Nelson's Linkblog

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Project 2025 Tracker

Simple line item tracking of the agenda to destroy US government

2025-02-19 uspol • politics • trump • project2025 • via:kottke

Thai Boys Love shows

TV craze for LGBT entertainment from Asia

2025-02-18 tv • gay • lgbt • vietnam • thailand • television

Documentary about 1961 gay sex with film from a police entrapment operation

2025-02-18 movies • films • gay • lgbt • ohio • mansfield • tearoom • police • civilrights

NSFW: Keith Haring

Joyful, sexy gay art at the LGBT center in New York

2025-02-16 art • nsfw • erotica • keithharing • streetart • lgbt • gay • newyork

Nevada County water shortage

Second year in a row that PG&E incompetence means a bunch of people in California won't have enough water

2025-02-16 pge • corruption • nevadacounty • water • infrastructure

Wrong about GPUs

Cloud hosting provider Fly discovers their customers don't want to lease GPUs

2025-02-15 cloud • computing • gpu • ai • llm • flyio • fly • hosting

Marcin Wichary's loveletter to a workmanlike font

2025-02-14 fonts • design • engraving • singlestroke • gorton • typography

Growing grassroots protest movement against Trump's destruction of our government. Next big protests are Monday Feb 17

2025-02-14 protest • 50501 • trump • musk • politics • uspol

German slang for someone who talks nonsense

2025-02-13 german • language • slang • conspiracy • funny

Little Sisyphus

Remarkable physics platformer for NES, built with NESfab

2025-02-13 games • nes • nintendo • retro • platformer • physics • nesfab

Online tech press continues to do remarkable work figuring out who's actually running the US government

2025-02-13 doge • politics • trump • corruption • coup • journalism

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font

A well designed font for readability gets major update

2025-02-12 fonts • opendyslexic • accessibility • typography • blind • vision

Javascript search engine for small document stores

2025-02-09 search • web • development • javascript

Heat pumps in US

Details on finding a good installer and why it's hard

2025-02-09 hvac • electrify • heatpump • home • heating • globalwarming • consumer

Kottke on #uspol

Thoughtful comments from an O.G. blogger about covering the current awful political situation in the US

2025-02-07 kottke • politics • uspol • outrage • linkblog • blogs • mentalhealth

Pearblossom Hwy., 11

David Hockney collage from 1986

2025-02-07 hockney • art • collage • polaroid • socal • california • desert

David Hockney's A Rake's Progress

Gay artist in the 60s does a parody of a famous 18th century moral work

2025-02-07 art • hockney • davidhockney • hogarth • moral • drawing

Special government employees

Insider explains the SGE role in the US government, a way for outsiders to come in as a short term consultant. Trump is abusing this position now to attack the bureaucracy.

2025-02-06 uspol • politics • musk • trump • sge • eeob • consultant • government

Alley Cat (video game)

1983 videogame that's a predecessor to Stray and Little Kitty Big City

2025-02-05 games • atari • cats • alleycat • stray

gcode2dplotterart

A Python framework for making plotter art. Also 3d printers.

2025-02-05 art • python • coding • axidraw • 3dprinter • plotterart

How Trump's destruction of foreign spending has immediately threatened global security with a specific example of an IS prison / home base

2025-02-04 trump • politics • uspol • syria • is • isis • terrorism

Musk's government sabotage

Major overview article from NYTimes about the chaos Musk is wrecking inside the federal government

2025-02-04 elonmusk • politics • trump • doge • chaos • eeob • treasury • usaid • uspol

USB 3 vs 2.4GHz

USB 3.0 ports emit interference at 2.4GHz, the frequency popular with wifi, controller dongles, etc

2025-02-03 tech • usb • radio • 8bitdo • interference • usb3 • wireless

Some information on the people who have illegal access to US government systems right now

2025-02-02 musk • elonmusk • politics • doge • opm • gsa • usaid • uspol

Until Trump took over the CDC used to have a webpage about life saving medication

2025-01-31 prep • aids • hiv • gay • lgbt • trump • uspol • politics

Hexaflexamexagon

Old but delicious and hilarious post about mixing geometry, origami, and burritos

2025-01-30 funny • food • mexican • via:metafilter • hexaflexagon • flexagon

$50M condoms to Gaza?

