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The Headless Mary Magdalene by Artemisia Gentileschi
I’m charmed by this fragment of Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting of Mary Magdalene that’s up for auction later this month.
For many years it was in a private collection in Germany where it lay rolled up in a cellar. The head of the saint had been cut out of the canvas, under circumstances that remain unclear, in an incident most probably linked to the chaos and looting of postwar Berlin.
Like the empty picture frames at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the rectangular hole in the painting invites the viewer to imagine what became of its former contents. Where is Magdalene’s head & shoulders now? Did it get framed as its own painting? Is it still hanging in someone’s house or tucked away in someone’s attic? Will it be reunited with the rest of the painting someday?
Btw, this painting is a copy of another of Gentileschi’s previous works, which hangs in the Pitti Palace in Florence. There are some differences between the two paintings, but at least we know what the area inside that hole looks like, mostly.
Between the Impossible and the Inevitable: The Case for Defiance (aka Never F**king Surrender). “We make the future in the present, when we show up. Don’t surrender it to those who would destroy it.”
KDO Rolodex a list of kindred spirits, friends, open web enthusiasts, role models, fellow travelers, and collaborators
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see full listHostile Volume is a simple and maddening game where you need to hold the audio volume at 25%, which gets increasingly difficult with each level.
International Chess Federation Adds Race Car Piece. “The race car piece gets to go twice in one turn because it’s so fast.” Smart to capitalize on F1’s popularity; they should do my fave Monopoly piece next (the iron).
The Fabulous Engineering and Design of Duct Tape
Bill Hammack, aka The Engineer Guy, is an amazing engineering educator and in this video he explains how duct tape is designed to simultaneously do three things well: “a) adhere with light pressure, b) stay in place, yet c) be removable”.
Controlling the stickiness of tape is of utmost importance. In fact, a key element of engineering tape is controlling its stickiness — and only by doing that can tape be wound into a useful roll. If the tape sticks too tightly to itself, we could not use it.
Gotta be honest: I was not expecting Silly Putty to make a relevant guest appearance during his explanation. And I love the ramp & ball test for tape stickiness near the end…a very elegant and simple bit of engineering:
Pressure sensitive tape predates much of the most elementary molecular understanding of adhesion; tape has been mass produced since the early twentieth century. That engineers developed and refined tape without this knowledge is no surprise — recall that the purpose of the engineering method is to solve problems before we have full scientific knowledge.
Someone ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii. “Since its launch in 2007, the Wii has seen several operating systems ported to it: Linux, NetBSD, and most-recently, Windows NT. Today, Mac OS X joins that list.”
How to Guess If Your Job Will Exist in Five Years. “There’s a better question for white-collar workers to ask themselves: Am I coal, or am I a horse?”
Post-Digital Digital Glitch Collages
I really love these collages by Anton Elfilter (Instagram, Threads). They are digital-ish? But also not? And does anyone else see the influence of Hilma af Klint in these? (via moss & fog)
Farmers won their right-to-repair fight against John Deere. The settlement includes a 10-year “agreement by Deere to provide ‘the digital tools required for the maintenance, diagnosis, and repair’ of tractors, combines, and other machinery”.
This sounds like an interesting podcast series from M. Gessen: The Idiot. “Compassion has its limits when it comes to your own cousin.”
Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service. “…the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a ‘reorganization.’ An execution.”
A Day in the Life of an Enshittificator
From the Norwegian Consumer Council, a funny video that warns against the dangers of enshittification. It’s part of their Breaking Free initiative:
Digital products and services are steadily becoming worse. Software
becomes increasingly difficult and frustrating to use, websites and apps
are littered with ads and spam content, and useful features are removed,
degraded, or made subscription-only. This is part of a process called
enshittification.Enshittification happens in stages: First a company attracts users by
providing a valuable service, often seemingly for free or at an artificially
low price. The company then exploits those users to draw in business
customers, and finally abuses its business customers and claws back all
the value for itself and its shareholders.Enshittification is the result of a dysfunctional market, where companies
have been able to get away with mistreating and exploiting consumers.
Consumers are trapped in digital services, potential competitors are
shut out, and policymakers and regulators are unable or reluctant to
clamp down on anticompetitive, illegal and otherwise abusive behavior.
In practice, a handful of tech companies have become so powerful that
they do not have reason to fear any consequences.
What it’s like to take an 11-day filmmaking workshop with Werner Herzog (in the Azores). “Take your camera, get the shot, forgo storyboards, don’t overdo it and, above all else, do the doable.” But also: “What will the local priest think?”
Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize are releasing a collaborative album called (maybe?) Nine Inch Noize. Available April 17.
The Most Beautiful Moment of the Artemis II Mission. It had little to do with science or celestial bodies; instead it was a moment shared by four curious, caring humans, united in purpose, far from home.
The Sunshine Recorder
I went into this video not knowing anything about how a mid-19th century sunshine recorder might work and was genuinely delighted by the reveal. If you’d like to be similarly surprised, stop reading now and just watch the video.
…
…
The sunshine recorder was invented in 1853 for measuring the duration of bright sunshine over a day. The contraption consists of a solid glass ball that acts as a lens, which focuses the light of the Sun onto a paper recording card, burning marks into it. As the Sun moves across the sky, the focus point moves across the recording card, burning a line into it. If it’s super sunny out, the focused beam burns right through the card. So simple! So clever! And so straightforwardly physical — here’s what a daily sunshine record looks like:
(via robert stephens)
Oh, about that story you may have read about one guy single-handedly building a “billion-dollar company” using AI: The New York Times Got Played By A Telehealth Scam And Called It The Future Of AI. Oopsie!
The latest big exposé on the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the secretive inventor of Bitcoin, names cryptographer Adam Back as the likeliest suspect. John Carreyrou has won Pulitzers & helped expose the Theranos scam, but his evidence seems thin.
Stunning Artemis II Phone Wallpapers
NASA has made available more than a dozen mobile wallpapers of photos taken during the Artemis II mission for free download. Basic Apple Guy has made some wallpapers of his own (that are slightly larger than NASA’s and better for iPhones). I have also made a few of my own: Earth Rising Over the Moon With the Orion Capsule in the Foreground, A Sliver of Earth Over the Moon, and Kubrickian Earth.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Interstitial tip: if you’re using an iPhone with iOS 26, tap the Spatial Scene button when you’re editing your wallpaper and the phone will turn any of these images into a 3D-ish scene that moves when you move your phone. Works best with images containing multiple objects (like the Earthrises). Makes you feel a little bit more like you’re there. (This is also an amazing setup.)
These are all real photos, cropped from the originals shared by NASA on Flickr and their website.
I also went back and looked at some of the images from the Artemis I mission, which sent an Orion capsule around the Moon without a human crew. Here are a few wallpapers made from photos from that mission: Earth Moon Capsule, Lens Flare Trio, and Lunar Surface.
Again, these three are from the Artemis I mission in late 2022. The first one works especially well with the Spatial Scene mode on iOS 26.
“I have a feeling that everyone likes using AI tools to try doing someone else’s profession. They’re much less keen when someone else uses it for their profession.”
Resident Advisor: there are signs that Boards of Canada might release some new music soon. Please let this be true, we need this!
A guide to which Apple chargers to use with which Apple products in order to charge the quickest. (Your charger’s wattage really matters when the device’s battery level is 0-50%. After that, less so.)
Solar Eclipse From the Far Side of the Moon
This shot from Artemis II of the Moon eclipsing the Sun is one of the most breathtaking astronomical photos I’ve ever seen. Holy shit.
Captured by the Artemis II crew during their lunar flyby on April 6, 2026, this image shows the Moon fully eclipsing the Sun. From the crew’s perspective, the Moon appears large enough to completely block the Sun, creating nearly 54 minutes of totality and extending the view far beyond what is possible from Earth.
Thanks to KDO reader Scott for pointing me to NASA’s Flickr account, which is possibly the easiest way to look at photos taken by the Artemis II mission. Like this one:
And this one — then maybe I’ll stop (maybe):
P.S. If you need some Artemis II wallpapers for your phone, right this way.
I missed that author Tracy Kidder died a few weeks ago. Kidder wrote the excellent The Soul of a New Machine, which won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
Hollywood, Ending is John Green’s forthcoming book, “a deeply observed novel about the tension between a public and a private life, and finding your safe someone to hold onto”.
A Catalog of an Entire House/Life
In a period of four years, Belgian photographer Barbara Iweins took a photo of every single thing in her house, “from my daughters torn sock to my sons Lego, but also my vibrator, my anxiolytics… absolutely everything. 12,795 photos of 12,795 objects.” You can explore the entire archive here, indexed and classified by color, material, frequency of use, room, and “what I would save in a fire”. (via @steveportigal.bsky.social)
Teenager Michael Haskell “buys abandoned storage lockers at bargain prices…with the aim of selling their contents for profit”. But: “Two years into his pursuit, he knows all too well that every locker tells a story, many of them bleak.”
