jkottke

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“Funny story: My first day here, I lit myself on fire.” Inside the last company making neon signs in the Bay Area.

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Flush is an app for finding public bathrooms. “Search through over 200,000 public loos all around the world!” Available for iOS and Android. Seems indispensable for parents of young kids.

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Everything you know about some chocolate is wrong — like Baker’s Chocolate wasn’t created for bakers.

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A world map of where you don’t need a permit to buy a gun. This belongs to a class of maps in which the US is (inexplicably, infuriatingly) highlighted and almost everywhere else isn’t.

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Jason: HEY, AARON, WHAT IF YOU MADE McRIB SAUCE ICE CREAM AT YOUR ICE CREAM SHOP?

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Missed the shuttle. “It was night but the tarmac was illuminated with spotlights and lights from vehicles and planes. These giant jets were taking off real close on either side of me. I’ve never seen a plane that big up close at lift off.”

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These infographics clearly show the world-changing, lifesaving impact of vaccines on the prevalence of diseases like measles, smallpox, polio, and pertussis. Vaccines are in the running for the greatest human invention ever.

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A great idea for a list: The 25 Most Important Recipes of the Past 100 Years. Includes caesar salad, the last word cocktail, Marcella Hazen’s tomato sauce, Julia Child’s beef bourg, no-knead bread, and Kenji’s reverse-sear steak. What’s missing?

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Augusta Britt, secret teenaged muse of a middle-aged Cormac McCarthy, sounds like a fascinating person but this profile of her in Vanity Fair does not do her justice.

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The winners of the National Book Awards were announced last night — Percival Everett’s fantastic James deservedly took the prize for fiction. Full list of the winners here.

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Cheese has been called the most stolen food in the world, so let’s read about some cheese crime, shall we?

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“Don’t worry, I’ve got twin beds and honestly, I don’t find you particularly attractive,” Sonny said to Cher when she was moving in.

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A report from the European championship of tram drivers. This was one of the tests: “Drivers had to come to a stop so gently that water did not slosh out of a bowl that was filled to the brim.”

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Photos by Noah Kalina of the oldest forest in the world (a 385-million-year-old forest in Cairo, New York) and the paleobotanist who discovered it. “Holy cats! These were roots and that’s where a tree stood 385 million years ago.”

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Earth’s First Interstellar Transmission Is 50 Years Old. On Nov 16, 1974, a binary message was sent to stars 25,000 light years away. When decoded, it’ll form a series of images showing what humans look like, the elements in our DNA, and so on.

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“Dental care supplier Henry Schein advanced in Monday trading as investors bet that RFK, Jr., Trump’s pick for HHS secretary, could recommend removing fluoride from the U.S. water system, a move that would lead to a boom in dental visits.”

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Today’s work music: Lane 8’s Fall 2024 Mixtape, 3 hours and 15 minutes of 🔥🔥,