The Babylonian map of the world is the oldest map of the world, in the world. Written and inscribed on clay in Mesopotamia around 2,900-years-ago, it is, like so many cuneiform tablets, incomplete. However, Irving Finkel and a particularly gifted student of his — Edith Horsley — managed to locate a missing piece of the map, slot it back into the cuneiform tablet, and from there set us all on journey through the somewhat mythical landscape of Mesopotamia to find the final resting place of the ark. And yes we mean that ark, as in Noah’s ark. Although in the earlier Mesopotamian version of the flood story, the ark is built by Ziusudra.
Finkel could not possibly look more like a British Museum curator than he does.
Btw, I first heard about the earliest Mesopotamian version of the flood story in a mythology class I took in college. I’d spent a lot of my youth going to church but religion didn’t click for me and I was never a believer. Hearing that flood story clinched it for me — the Old Testament of the Christian bible is just as mythological as the Greek or Mesopotamian gods (everything is a remix) — and I’ve been solidly atheist ever since. (via open culture)
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Saturday Night is a forthcoming movie directed by Jason Reitman about the premiere of Saturday Night Live.
At 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television — and culture — forever. Directed by Jason Reitman and written by Gil Kenan & Reitman, Saturday Night is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. Full of humor, chaos, and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, we count down the minutes in real time until we hear those famous words…
According to Wikipedia, Succession’s Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg) plays both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson in the film. (via @ernie.tedium.co)
Is this a new streaming device for your TV or the bar of soap in the shower that’s been worn down to a sliver but your parents won’t throw it out because “there’s still a lot of soap there”?
Immediately after Tim Walz was announced as Kamala Harris’s VP pick, the memes started. Most zeroed in on Walz’s potent Midwestern dad energy; he’s the kind of guy who would help a neighbor fix a car, pick you up from the airport, or bring you some soup when you’re sick. For his supporters, Walz is bringing the same kind of energy and hope to the presidential race as Obama did in 2008 and Bernie Sanders did in 2016.
And so of course someone made Tim Walz Fixed Your Bicycle; it’s a collection of things Walz would do for you because he’s just that kinda guy.
Each time you refresh the page, you get a new saying; some of the other ones:
Tim Walz remembers where you parked your car.
Tim Walz has room for a little slice of pie.
Tim Walz is glad to give you a hand with your stroller down those stairs.
Honan even turned the site into a book. A few months later, folks on Twitter started sharing all the wonderful things that would happen when Obama won the Democratic nomination and I collected a bunch of those tweets into this site.
The Portable Feminist Reader, edited by Roxane Gay. Includes writing by Agrippa, Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, The Guerrilla Girls, and more.
I watched the men’s Olympic mountain biking race last week and something one of the announcers said caught my attention. She was describing the electronic shifters the cyclists use and then said that many of the competitors were also using an AI-controlled suspension system that automagically adjusted the level of suspension according to the terrain and rider preference.
The S-Works is the first production bike to debut with the latest version of RockShox’s Flight Attendant Ai suspension. This uses sensors in the SID Ultimate fork, SIDLuxe Ultimate shock, Quarq XX SL power crank, XX SL rear mech and XX shifters to build a comprehensive ride ‘picture’. It then automatically switch the fork and shock between open, pedal and lock modes depending on incoming impacts, bike orientation, pre-emptive shift signals and rider referencing ‘effort states’.
Flight Attendant is comprised of two primary components: a fork module and a rear shock module. The fork module sits atop a special Charger damper that comes inside a Pike, Lyrik or Zeb, while the shock module is built into the piggyback reservoir of a Flight Attendant-specific Super Deluxe Ultimate shock. These two modules communicate wirelessly, and decide whether the suspension should be in one of three predetermined compression settings: Open, Pedal or Lock.
The system makes these decisions based on input provided by an array of sensors. Inside the fork and shock modules you’ll find an accelerometer and an inclinometer, which allows the bike to detect both bump forces and pitch. There’s also a sensor within the crank spindle to detect if you’re pedalling or coasting.
