Posts tagged “Boston”

• Symbol Salad is a great resource for those in need of special keyboard characters, like ¢ and ½.
• Organ Donation & Pascal’s Wager – via mergesort.me
• The current administration does not want to FAFO with an organized gang of wine moms. – via @froggyb
• Speaking of FAFO: I can’t believe this academic admitted to losing all his AI-generated research.
• The Ottawa Senators are selling jerseys with the names of the HBO Heated Rivalry characters for $325/ea (and donating the proceeds to a local queer hockey group) and they can’t keep them in stock because they sell out so quickly. – via The Athletic
• Rhode Island might ditch Mr. Potato Head license plates after Hasbro moves to Boston
• Well, fuck. Swearing Actually Seems to Make Humans Physically Stronger and There Really Is Something Soothing About Saying The ‘F’ Word
• This is absolutely wild: Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows (I mostly quit eating beef about 15 years ago and haven’t missed it at all. But now I’m going to feel even more guilty about the milk in my coffee.)
• It’s “Mental Illness Doesn’t Do That” Season Once Again
• This will be the first time the Patriots have been to the Super Bowl since Bill Belichick‘s girlfriend graduated high school. – via @bgoad85
• And now for the bad news:
  • Since beginning operations seven years ago, Brightline, which runs high-speed trains between Miami and Orlando and is the only private rail service in the country, has killed nearly 200 people. – via longreads.com
  • The South Carolina measles outbreak has surpassed the recorded case count in the 2025 Texas outbreak.
  • Immigration agents operating near Vail, CO placed branded ace of spades playing cards — similar to “death cards” left on corpses by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War — in cars left behind after immigrants’ arrests.
  • “FYI, a masked, anonymous, armed paramilitary force denying due process and breaking into people’s homes to arrest and detain people in camps is exactly what fascism looks like.” – via @darrigomelanie
  • Death of Cuban Detainee in El Paso ICE Facility Is Ruled a Homicide
  • America’s Would-Be Surgeon General, Casey Means, thinks improving health is a spiritual project?!

It’s the birthday of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, born on this date in Boston in 1706. He invented bifocal lenses, the Franklin stove, lightning rods, the urinary catheter, and swim fins. He was the first US Ambassador to France and was a prolific author, giving us dozens of common sayings, some of which you probably use all the time without knowing he said them first. And of course there’s a wonderful Ken Burns PBS documentary about him.

• Please enjoy watching this 45-second clip of a group of penguins meeting a kitten for the first time in their lives.
• Alzheimer’s Fully Reversed in Mice, Scientists Say
• If You Give A Crocodile A Kawasaki Ultra 310LX
• I’m excited to build this Andor LEGO MOC of the Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) Covert Resistance Art Gallery with my son.
• America’s Most Reliable Public Transportation Subway Belongs To A Thriving East Coast City – via my dad
• A Little Good News on a Saturday Night
• Pioneering Olympic snowboarder Ueli Kestenholz dies in Swiss avalanche
• Meet the Aphantasics, Those Who Can’t See Mental Images
• None of This Is Normal:
  • “It’s shameful that the government can come out and lie about what happened when there’s video and witnesses who have all come out and disputed what the government is saying.” – Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr – via @benross
  • The laws of armed conflict forbid combatants from feigning civilian status, a war crime called perfidy. The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first boat attack off the coast of Venezuela. – via @kylegriffin1
  • Jonathan Gerlach was arrested as he walked back toward his car with a crowbar and a burlap bag in which officers found the mummified remains of two small children, three skulls, and other bones.
  • Six federal prosecutors quit amid the Department of Justice push to investigate the wife of Renee Good, the mother killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week. – via What A Day
  • ICE detention has expanded rapidly under the current administration, both in terms of the number of facilities and people held.
  • I Was Kidnapped by Idiots

