Posts in the category “News”

• Take a moment this holiday season to indulge in the Southern University sousaphones playing the Veggie Tales theme in the Superdome parking lot.
• Actor Michael Sheen purchased and then forgave $1.3 million of his neighbors’ debts.
• This first-person account from a high school kicker of what it’s like to miss a game-tying PAT is riveting.
• There are no words to convey how excited I am about the return of The Muppet Show, even if it’s just a one-off. See also: Forks Out: A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery
• Yes, There’s a Parallel Parking Championship – via Jason
• “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken

  If you’ve been extremely online (and building things on the web) since the middle of the 1990s, you will enjoy reading this Christoffer Artmann essay: 30 Years of <br> Tags

• After much cajoling, last night our son finally convinced us to watch Interstellar (2014, Matthew McConaughey) and I loved it. Brilliant film.
• I feel like this archive of fictional companies is missing a few thousand references from The Simpsons alone, but it’s a good start.
• Fahlo is a wonderful service that (for a nominal fee) allows you to track an animal in the wild. I can confirm that kids love this app.
• The full story of Fedora Man is in the running for the best thing on the Internet this year.
• Ugh: The rise of deepfake cyberbullying poses a growing problem for schools.
• The serial killer epidemic in 1970–80s US may have been caused by lead fumes from cars and factories, and solved by environmental regulations. – via Tom Whitwell
• Take a minute to recall The 2017 Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog – via Lauren
• Friendly reminder: The mass deportation of undocumented people was one of Hitler’s largest coercive policies before the war.
• Just in time for Christmas! “This lightproof, soundproof vat filled with our signature vine-ripened, zesty sauce marks the beginning of an exciting new era in tomato-based relaxation.

• Renewable energy was the world’s leading source of electricity in the first half of 2025 for the first time ever, knocking coal off its longtime throne. – via The Progress Network
• Narrative String Theory (NST) is an awesome collection of movies, television shows, and other assorted media that feature detectives (or conspiracy theorists) connecting pictures on a wall or whiteboard with thread.
• Taylor Swift gave her Eras Tour crew jaw-dropping bonuses because of course she did.
• Mississippi State will face Wake Forest in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, which requires head coaches to sign an agreement saying the winner will accept having a bucket of mayonnaise dumped on his head.
• RIP Tom Stoppard
• The Athletic did a great story on the current value of the sports collectibles seen in Home Alone.
  Related: Meet the family that pulled the most expensive Shohei Ohtani baseball card to date.
• Why do we have two nostrils instead of one big hole in our face? – via Jason
• 51% of the animals in farms across the world are shrimp. – via Tom Whitwell
• I know I’ve linked to this already, but I’m going to once again urge you to read the fascinating backstory of the Duck Tales theme song, history’s catchiest single minute of music.
• I’ve certainly experienced the Abilene Paradox plenty of times. I didn’t know it had a name, though. – via cassidoo
• Can Magnus Carlsen, the best chess player in the world, beat a novice while facing increasingly-difficult disadvantages?
• Jingle Bell Rock:
  • WTF? White House installs plaques mocking former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden
  • WTF? Liam Neeson Narrates Anti-Vax, Pro-RFK Documentary
  • WTF? Fake social media accounts attempted to push a ridiculous narrative framing Taylor Swift as a white supremacist.
  • Massachusetts Catholic Church Angers Conservatives with Its ICE-Themed Nativity Scene
  • Am I the only one thinking that there’s something really sus about this whole insane Venezuela lunacy? They’re not flooding us with drugs. We don’t need their oil. Why all the trumped up aggression? I feel like we’re living in the first few chapters of a 007 novel and we’re soon going to learn 90% of some critical part of cryptocurrency or artificial intelligence computer chips can only be found buried underneath some mountain range there or something like that.
  • “It makes my blood boil. It’s so ridiculous, so petty, so small minded,” wrote Maria Shriver, about the latest stupidity out of the current administration.

• A study of 500 diners found “attractive servers earn approximately $1,261 more per year in tips than unattractive servers.” Mostly because of “female customers tipping attractive females more than unattractive females.” – via 52 things I learned in 2025
• A recent randomized trial on exercise for cancer patients breaks new ground in showing the life-extending powers of a workout.
• Scope Creep is an online horror video game about being a project manager.
• “Time is indeed a cruel mistress.”

  History and the Passing of Time is a brilliant (and short) essay by Daniele Bolelli, host of the History on Fire podcast.

