, showing off all her curves, and I knew then I was in for a weekend of trouble because Dave’s Reptile Emporium next door, from which the ball python had escaped, was closed until Monday.
Sir Arthur Pendragon, High King of the Britons, son of King Uther Pendragon, nephew of King Aurelius Ambrosius, who was in turn the son of a long list of people who weren’t kings and thus don’t matter, only slept with his sister once, but boy did it come back to bite him in the ass.
His burnt flesh sizzling like a burger on the grill, blood pouring from his wounds like an overshaken cola, and sweat as salty as French fries pouring down his face, John knew that after this mission was over, he was getting McDonald’s for dinner.
“I do enjoy turning a prophet,” said Torquemada, as he roasted the heretic seer on a spit.
You can check out the whole wretched bunch here.
The different kinds of sounds that carmakers have had to come up with to make EVs audible to pedestrians, bikers, and other drivers are wild: orchestras, pitch-shifted didgeridoos, gas car noises.
For over a century, the internal combustion engine powered vehicles with an intricate combination of moving parts and tiny explosions. That combustion process inevitably made noise, and that noise came to define the background soundscape of our roads, cities, and day-to-day life. But as hybrids and EVs became increasingly mainstream — and more of their near-silent electric motors filled the streets — it became clear that silent vehicles didn’t fit in the ecosystem we’d built around cars.
Spearheaded by associations of the blind and visually impaired, legislation eventually began to require electric vehicles to emit an artificial engine noise out of hidden external speakers. These hidden speaker systems, called “Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems” — or AVAS — had to meet certain sonic criteria. But they were also a blank slate for sound designers to decide how the cars of the future should sound.
Reminder: cities aren’t noisy, cars are.
For his project The Disciples, photographer James Mollison took photo montages of fans outside of music concerts. See if you can guess which concerts these groups of fans attended:
Here’s Mollison on the project:
Over three years I photographed fans outside different concerts. I am fascinated by the different tribes of people that attend them, and how people emulate celebrity to form their identity.
As I photographed the project I began to see how the concerts became events for people to come together with surrogate ‘families’, a chance to relive their youth or try and be part of a scene that happened before they were born.
Fascinating! From top to bottom: Lady Gaga, Merle Haggard, 50 Cent, The Casualties, and Tori Amos. Here’s a video featuring some of the photos accompanied by music from the corresponding artists:
Mollison published a book featuring the photos; a signed copy is available from his website.
Costco in Cancún, a piece about Costco’s travel service and how the company’s warehouse shopping experience (“Everything Is a Good Deal”) relates to the all-inclusive hotel vibe (“Everything Is Paid For”).
Costco in Cancún - The Paris Review · theparisreview.org
On Costco aesthetics, at home and abroad.
I’ve been enjoying watching these livestreams of watering holes in the arid regions of Namibia. As I’m looking now, there appear to be some zebras and giraffes hanging out — previous sightings include hyenas, ostriches, cheetahs, wildebeest, oryx, and even honey badgers. You can find more cams and archived footage at @NamibiaCam.
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