A late 90s guide to Super Metroid was written in monospaced type, fully justified with no double spaces or hyphens. “I just chose words carefully so that everything lined up on the right hand side.”
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Biiiiig Stretch
Back when I went on sabbatical in 2022, I told the story of the fiddle leaf fig tree I bought shortly after my ex-wife and I separated and I’d moved into my own apartment.
Iād recently moved into my own apartment after separating from my wife and figured a large plant in my new place would add some liveliness to a new beginning that was feeling overwhelming, lonely, and sad. For the first couple of months, I didnāt know if my tree and I were going to make it. Iād never really had a plant before and struggled getting a handle on the watering schedule and other plant care routines. It started losing leaves. Like, an alarming number of leaves.
Iād brought this glorious living thing into my house only to kill it! Not cool. With the stress of the separation, my new living situation, and not seeing my kids every day, I felt a little like I was dying too.
One day, I decided I was not going to let my fiddle leaf fig tree dieā¦and if I could do that, I wasnāt going to fall apart either. Itās a little corny, but my mantra became āif my tree is ok, I am okā. I learned how to water & feed it and figured out the best place to put it for the right amount of light. It stopped shedding leaves.
The fig tree was a happy plant for several years after that. And I was ok because my plant was ok ā I found new routines and rhythms in my altered life, made new traditions with my kids, got divorced, met new people, moved to a new state (w/ my family and tree), rediscovered who I was as a person, and, wonderfully and unexpectedly, forged a supportive and rewarding parenting partnership and friendship with my ex. We made it through that tough time together, that plant and me.
I got a lot of feedback from that postā¦so many kind notes and comments. But there was one email from a reader that particularly stuck in my mind. Of course I canāt find the actual message in my disaster of an inbox, but the gist of it was something like: There may come a time when you feel like you need to let your fiddle leaf fig go and that will be ok too.
Over the next few years, I thought often of that email. About how my tree, which in some sense kept me going during one period of my life, might not be quite right for whatever the next period in my life would be.
Recently, that time arrived. I carried the fig out to my car, stopping to snap this pic on the way:
I loaded it into the car and drove it a short distance to its new home with my friend and her three young boys. Here it is in its new habitat:
Looks pretty good, right? Like it belongs there. Iām really happy it found such a good new home. I hope it thrives along with their family.
A few days ago, about two weeks after the tree departed, I left my house in Vermont for the last time too. In the preceding months, I’d sold some of my things (including my car), given a bunch of stuff away, and put the rest in storage. I drove my rental car to Boston and got on a flight to Toyko. Right now, Iām sitting in a cafe near my rental apartment writing this post, jetlagged but happy to be here.
So whatās my plan? Iām going to travel for an indeterminate period (mostly outside of the US and dipping back in for visits), starting in Japan for a couple of months. I donāt know where Iām going next yet ā probably somewhere closer to the US so I can visit my kids more easily during this transition.
Zooming out a bit, the broader plan is to attempt to answer the questions that Iāve been thinking about for the past few years, ever since I went on a Walk and Talk in Thailand:
Where do you call home? And why?
Iāve been struggling with the concept of home for the past several years. NYC very much felt like home to me shortly after I moved there in 2003 in a way that Minneapolis and (especially) San Francisco hadnāt. Since moving to Vermont in 2016, Iāve never really felt at home here. But NYC isnāt home anymoreā¦and neither is Wisconsin, where I grew up. Where do I want to go to find a home? Do I need to feel at home somewhere? Or is home simply wherever my bed/desk/stuff happens to be? I had more questions than answers around this issue and I was interested in how other people in the group, which included folks that had lived and travelled all over the world, would answer the question.
Iām not going to lieā¦Iām a little terrified. Sitting on the plane to Narita, I looked out the window thinking āwhat have I done?ā But Iām also excited. Living elsewhere in the world has been on my mind for a long while and at this point, I canāt not do it. Iāll let you know how it goes.
As for what this means for KDO: hopefully not much and only good things. I moved; I didnāt retire. As I get more settled here and my body accepts its new timezone, regular service will resume. Iām hoping the more stimulating surroundings and injection of culture shows up in interesting ways in my life and on the website. I donāt think KDO will ever become a travel blog, but I imagine Iāll write sometimes about where I am and what Iām doing. Iāve got a backlog of things I want to do for the site and now that the massive time sink of moving is done, Iāll have the opportunity to do them.
For now, Iām going to pack my computer up and walk to find something tasty for lunch ā Iāve so missed being able to easily do that. Catch you on the flip side.
