James Bridle on making chairs with LLMs. “What we have here is, quite literally, a chair designed by someone who has read a lot about chairs but never actually sat in one.” https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/benchmarking

Patrick Stewart appeared on Sesame Street in 1996, performing a parody of Hamlet’s soliloquy with the letter “B”. You can't say he never didn't give it his all when acting. https://kottke.org/21/06/patrick-stewart-does-hamlet-on-sesame-street

The NY Times recently asked readers “what they can no longer afford, or have given up on having”. Among the answers: medication, car repairs, new clothes, having more kids, eating out, and contact lenses. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/10/28/opinion/american-dream-affordability.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MVE.qqs4.0GKU7KOLrbcV

Old newspaper headlines about the name doppelgängers of current celebrities, like "Ben Affleck Still Maintains Leadership in World of Cement" (1925), "Blood Donors Sought for Miss Elizabeth Holmes" (1950), and “Charlie Kirk Still Not Available”. https://kottke.org/26/10/old-newspaper-headlines-about-the-name-doppelgngers-of-current-celebrities

I made a small tweak to Prometheus (gift link discovery site) that kinda kicks ass: NYT Cooking is now a separate source (which you can filter by). The Rigatoni With White Bolognese recipe is a favorite of mine. 🤌 https://kottke.org/prometheus

Remember the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game? Turns out: “Kevin Bacon is not the center of Hollywood. In fact, he never has been, and almost certainly never will be.” https://pudding.cool/2026/10/kevin-bacon

“The Moving Image Archive is a searchable library of archival films. The material is drawn from public-domain collections and is free to reuse.” This a collection of over 120,000 clips from almost 2300 archival films. https://kottke.org/26/10/the-moving-image-archive

According to a recent survey, Americans are divided on whether empathy is a good thing. 83% of the religiously unaffiliated agreed that empathy is "a foundational moral value that helps build a healthy society” while only 42% of white evangelicals did. https://kottke.org/26/10/the-american-divide-on-empathy

The Flipbook of the Rings. More than 1000 artists collaborated to create a hand-drawn, shot-for-shot, animated, flipbook version of the first The Lord of the Rings movie. All 3 hours. Over 120,000 scenes drawn by hand. Watch the first 11 minutes here. https://kottke.org/26/10/the-flipbook-of-the-rings

Railpass simulates a train ride in your browser window using real video footage. Choose from trains from around the world or add some weather to the mix. Sound on for the best ride. https://train.samismith.com

Bastardica is “a foundry for bastard web fonts. Mix, stretch and/or squish them.” E.g. Nervous Sans: “Arial is stacked five times, pseudo-randomly twitching out of line.” I quite like Impacter. https://bastardica.mitpit.com

Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First. “It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off.” https://theonion.com/protestors-criticized-for-looting-businesses-without-fo-1843735351