Adam Serwer: “The reason so many of yesterday’s free-speech champions transitioned so easily into today’s pro-Trump censors is that their definition of free speech never included the right of others to talk back.” [theatlantic.com]

Are We Still Loving Pluribus? Now that the season finale has aired, what did you think of the first season as a whole? [kottke.org]

The data is clear: congestion pricing in NYC has been a “huge success”. “Pollution: -22%. Revenue for mass transit: $548M.” [bsky.app]

Infinite Ball Drop: what if the Times Square NYE ball started dropping now? (It’s currently more than 200 miles above the surface of the Earth.) [infiniteballdrop.com]

Something joyous for your Tuesday: David Byrne’s Tiny Desk Concert. It’s good for what ails ya. [kottke.org]

Santa Tracker Shows Sleigh Stopped For 40 Minutes Outside Old Girlfriend’s House. “NORAD’s official tracking app confirmed that Santa Claus paid a visit to his former girlfriend’s house around 3 a.m. Wednesday.” [theonion.com]

inventing the hate cook

These Muppet versions of Xmas movie posters are great: Beaker as John McClane in Die Hard, Oscar the Elf, Animal as Clark Griswold, etc. [kottke.org]

Reminder: NASA’s holiday yule log fireplace video is delightful — it’s a rocket engine (in a fireplace). “8.8 million pounds of total thrust…” [kottke.org]

From Mr. Bean’s official YouTube channel the show’s hilarious Christmas episode. [kottke.org]

A list of Bookshop’s bestselling nonfiction books of 2025…the next best thing to going into your local independent bookstore and browsing what’s on the front tables. [kottke.org]

The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore. “To truly understand living systems as self-organized, autonomous agents, physicists need to abandon their ‘just the particles, ma’am’ mentality.” [theatlantic.com]

Allspice is a single spice?! “Allspice is the dried fruit of the Pimenta dioica plant.” [en.wikipedia.org]

We Asked Four AI Coding Agents to Rebuild Minesweeper… “Cloning Minesweeper isn’t a trivial task that can be done in just a handful of lines of code, but it’s also not an incredibly complex system that requires many interlocking moving parts.” [arstechnica.com]

The Case for a Public Social Media Platform. “What if the United States government decided to, overnight, nationalize Facebook and make it a digital division of the post office. What would that look like?” [daily.jstor.org]

If Stayin’ Alive Had Been Written in 16th Century. A quartet sings the Bee Gees tune as a madrigal. “A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance…” [kottke.org]

Finland uses a progressive scale for speeding tickets; the fine amount is based in part on income. In 2023, a businessman got hit with a €121,000 fine. [theguardian.com]

From Sight & Sound, a list of the best video essays of 2025. I have barely seen or linked to or even heard of most of these. What am I even doing here, besides utterly failing you? (I wonder what would make my list…?) [bfi.org.uk]

200,000 Years Of Human History In One Hour. “Every second, 2 generations or 50 years will pass. You are on a musical train ride looking out the window, as you watch our ancestors hunt large animals, tell stories around campfires…” [kottke.org]

Why Japan’s internet looks weird — unless you live here. “Japanese customers are used to seeing a lot of information packed into tiny spaces — consider how much text you can find on the label of an onigiri…” [japantimes.co.jp]

Incredible video: an underwater photographer captures humpback whales breaching, including one that lands *very* close to him. You get to see the full cycle of the jumps: both the above-water and underwater views. [kottke.org]

American Classmates Having Difficulty Understanding Better Educated Foreign Exchange Student. “Kids say it’s really hard to understand what he’s talking about due to his precise English diction and extensive vocabulary.” 🫠 [theonion.com]

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is my #1 most anticipated film of 2026 and this trailer has got me revved up! Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Circe, and Hoyte van Hoytema doing the cinematography!! [kottke.org]

Runaway supermassive black hole? Did not know this could be a thing. It’s moving at 2.2M mph and “is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized ‘bow-shock’ of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it”. [space.com]

A full archive of The Hairpin (iykyk). [thehairpinarchives.com]

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Christmas: a series of animated shorts featuring Gromit having to deal with the aftermath of Wallace’s inventions (like a rabid cracker vacuum and a remote-controlled shopping cart). Free on YouTube. [kottke.org]

