January 29
Dear Trans Kids, You Don't Need the Government's Permission to Exist
Punk's still twitching
Stalwart punk zine Maximumrocknroll has released its annual top ten lists for 2024: part 1, part 2, and part 3. [more inside]
OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From
"but then I turned out to be that idiot"
If you live in the New Orleans metro area and are missing your pants, Admiral Galacticat may be to blame.
the shoal moves like a single living thing
Murmurations, a three-minute video of digitally-made long exposures by Xavi Bou, 2019. [via, previously]
Bookshop.org now sells ebooks
Bookshop is joining the ebook market, taking on Amazon. It's launched an app for Android and iOS. According to the Verge, Bookshop has signed deals with the big 5 publishers, and "most indie" publishers, allowing them to launch with about a million titles. Support for self-publishing, and possibly an ereader further down the line.
Who goes MAGA?
You may have read Dorothy Thompson's breathtakingly insightful 1941 Harper's article Who Goes Nazi?. Talla Lavin has updated it for our modern era in Who Goes MAGA?. You'll recognize your friends, family and neighbours, and maybe even yourself (but hopefully not in that way).
"We need to 'pull out' of....WHO?"
(Some of) Trump's Wildest Executive Orders Explained [slyt] Daily Show correspondent, comedian, and wearer of grey hoodies Josh Johnson does a 40 minute set with political humor.
John Coltrane's "Ascension"
"But what I would suggest is that John Coltrane never made rawer, realer, rip-your-face-off-and-pull-out-who-you-really-are art than his infamous Ascension date from June 28, 1965. In its tonal ferocity, it’s merciless and yet, paradoxically, laden with that self-same quality that is the balm for all human suffering: mercy sprung from the well of compassion, understanding, and intimate communal byplay." - Colin Fleming, Jazz Times [more inside]
The Audiobook Wow Factor
"Audiobooks, indeed, are so much about personal connection—with the writer, their characters, what happens to them. Who tells that story to you is an intimate experience that can enhance and elevate—or contaminate and damage." [more inside]
Reducing female mosquito population by sex poisoning
Toxic male technique could reduce female mosquito population by poisoning them during sex. A new study by Macquarie University researchers has suggested that the toxic male technique could be used to address the prevalence of mosquito-borne illness.
The scientists, which genetically modified fruit flies to produce venomous sperm, found that this technique reduce female fruit flies by more than half.
Researchers say this approach could be used to reduce mosquito species linked with diseases like dengue fever and zika virus. [more inside]
Domestic colonialism
Between the late 1950s and the middle of the 1960s, more and more Black Americans began envisioning the relationship between decolonization and the Black freedom struggle in a new way. Before then, the relationship was primarily seen as one of inspiration. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in these terms in a sermon delivered after his return from the independence ceremonies in Ghana in 1957. The anticolonial movement there, in his estimation, served as an example from which Black Americans might draw strategic lessons and philosophical reinforcement in their parallel, but conceptually distinct, struggle for freedom. By the middle of the 1960s, however, an increasing number of Black intellectuals—including, if only on occasion, King himself—began to describe American racism as a kind of colonialism. from The Lexicon of Empire [Boston Review]
January 28
"I left to stay true to my byline"
Paul Krugman on leaving the New York Times: "One more thing: I faced attempts from others to dictate what I could (and could not) write about, usually in the form, “You’ve already written about that,” as if it never takes more than one column to effectively cover a subject. If that had been the rule during my earlier tenure, I never would have been able to press the case for Obamacare, or against Social Security privatization, and—most alarmingly—against the Iraq invasion. Moreover, all Times opinion writers were banned from engaging in any kind of media criticism. Hardly the kind of rule that would allow an opinion writer to state, “we are being lied into war.” I felt that my byline was being used to create a storyline that was no longer mine. So I left. On a somewhat different issue, it became clear to me that the management I was dealing with didn’t understand the difference between having an opinion and having an informed, factually sourced opinion."