• This is your annual reminder that the album Sugar & Booze by SNL alum Ana Gasteyer is chock full of fantastic holiday music and you can stream it on Alexa.
• I have at least eight of these Wyze smart plugs and they are great for scheduling holiday decorations. (I have two Wyze outdoor plugs, too.) This year I bought two more of these battery-to-plug adapters. (They let you convert battery-powered decorations—like snow globes and animated Santas—so you can plug them into the wall.)
• And you may ask yourself, “How did I get here?” (This is actually a fabulous explanation of how the Internet works and not, sadly, a site about Talking Heads. Coincidentally, I just learned a few days ago that David Byrne was at RISD at the same time that my dad was at PC, and my dad said Byrne used to work in the window of a New York System place grilling hot dogs.)
• This might be the most wholesome thing on YouTube. Dad, How Do I? is a collection of videos teaching you how to do all sorts of basic things. – via Jason
• It’s hard for me to believe it’s been a decade since the release of The Force Awakens. (I still love BB-8 and was pleasantly surprised to learn he was imagined into existence by J.J. Abrams himself!)
• In Bolivia a team of paleontologists have discovered and meticulously documented 16,600 footprints left by theropods, the dinosaur group that includes the Tyrannosaurus rex.

• A limited-edition, Fabergé egg pendant, inspired by the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, was (grossly) recovered after six days of closely watching the man accused of swallowing the jewelry in a New Zealand store.
• Scientists found that taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 daily slowed telomere shortening by the equivalent of about 3 years of biological aging over 4 years. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• Fifteen Years
• If you need a good gift for anyone over 80 years old, these hard candies are great. My grandmother loved them and I used to send her a tin every year on her birthday and Christmas.
• We didn’t see it in the theater, but the 1986 comedy Ruthless People was on high rotation at our house for a while (from Blockbuster, once it was released on VHS). Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Judge Reinhold, Helen Slater, and Bill Pullman had us in stitches and I still occasionally quote it. (Now you can rent it on Amazon.)
• An Indian boy, just 3 years old, became the youngest rated chess player in history.
• These Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights are awesome. They’re super easy to install and you can control them with an app on your phone and/or via Alexa, HomeKit, etc. (The cost has been fluctuating wildly for months now, by hundreds of dollars, and I wish you the best of luck in finding them listed at the absurdly low price we paid.)
• I can relate to this guy’s 2025 Parenting Wrapped. – via hiro.report
• My Kid’s Insane Christmas Wish List, Annotated – via my friend Lauren
• University of Florida Honors Program class teaches Gainesville‘s punk history – via my little sis
• This holiday season, consider giving the gift of independent journalism. – via @marisakabas
• ‘Tis the Season:
  • The president’s Florida mortgages match his description of mortgage fraud. – via @charlesornstein
  • Pete Hegseth Should Be Charged with Murder – via @elienyc
  • I Left the CDC 100 Days Ago. My Worst Fears About the Agency Are Coming True – via @brandyzadrozny
  • Spotify is garbage on every count: Its treatment of artists, its ICE advertising, the CEO’s investment in military AI, its leading role in the commodification and AI slop-ification of music, its terrible audio quality—you name it. A Guide to Finding the Best Spotify Alternative – via @bcmerchant
  • “If you’re a complete idiot life sure does have a lot of surprises for you.” – via @samthielman.com
  • “All I want for Christmas is for the worst people in the world to experience some consequences.” – via @gracelp
  • The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on the president’s birthday next year, but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

• When ancient Romans felt wronged, they didn’t ask for revenge from the gods. Instead they scratched their anger into thin lead sheets called defixiones, folded them carefully, and buried them in wells, graves, or temples, trusting that some power beneath the earth would take care of the rest.
• Buckle up, buttercup. This essay is going to be tough to swallow. Collagen Sits on a Throne of Lies: How the supplement industry took meat garbage and turned it into a $9B business
• A single HPV vaccination appears just as effective as two doses at preventing the viral infection that causes cervical cancer.
• Finding it impossible to stop thinking about The Chair Company? You can get a Tecca t-shirt or hat, but they’re sold out of chairs.
• One of the hardest parts of being a parent is attempting to balance, “Please study! School and your grades are very important,” with, “Don’t be stressed! This one history test isn’t going to matter at all in twenty years.” – via me
• Have you ever wondered how a touch screen knows you are touching it?
• Chindōgu: The Japanese Art of Unuseless Inventions
• How a UF engineer found purpose Below Deck
• Man unexpectedly cured of HIV after stem cell transplant
• “Anyone who was born an American and therefore feels superior to someone who had to work to become an American doesn’t know the first thing about being an American.” – via @harrymccracken.com
• Good News for People Who Like Bad News:
  • A 6-year-old boy is missing after ICE arrested him and his dad in NYC last week and shipped them to separate facilities. – via @clauirizarry
  • Zillow has removed climate risk scores from over a million real estate listings after realtors complained that information such as how at risk a home is from wildfires was causing them to lose sales. – via @carnage4life
  • Crucial is shutting down — because Micron wants to sell its RAM and SSDs to AI companies instead. – via @papapishu
  • “You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” – Penelope Hegseth to her son, Pete
  • The Supreme Court is siding with the current administration 84 percent of the time; it sided with the Biden administration only 53 percent of the time. And of course only one of those administrations is habitually laying waste to the rule of law.
  • Lawsuits allege USA Gymnastics, SafeSport failed to prevent sexual abuse by coach