“The embrace of the unitary executive theory by both the president and the [Supreme Court] has given us the worst of all worlds: an ultrapowerful presidency without an actual president at the helm.” [nytimes.com]

On reading Proust vs experiencing the world intermediated by screens (even when you’re not on one). “Your attention is, on a foundational level, all you have. This is why it feels worse than bad to waste it. It feels annihilating.” [blackbirdspyplane.com]

If you want to see the future of clean energy, you have to go to China. They have flying 2-seater taxis, lunch delivery drones, robots that can swap your empty EV battery in 3 minutes, bullet trains, driverless taxis, etc. [nytimes.com]

Inkblot Books via the Public Domain Review. These pre-date use of the inkblot in the Rorschach test. [publicdomainreview.org]

“The Global Village Construction Set is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.” [opensourceecology.org]

Using thousands of photos taken by NASA astronauts from the ISS earlier this year (including many with dazzling auroras), Seán Doran made this incredible timelapse called Light Fantastic. [kottke.org]

A report from one of the competitors in a parallel parking championship. “You’ve got to get uncomfortably close. Those bumpers are called bumpers for a reason.” [caranddriver.com]

Savory Rice Krispies treats? “Savory chicken fat and fried onions push Rice Krispies Treats into gloriously salty-sweet territory.” [seriouseats.com]

In 2023, seismologists detected a “global hum” originating in Greenland that lasted for 9 days. A rockslide triggered a 200m-high tsunami that sloshed back & forth in a fjord every 90 seconds, slamming into the fjord’s walls “like a beating heart”. [youtube.com]

The people want a Knives Out Muppet movie (w/ Daniel Craig as the only human). To tide us over, Netflix & Sesame Street have teamed up for “Forks Out”, in which Beignet Blanc solves the mystery of who ate Cookie Monster’s triple berry pie. [kottke.org]

Prepare to lose a few hours to these: Andy Baio’s top 10 free browser games of 2025. [bsky.app]

Just dropped: Lane 8’s Winter 2025 Mixtape. [soundcloud.com]

This AI Vending Machine Was Tricked Into Giving Away Everything. “…including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for ‘marketing purposes.’ It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear.” [kottke.org]

“Docs said I’d never walk, but I ran a marathon.” Logan Knowles was born with cerebral palsy. This fall, he ran & completed the NYC marathon, his body fighting him the whole way. What a story. [youtube.com]

Making your own amaro at home. “…so long as the plants are edible and the flavors appeal, a variety of contrasting and complementary elements will ultimately result in something complex and intriguing.” [saveur.com]

Entirely Too Many Thoughts About Wake Up Dead Man. An excellent, long & close read of Wake Up Dead Man, particularly its focus on “religion, faith, and grace”. [reactormag.com]

On Kindness, Power, and Hypocrisy. “And [Stephen Miller] says to me, ‘You know, you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to people.’ And I looked at him and I said, ‘You know, you do, too.’” [kottke.org]

A group of journalism students was able to track probable Russian spy drones launched from cargo ships to surveil European military bases. They even flew a drone of their own over one of the cargo ships: “we droned back”. [digitaldigging.org]

We’re getting down to the wire for gifts to be shipped in time for Xmas. Take a look at the 2025 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide if you still need to shop for your fam & friends. [kottke.org]

“On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925.” Includes Betty Boop, Blondie & Dagwood, and works by William Faulkner, Agatha Christie, and the Marx Brothers. [web.law.duke.edu]

Machine With Concrete. In a series of 12 gears, the 1st spins at 200 rpm, the last spins once every 2 trillion years. “Even embedding the final gear in concrete doesn’t make any difference to the machine’s operation.” [kottke.org]

Chef Saves 78-Year-Old Man’s Life After He Stopped Showing Up for His Daily Dinners at Local Restaurant. “Mr. Hicks don’t miss no days. I knew, then, something was wrong.” [people.com]

[Trailer] The Muppet Show is returning! It’s a one-time event, hosted by Sabrina Carpenter, to celebrate the show’s 50th anniversary. “It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights…” [youtube.com]