“A three-month national investigation by Beyond Plastics found that not a single tracked Starbucks cold-beverage cup ended up at a recycling facility — even when the cups were placed in clearly marked recycling bins inside Starbucks stores.” https://www.beyondplastics.org/press-releases/starbucks-cups-recyclable-report
No reparations for Black Americans. No student loan forgiveness for folks struggling w/ debt. No UBI for working Americans. But reparations, treason forgiveness, and UBI for Jan 6th insurrectionists who attacked Congress. Got it. https://joycevance.substack.com/p/kleptocracy
Jamelle Bouie writes that each US president molds the presidency in his own image and Trump has constructed a "government as protection racket and the president as mob boss". https://kottke.org/26/05/our-mob-boss-president
The fake courtesy machine is a wooden hand-cranked contraption that types “I hope this email finds you well” over and over again. Jacquard loom & player piano vibes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKs_-uN6SSQ
Infants are dying because parents are opting-out of vitamin K shots. “In the hopes of safeguarding their newborns from what they see as unnecessary medical intervention, they have shunned fundamental and scientifically sound pharmaceutical intervention.” https://www.propublica.org/article/more-parents-decline-vitamin-k-shot-newborns
The Booksellers is a 2019 feature-length documentary film about antiquarian and rare book dealers; you can watch the whole movie for free on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM17mX_C0Cw
Artist Maarten Baas has created The People's Clock, a timepiece made of people. To create the clock's "workings", Baas recorded more than 1000 volunteers moving as the clock's hands over a 12-hour period. https://kottke.org/26/04/the-peoples-clock
“The internet known within China is a very different internet to the one known by the world at large. It is censored, regulated and structured quite differently. It is controlled and managed, rather than organic and sprawling.” https://vale.rocks/posts/chinas-web
For decades, Aadam Jacobs recorded live music shows. His collection of over 10,000 shows since 1984 features Nirvana, R.E.M., The Pixies, Björk, Depeche Mode, The Cure, and so many more — and they're now available on the Internet Archive for free. https://kottke.org/26/04/online-treasure-trove-secret-concert-recordings
An interactive explainer on the physics of GPS. “The answer is in some ways simpler than you’d expect, and in other ways more complex. GPS is fundamentally a translation tool: it converts time into distance.” https://perthirtysix.com/how-does-gps-work
An AI bot created by Andon Labs is running its own retail store in San Francisco. The bot has hired a pair of human employees and “has a corporate card, a phone number, email, internet access and eyes through security cameras”. https://andonlabs.com/blog/andon-market-launch