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
"In The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, a heart-wrenching documentary, co-directors Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri puncture the uneasy vein of child star building, explaining how often the practice ensnares the vulnerable. They do so by telling the story of once Swedish teen idol Andrésen, who at the age of fifteen was cast as Tadzio in Italian director Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel Death in Venice. The part would bring the Swedish actor fame, adulation, and adoring fans only for the ensuing noise of stardom to rupture his life, permanently." - Robert Daniels
Rise up against your electronic pickleball oppressors
bradsucks, who haunts this cavernous place on occasion, has a new music video out called Learning to Lie that is VERY entertaining. And educational too! I had no idea that pickleball required one of the players to be a Kaiju Big Battel-style cardboard robot!
Tile, Baby, Tile
Why do we need a “desktop” at all? Our digital spaces are hyper-connected, non-linear, infinitely malleable—yet we continue to constrain them within the rigid, physical-world boundaries established four decades ago. Our computers are capable of generating entire worlds, processing billions of calculations per second, constantly connected to global networks—and yet we interact with them as if they were elaborate digital paper-pushing machines. The skeuomorphic interface made sense in the 70s when computers were alien technologies that needed familiar metaphors to feel approachable. But in 2025, it’s become a cognitive straightjacket, limiting how we conceptualize and interact with information. from The Lost Futures of Computing: How We Got Boxed Into the Desktop Metaphor
Three Men In A Boat MOVIE
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome is a Metafilter favorite. You may not know there is a 1975 TV movie adapted by Tom Stoppard(!) featuring Michael Palin(!), Tim Curry(!), and Stephen Moore.
Wake-up call at shoreline.
Billionaire real-estate-investor-cum-military-supplier experiences a rude awakening when activists on Moloka'i thwart shore access for his superyacht. Superyachts like Liva O deploy heavy anchors and long chains that drag along the ocean floor, often crushing coral reefs that have taken centuries to form. They also release wastewater, fuel residues, and chemicals into the water, polluting marine ecosystems.
"The blast radius of this terrible decision is virtually limitless."
Legal battle looms (AP, NYT) after Trump freezes federal grant funding (Reuters, WaPo). Originally reported by Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket), Steve Vladeck offers an explainer (One First) on the 1974 Impoundment Control Act and related constitutional issues. The freeze has already been challenged in a lawsuit (Reuters). [more inside]
indecencies of hedgehogs seen through a thermal camera
Software engineer & Soldier Victor Shepelev has been translating poetry by his fellow Ukrainian soldiers: Seven Poems a week.
Making an SNES Game the Way Nintendo Intended
Kiss Me, Petruchio
A documentary about the 1978 stage production of The Taming of the Shrew by the New York City Shakespeare company at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. Includes scenes from the production, interviews with Meryl Streep (Kate) and Raul Julia (Petruchio) as well as an introduction by producer Joseph Papp and audience commentary.
A Better World
A Better World - Alternate History Simulation. Choose events to modify in the timeline of history, and see how the timeline changes.
I get offered a lot of really unwholesome, unsavory, dangerous people
I was a young actor, talking to an older actor. I’m not going to tell you who. As I was leaving the room, he said, “Chris! Be careful.” I walked out the door, and I don’t think a day has gone by that I don’t think about that. “Be careful.” Every day, I think that. And I don’t know what he meant. from Christopher Walken Has Never Owned a Cellphone [WSJ; ungated] [more inside]
January 27
Narwhal: a music ensemble
There’s a rare magic in Narwhal’s brass and vocal arrangements of "Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires" and "Weird Fishes", a moment where a group of talented musicians lock in and "catch lightning in a bottle."
Opera written about hate crime
In 1972, a gay hate crime was allegedly committed by police in Adelaide (Australia). Now it's a work of opera. Operatic works, particularly traditionally religious oratorios, rarely depict queer characters. But this new Australian work brings reverence to the harrowing true story of a historical gay hate crime.