A fact-check on one of the stupid Trump administration lies. It's not $50m for condoms. And they're being sent to Mozambique, not the Palestinian Territory

2025-01-30 trump • politics • lies • condoms • gaza • geoegraphy • stupid

Embeddable database, like sqlite, but columnar so better for certain kinds of repetitive data

2025-01-30 database • sqlite • datastore • db • parquet • timeseries

Pableaux Johnson

Obituary for a beloved New Orleans figure

2025-01-30 obit • obituary • neworleans • pableaux • food • cooking

Chinese AI overview

Details of the impressive development and in particular their open source bent

2025-01-30 china • ai • computerscience • llms • deepseek • baidu

Hitler's siezing of power

Meticulously documented details of how Hitler took control of the German government largely through governmental means, using German law

2025-01-28 hitler • politics • history • germany • nazis

UK OSA vs. woof.group

The UK's new anti-pornography law seems impractical to implement. My friend who runs a sane Mastodon server for LGBT kink grapples with compliance

2025-01-28 osa • kink • bdsm • lgbt • uk • moderation • law • pornography • porn

NEW #startsmall tracker

Jack Dorsey's spreadsheet documenting his charitable donation program. $723M so far in direct gifts. Altruism that is actually effective.

2025-01-27 charity • donation • twitter • jackdorsey • jack

Musk's game cheating

World's richest man plays other people to play videogames for him, claims credit

2025-01-26 games • sad • elonmusk • politics • poe2 • diablo4 • boosting

ChatGPT system prompt

Trying to control a djinn by wording your requests very carefully

2025-01-26 ai • chatgpt • prompt • promptengineering • jailbreak • llm

Musk speaks to AfD

South African / American dude says it's time for Germany to "move beyond" its history. Nazi salute on Tuesday, neo-Nazi talking points on Saturday.

2025-01-26 elonmusk • politics • germany • shame • holocaust • nazi

The Modem World

"A prehistory of social media", documenting pre-Internet online communication

2025-01-24 bbs • socialmedia • history • fidonet • 1980s

Stochastic parrot

A metaphorical term of art to describe LLM AIs. Origins in a Google AI ethics paper.

2025-01-24 llm • ai • slang • chineseroom • searlsroom

US homeowners insurance

Why insurance is so expensive in the US. Climate change is a big part of it.

2025-01-24 realestate • insurance • homeowner • globalwarming

Computer debugging tool: like wireshark, but for system calls instead of network packets

2025-01-22 via:hackernews • wireshark • debugging • strace • syscall • linux • devops

Reddit vs Xitter

Grassroots effort to stop linking to the Nazi-aligned social media company

2025-01-22 elonmusk • twitter • fascism • nazi • reddit • socialmedia

A particularly valuable typosquatting domain was available, Mastercard and others were vulnerable

2025-01-22 badtech • security • dns • akamai • mastercard • via:hackernews • typosquatting

Silk Road pardon

Trump pardoned the guy who founded a black market for assassinations and heroin.

2025-01-22 trump • politics • silkroad • ulbricht • pardon

A classic Usenet archive with a Web interface

2025-01-22 history • socialmedia • usenet • via:reddit

Nevada County protests

Local reporting on our small town protests against the Trump inauguration

2025-01-21 politics • uspol • protest • nevadacounty • california • grassvalley

Discussion from an insider formerly at a government service agency about what the new Trump/Musk change at the US Digital Service might mean

2025-01-21 uspol • politics • trump • usds • doge • amac

Project Mini Rack

Rackmount computers made cute! Half-width 10" racks.