Shoe Pop Dream Gaze, a three-hour playlist from Christina Hendricks’ all-vinyl DJ set. (You may remember Hendricks as Joan on Mad Men.)
“What caught my eye as a designer, as with most industrial plants and control rooms of that time, besides the knobs, levers, and buttons, was the use of a very specific seafoam green…” It’s time for some color theory…
Really interesting piece from Jodi Ettenberg about microdosing a GLP-1 to manage her mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). She’s noticed “way less pain” and can eat more foods without reactions (yoghurt, oats, mild curry pastes).
The Astor Place Riots of 1849 resulted in “the greatest loss of life in a civic insurrection in American history up to that time”. And they were incited over the “wrong” actor playing Macbeth.
Transcription by Ben Lerner
I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about Ben Lerner’s new novel Transcription (Amazon) which comes out tomorrow. From the book’s description:
What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and an exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of parenting in a burning world. One of the first great novels about the early days of COVID, it is also a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Full of startling insight, but written with the intensity of a séance, Lerner shows us how the air is full of messages, full of ghosts. Ultimately Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.
And the cover is great:
I read Lerner’s 10:04 years ago and really liked it…I might pick this one up (and at only 144 pages, I might actually finish it).1
More reading: Ben Lerner and the Impossible Interview, The Gentle Parenting Of Ben Lerner’s ‘Transcription’, A Novel as Slim as an iPhone Has a Lot to Say About Technology, Ben Lerner’s Latest Is a Strange and Brilliant Attempt to Resurrect the Novel, and Ben Lerner’s Big Feelings.
I’ve not had good luck with reading lately. Lots of audiobooks but I haven’t read more than 20-30 pages of an actual book since returning from Japan in November. ↩
A visual history of exploring the far side of the Moon. “The Moon is tidally locked, meaning that only one side of the Moon ever faces the Earth. [For millenia,] there was an entire half of our natural satellite that no human had ever seen before.”
Livestream: Artemis II is about to fly around the Moon. At around 1:56pm ET, they’ll surpass the Apollo 13 distance record. And: “At their closest point, they’ll pass roughly 4,000 miles above the lunar surface.”
New vocabulary word: “RAM harvester”. RAM chips are so expensive right now that RAM harvesters are stealing them out of demo computers at electronics stores.
Missed this last week: Lane 8 dropped their Spring 2026 Mixtape. Available on YouTube and Soundcloud.
Pattern Index, Max Cooper
Max Cooper’s music videos are always worth a look. This one, directed by Katia Schutz, is for a song called Pattern Index from his forthcoming album (Feeling Is Structure, May 8).
Cooper describes Feeling Is Structure as an “audiovisual album”, which I take to mean that each song will have an associated video released with it. A second video, Ebb and Flow, is already out too:
Lessons from fighting cancer that apply to resisting authoritarianism. 1. We need each other. 2. We must move, even when on uncertain ground. 3. Past trauma will bring us down if we do not release its effects on us. And more…
“The promise of the open web was colonized by internet giants. But the power of LLMs and agentic coding means we can start to take it back. We can build customized, personal software for ourselves that does what we want.”
Louisiana, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland: only five US states have ever had a Black governor.
We’re expected to believe that the NY Times is a serious newspaper when they are sending a reporter to talk to dozens of ppl to debunk a claim from a known conspiracy theorist, fascist, and grifter that he’d teleported into a Waffle House?!?
As Slow As Possible. Very very very slow versions of three classic video games: Pong, Breakout, and Missile Command. On the slowest setting, you’re almost begging for a notification functionality to alert you when you need to next engage.
I have to say that I was a little bit charmed by the trailer for Supergirl. Looks promising.
Rosalía Berghain Live
I thought the official video of Berghain by Rosalía (feat. Björk & Yves Tumor) was great — “I don’t even know what this is — classical pop? surrealist orchestral?” — and this recent live performance from the Brit Awards takes the song to the next level. I loved it. (via kenzie)
A women had sex with identical twins (within a 4-day period), got pregnant, and now it’s impossible to tell which is the father, even with DNA testing.
This Is Us
The commander of NASA’s Artemis II mission to the Moon, Reid Wiseman, took this photo of the Earth as the spacecraft speeds away our planet.
There are two auroras (top right and bottom left) and zodiacal light (bottom right) is visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun.
That is so cool. Worth clicking through to see the high-resolution image.
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