With this combination of sensors, Flight Attendant builds a picture of the terrain and the rider’s pedalling input. Based on that picture, it automatically adjusts the suspension to the ideal setting. Put simply, it’s designed to firm up the suspension to improve pedal efficiency on the climbs and along smoother terrain, while allowing the suspension to open up for the descents and on rougher trails. And all without your hands ever having to leave the grips.
And does it work? Again from Mountain Bike Rider:
In fact I’d actually say RockShox’s claimed 1.8% faster over a 90 minute event is an underestimation for most riders. Even XC GOAT Nino Schurter found the Flight Attendant changed modes over four times more often (1,325 switches rather than 300) than he normally would with a manual lockout. That experiment also ended in the first of several World Cup wins for SID Flight Attendant prototypes in 2023 including some by Victor Koretsky on a modified version of the previous Epic Evo.
A lot of that is MTB jargon but I hope you get the jist. What I couldn’t find is any evidence that Flight Attendant or any of the similar systems are actually using AI or machine learning to assist with these adjustments. I did find this article on Pinkbike about Shimano’s plans for a suspension system that a rider can train.
Automatic control of suspension itself is nothing new. Fox Live Valve, RockShox Flight Attendant and more recently, SR Suntour’s TACT suspension products have been automatically adjusting suspension damping, with varying levels of success, for a good number of years now. However, the programming behind the function of these products is relatively fixed. There is no scope for the rider to give the system feedback on its performance. It can’t “learn” what the rider’s preferences are.
It could be that the Olympic riders are using pre-market prototypes that use machine learning to adapt to individual rider preferences, but I don’t know. I’d love to hear from folks out there if you know any more details!
Michelle Goldberg writes about a new book, a fascist manifesto, written by antisemite and white nationalist Jack Posobiec (and his ghostwriter) called Unhumans.
The word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot in politics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for “Unhumans,” which came out last month. The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman,” write Posobiec and Lisec.
As Goldberg notes, the endorsement of the book by prominent Republicans is a reminder of how extremist and far away from reality the Republican Party is now. Trump’s running mate JD Vance wrote a blurb for it and so did Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., and Michael Flynn, Trump’s National Security Advisor. Steve Bannon wrote the foreword. These guys are weird and unhinged and dangerous because they are somehow at the center of the Republican Party. (See also Project 2025.)
Utah is basically burning books now. “State has ordered books by 13 authors, 12 of them women, to be removed from every public school, classroom and library.” Includes books by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, and Rupi Kaur.
Why the word “Taiwan” is banned at the Olympics. “Taiwan is one of just three teams whose flag is banned at the Olympics. The other two are Russia and Belarus — banned as punishment for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The EP–1320 Medieval is, amazingly, a real gadget being sold by Teenage Engineering — it’s a “beat machine” (or “instrumentalis electronicum”) loaded with a bunch of musical phrases and instruments from the Dark Ages.
Hurdy gurdys, lutes, Gregorian chants, thundering drums and punishing percussive Foley FX. The EP-1320 is the first of its kind: featuring a large library of phrases, play ready instruments and one-shot samples from an age where darkness reigned supreme, the instrumentalis electronicum is the ultimate, and only, medieval beat machine.
The theme for the Cooper Hewitt’s upcoming Design Triennial (in collaboration with the National Museum of African American History and Culture) is Making Home.
3. Walz credits his rural upbringing for his values: “A town that small had services like that and had a public school with a government teacher that inspired me to be sitting where I’m at today. Those are real stories in small towns.”
6. Walz’s father, a school administrator, died of lung cancer when Walz was 19. Walz said this moment fueled his views on health care access: “The last week of my dad’s life cost my mom a decade of going back to work to pay off hospital debt.”
15. He was the faculty adviser for [Mankato West High School’s] first gay-straight alliance chapter in 1999.
24. Walz won re-election five times in southern Minnesota’s mostly rural, conservative 1st District, serving in the House for 12 years.
28. Walz once earned an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association and the group’s endorsement. In 2016, Guns & Ammo magazine included him on its list of top 20 politicians for gun owners.