• Three brothers cleaning out their late mother’s attic discovered a remarkably well-preserved copy of Superman No. 1, which sold at auction for a record-breaking $9.12 million.
• Everyone in Florida should be thankful for alligators. – via my dad
• What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows. – via @heidiyounggrasshopper
• I love this research into whether the mere presence of someone in a Batman costume makes people act nicer. (Spoiler: It does.)
• Why do NFL refs keep botching the overtime coin toss?!
• Clues by Sam is a daily brain teaser that manages to be both cute and maddening – via The Athletic
• On the evening of October 9, 1992, a meteor weighing more than two tons punctured the atmosphere. Sonic explosions accompanied its descent as it broke apart while screaming across the sky before a small chunk of it went through the trunk of a parked car in Peekskill, New York.
• Does Harrison Ford Know His Lines?
• The ultimate dad gift? A World War II Aircraft Advent Calendar
• War Is Over If You Want It:
  • The people making AI seem trustworthy are the ones who trust it the least.
  • Higher Ed’s Rush to Adopt AI Is about So Much More Than AI
  • The current maliciously-ignorant dotard running the most powerful nation-state in the history of mankind decided to demolish the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden (established by first lady Edith Roosevelt as the Colonial Garden in 1903) in addition to leveling the Rose Garden and felling two historic magnolia trees (commemorating Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt) adjacent to the East Wing in his craven lust to install a self-aggrandizing and pointless ballroom.
  • A 17-year-old U.S. citizen and high school senior was detained by immigration officers in Oregon on Nov. 21, 2025.
  • Driver Denny Hamlin breaks down in tears as the first witness testifying at NASCAR antitrust trial
  • Indigenous actress Elaine Miles of Northern Exposure was detained by ICE at a bus stop. When she showed them her Tribal ID, they told her it was fake. – via @phillewis

• Martijn Doolaard is a photographer, filmmaker and travel writer from the Netherlands who is renovating and living in a remote stone cabin in the Italian Alps. – via @thepharmdfoodie
• MacKenzie Scott (ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) has now given away more than $19 billion, including more than a quarter of a billion to historically black colleges and universities.
• The recently-published list of the Top 100 Comedies of all Time (from Variety) is an abomination. Bull Durham deserves to be in the top ten and it’s not even on the list! (And where is Trading Places?!)
• Man Keeps Strange Rock for Years, Hoping It’s Gold. It Turned out to Be Way More Valuable. (See also: Scientists Cracked Open a Lunar Rock and Found a Huge Surprise)
• Requiem for Early Blogging doesn’t resonate with me as much as I know it does for many. (I think it’s because I started far, far earlier than the blog boom and, y’know, still haven’t stopped.)
• “User behavior suggests people are finding LLMs more convenient for finding answers than Googling, where they must leap over hurdles of ads, dive several pages into the search results, and then pogo in and out of websites to find answers to some of their most banal questions.”
• We Asked Golfers for the Best Place to Buy Used Clubs. – via my dad
• All’s Fair, the new series from Ryan Murphy, is an atrocity.
• Why Is Dad So Mad?
• Vocalist and a-ha front-man Morten Harket recently shared that he has Parkinson’s disease.
• Black Friday:
  • “Imagine the quality of an architect that Trump would pick – and who would want to work for him. Even *that guy* thinks this project is too grandiose.” – via @helenkennedy
  • “It should go without saying, but the president has no authority to do this, and anyone reporting the story needs to say as such.” – via @tomtomorrow
  • This is, quite literally, what the Germans did. We all agreed it was a big deal and nobody should ever be allowed to do it again. So for anyone in any uniform to allow it to happen by the United States of America is inexcusable.
  • Charities that help people pay for medical care say demand is way up, and that’s before scheduled cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare enacted in the new GOP spending bill take effect.
  • “The guy shot two random people with a gun, I don’t think you can say he wasn’t assimilating into our culture.” – via @internethippo
  • A Story About Illegal Orders is terrifying.