Like a Rock
The original Pebble smartwatch launched in 2013 on the back of a last-ditch Kickstarter that ended up raising over $10 million, the largest ever at the time. Though a bit clunky-looking, its crisp e-paper display, week-long battery life, and delightfully hackable OS captured the hearts of tech geeks everywhere, inspiring a vibrant ecosystem of watchface creators and app builders. Another crowdfunding round in 2015 doubled their resources, leading to new models like the versatile Time, the businesslike Steel, and the elegant Round. As powerful competitors like Apple and Samsung entered the scene, though, Pebble struggled with budget crunches and manufacturing challenges, and the company's assets were eventually sold off to rival Fitbit. Undaunted, a dedicated community of open-source developers kept the faith over the years, organizing the Rebble Alliance project to maintain support for the watch's app store, firmware, and cloud services. That Pebbler passion has been finally rewarded, as former CEO Eric Migicovsky has announced the surprise return of Pebble watches, including a Rebble-sponsored hackathon (and foundation) made possible by Fitbit owner Google open-sourcing the full Pebble OS (now available on Github).
The biggest baguette producer in France.
I think it's the other way around; I think I look like you.
Pioneer is short film by David Lowery starring Will Oldham and Myles Brooks. It investigates fatherhood, the long history of US racial violence, and reasons we tell children stories, and perhaps tell them to ourselves. SLYT. [more inside]
A dimension not only of sight and sound but of flippers
“We had a nickname for Twilight Zone," Pat Lawlor said, "and it was 'In Excess Pinball'...we had just gotten done setting the record with Addams Family*, and Williams executives were willing to let us do anything, and we did, which was a big mistake." While he conceded that "extreme pinball players" would enjoy the game, he added that "from a commercial standpoint, we were out of control... nobody would be allowed to do something that complicated again; nor should they be." [more inside]
And the Oscar goes to FanFare
THIS WEEK IN FANFARE... FIRST OFF (INSIDE): a list of 2025 Oscar nominated films with posts. NEW MOVIES: Universal tries rebooting the Wolf Man with director Leigh Whannell; Steven Soderbergh offers a new take on the haunted house in Presence; when a boyfriend steals the rent money, two friends go on an odyssey to stave off eviction in One of Them Days; Michelle returns as Captain Georgiou in Star Trek spinoff Star Trek: Section 31; a physicist uses a time loop and the help of a bright student to try to stop the literal black hole growing in her chest Omni Loop. AND IN TV: Canadian comedy North of North finds a young Inuk mother struggling to reinvent herself; new episodes of Abbott Elementary, Severance, The Pitt, and wrestling times two. [more inside]
Man Builds 7-Cylinder Engine in 500 Hours
"In a world dominated by automation and mass production, Rocha KRG’s handcrafted 7-cylinder radial engine stands as a thrilling victory for the raw power of human ingenuity." [more inside]
"Say, for the sake of argument...."
The South Bank of the Rubicon is the latest episode of The Alt-Right Playbook by Innuendo Studios previously [more inside]
the announcer blaring his bull / and clown doctrine so loud it carries
The approach to materiality of such images holds us back from premature abstract cognition, imprisoning us, albeit briefly, in the realm of the senses. The inherent brilliance of lyric poetry is its ability, with its best practitioners, to restrain our collective mania for codifying and explaining what each poem is ‘really about.’ In some ways, it seems implausible that lyric ever became about what it’s supposedly “really about.” from The Buster’s Hand: Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s “Rodeo” [Merion West]
"Based on photos from the moon, fed through a custom music generator"
Poco Apollo is a 2019 album by Icelandic composer Halldór Eldjárn, which started out as a generative music program he made that would turn photographs from the Project Apollo Archive into bits of score, which he then curated into a 25 minute cohesive piece which were performed by him and several musicians. He explained the process more fully in a lecture. You can hear and see a number of live performances on his website, including one of the whole piece.
OREOBOROS
"Never Shall We Know Where The Legs Do Meet"
In The Town Show, funny people Mark Chavez and Ryan Beil (Let's Make A..., Sunday Service Improv) interview guests about their hometowns, get silly, and build their own imaginary town, it's citizens, landmarks, and history. [more inside]
"everyone has a personal stake.... Some people just don’t know it yet."