29. He later denounced the NRA and supported gun-control measures, such as an assault weapons ban. During his first campaign for governor in 2018, the NRA completely downgraded his rating. “I had an A rating from the NRA. Now I get straight F’s. And I sleep just fine.”
33. Walz frequently defends his policies, such as the universal school meals bill signed into Minnesota law earlier this year, as common sense: “What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn and women are making their own healthcare decisions,” Walz said jokingly.
Klein: If a Democrat is president in 2025 and there’s a governing trifecta, what do you think Democrats should pass first? What would make the biggest difference for people?
Walz: I think paid family and medical leave. We’re the last nation on earth basically to not do this. It is so foundational to just basic decency and financial well-being. And I think that would start to change both finances, attitude — strengthen the family.
If JD Vance is right about this: that we should make it easier for families to be together, then make sure that after your child’s born, that you can spend a little time with them. That’d be a great thing.
K: Great way of also seeing who in politics is actually pro-family and who just likes to talk about it.
“Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Walz said last year. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”
Reading that quote, I immediately thought of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society; there’s a great podcast series about it hosted by Melody Barnes.
Amazing stat about the disappearance of bands from the UK music charts (29:40 mark): in the first half of the 80s, bands were #1 for 146 weeks; the first half of the 90s, it was 141 weeks. In the 20s so far: 3 weeks that songs by bands were #1. 🤯
I haven’t watched too much of the Olympics this summer so maybe the announcers explain this every single time they show a medals ceremony, but in case you didn’t know, the long, thin boxes given to the medalists along with their medals contain the official poster of the Games (and a plushie).
The poster was created by illustrator Ugo Gattoni and is a sort of Where’s Waldo / Busy Busy Town representation of the Games and its venues.
The designer had total creative freedom. While working to a brief and respecting the look of the Games, he still managed to maintain his own playful and joyful style.
This is why eight mascots are hidden within the posters. In fact, whatever age you are, there is something within the artwork that you will be able to enjoy.
The biggest images of the poster I can find are here if you want to zoom in to see the details. There are also zoomed-in images and videos on Gattoni’s Instagram.
The Olympic poster is the twin of the poster for the Paralympic Games, also created by Gattoni:
Forthcoming book: The Marvel Comics Covers of Jack Kirby Volume 1. This volume contains covers from 1961 to 1964, including art from The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and The X-Men.
Chinatown’s tenements are in the foreground, while the skyscraper canyons of Lower Manhattan rise above. This shows the area of Chinatown bordered by Bowery, Canal Street, and Columbus Park.
It took him around 60 hours to complete; he made a time lapse video of its creation:
A deep dive into Null Island. “Null Island is a long-running inside joke among cartographers. It is an imaginary island located at a real place: the coordinates of 0° latitude and 0° longitude.” Its shape is a reference to the video game Myst.
YES YES YES: “Campaigns from Harris for President on down should clarify that they will post to Twitter only after updating other platforms. Steering the media away from Twitter helps democracy.” Time to stop helping Musk’s disinformation campaign.
If you watch any of Steven Spielberg’s movies, you’ll notice a distinctive element: the Spielberg Face.
If Spielberg deserves to be called a master of audience manipulation, then this is his signature stroke.
You see the onscreen character watching along with you in wonder, awe, apprehension, fear, sadness. It’s the director’s way of hitting pause, to show the audience this is a critical scene, to reinforce how the audience should be feeling in that moment.
Cooking with Pixar, a playlist of videos with recipes inspired by Luca (trenette al pesto), Turning Ref (congee), Coco (tamales), and Incredibles 2 (cookies).
If you spend any amount of time on the internet — and if you’re reading this, you probably do and perhaps even feel shamed by your weekly Screen Time notification — you’ve probably seen the statistic that 5% of the Earth’s population is related to 13th century ruler of the Mongol Empire and presumed prolific father, Genghis Khan. In this episode of SciShow, Hank Green explores if that’s true and how researchers investigate relations across dozens and even hundreds of generations.