• The Philadelphia Eagles have produced yet another awesome and fun Christmas video. – via The Kids Kickoff
• Missing Flamingo Thought to Be Living in France
• Beginning in the 1970s, Alan Rosen – the Indiana Jones of vintage sports cards – professed that there would always be a market for older cards and memorabilia, and history has proven him right.
• The Fascinating History of Tarot Card Decks: From the Renaissance to the Modern Day – via kottke
• It’s tough to argue with anything on this list of 100 small steps you can take to live to 100. And some of them are even pretty fun. – via hurly
• The Food and Drug Administration unveiled a new blueprint for the regulation of bespoke drug therapies, a way for these treatments to quickly get to market if they meet certain standards.
• A cannon, three coins, and a porcelain cup were among the first objects Colombian scientists recovered from the depths of the Caribbean Sea where the mythical galleon San José sank in 1708.
• This Is Fine dot gif:
  • Over 30,000 Charlotte, North Carolina students skipped school in protest of ICE operations in the area.
  • The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state: How the AI Crash Happens
  • Sales of AI-enabled teddy bear suspended after it gave advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives
  • I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. Students chose to actively avoid learning because it’s boring and hard.
  • Paul Bojerski, a 79-year-old who was born to Polish parents in a WWII German refugee camp and who legally emigrated to the U.S. when he was 5, has been abducted by ICE in Florida. – via @oliviamesser
  • Prominently displaying the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom is a clear and obvious violation of the First Amendment. How is this even an issue?
  • Sex Workers & A Secret Charity: The Story Of Cory Mills’ ‘F*cking Bananas’ Afghanistan Mission – via @ronfilipkowski
  • This story is simply heartbreaking. A Teen in Love With a Chatbot Killed Himself. Can the Chatbot Be Held Responsible? – via New York Times Magazine

It’s easier to put your hand in the next guy’s pocket if he’s illiterate.

American society is dominated by wealthy mountebanks and literally demented politicians who are happy to take on all the risks of AI because it promises to create workers who cannot even conceptualize quitting, much less striking.
from We Used to Read Things in This Country, by Noah McCormack

• The paradox of horror: How scary films can soothe your anxiety
• Matt Berninger, lead singer of The National, traded his notebook for a baseball. And the words kept coming.
• I didn’t realize until reading a recap at The Athletic that on Saturday night Will Smith hit the first extra-inning Game 7 homer in the history of the World Series. Oh, and the nail-biter peaked at 33.1M viewers and beat the last Game 7 (in 2019) by 10%, making it the most-watched MLB game since 2017.
• The New England Aquarium built a geriatric island for aging penguins to live in safety and dignity.
• Take a walk! A modest increase in physical activity can delay cognitive decline by three years or more, and Alzheimer’s symptoms decrease with just a few thousand steps a day. And new research shows exercise could help reduce anxiety as effectively as traditional talk therapy in as little as 8 to 12 weeks.
• This is pretty wild: [M]ost Americans in 1790 consumed an average [of] 5.8 gallons of pure alcohol a year. (Today the average is closer to “just” 2 gallons per year.)
• Adults ruined “6-7” for Halloween – via my wife
• The University of Florida Gators 7-foot-9 Olivier Rioux became the tallest college basketball player ever.
• I’ve long loved The Point, but never knew the full story of the brilliant, baffling rise and fall of Harry Nilsson. – via my dad
• Things Can Only Get Better:
  • Federal agents drive off with 1-year-old girl after arresting her father in Los Angeles
  • Louisiana officials waited months to warn public of whooping cough outbreak – via @elizabethjacobs
  • One analytical model shows that the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. – via @newyorker.com
  • The United States of America continues to extrajudicially murder people.
  • A Food and Drug Administration official who resigned on Sunday was sued by a Canadian pharmaceutical company, which accused him of soliciting a bribe and tanking its stock with false statements as part of a revenge campaign against a former colleague.
  • Employees at The Washington Post uploaded a fake video to 8 social apps. Only one told users it wasn’t real.
  • East Wing ballroom donations by corporate owners create awkward moments for news outlets