Somehow I’ve managed to have largely missed the website Kottke.org, the Home of Quality Hypertext Products. This is understandable since it’s only been around since 1998. I found it, as is often the case while looking for something else.
“It’s written and produced by Jason Kottke and covers the essential people, inventions, performances, and ideas that increase the collective adjacent possible of humanity. Frequent topics of interest among the 26,000+ posts include art, technology, science, visual culture, design, music, cities, food, architecture, sports, endless nonsense, and carefully curated current events, all of it lightly contextualized. Basically, it’s the world’s complete knowledge, relentlessly filtered through my particular worldview, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails.”
Some recent posts:
Measles Makes Your Immune System Forget Its Protections Against Past Illness
AI Creates Photorealistic Portraits of Cartoon Characters
The Unsuccessful Treatment of Writer’s Block
Star Trek Warp Jumps Through the Years
If you really want to fall into a rabbit hole, search the archives. I tried these words, pretty much based on books on my bookshelf.
Star Wars: Carl Sagan in 1978: Star Wars Is Too White
Language: Lydia Davis on Translation and Learning Languages. Lydia Davis was one of the FFAPL Literary Legends in 2021.
Music: Music for Empty Malls
Bible. The Bible’s book of Revelation explained [spoiler: it’s not the stuff from Left Behind]
You can also follow along with the Quick Links on Twitter and in kottke.org’s main RSS feed.
Taking a sabbatical
On May 9, Jason Kottke wrote: “I’m going to be taking an extended break from kottke.org, starting today. I’ve been writing here for more than 24 years, nearly half my life — I need a breather. This is something I have been thinking about and planning for years and I’d like to share why I’m doing it, how it’s going to work, what I hope to accomplish, and how you can help.”
He says it’ll be for a few months. And there will be plenty of things to check out in the meantime.
Bible Gateway
I believe I had previously mentioned Bible Gateway. It provides dozens of versions of the Bible, about sixty in English. The favored one of my friend Lee and my late friend Keith is a relatively contemporary iteration called The Message, created by Eugene H. Peterson.
Peterson writes: “Language changes. New words are formed. Old words take on new meanings. There is a need in every generation to keep the language of the gospel message current, fresh, and understandable—the way it was for its very first readers.”
Bible Gateway also includes versions in Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cebuano, Cherokee, Chinese, Danish, German, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Thai, Vietnamese, and other languages.