- Scientific American published a list of all the interesting things to see in the night sky in 2025.
- Spotify’s Secret Star Wars Easter Egg: The Hidden Lightsaber Feature (I don’t usually stream music, but this is pretty cool.)
- Are you responsible for designing or developing any type of authentication for a website or app? Take a second and read the UX of login codes by Brad Frost.
- “You can’t speak to the weather’s manager. Mother Nature has no concierge. Your investment portfolio will not halt an inferno. A college degree won’t tame the blaze. In the way we all inhabit the same Earth, we are all made of blood and flesh that burns the same.” – via The Handbasket
- Own a Kindle? You can read the complete works of Shakespeare for free.
- The Jabberwocky was one of my mom’s favorite poems. I love that I can still recite most of it from memory and it always makes me think of her.
Pampelone
In which I complain about an inexcusable lack of customer service
Once upon a midnight dreary
Happy birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!
- Axios has put together a handy list of which companies are rolling back DEI policies and which are standing firm.
- Related: One of my favorite podcasts is The Rest is History. A recent episode highlights an incontrovertible fact plainly obvious to anyone who’s ever had to deal with a toddler. It doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with a schoolyard bully, a demanding client, a political rival, or Hitler himself. Appeasement never works.
- If you have an Apple computer, you can click the command key and the plus key to increase the font size in (almost) every app. And command with the minus key makes the font smaller, natch. It might seem like a silly tip, but I can’t tell you how many times someone has been delighted when I show them this.
- Put your Taylor Swift musical knowledge to the test. – via @lilmisssunshine
- “Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that’s just barely possible.” – John Lennon
- If you got a new laptop for Christmas, you should grab (at least) one of these 5-in-1 USB-C / HDMI hubs. I keep one in my computer bag and the other is (essentially) what I use as a docking station at home.
- “Artificial Intelligence will finally have arrived when my laptop can tell me specifically which process is actually still accessing the flash drive I’m trying to eject after closing every open app on the machine.” – via @kiplet
- More good news for those looking to exit Meta’s social app ecosystem in favor of a more open alternative: An independent developer is building a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. – via phillewis
- Misinformation isn’t random. It’s strategic. Misinformation is not a general condition; It is driven by populist radical right parties. When Do Parties Lie? Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries – via pettertornberg
- “The entire health insurance business model is built on scamming customers and denying the coverage they pay premiums for. Health insurance is not healthcare. It’s an unnecessary middleman that preys on the sick, and only exists because lobbyists pay off our politicians.” – via darrigomelanie
- “Is it like the old Playboy Magazine? You have essays there by the modern day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?” – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, asking if people visit Pornhub to read articles during a hearing about minors having access to pornography. – via crooked media
- You can watch the three (newer) seasons of The Animaniacs on Disney+ / Hulu, so why are you wasting your time reading this when you could be doing that instead? Five stars. Highly recommend. (The original five seasons are available on Amazon Prime and AppleTV.)
- In the US, table saws are responsible for around 4,300 amputations per year. All other products are responsible for 3,600 amputations per year combined. – via Tom Whitwell
- I have no idea how, when, or why I subscribed to the Making It Work newsletter from Youngna Park, but I’m always happy when it lands in my inbox. This week’s issue, which includes some beautiful writing about the horrific L.A. wildfires, was exceptional.
- This brilliant bit of investigative reporting (with math!) – into how Threads changed its algorithm to start throttling engagement on posts about climate change – should tell you everything you need to know about which platforms are enshittification engines and which one is not. And with that, I’m effectively done with Meta. (Mastodon might be a safe social network alternative, but it’s currently far too complicated for the general public.)
- Dozens of official government websites have been exploited by spammers to redirect to porn. – via jbhall56.bsky.social
As a diehard Florida Gators fan, I absolutely adore sporting this lapel pin I found recently at LostLustSupply.com. It was designed by artist Emily Elizabeth Miller and she’s got some other great stuff for sale, too.- “What’s the point of being rich if you can’t afford to do the right thing.” – via Kelsey Hightower
- A.J. Brown read his book during a playoff game. The story behind the book is even more unusual.
- Olympic swimmer Gary Hall Jr. to receive replacement medals after losing originals in L.A. fires.
- “You were drunk. You tried to dance with strippers. You had to be held off the stage,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, recounting allegations against Fox News host Pete Hegseth during his confirmation to be Trump’s defense secretary. – via crooked media (See also: Jamelle Bouie speaks the truth.)
