kottke.org

Five Quick Links for Thursday Afternoon
Save Your Mask for the Next Disaster
How to Draw Yourself as a Peanuts Character
Four Quick Links for Thursday Noonish
What Else Is There to Say About Climate Change?

Posted: 22 Jul 2021 02:52 PM PDT

The Last Duel, a historical film set in medieval France starring Adam Driver and directed by Ridley Scott? Sure, yeah. [youtube.com]

A fantastic interactive feature from the NY Times on Adam Ondra, the world's best rock climber. [nytimes.com]

"If nothing slows their momentum, Amazon will control nearly 80% of the consumer book market by the end of 2025. Every single book lover should worry." [medium.com]

"Bonding over a 'joking' disdain for your spouse is more than an innocuous social phenomenon – it's become a bandaid for the broad simmering resentment in so many American marriages." [jessica.substack.com]

Great interview with Jane Goodall, who is still going full-tilt at 87. "I don't know what the meaning of life is. The meaning of my life is to give people hope because without hope you give up." [nytimes.com]

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Save Your Mask for the Next Disaster

Posted: 22 Jul 2021 12:51 PM PDT

In what will be an increasingly common occurrence in the years to come, smoke from fires in the western United States and Canada covered a large part of the US over the past few days. The smoke drifted thousands of miles to the eastern seaboard and turned the skies hazy, the Sun orange, and the air dangerous for some people to breathe. But there’s good news: your Covid mask works for air pollution too!

Dr. Commane said people should avoid going outdoors in high-pollution conditions, and especially avoid strenuous exercise. She also suggested that wearing filtered masks can provide protection for those who can’t avoid the outdoors.

“A lot of the masks people have been wearing for Covid are designed to capture PM2.5,” she said, referring to N95-style masks. “That’s the right size to be very useful for air quality.”

It’s always nice when your apocalyptic dystopias match up so nicely.

Tags: Covid-19 global warming

How to Draw Yourself as a Peanuts Character

Posted: 22 Jul 2021 10:42 AM PDT

In this video, The Snoopy Show storyboard artist Krista Porter and Apple’s Anthony Jackson show us how to draw yourself as a Peanuts character. Once you get past all of the Apple synergy stuff (Pages! Pencil! Apple TV+!), this is actually pretty neat and you can obviously do it with any device/app or even pencil & paper. They’ve even included a PDF of drawing references to make it easier.

different faces drawn for Peanuts comic strip characters

See also Watch Charles Schulz Draw Charlie Brown — it takes him about 35 seconds. (via print)

Tags: Anthony Jackson art how to Krista Porter Peanuts video

Four Quick Links for Thursday Noonish

Posted: 22 Jul 2021 09:52 AM PDT

Low Pay, No Benefits, Rude Customers: Restaurant Workers Quit At Record Rate. "It was almost like there was this unplanned, unorganized general strike." [npr.org]

Anti-vax groups have invented their own alternate vocabulary to avoid being kicked off Facebook for misinformation -- e.g. "dancing" = "getting vaccinated", "Pizza King" for "Pfizer", "oxygen thief" for "mask". [twitter.com]

Pornhub has created guides to "Classic Nudes" for several museums. "I had thought I might feel a little pervy visiting The Met just for nudes; instead it made the museum's collection come alive in ways I'd forgotten it could." [inputmag.com]

The Is This Prime? game. I got tripped up by 87 because I forgot my divisibility rules (if the sum of the digits is divisible by 3, the number is also.) [isthisprime.com]

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What Else Is There to Say About Climate Change?

Posted: 22 Jul 2021 08:33 AM PDT

Sarah Miller, author of this 2019 article on Miami real estate & rising oceans, recently wrote this resonant piece, All The Right Words On Climate Have Already Been Said.

I told her I didn’t have anything to say about climate change anymore, other than that I was not doing well, that I was miserable. “I am so unhappy right now.” I said those words. So unhappy. Fire season was not only already here, I said, but it was going to go on for at least four more months, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I didn’t know how I would stand the anxiety. I told her I felt like all I did every day was try to act normal while watching the world end, watching the lake recede from the shore, and the river film over, under the sun, an enormous and steady weight.

There’s only one thing I have to say about climate change, I said, and that’s that I want it to rain, a lot, but it’s not going to rain a lot, and since that’s the only thing I have to say and it’s not going to happen, I don’t have anything to say.

Miller continued:

Also, for what? Let’s give the article (the one she was starting to maybe think about asking me to write that I was wondering if I could write) the absolute biggest benefit of the doubt and imagine that people read it and said, “Wow, this is exactly how I feel, thanks for putting it into words.”

What then? What would happen then? Would people be “more aware” about climate change? It’s 109 degrees in Portland right now. It’s been over 130 degrees in Baghdad several times. What kind of awareness quotient are we looking for? What more about climate change does anyone need to know? What else is there to say?

This is where I am on the climate emergency most days now (and nearly there on the pandemic). Really, what the fuck else is there to say?

Tags: global warming journalism Sarah Miller