Over the last century, athletic performances have dramatically improved because of better training, improved nutrition, a bigger pool of people to draw from, technology, increased financial support, and the human desire to build on each others’ successes. It’s actually shocking how much better athletics have gotten, as you can see from these “then & now” videos from the Summer Olympics. Here’s the men’s pole vault from 1912 and then 2020:
The women’s javelin in 1932 (Babe Didrikson!) vs. 2020:
And perhaps the most stark difference: the women’s 10-meter platform diving in 1912 and 2020; it’s like watching two completely different sports:
Carl Zimmer’s new book sounds fascinating & relevant: Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. “The fascinating, untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down.”
If you’re curious about how USA’s Kristen Faulkner shocked the top riders in the women’s road race, thesethreads go into some of the strategy involved. “Road cycling is built upon prisoner’s dilemmas like this.”
The D.M.V. is a beacon of equality in this country. Celebrate the place where you can watch a celebrity fill out the same forms that you do. We should revel in the fact that there is no express lane for beautiful, rich people to renew their licenses. When you sit in those hard chairs waiting for your number to appear on a screen, you should be delighted that no one else is sitting in a cushier chair. Look around that room and see your fellow Americans, the huddled masses, gathered at the feet of a woman asking for the paperwork to be a law-abiding citizen.
She also adds that “The D.M.V. is one of the few places where privileged people — especially privileged white people — will ever encounter a woman of color with unquestionable authority.”
It sounds like an innovative answer to the problem that everybody faces at an amusement park, and one perfectly in keeping with the approaches currently in place at airports and even on some crowded American highways — perfectly in keeping with the two-tiering of America. You can pay for one level of access, or you can pay for another. If you have the means, you can even pay for freedom. There’s only one problem: Cutting the line is cheating, and everyone knows it. Children know it most acutely, know it in their bones, and so when they’ve been waiting on a line for a half-hour and a family sporting yellow plastic Flash Passes on their wrists walks up and steps in front of them, they can’t help asking why that family has been permitted the privilege of perpetrating what looks like an obvious injustice. And then you have to explain not just that they paid for it but that you haven’t paid enough — that the $100 or so that you’ve ponied up was just enough to teach your children that they are second- or third-class citizens.
On social media this morning, I ran across this evergreen quote from Toni Morrison about the true function of racism:
It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.
Morrison said this during a speech titled The Humanist View at Portland State University on May 30, 1975. The text above, which is slightly different than you’ll see on social media or Goodreads, is taken directly from the transcript. You can also listen to Morrison’s full remarks on Soundcloud:
The snippet quoted above starts at about 35:45. (via @greg.org)
Public Work is an image search engine that boasts 100,000 “copyright-free” images from institutions like the NYPL, the Met, etc. It’s fast with a relatively simple interface and uses AI to auto-categorize and suggest possibly related images (both visually and content-wise). And it’s fun to just visually click around on related images. On the downside, their sourcing and attribution isn’t great — especially when compared to something like Flickr Commons.
I’d love it if an interface this quick and visual-first were adopted by museums though — let’s face it: the image search on museum, library, and institution websites is often terrible and slow. (via @jaygogh)
Yes, yes, yes, yes to the moon and back. I thought no one else noticed this! Vermont drivers are unusually “nice” in this regard and it drives me bonkers.
I was just explaining this to my son, a new driver, a couple of months ago. There’s a left turn at a one-way stop onto a busy road near my house that I do several times a week that is partially blind to oncoming traffic and you’ve really gotta commit when you do pull out because everyone’s doing 5-7+ mph over the limit coming around the curve. So, you end up sitting there for a bit and drivers coming from your right who are going to turn left in next to you will often see this and try to wave you through before they turn.
But you can’t grant right of way like that! I can’t trust that they’ve checked if oncoming traffic is ok and that no one is trying to sneak around them on the right into the lane I’m supposed to be turning into (something that happens frequently at this intersection, and at speed). (There are also bikes and pedestrians to keep track of.) All this presumably nice gesture does is make the situation more dangerous for me because I now feel socially obligated to accept their favor and time pressure to be quick about it. But instead I decline and insistently wave them through, the other driver possibly now offended at having their good deed refused and thinking I’m the asshole.
Just take the right of way when it’s yours and cede it when it’s not. That’s it — keep it predictable. That’s like 95% of driving right there.
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