2025-01-19 homelab • computers • hardware • racks • minirack

Bambu Connect hacked

3d printer company enshittifies, hackers immediately reverse engineer the DRM

2025-01-19 3dprinting • hacking • drm • bambulabs • bambu

Netscape founding dirt

1994 complications involving MCOM, University of Illinois, and Mosaic code that may have ended up in Netscape

2025-01-19 history • netscape • mozilla • uiuc • ncsa • legal • pmarca

Warming visualization

Nice use of stacked graphs to visualize climate change

2025-01-19 visualization • climatechange • globalwarming • joydivision

r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT

A whole subreddit of shitposts on the theme that Portugal is more like Eastern Europe

2025-01-19 funny • portugal • europe • stereotypes • culture

Banū Mūsā organ

9th century automaton may have had the first stored program for a machine, a cylinder triggering notes on a flute

2025-01-19 music • history • islam • banumusa • programming • jacquard • punchcard • computing

isd for systemd

An interactive text UI for systemd for Linux

2025-01-18 linux • systemd • tui • via:hackernews • sysadmin • ops

Appreciation of the trans character on the 1990s Twin Peaks. I didn't love the character myself but this essay makes some good points.

2025-01-18 gay • lgbt • trans • transgender • twinpeaks • davidlynch • davidduchovny

Harris Wofford's second love

2016 essay about a 90 year old man marrying a man of age 40, after a lifetime of a loving relationship with his wife

2025-01-18 bisexuality • gay • lgbt • agegap • love • relationship

Facebook ad privacy

Practical instructions for protecting yourself from Meta surveillance

2025-01-18 ads • facebook • meta • privacy • surveillance • tracking

Trump vs immigrants

Detailed reporting on what Trump will be able to do when attacking immigrants

2025-01-18 uspol • politics • immigration • trump • civilrights

2024 election results

Very detailed polling returns, albeit partial

2025-01-17 elections • uspol • voting • politics • trump • 2024

The Straight Story

A deeper critical reading of David Lynch's film that on the surface looks like a sweet and sentimental story

2025-01-17 film • movies • lynch • criticism • straightstory

Cool 3d printer company does a heel turn, locks customers out from using third party software with the devices they own

2025-01-17 bambu • lockdown • enshittification • 3dprinters • freedom

Artwork, Arabic calligraphy. Photo doesn't do it justice, it's a subtle changing scrim of beads that reveals Kufic writing as you move around it

2025-01-16 calligraphy • art • arabic • kufic • amighi • houston • mfah

Blek le Rat / Houston

Paris street artist has an enormous stencil at a hotel in Houston

2025-01-15 houston • bleklerat • paris • stencil • art • streetart

Houston West African restaurant, food is real good

2025-01-15 food • dining • nigeria • naija • africa • westafrica • houston • restaurant

Gainfully Unretired

Justin Watt on his post-software-engineer career as a handyman building things for people

2025-01-15 retirement • life • working • purpose • handyman

A thoughtful essay on the problematic use of the term "Cargo cult" in the tech community

2025-01-14 cargocult • culture • tech • language

Musk's fake gaming

Elon buys accounts someone else spent the hours developing, doesn't know how to play them

2025-01-10 elonmusk • gaming • politics • funny

Location spying

Hack of a sleazy data broker reveals how ad networks and mobile apps track and resell your location data

2025-01-10 privacy • gravy • location • tracking • surveillance

Color calibration target

Spot in China for calibrating satellite and airplane cameras. Includes color

2025-01-09 calibration • satellite • space • remotesensing • imagery • china

Music, a sort of metal / baroque mashup with heavy videogame influences

2025-01-09 music • metal • baroque • games • chiptunes

San Francisco stree artists, pasteups featuring a Shiba Inu andlots of mushrooms

2025-01-08 sanfrancisco • streetart • mushroom

A list of little-known feeds for various web products

2025-01-08 rss • syndication • feeds • blogs

Data Portability Map

Articles about transferring data from a service to another service, like Wordpress to Squarespace or getting out of Facebook

