Notices by kottke.org (kottke@mastodon.social)

Teenager Michael Haskell “buys abandoned storage lockers at bargain prices…with the aim of selling their contents for profit”. But: “Two years into his pursuit, he knows all too well that every locker tells a story, many of them bleak.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/style/new-jersey-teen-storage-units.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Y1A.oeXF.olgkR_cMCkKj

We’re expected to believe that the NY Times is a serious newspaper when they are sending a reporter to talk to dozens of ppl to debunk a claim from a known conspiracy theorist, fascist, and grifter that he’d teleported into a Waffle House?!? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/us/fema-gregg-phillips-waffle-house-teleportation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YFA.u56i.a8rPTNc__Diz

Great photo of the whole Earth taken from NASA's Artemis II spacecraft. "There are two auroras (top right and bottom left) and zodiacal light (bottom right) is visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun." Wow. https://kottke.org/26/04/this-is-us

The 2026 issue of the HTML Review, “an annual journal of literature made to exist on the web”. https://thehtml.review/05/

Endgame for the Open Web, brought on by LLM bots, content summarizing while driving no traffic, increasing paywalls for information of all kinds, locking down APIs (due to AI abuse), attacks on Wikipedia, disruption of open source communities, etc. https://www.anildash.com/2026/03/27/endgame-open-web/

The future of energy is being decided now. "The US is basically aligning itself as the last big petrostate. We're going to go down with the fossil fuel ship, and China is aligning itself as the first electrostate." https://kottke.org/26/03/us-the-last-big-petrostate

Jesus Clarifies Return Will Be Strictly Limited To Carpentry Business. “My sole focus during this Second Coming will be various woodworking projects and not the establishment of a messianic kingdom.” https://theonion.com/jesus-clarifies-return-will-be-strictly-limited-to-carpentry-business/

“Stop naming things after people, living or dead. No schools. No streets. No courthouses. No fountains. Just quit it.” https://fritinancy.substack.com/p/stop-naming-buildings-and-streets

Paris now has a cycling network bigger than Amsterdam and “more daily trips in Paris are now made by bike than by car”. https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/03/12/in-pariss-mayoral-race-its-drivers-against-cyclists

For the first time in awhile, copies of two lost episodes of classic Doctor Who have been discovered. Both are from the William Hartnell era and feature the Daleks. https://www.polygon.com/lost-doctor-who-episodes-daleks-master-plan-william-hartnell/

“The US is hurtling towards autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey”. The Varieties of Democracy Institute: “Our data on the USA goes back to 1789. What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever…” https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2026/mar/17/trump-is-aiming-for-dictatorship-thats-the-verdict-of-the-worlds-most-credible-democracy-watchdog

Potoooooooo was an 18th-century British racehorse whose name was pronounced like “Potatoes” (Pot-eight-Os). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potoooooooo

Everyone knows Yuri Gagarin was the first person to go to space. What this article presupposes is…maybe he wasn’t? It all boils down to what your definition of space is. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2517964-why-yuri-gagarin-wasnt-the-first-in-space-and-who-beat-him-to-it/

Rebecca Solnit's new book: The Beginning Comes After the End. "In her telling, the current rise of authoritarianism is the dying gasp of an old world order, and we are on the precipice of living in a multicultural and interconnected world." https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end

A history of Apple's HyperCard ("it was the web before the web"), where it came from, and what happened to it. https://kottke.org/26/03/hypercard-changed-everything

When lit up at night, this badminton academy in Bhubaneswar, India looks like a shuttlecock. https://mossandfog.com/badminton-academy-features-dramatic-shuttlecock-shaped-building/

“For months, callers to the Washington state Department of Licensing who have requested automated service in Spanish have instead heard an AI voice speaking English in a strong Spanish accent.” https://apnews.com/article/washington-dol-spanish-accent-ai-3a1b8438a5674c07242a8d48c057d5a3

Kansas Sends Letters To Trans People Demanding The Immediate Surrender Of Drivers Licenses. “The letter…marks one of the most significant erosions of transgender civil rights in the United States to date.” https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sends-letters-to-trans-people

“The CyberTruck is 17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto”, a 70s automobile that put the “car” in “exploding car”. https://fuelarc.com/evs/its-official-the-cybertruck-is-more-explosive-than-the-ford-pinto/

How to Stop a Dictator. “Democracy is in fact a powerful motivating factor: When people are convinced that there’s a threat to their political freedoms, they can be motivated to go to extraordinary lengths to defend them.” https://www.vox.com/politics/479924/democracy-us-brazil-south-korea-poland-backsliding-resilience?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6Imo4RXgyMXcxVTUiLCJwIjoiL3BvbGl0aWNzLzQ3OTkyNC9kZW1vY3JhY3ktdXMtYnJhemlsLXNvdXRoLWtvcmVhLXBvbGFuZC1iYWNrc2xpZGluZy1yZXNpbGllbmNlIiwiZXhwIjoxNzczMTU1MzM3LCJpYXQiOjE3NzE5NDU3Mzd9.x8VgqQazoDLyEXP3yquyp3uqVqLMwVH3J5VRtdCQylc