Joshua Kagavi
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kagavi.bsky.social
Joshua Kagavi
@kagavi.bsky.social
340 followers 230 following 890 posts
History writer and artist clinging to life in the distant badlands. Jazz Age football, stop motion animation, petroglyphs, pixel games, grumpy terriers. Jack Trice expert. Huffing mold in archives kagavi.com
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kagavi.bsky.social
Joshua Kagavi @kagavi.bsky.social · Feb 6
I'm a history & culture writer (Guardian, Smithsonian, Atlas Obscura, etc). I also design things like blankets & create art. Obsessed with everything. Three of my favorite pieces:

www.theguardian.com/sport/articl...

www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-...

www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this...
This Black Football Player Was Fatally Injured During a Game. A Century Later, a College Stadium Bears His Name
Rival athletes trampled Jack Trice during his "first real college game." He died two days later at age 21
www.smithsonianmag.com
kagavi.bsky.social
Woah I love Kadir Nelson's art. Just put it on hold at the library. Sharing image again to add detailed ALT for my vision homies
Square color painting of a pickup basketball game showing a male player in mid-dunk while being contested by three leaping players. Perspective is from free throw line looking towards the basket. We can't see the court, only 7 players, 5 black, 2 white, from the knee up. Most of the perforated silver metal backboard, no net, is visible. Behind is a chainlink fence lined by green foliage. Off in the distance, obscured by the backboard, is a red brick building that appears to be an urban high rise, so it appears this painting is at a city park. Their clothing and hair styles suggest the 1970s era. The painting doesn't show much of either side of the group of players, very focused on the central action. On the extreme right edge of the image on fence is the edge of a rectangle sign with black type in 3 lines. Top line only has the letter N visible, middle line has the letters DU visible, bottom line has the letters AL visible. It's clear the sign says NO DUNKING ALLOWED. As is Kadir Nelson's dramatic style, players have elongated exaggerated limbs, with long fingers. The 3 leaping black defenders are all wearing colorful shirts and very short shorts with a single thin side stripe along with knee high striped socks and low top converse type sneakers. Left leaper is in white shirt, gray shorts, middle leaper is in purple shirt, blue shorts, right leaper is in yellow shirt, green shorts. In the middle, powerful arms cocked behind his head holding a basketball is a shirtless black man in red shorts, 3 thin white stripes on side, white crew socks and low tops. His muscular legs are bent backwards and you can just feel the immense dunk coming. Three men are on the ground, 1 shirt, 2 shirtless, arranged in a triangle around the leapers. They all look up in awe, arms bent at sides. Two white men facing us have long sideburns, shirtless one has red headband, cutoff jean shirts. Closest player has back turned, arms splayed out, sweat glistening on his muscular black body
January 8, 2026 at 10:27 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Time for more #bluecy random thoughts:

1.) Might be the best ISU mbb team I've ever seen, cuz secondary players probably better than Fizer/Tinsley team

2.) Buchanan = perfect big for this team

3.) Love seeing the tough effort/attitude of all players. No egos, just hard work

4.) TJ needs a bag
January 8, 2026 at 9:23 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
opening bsky every morning
blurry zoomed in screenshot of bulldog's face looking surprised, eyes wide open, mouth shut It comes from a video that somehow shows a bulldog sitting upright and apparently driving a car with a white man sitting in the passenger seat. The camera view is set to the side and behind the wheel, roughly where the left side mirror is. We see just a portion of the steering wheel and the bulldog, which has a tan face and white snout. One fat paw is holding the left side of the steering wheel. They are looking straight ahead with a neutral expression. The man is wearing hoodie and holding a coffee bottle. A few seconds into the video, the car hits something and veers a bit to the side. The man's coffee lid pops open and coffee spills onto his front. The bulldog tilts to his side with the surprised expression.
January 8, 2026 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Joshua Kagavi
erinbiba.bsky.social
February 4, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Joshua Kagavi
erinbiba.bsky.social
January 8, 2026 at 4:27 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
wtf kind of a major problem out of nowhere, this is going to screw up a bunch of things for me
mmasnick.bsky.social Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 1d
So I have only just discovered at some vague point in the next couple weeks Google is going to break the way my work email works, and the company has done nothing to alert people to it.

