A week ago, Big Think released this video featuring philosopher Daniel Dennett talking about the four biggest ideas in philosophy. Today, we learned that he passed away at age 82. The New York Times obituary for Dennett reads: “Espousing his ideas in best sellers, he insisted
Green’s Dictionary of Slang is “is the largest historical dictionary of English slang” that contains “nearly 100,000 entries supported by over 400,000 citations from c. ad 1000 to the present day”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
My daughter is home sick from daycare, and I’m letting her watch my phone unlimitedly. She’s absorbed in it but made an exception to look up and point at the above picture, from an entry in Chadwick Matlin’s newsletter Writ Small, about the book Today , by Julie Morstad. The
From Kevin Kelly on the occasion of his 73rd birthday, 101 bits of additional life advice . “Most arguments are not really about the argument, so most arguments can’t be won by arguing.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
“my therapist just told me that the NYT word games app is becoming a problem for many of her patients, including me … she asked me how long i spent every day doing them and i LIED ” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
The re-release of Interstellar in 70mm IMAX on my birthday? Don’t mind if I do! “Interstellar will fly back into theaters on Sept. 27, 2024. It will be shown in 70mm Imax prints (Nolan’s preferred format), as well as on digital screens.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Anyone who’s tried to untangle a ball of yarn understands that fibers have a habit of knotting in ways that can seem impossible to unwind. These twisting, interlaced qualities ground much of Tali Weinberg ’s fiber-based work as she pulls at the individual threads of our
Black Twitter: A People’s History is a three-part Hulu documentary series directed by Prentice Penny (Insecure) premiering in May. It’s based on Jason Parham’s Wired article of the same name . 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Really fascinating piece by Michael Habib in Scientific American about how amazing feathers are : they come in so many different shapes and sizes and do so many things (insulate, keep dry, flying, noise dampening, etc. etc. etc.) And I loved the opening anecdote: In October
Written in blocky, bright typography, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” wraps the top of the neoclassical facade of the U.S. Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. The opening lines from the Declaration of Independence greet visitors to the groundbreaking exhibition the
A bar chart race visualization of the most popular desktop operating systems from 1985 to the present . Just overwhelming dominance by Microsoft — but an impressive comeback from Apple in the 2010s. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
The hidden potential of bicycles . “Bicycles have been used for so long as children’s toys and exercise equipment that we forget what useful technology they represent. They multiply our bodies’ speed and efficiency many times over.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any
Love is much more than a mere emotion or moral ideal. It imbues the world itself and we should learn to move with its power - by Mark Vernon Read at Aeon
We now live, as one often hears, in an age of few musical superstars, but towering ones. The popular culture of the twenty-twenties can, at times, seem to be contained entirely within the person of Taylor Swift — at least when the media magnet that is Beyoncé takes a breather.
Expertise and firmly held beliefs don’t always go together. Here’s a simple XY grid to help us choose where to sit at whatever table we’re invited to: Plenty of well-trained professionals have earned the right to have strongly held beliefs. These convictions save them time and
“I feel like every single frame of the film is burned into my retina,” said Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett about the movie Stalker (1979). “I hadn’t seen anything like it before and I haven’t really seen anything like it since. Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film in the USSR