“In almost every [US] county, extreme heat is at least as bad as it was 30 years ago. In most counties, it’s much worse.ā Itās Not Just You. America Has Gotten Much Hotter. (Not a fan of articles like this being in the āopinionā section…)
KDO Rolodex a list of kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators
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see full listVC Isnāt VC Anymore ā Understanding the Rise of Cancer Capital. “We must understand that it is no longer a financial machine that is used to fund startups, but a political and social machine focused on dismantling democracy and civil society.”
The Simpsons Switcheroo
At the beginning of a clip from this podcast episode of Conan OāBrien Needs a Friend with Matt Groening, Conan talks about one of his favorite things they did on The Simpsons:
It’s a phenomenon that the Simpsons did so beautifully, which is ā and we did this with Homer a lot ā but Homer is not the smartest guy in the world, but if it’s funny for him to have a certain knowledge of something or turn a phrase, suddenly he has it.
And one of my favorites of that is he’s sitting around the table and Lisa’s despondent. Something didn’t go well for her and she doesn’t think she’s going to get to go to a good school now. And she’s sitting at the table and she said, “Oh no, now I’ll never get to go to an Ivy League school. I’ll have to go to Vasser.” Which is just this like ā by the way, my wife went to Vasser, it’s a very good school. But it was just this thing where in Lisa’s little world, oh my god, I’ve been I’ve been ruined. I’ll have to go to Vasser. And Homer like slams a table and says, “There’ll be no Vasser bashing in this house.”
I loved this about the show too. And it was part of a general thing the writers did where sometimes characters would play against type. So Marge became reckless, Homer was smart/sensitive, Bart was organized, and Lisa was a giggly little girl. Those moments helped make the show and when, after the epic run in the early-to-mid 90s, the show became almost exclusively about how dumb & crass Homer was, it was much less rich and entertaining. (thx, mark)
“Gimme is a dazzling ever-growing type family of multi-chromatic and variable display typefacesā¦ā This is bonkersā¦letters made from Battleship pieces, Connect Four boards, playing cards, wooden railroad tracks, etc.
Bring Blockbuster Video back to your town/city by setting up a little free library of VHS tapes & DVDs. āTake a movie, leave a movie.” Love this.
Gloria Steinemās final essay, posthumously published by the New Yorker. “When youāre lucky enough to have lived a long life, as I have done, your role as an older person is to remind us how far we have come.”
Teaser trailer for Musk, a 3h45m-long documentary film on fascist businessman Elon Musk, directed by Alex Gibney. “Heās chaotic, random, capricious. He is manifestly cruel and selfish. In a science fiction novel, he would not be a hero.”
“We found ~18,000 posts from autonomous AI agents (self-identifying as from OpenAI) using the public internet to communicate during a web research task. These AIs colluded to share answers, research their environment, and bypass sandbox restrictions.”
The Chicago Public Library informs patrons of how much money theyāve saved borrowing from the library instead of buying. āYou just saved $58.94 by using your library. You have saved $231.79 this past year and $1,107.24 since you began using the library!”
Over the past 12 years, Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Tomlin has built a Minecraft city. He started playing the game for the same reason I started playing Fortnite: his kids. “How do I meet them where they are and spend time with them?”
From the Internet Archive: Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record. “When digital materials are vulnerable to sudden removal…our collective memory is compromised, and the public’s ability to access its own history is at risk.”
Vintage Eastern European Matchbox Labels (1950-1980s)
Over on Flickr, Jane McDevitt maintains a huge collection of 20th century matchbox label art from Eastern Europe, over 4000 photos in all. Some of the labels are available as prints. They did a book too, but itās sold out. It was really difficult to narrow these down to some of my favorites, but I managed.
P.S. I wrote this whole post and then discovered that Iād written about this collection before. But I picked different labels so itās all good.
A catalogue of 645 acts of hate from the week after 9/11. “Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh Americans were targeted for how they looked, dressed, or prayed.”
Bayeux Go! A playable video game of the Bayeux Tapestry. āThou art Harold. Win Thine Battle. Tap to starte.”
Spaceships: A version of Asteroids where āyou are not the shipā ā you control the rocks instead.
The 101 Plays Itself. The five lanes of highway 101 in LA turned into a musical instrument: each car on the live Caltrans camera is a note.
Teaser trailer for You Can See Everything from Nathan Fielder & Lance Oppenheim. “Thirty-four days before sheās sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move.ā WHAT WAS THAT?
Autumnal Open Thread
My move is coming down to the wire (omg so many things to juggle!), kids are heading back to school, Iām going to be traveling, and itās a holiday weekend here in the States, so thereās probably not going to be too much going on here until next week. Thanks for your patienceā¦I canāt wait to get back to work here.