www.theregister.com/2026/01/05/g...
Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching
: It's January 2026, and Google is finding innovative new ways to make one of its services worse
www.theregister.com
January 8, 2026 at 12:12 AM
Reposted by Joshua Kagavi
mcpli.bsky.social
The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.
December 31, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Joshua Kagavi
artworms.bsky.social
When I was 23, I saw a bunch of really cute velvet furniture on the side of the road, totally nice. Took it in and a year later a friend’s new gf came to my house and it turns out I’d stolen her entire living room while she was moving.
January 6, 2026 at 11:22 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Really liked this project by @robertobenavidez.bsky.social who created pinatas partially inspired by this painting. Just spent some time on @wikipedia.org looking at the high res image. I had forgotten how much crazy stuff there is
January 5, 2026 at 9:35 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
1000000000000000% better art than anything AI can create.

(Becoming more militant about needing to see janky art by real people promoting real projects.)
January 5, 2026 at 9:18 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
I've always loved this one too which shows a whale interferring with the HMS Agamemnon cable via the MIT museum. Link is a higher res version of it

assets.mitmuseum.mit.edu/iiifimg3/120...
Black and white, but it has kind of a tan tint, image is labeled "H.M.S. Agamemnon laying the Atlantic Cable in 1858, a Whale crosses the line" MIT museum description: Black and white print depicts a view of the Agamemnon, a second-rate ship of the line, while laying a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean. The paying-out machinery used to lay the cable is visible on a temporary structure that has been added to the ship. A fender encircles the stern to prevent the cable from becoming entangled with the ship's propeller. Smoke can be seen pouring from the ship's funnel. A whale is crossing over the cable, and the ship's crew is gathered on the top deck to watch.
December 24, 2025 at 10:58 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Amazing story. The Zodiac serial killer appears to have been solved by an autistic 50-year-old HS dropout w/ shocking link to another notorious murder 20 years earlier w/ discovery of the Black Dahlia killer's frantic search for a motel w/ bathtub, which he eventually found named... the Zodiac Motel
latimes.com Los Angeles Times @latimes.com · 16d
If true, the theory would rewrite the history of two legendary unsolved murders. An amateur sleuth claims he has cracked both the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases — a claim experts say remains unproven but impossible to ignore.
An amateur codebreaker may have just solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac killings
Two retired LAPD homicide detectives say that both notorious cases are solved -- with a single culprit -- thanks to the work of a novice sleuth.
www.latimes.com
December 23, 2025 at 9:31 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Big thread w/ Jimmy Rogers #bluecy cfb thoughts

1.) If I'm JFR, I'm not sad at all about our star guys leaving. Get reset done 1 year early

2.) Besides Tez and Cooper weren't even due back in 2026, etc

3.) Biggest test = keep young stars like QB Manske, LB Hawthorne, TE Alexander (maybe Neal???)
December 22, 2025 at 10:44 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Catching up on my #bluecy crew, glad to see people sticking with it over here as the other site careens over the cliff. Gotta be the change we want
December 22, 2025 at 9:26 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
In completely unrelated news via Reuters from the other day, a railroad biz discovered that giving AI their tiny little 100 page manual turned into a disaster, but sure, let's have AI sum up the National Archives

www.reuters.com/business/bus...
But Cando ran into a surprising stumbling block: the models couldn’t consistently and correctly summarize the Canadian Rail Operating Rules, a roughly 100-page document that lays out the safety standards for the industry. Sometimes the models forgot or misinterpreted the rules; other times they invented them from whole cloth. AI researchers say models often struggle to recall what appears in the middle of a long document.
December 21, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Joshua Kagavi
kottke.org
Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Christmas: a series of animated shorts featuring Gromit having to deal with the aftermath of Wallace’s inventions (like a rabid cracker vacuum and a remote-controlled shopping cart). Free on YouTube. [kottke.org]
Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Christmas
In 2002, Aardman Animations produced a series of short episodes called Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions. In each episode, Wallace unveils a new invention, which Gromit then has to deal with. For the holiday seaso
kottke.org
December 19, 2025 at 11:42 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Before the Oorang NFL team our pal Wrinkle Meat played for Haskell Institute, which was the midwest version of Carlisle. Other names from those teams

