Hardly. It's linking to newsweek article, from where it gets the info about Giza and the picture, but is its own thing and has nothing to do with the supposed "original" of britannica (which is just a general piece on the 7 wonders with briefly mentions Giza, and says nothing about its surface, which is the topic here). It also features a NatGeo video on the topic.
It's also by a well-known website that does personal curation (not mere aggregation or mindless posting, and no shady SEO and other BS, to be worthy of the "blogspam" title). Kottke is a one-man-brand and has been at it for 2 decades...
You keep using this word "blogspam". I don't think it means what you think it means. (Or "blatant" for that matter)
"Noun. blogspam (Internet) promotional material posted to a weblog, often one specifically created for the purpose" -- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blogspam
This definition makes it the very opposite of the post, since it's neither promotional, nor "specifically created for the purpose" of promotion.
At worst this is a personal blog site that posts interesting links and curates them. Don't know if you missed the whole 2000-2010 era, but that was a popular thing back in the day.
Sorta like a non-social HN -- where a single person selects the best bits and comments on them. Is HN "blogspam"?
Is anything that's not an original post "blogspam"?
If we were talking about automated aggregation, listicle sites, "link farms", etc, one could agree...
It's not blogspam. Kottke is a well-known website which collects beautiful things online. It's also curated by one person. I think this kind of blogs actually provide a more human, opinionated way to browse the web than, say, algorithmic recommendations on Google.
The chain is a bit much, though. Besides, one would hope that news aggregators[1] like HN would direct to the original source as much as possible.
[1]: Is there a better term for this? HN isn't solely focused on news (and in fact has a lot of focus on olds), but the term "content aggregator" seems to imply something more like freebooting. "Social link aggregator"?
It’s just blogging - Kottke is one of the longest standing and most successful of all of them, and if his schtick was just mindlessly reposting links with no commentary or value add, he wouldn’t have lasted half as long as he had. ‘Welcome to 2019’ is a bit rich given Kottke started in 1998.