In the meantime, I thought Iād open up this thread for folks to share what they feel like sharing. Iāll go first below…
Trump Is in Open Revolt Against the Constitution
The details of what is happening here are important ā thatās why I laid them out ā but itās also important to step back and make a more fundamental point: the president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself. And this is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation.
It is important to say, as well, that this is all out in the open, as plain as day.
*repeated hair tearing-out noise*
Gina Trapani: The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer. Iāve always been a little 3D printer-curious and this looks like a good resource to start with.
2 Odysseus 2 Ithaca: Emily Wilson is completely retranslating The Odyssey. “Itās a complete retranslation. Itās not a revision of the old version.ā This is the exact opposite of resting on oneās laurels.
Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court Orders on Voting by Mail. āThe Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans.ā
How Blackwing Pencils Are Made
The thing about me is if I see a making-of video for pencils, Iām gonna stop and watch it and then post it to my website, especially if said pencils are Blackwings, made in Japan.
Take a first-ever, in-depth look at the Blackwing pencil manufacturing process. This short film gives a glimpse into its manufacturing facilities in Japan and California. Beginning in Kofu, Japan, the film details the intricate graphite formulation and cutting process, then transitions to the woodworking facility in Tokyo where the pencils are pressed and lacquered.
Finally, it ends in Stockton, California at Blackwing’s headquarters where the pencils are imprinted, assembled with its signature ferrule, quality-checked, and hand-packed. Each and every Blackwing pencil is thoughtfully made to help you slow down and have the best tools for your creative journey.
Iām always so curious about whatās being blurred out in making-of videos like this!
See also See How Pencils Are Made in a Japanese Factory, How Pencils Are Made, A Visit to an American Factory That’s Been Producing Pencils Since 1889, and A History of Pencil Lead and How Pencils Are Made. (via NaOH)
Industry Standard Tools. “Every trade has a small number of items so entrenched that they’ve become the de facto tool that nearly everyone in that trade uses.”
This is a fun read: If You Build It, Will They Come? On the Sperm Racing World Cup. āThe cells then race through courses less than a half-centimeter long that are etched into microfluidic silicon chips.”
Nationally, unsubsidized ACA premiums to jump *another* ~15% next year. We canāt continue like this (but I feel like this has been the case for the last ~10 years and will in fact likely continue…)
Hereās how noise-cancelling headphones work (and when they don’t). “This is why ANC is better suited for reducing low, sustained sounds like those of motors and airplane engines, and itās why such headphones canāt filter out screaming kids.”
Google Maps Changes Lake Ontario to Lake America. Totally pathetic and stupid. Maps are wayfinding tools and this toadying political change will help no one find their way.
Ahhh, relax with the sights and sounds of the Windows 98 Disk Defrag Simulator.
Voting is now open for the 2026 Tiny Awards, featuring 10 sites that celebrate “the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade webā. You have until Sept 25 to vote.
Heat waves are disproportionately harming people with schizophrenia. “The bodies of people with schizophrenia, especially those on medication, simply regulate temperature very differently than others do.”
Emptying the Tabs…
Ok, weāre gonna go a little old school today. I’m talking the late 1990s and early 2000s, back before permalinks (sorry), RSS, and social media turned blog posts & tweets into their own little discrete units packaged to be easily passed around and things were less homogeneous. Back then, blogs ā at least the ones I loved ā tended to be more of a stream of consciousness thing, just an unordered and uncurated list of whatever happened to pop into peopleās heads or cross their screens.
So, Iāve currently got at least 120 tabs across 20+ windows open in Chrome. I know, I know, Iāve gotta get a tab manager, but this is where I am right now. Each of these tabs contains something interesting and potentially bloggable, but some of them have been sitting there for months and with moving stuff consuming most of my days right now, I donāt have time to sit down and give them each even a Quick Links treatment. So Iām gonna do them rapid-fire in the hopes that you might find some of it interesting. Here we go, letās empty some tabs!!
The winners of the 2026 iPhone Photography Awards. Via my pal Jodi, I think. I love this one, which rhymes with this famous photo (Behind the Gare St. Lazare) by Henri Cartier-Bresson:
Ways of Treeing, “Meditations on time and rebellion against the straight line”.
The quiet grief of adult friendship. āAdult friendship became one of the most emotionally significant and least discussed losses of modern life.ā (Via swissmiss; have I linked to this one before?)
Hugh Howey (author of the Silo books) on how the self-publishing window has closed (or at least narrowed). “We had less than 20 years of writing being hard and publishing being easy, and we will never get that window back.”