Two bittersweet scifi stories where women navigate genetics, relationships, and how hard it is to make a living. The New Mother is a 2015 novella by Eugene Fischer (caution for sexual assault, medical horror, and harm to children and pregnant people): Without her prescription bottles, all she had left were words. Pliant letters on the page. The story was what mattered. (Author's notes, reviews, and awards.) "The Donor" is a 2024 short story by Bernie Jean Schiebeling (audio, author's moodboard): There was no way that Cleo’s eyes couldn’t mean a new, better, lovelier life. A lovelier life for both of them. [more inside]
The Great Social Media Disapora
"[The] movement away from centralized trust and safety teams enforcing universal rules may sound like a fix for social media’s woes. Fewer violent clashes between culture warriors. Fewer histrionic accusations of “censorship.” The players becoming the referees. Isn’t that ideal? But new governance models come with new complexities, and it’s crucial to grapple with what’s on the horizon.What happens when sprawling online communities fracture into politically homogenous, self-governing communities?
New Zealand to loosen visa rules for digital nomads
New Zealand to loosen visa rules for digital nomads.
The digital nomads include visitors such as IT specialists, as long as they are not receiving any income from NZ sources.
Free To Be... It's This Week's Free Thread!
Who would you be, if you could be anyone? Have you become who you really are? Is being free all about self-actualization? Or is it about your civil liberties*? Maybe it's a photon and electron thing? Be free... and tell us what's up! [more inside]
It starts off really strong
2025 seems to be the year of Agents™️, even though no one really agrees on what they really are. With all the hype around agents, it’s hard to truly know what these things can actually do or not. This is where ‘The Password Game’ comes in. from I had different agents play ‘The Password Game’ - they didn’t do so well [more inside]
Our Cyber/Solar-Punk Future
The Distortion Is Inherent in the Signal - "Social media is a machine for 'creat[ing] publics with malformed collective understandings'... we know that the people who use social media are not representative of the population-at-large." [link-heavy FPP! ;] [more inside]
January 26
For Musk and Thiel, Past is Prologue
In an article that deserves to go viral, the Guardian's former Johannesburg correspondent Chris McGreal traces how Musk and Thiel's South African and South West African boyhoods continue to influence Musk and Thiel's worldviews. [more inside]
IBM Plex
"As the new typeface for our diverse and global brand, IBM Plex® is just as important as our name or our logo. It fine-tunes the tone of our words. It represents who we are and what we believe — as a company and as designers. Every decision was made with purpose; every detail has a reason for being." (previously) [more inside]
Pingos
"pingo, dome-shaped hill formed in a permafrost area when the pressure of freezing groundwater pushes up a layer of frozen ground."
Pingo gives "clues about Earth’s changing climate"
Ocean Pingos
Exploding Pingos
Pingos and outer space
Ghost Pingos
Pingo gives "clues about Earth’s changing climate"
Ocean Pingos
Exploding Pingos
Pingos and outer space
Ghost Pingos
Oyster blood could hold key to fighting drug-resistant superbugs
Australian oysters’ blood could hold key to fighting drug-resistant superbugs, researchers find. Researchers find a protein in the hemolymph (analogous to blood) of Australian oysters which has antimicrobial properties, including against biofilms of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a common cause of pneumonia. The oysters likely evolved the peptide to help prevent infection by similar microbes, and the discovery could help down the road in the development of antibiotics and antiseptics useful to humans.
Porn Bombing: A New Tactic to Force Your Critics Off Youtube
Unless you roam the "shady underbelly" of the Internet looking for information on "get rich quick" schemes, you probably have never heard of Danny de Hek, also known as "The Crypto Ponzi Scheme Avenger" on Youtube, Facebook, and other social channels.
[more inside]
Return of the Tabs
Spending several months out in the woods and small towns of Eastern America, much of it alone, has scrambled my life in ways I’m just beginning to notice, let alone figure out how to live with. I left at the end of May unsure if I would come back and resume writing Tabs, and here we are in January, halfway through a new Tabs post, and I’m still unsure. from New Year, New You, New Tabs [more inside]
"Step right up and claim your fortune"
Two short, suspenseful horror/fantasy stories about people who think they can outwit or outlast their predators. "The Devil's Wheel" by creepyclothdoll (found via roach-works): "You’re smarter than he thinks you are– a devil deal always has a catch, and you’re determined to catch him before he catches you." An untitled story by inkskinned a.k.a. Rowan Perez: "it’s quiet here, i love the location, and even if it’s rundown, i can make it work...." (Per author's commentary in the tags at the end of the story: "posts that make you google the scientific name of pitcher plants".)