Kottke – Chad Comello

Pick up your kid

There’s a post by Jason Kottke I’ve thought about almost every day since he wrote it last year. He links to an animated version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, then reminisces about reading picture books with his now-older kids:

We’ll likely never read any of those books together again. It reminds me of one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard about parenting: one day you’ll pick up your kid, put them down, and never pick them up again…and you won’t remember it happening.

This is why I never, ever get tired of picking up Mr. 20 Months. He’s only getting taller and heavier (though his weight has plateaued since he’s so freakin’ active), but I will continue to pick him up as long as possible, if only to smooch him yet again. I mean, how could you not want to scoop this up:

October 21, 2020 Add Comment

We’re in this together

Via Kottke, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom’s opening remarks at today’s media briefing on COVID-19 officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Despite the alarm that word may raise raises, Adhanom concluded his remarks with some wise words:

Let me give you some other words that matter much more, and that are much more actionable.

Prevention.

Preparedness.

Public health.

Political leadership.

And most of all, people.

We’re in this together, to do the right things with calm and protect the citizens of the world. It’s doable.

Burn this into bronze: We’re in this together, to do the right things with calm and protect the citizens of the world. It’s doable.

March 11, 2020 4 Comments

City roads turned into line drawings

Andrei Kashcha’s City Roads tool beautifully renders every road of any city in the world into a simple line drawing using OpenStreetMap.

I did my hometown of Madison (above), knowing its isthmus gives it a distinct look. I then did the city where I work and discovered that for some reason it includes a large chunk of the interstate that borders it:

(Via Kottke)

January 25, 2020 1 Comment

The Smoking Type

Love this photo by Adrian Borda, called “Under An Ocean of Words”, which captures the view from inside a typewriter looking up through smoke. I’ve seen this view plenty during repair and cleaning sessions, but never quite this dramatically. Perhaps I should take up smoking.

h/t Kottke

November 25, 2019 1 Comment

Making Migrant Mother

You probably know of Dorothea Lange’s famous 1936 photograph “Migrant Mother” (aka Florence Owens Thompson), an icon of the Great Depression. Perhaps you don’t know, as I didn’t, just how much the photo was staged and later altered.

Evan Puschak of the video series The Nerdwriter breaks down the photo’s origin, the alterations (ghost thumb!), and the other photos from the session (h/t Kottke):

February 1, 2019 4 Comments

How to have better conversations

Via Kottke, here are radio interviewer Celeste Headlee’s 10 tips for better conversations:

Don’t multitask.
Don’t pontificate.
Use open-ended questions.
Go with the flow.
If you don’t know, say that you don’t know.
Don’t equate your experience with theirs.
Try not to repeat yourself.
Stay out of the weeds.
Listen.
Be brief.

I’m better at some of these than others. I think about #6 a lot because it’s so easy to do, and I think about #5 a lot because, for me at least, it’s so hard to do.

Additionally, WSJ’s “Save Yourself From Tedious Small Talk” offers some conversation-openers that spark pleasure and deeper thinking beyond today’s weather and the traffic you hit on your way here:

Have you been working on anything exciting recently?
What was the highlight of your day?
Any exciting plans this summer?
What do you do to relax?
What’s keeping you awake at night?

February 1, 2018 Add Comment

My Birthday Planets

Thanks to Fourmilab (via kottke), I discovered exactly how the planets were aligned on the day of my birth:

You can find your own here.

October 11, 2017 Add Comment