I havenāt done a media diet post since November (and may not again?) but Iāve been eagerly watching s03 of Silo, listening to Toni Morrison read Beloved (great book but what a fucking gift to hear Morrison read it), and enjoyed the new Spider-Man, a series that is at its best when the three leads just chill and talk.
“Artist and researcher Maggie Coblentz fermented miso in orbit, chasing a deeper question: What makes a miso a misoāor a person a personāaway from Earth?”
I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World by Sarah Wilson.
Messy Nessyās Cabinet (always a good source of interesting links) redesigned recently.
These Dutch strip islands are cool.
How art invented humanity (instead of the other way around).
I donāt watch enough videos by Phil Edwards these days: “Why are bowling alleys across America replacing 2,000-pound mechanical pinsetters with nylon strings?”
Is democracy without elections possible? Could a lottery be better? I actually watched this a couple of months ago but never got around to writing it up. More on this from Alex Guerrero.
I really wanted to get to this one but just never could find the time: Historia Civilis on The History of the City.
This might be a minority view, but my YouTube algorithm is actually pretty good at showing me stuff Iām interested in. Case in point: when I was getting the link for the city video above, I noticed a newish video from Tom Scott about Bletchley Park and the secrecy of the Intelligence Factory.
The Spectacle: Has Taking the Perfect Photo Ruined Tourism?
Fordite is an artificial gemstone made up of dozens of layers of automotive paint that built up and hardered over time.
This material is typically found in the paint booths of auto factories, where cars were spray-painted by hand. As the paint sprayed over vehicles, excess paint would build up on the equipment and surfaces around the painting area. Over the years, these layers of paint would harden, creating colorful, agate-like structures.
Fordite is no longer being produced: “The switch from solvent-based paints to more environmentally friendly, quicker-drying paints in modern automotive plants has virtually ended the creation of new fordite, making it a finite material.”
Infinite Digest: a collection of infographics about DFWās Infinite Jest.
Inge Druckrey: Teaching to See, āa 40-minute crash course in design thinkingā. Found this via Edward Tufte.
Debbie Millman on the fleeting euphoria of success (YouTube).
March Forth is a feature-length documentary about Reginald Dwayne Betts, who was incarcerated at 16; āafter his release, Betts went on to become an acclaimed poet, author, lawyer, activist and MacArthur Genius Award winnerā. Trailer.
The Professor Who Taught People How To Think (1962). This looks great; shades of Feynman.
Screenshots of various operating systems (1983-2005). See also The Virtual OS Museum (“1,700+ pre-installed operating systems, ready to run”).
The Unsolved Mystery of Lorem Ipsum. Got this from Andy so you know itās good.
Speaking of Andy, he recently posted about Amazonās decision to shutter Mechanical Turk. Kinda shocked it was still going tbh.
2018 PBS special hosted by Michael Keaton: Why Mister Rogers Still Matters Today. Iām gonna make some time to watch this one after my move is done.
Love the premise of this: Mediocre Movies That Changed My Life. Eddie the Eagle!
Visual Instruments: An Exploration of Making Music Out of Images. This is a fun little web toy to play with.
I wanted to do a whole post on the artistās palettes they have in the collection at the Met.
A Living Museum of the Comic. “A living museum of where the comic came from ā its Western and Eastern roots, the women who drew the early funnies, the Europeans who invented its grammar, and the golden age of the American color cartoon. Every artifact is public domain, restored by us, and free to explore.”
From Kurzgesagt: The Impenetrable Barrier Trapping Us in the Solar System. “From the vast empty space to the laws of physics themselves, there are many reasons why the dream of space travel might stay just a dream.ā Alt title: Why Humanity Will Never Leave The Solar System.
The Dingo Fence | The Longest Fence in the World. “In the heart of Australia, the continent has been cut in two by the longest fence in the world in a bid to protect livestock from dingoes. Dingoes have divided the nation for the past 150 years, but with new research coming to light, is it time for this to change?”
“I rebuilt 1901 by Phoenix from scratch to figure out what makes it so good.ā I love this song and will make time to watch this soon.
The Deadly Legacy of HIV Truthers (2015). āEven as the medical community reached a consensus that HIV caused AIDS, a counter-movement was emerging, claiming that HIV didnāt exist, or that the virus existed but was harmless. The symptoms of AIDS, according to some of these people, were actually caused by HIV therapies themselves.”
Recent Howtown: So… did NASA find life on Mars? “Awkwardly, we’ve now collected the most promising extra-terrestrial biosignature in a tube that might spend the rest of eternity sealed inside a dead rover.”