• Ten Ways to Get a Tee Time at Augusta National – via my son
• What Is Italian Brain Rot? The Surreal TikTok Obsession, Explained
• A cephalopod captured on video in March has been confirmed as a juvenile colossal squid, the first live colossal squid observed in its native habitat.
• I visited the Disney website to find the hours of the EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival and was asked to complete a survey. Here was my answer to their question about Lightning Lane passes: “I have been an AP holder (at Disneyland for 5+ years and at Disney World for 10+ years) and still absolutely cannot understand how Lightning Lane works. It’s incredibly confusing compared to Fast Passes and it’s reprehensible and indefensible that AP holders must pay for Lightning Lane passes.”
• Italy enacted a law in March 2025 making it so only individuals who can prove at least one parent or grandparent was born there will can be considered citizens from birth.
• Wow. The U.S. government is phasing out the penny, whose use has spanned more than two centuries.
• The Sports Bra, a small chain of bars that only show women’s sports on their TVs, announced that it’s opening new locations in Boston, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, and St. Louis.
• Bobby Tables: A guide to preventing SQL injection
• Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing:
  • POTUS resurrected a hallmark policy of his first term, announcing that citizens of twelve countries would be banned from visiting the United States and those from seven others would face restrictions.
  • The [current] administration revoked EMTALA guidance for emergency rooms to provide abortions when pregnant patients’ lives are in danger.
  • Even the pro-gun lawyer working at the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives opposed the current administration’s move to allow the sale of forced reset triggers.
  • While ICE patrols court houses for law-abiding immigrants, friends of the President get a free pass.
  • Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled after the head of the disaster agency said he had not been aware the United States has a hurricane season.
  • Close your eyes and point in almost any direction, and you’ll find an area of knowledge loss.

• Just in time for Penguin Awareness Day (on Thursday, January 20th), the Wildlife Conservation Society‘s Argentina Program has released amazing underwater selfie video recently taken by a male Gentoo penguin fitted with a special camera.
• Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said, “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.” – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter
• In the city of Poznań, Poland, a group of eight clams controls the local water supply through a clever bio-monitoring system. – via kottke
• I have been trying unsuccessfully for a while now to find the recipe for the Pistachio & Orange “Redemption Cake” that Amelia Le Bruin made on The Great British Baking Show: Holidays (S7: E1 “The Great Christmas Baking Show”). If anyone has any leads, please let me know. [Update: I sent her an Instagram DM and she replied to tell me she’d try to find the recipe in her notes!]
• Oysters and Beer Have Always Been on the Menu at One of America’s Oldest, Most Renowned Restaurants. I have been here many times, including a memorable birthday dinner in my 40s, and can confirm that The Union Oyster House is a national treasure. – via my dad
• Netflix Is Telling Writers to Dumb Down Shows Since Viewers Are on Their Phones – via The Dailies
• The essay Who Goes Nazi? from the August 1941 issue of Harper’s Magazine should be required reading at every high school in America. – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
• It was fun to read about all the wild Christmas gifts NFL quarterbacks got their offensive lineman last week. Did you know that NFL teams are required to provide “three dozen sliced oranges for halftime” for the visiting team? And that each team easily goes through at least 80,000 Uncrustables each year? Oh, and Notre Dame winning the Sugar Bowl on January 2, 2025 ensured a Black head coach will be in an FBS national championship game for the first time ever. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
• People often ask me what I think their children should study to learn how to be a programmer, or create video games or apps and I always answer that they should start with the absolute basics. Learn Bash Scripting in 10 minutes is a great example.

• “Hey gamers remember, on Dec 26 a lot of kids are gonna be online playing with their gifted console/game/pc for the first time. Be nice.” – via @dinocornel
• An Ode to Christmas Eve
• It’s a Christmas miracle! Netflix subscribers can play Civilization VI on iOS devices, free and with no ads. – via hiro.report
• In 1996 Sir Purr became the only NFL mascot to ever be involved in a live play. – via @gregstreetz83
• Is it just me or does every Instagram link shared via Apple Messages on iOS 18 take you to the wrong post? And the preview of the link in Messages never works.
• The Alphabet Fades Away – via @anthony_onumonu
• Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger, on lawmakers’ unfounded theories about those weird drones over New Jersey: “Members of Congress need to not be opportunistic idiots who say shit that’s not true.” – via crooked
• Drinking caffeine (the equivalent of a very strong cup) thirty minutes before aerobic exercise increases fat oxidation by 11% in the morning and by 13% in the afternoon. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club
• A pregnant woman in Texas claimed her fetus was an HOV lane passenger, but got a ticket anyway.
• New England’s largest outdoor sculpture park is in Brookline, New Hampshire, about an hour north of Boston. – via my dad