2025-01-07 dataportability • data • download • socialmedia • dataliberation

Artisanal information collection in Brooklyn, NY

2025-01-07 funny • parody • krazam • smalldata • data • documentary

Lobste.rs vs UK OSA

Community forums may not be able to comply with the UK's new Online Safety Act

2025-01-07 uk • politics • forum • community • socialmedia • osa • ofcom

Matt Haughey wrote a book about touring all 14 women's soccer stadiums

2025-01-06 nwsl • soccer • women • usa • travel • mathowie

Naoshima Island

An island in Japan with a huge amount of contemporary art

2025-01-05 japan • art • travel

DOGE as procurement capture

Analyzing the Musk/Trump grift

2025-01-05 musk • trump • corruption • politics • doge • procurement

Kehinde Ekundayo

Art history graduate student with an interesting perspective on contemporary art from refugees

2025-01-05 art • arthistory • stanford • refugee • global

Twitter blocks Amber Alerts

Emergency organizations still using Twitter as a messaging medium even though it's completely inappropriate for the use now

2025-01-04 twitter • emergency • socialmedia • elonmusk • chp

Timescape cosmology

Alternate explanation for the universe's acceleration of expansion. Not dark matter or energy but rather variable time

2025-01-03 cosmology • science • astronomy • darkmatter • timescape

An open source alternative to Slack and Discord

2025-01-02 socialmedia • slack • discord • chat • collaboration

Embroidery Journaling

Lovely craft to remember one's year

2025-01-02 journaling • embroidery • fabric • arts • via:kottke • art • crafting

In this house...

Yeats The Second Coming made into the form of a smarmy affirmation lawn sign

2025-01-02 funny • parody • yeats • poetry • inthishouse • 2025

Yearly stats on growth of the Internet

2025-01-02 ipv4 • ipv6 • internet • bgp • routing • networking

An odd New Year's tradition, of a sort

2025-01-01 newyears • food • Glücksschwein • pig • lemon • crafts • alcoa

A map of protests planned for Jan 18

2024-12-31 protest • trump • politics • peoplesmarch • womensmarch • inauguration

Yanyuwa language

Unusual Australian language: 16 noun classes, an unusual consonant inventory, very few vowels, and separate dialects for men and women

2024-12-30 language • linguistics • australia • aborigine • yanyuwa • via:languagehat

19th century Ugandan leader was queer. Interesting bio

2024-12-30 lgbt • history • uganda • africa • bisexual

Reed meat smoke

College buddies got serious about smoking meat for events

2024-12-29 meatsmoke • bbq • reed • rennfayre • college • smoking • cooking

Visualizations of the moon's motions around earth

2024-12-29 visualization • via:kottke • space • moon • lunar • eclipse

Reddit male harassment

Interesting discussion of girls and womens' experiences on a subreddit for girl gamers, how gross men slide into their DMs

2024-12-27 sexism • harassment • reddit • girlgamers • gaming

Hon. Frank Murphy

Supreme Court Justice in early 20th century was almost certainly gay, also a defender of civil rights

2024-12-27 politics • history • lgbt • gay • supremecourt • civilrights

Measuring Starlink users

Clever IPv6 survey finds 3M+ Starlink users

2024-12-27 ipv6 • starlink • survey • isp • internet

Helen Corbitt Texas Caviar

The original recipe for the blackeyed pea salad. Honestly sounds boring, but it's a starting point

2024-12-23 food • texas • history • corbitt • blackeyedpeas • southern

SimonW's linkblog

Details on process and tech for one of the most active current linkblogs

2024-12-22 blogs • linkblogs • socialmedia • internet • sharing

License Plate Game

A new word game from a friend

2024-12-21 games • words • wordle • scrabble • dictionary

The Loves of my Life

Chapter from Edmund White's new sex memoir. Text is very NSFW.

2024-12-20 gay • lgbt • erotic • sex • edmundwhite

World's richest man endorses Germany's right wing extremist party

2024-12-20 elonmusk • politics • germany • afd • nazis • fascism

MacKenzie Scott gives away another large tranche of money to non-profits

2024-12-19 charity • philanthropy • yieldgiving

mail-tester.com

A free service to test if an email is likely to be marked as spam

2024-12-18 email • spam • dkim • spf • testing • filtering • dmarc