I love these little icon collages and creations from Font Awesome (FA serves the icons I use on KDO). Starry Night! Sudoku! Chef Vader! Business Fett!
More than 200 Ansel Adams photos, mostly of National Parks, that are free to view & download. Via Open Culture, one of the gems of the open web.
The Crazy History of the Shower. I think thatās self-recommending.
Jamelle Bouie saw The Odyssey and shared his thoughts about it on YouTube. From his Letterboxd review:
The Odyssey or, what if you did THE DARK KNIGHT in ancient Greece?
This, to be clear, is not a bad thing. Nolan is covering the same thematic territory he did nearly 20 years ago and more recently with OPPENHEIMER. And it is compelling! A kind of Burkean liberalism that sees the heroism of āgreat menā as a necessary bulwark against disorder and chaos but understands the great men as merely men ā who themselves bear some responsibility for the chaos ā and sees heroism as a terrible burden to bear, more akin to a curse than a crown. There are no parades or honors. In the end you bear the scars and fade away, an exile remembered in legend.
Anyway, I am glad Hollywood keeps giving the man hundreds of millions of dollars to make his didactic and idiosyncratic blockbusters. Keep āem coming!
Yeah, exactly. I feel like most pans of The Odyssey fell into two main buckets: 1) it wasnāt long enough ā pacing off, didnāt include my favorite scene, etc. ā which was entirely due to 3-hour runtime constraints of IMAX projectors, and 2) I wish Christopher Nolan hadnāt made a Christopher Nolan movie.
Debbie Millman again: Is the World Getting Uglier? First brand she mentions is a Tesla Cybertruck, a completely tasteless monstrosity designed by Elon Simpson that I still laugh at every time I see one on the road.
Due to drought in Britain, you can see “gardens that disappeared hundreds of years ago starting to show themselves again through the grass”.
Artisans make punchcards by hand for the looms that weave beautiful banarasi sarees.
Ok, thatās all for now. I didnāt close all of the open tabs thoughā¦maybe I’ll do some more in a few days. How about you? Do you have anything interesting to share with the rest of the class thatās been languishing for a few weeks in a browser tab?
Dolly Parton and Kermit the Frog Sing Everyday People (1987)
On the fifth episode of her late 80s variety show Dolly, Dolly Parton was joined by Kermit the Frog for a lovely rendition of Sly and the Family Stone’s 1968 hit Everyday People.
You can also watch the clip on Instagram and Reddit. The full episode, which features special guest stars Delta Burke, Terence Trent D’Arby, and the Oak Ridge Boys (in addition to Jim Henson as Kermit), can be seen on YouTube (not very good quality unfortunately).
In lieu of flowers, Dolly Partonās family is asking for donations to her Imagination Library, which has distributed over 330 million books to kids.
“Ultimately there are people who want to live, not in a world of reconciliation, but in a world without repercussions.”
“At least 1-in-4 of all the people who have played in the NFL might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy [CTE], according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.”
More Fucked Today than Yesterday. “I keep wanting to write a post showing off my latest graphics along with the latest data and forecasts, because the picture they paint is one of a truly fucked planet.”
Flock banned Benn Jordan from their recent convention (they even emailed his hotel to cancel his room) but, taking a page from law enforcement & Flock itself, he electronically surveilled the whole thing from outside, sniffing Wifi, Bluetooth, mics, etc.
Targetās now-pulled childrenās Halloween costume is so unbelievably racist that it had to, on some level, be purposely done by someone in the decision chain and everyone else was like, āseems ok to me”.
Homing pigeons may sense the Earthās magnetic field using superparamagnetic macrophages in their livers. So metal! š¤
Just quickly reupping this post to remind you things might be slower than usual around here for the next few weeksā¦moving crunch time is here. (Iāll still be posting thoughā¦itās nice to sit down and flow state through some links occasionally.)
Meat proxy (noun): “A person who forwards AI-generated text, code, or other output without reading, understanding, or validating it. The person acts only as a relay between the AI system and the intended recipient.”
Why Are Rivers So Mathematical? āAny stream, from the littlest brook to the mightiest river, has a length thatās proportional to its drainage area raised to the power of 0.6.”
Opinion columnist Karen Attiah won her arbitration against the Washington Post. They are ordered to reinstate her and pay full back pay. The Post fired her almost a year ago for her remarks in the wake of Charlie Kirkās murder.
Jodi Ettenberg on living grief and a serendipitous discovery. “Living grief lacks the tapestry of rituals, language, and social permissions around grieving that a person is offered with death.”
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