Crossword Clues Where It’s Clear the Puzzle’s Creator Got Themselves into a Jam Letter-wise. Incl. “Could be found on the second to last line of an optometrist’s vision chart” and “The sound a cow might make when spanked”. [mcsweeneys.net]

Unseen Places: Rediscovering the Art of Observation by Anna Kodé. Looking forward to this one…Kodé is one of my favorite journalists covering urban culture. “Observation…is not a passive act, but a powerful and radical way of connecting…” [bookshop.org]

Every US Electrical Outlet Explained. There are more than three?? Apparently there are more than 35 types of electrical outlets just in the US! [kottke.org]

Japanese book rave. A club in Tokyo spread carpets on the dance floor, played ambient music, and invited daytime clubgoers to chill out and read. Would 100% frequent a bookstore/cafe that did this regularly. [edm.com]

Weball allows you to roll up websites into a Katamari ball. You can even roll up KDO. This is too much fun. See also Destroy Any Website. [funwithcomputervision.com]

Is This Weird Quiz Game the Toughest F1 Video Game Ever? "The game will not take 'Fittipaldi’, 'Emerson’, or 'E Fittipaldi’. The answer must be 'Fit’. The real quiz...is not a test of one’s F1 knowledge, but figuring out what the game expects to hear." [kottke.org]

I just went down a rabbit hole of incense seals. So cool. [youtube.com]

Bill McKibben: I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This. The human nervous system wasn’t designed for the polycrisis. “Among all the other dangers these developments represent, they’re simply wearing us out.” [nytimes.com]

In 1996, the Blondin family drove all around the US, blogging about it all before “blog” was even a word. “We were doing something that had no name and no manual, and we were doing it over a dial-up modem while living in a motorhome.” [longreads.com]

Photographer Agustín Ferrando Trenchi tried for 10 years to capture an image of an airplane crossing the face of the moon. The result is this lovely video — a meditation on obsessions, journeys, and finding meaning in your life. [kottke.org]

Abolish Frat Culture. “This is going to be uncomfortable for anyone with a kid in a fraternity to hear: If your son finds himself in a group that would send a ‘free pussy’ text, it’s too late. The group is the disease, the text is the symptom.” [besskalb.substack.com]

Any Human Ever randomly picks an average person from some point in human history and tells you about what their life was like. Mine was a woman born in 1547: “Of all the sounds of her life, the loudest were thunder and the church bells.” [anyhumanever.com]

Watch the 2016 Oscar-winning short film Stutterer. "But in his thoughts, which we hear, he does not stutter." [kottke.org]

Mamdani’s “Richard Scarry Socialism” Can Make City Life Simple Again. “It is an astonishing indictment of our times that the cities of our picture books can seem like a radical utopia.” [currentaffairs.org]

Bertrand Russell Shows How to Respond to Fascists Who Want to Debate. “The emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us." [kottke.org]

The Global Rise of Electoral Dictatorships. Is the U.S. Next? “Electoral dictators — who identify as presidents and prime ministers — hold uncompetitive and unfair elections after aggressively suppressing political opponents.” [theemancipator.org]

A short (too short?) video from Little White Lies on designer Saul Bass and his influence on the art of movie title design. They also did videos on Pablo Ferro and Kyle Cooper. [youtube.com]

There are some great online deals for tech stuff right now, including AirPods Pro 3 and M5 MacBook Airs (13- and 15-inch). [kottke.org]

“Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon, died Sept. 30 in Cambridge, Mass. She was 90.” [nytimes.com]

Where in the world are typefaces being designed? The US, Germany, and France…but also the UK, Netherlands, and Indonesia. [type.lol]