Laughing Gas
Little Twig
Long Time Sleep
Horn Weasel
Afraid of His Track
Xavier Downwind
Baptist Thunder
Stillwell Sanooke
Fire Starter
Takes the Gun
sickoscommittee.org Sickos Committee @sickoscommittee.org · 20d
We gotta bring back nicknames.
December 19, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Joshua Kagavi
kriswolfhe.art
he was good at his job, his job was explicitly to destroy things so they'd be acquired and shareholders would make a bunch of money

this isn't an incompetent getting a payday, it's the guy who planned the heist getting the biggest cut
December 17, 2025 at 10:00 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
I sent a note to ProPublica stating I'll stop donating if they pursue this, given it's antithetical to their stated mission. Can't report on "abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust" while swaddled in AI money. It's not a hard decision!
propublicaguild.org ProPublica Guild @propublicaguild.org · 22d
1/ At bargaining yesterday, @propublica.org management said that they should have 100% discretion to replace workers with AI and would not commit to labeling future AI-generated content.
Headline: ProPublica management wants 100% discretion over when and how to use AI Supplementary text: The organization rejected our proposal that ensures staff will not be replaced by AI and requires labeling AI-generated content
December 17, 2025 at 9:03 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
Amazing discovery of a massive amount of dino footprints on a steep mountain slope
A photographer finds thousands of dinosaur footprints near Italian Winter Olympic venue
A wildlife photographer has discovered one of the oldest and largest collections of dinosaur footprints in an Italian national park.
apnews.com
December 16, 2025 at 11:34 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
This was so good. Charming and cozy. It's like a Pixar short film wrapped in a French supermarket commercial #animation
Illogic Wolfs Down Christmas Dinner for Intermarché
WIZZ directing collective Illogic, who just delivered this shiny holiday spot, switch styles completely in the new Christmas spectacular for French supermarket Intermarché, with live-action by DIVINE'...
www.stashmedia.tv
December 15, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Reposted by Joshua Kagavi
tylerfromtheinternet.com
I don't have any news to counteract the terrible news of the last few days, so here is a thread of cute animals eating things, with most with crunchy cromchy sounds.

1.
December 15, 2025 at 5:21 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
I really liked this. There are still way too many examples of people being given an artifical choice between being ignored in popular culture or being represented in an exoticized way.

Her Panûpünüwügai book has these photos and more

www.cararomero.com
19thnews.org 19thnews @19thnews.org · 28d
Cara Romero is a photographer, artist and an enrolled member of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe. She created a photo series called “First American Doll” that defies the stereotypical Native American dolls she grew up seeing at truck stops by showcasing the diversity of tribes. https://bit.ly/4rRrj0D
December 12, 2025 at 12:19 AM
kagavi.bsky.social
incredible thread. Completely forgotten core memory unlocked
lukeknox.me Luke Knox @lukeknox.me · 28d
Thread: 1993-94 Cola-Cola Monsters of the Gridiron cards

Cortez Kennedy
Cortez Kennedy
December 11, 2025 at 11:02 PM
kagavi.bsky.social
no idea what to even call this, but apparently this is in the bag of new ISU #bluecy offensive coordinator Tyler Roehl from his NDSU days
Aerial view of a football game between North Dakota State, wearing green and yellow, and a unknown team wearing white. NDSU is on offense. The quarterback is in shotgun with five offensive lineman. Split on his left is a single wide receiver. Split on his right is a quad formation of three people with their hands in the ground and a single wide receiver behind all three. Very unusual to see people in a three point stance by the numbers. From this post: https://xcancel.com/TheLastFullback/status/1983320247148130780
December 10, 2025 at 2:49 AM