- The US government wants to start protecting you (and your kids) from Roblox robux scams. – via Anil
- The Moon is part of the Diocese of Orlando, in accordance with the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which states that “any newly discovered territory was placed under the jurisdiction of the diocese from which the expedition which discovered that territory left.” – via Kent Hendricks
- I can’t be the only GenXer really struggling with the fact that it’s 2025. That number seems impossible to me. It sounds like a year from The Jetsons or Space Mountain. (Related: Wikipedia’s list of movies set in 2025 is somewhat disappointing.)
- I thoroughly enjoyed reading this essay on the evolution of the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade screenplay. – via hiro.report, via Phil Gyford
- Bad news for people who hate good news:
- In a 6-1 ruling in favor of sixteen youth who sued, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” – via kottke
- The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear appeals from oil companies challenging a lawsuit in Hawaii that aims to hold them accountable for climate change. – via Crooked Media
- The US jobs market roared to life in December – via Semafor
- Trump can still vote after sentencing, but can’t own a gun and will have to turn over DNA sample – via The Associated Press
- Biden Issues Sweeping Deportation Protections Before Trump Takes Office
- Good news for people who love bad news:
- Global temperatures in 2024 eclipsed 2023’s average by more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit. That’s an unusually large jump; until the last couple of super-hot years, global temperature records were exceeded only by hundredths of a degree. – via The Morning Wire
- Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state. – via my dad
- A 2016 UK study found folks who participated in Dry January had improved confidence around abstinence, did not rebound, and drank less alcohol overall six months later, regardless of their January success. – via YLE
- Friendly reminder: There are exactly two things you can try and do. You can try and fail or you can try and succeed. Otherwise you try to do something.
- Research suggests that even taking small breaks from sitting could significantly improve your cardiovascular health, making it easier than ever to protect your heart and improve your overall well-being. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club
- “If you’re only going to open a book on the off chance you have several hours to kill in a comfy chair with a glass of scotch, it’s only ever going to happen when you have several hours to kill in a comfy chair with a glass of scotch.” How to Read a Whole Damn Book Every Week – via Links You’ll Love
- 33 Ways To Improve Your Life, Japanese Style – via pretty much everyone I follow
- Quantum physics is wild: “Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time.”
- “You shouldn’t be driving over 100 mph—and your car shouldn’t let you.” – via kottke
- This LA Times interactive map of the Southern California wildfires has been very handy. – via @dansinker.com
- “Just a reminder that the French revolution started with a climate crisis-induced famine, an empire that had overexpanded into too many foreign wars, and parasitic nobility that funneled all the wealth upward while regular citizens suffered.” – via @chris.writes.books
If you want to “follow” me somewhere (other than here, of course), you should use my verified account on bluesky. I adored Twitter when it launched, and for many years after. But I haven’t looked at that social network in months and deleted my account a while ago. I’ve been enjoying Threads, but it looks like it’s time to abandon that platform, too. I’m very, very glad I have my own personal website. (I hardly ever look at Instagram, and doubt I’ll keep my account there for much longer. If I didn’t feel obligated to remain on LinkedIn, I’d quit that site, too.)- In China, there are registries of haunted apartments. If you’re willing to live somewhere with a sinister history, you can get a discount of 30%. – via @tomwhitwell
- I am starting to get concerned about the bird flu, H5N1. Paying attention to updates from Your Local Epidemiologist is a good way to be prepared.
- A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends. Then, in 2023, a ProPublica reporter received an envelope with no return address. Inside was a flash drive containing tens of thousands of secret files. – via @propublica
- “In species where males invest in weaponry (antlers, horns, tusks, etc.), female brains are bigger.” – via Kent Hendricks
- How to Make the World’s Rarest Pasta – via kottke
- The requirement that homes be built at least 21 meters apart in parts of the UK dates back to a 1902 regulation drafted by two men who determined this was closest they could be to each other before they could see the other’s nipples through their shirts. – via Kent Hendricks
- The Lions–Vikings regular season finale had three times as many viewers as the Golden Globes. – via TMQ
- Bartosz Ciechanowski occasionally publishes incredibly detailed articles on fascinating topics. Last month he tackled the moon and – hoo boy! – this is a deep dive on our nearest celestial neighbor. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter
- I would probably finally switch completely from Firefox to Chrome if it wasn’t for Chrome’s egregious, unforgivable, inexcusable insistence on stealing focus from other apps on launch. – via bluesky
- “I can’t believe the billionaires are unanimously siding with the fascists! This has only happened every possible time throughout history so I am truly stunned!” – via @fousheezy
- “I don’t think people understand how devastating the end of net neutrality, and consumer protections around internet connectivity, are going to be.” – via @anildash
- Animals as Chemical Factories: Horses are bled for antivenom, crabs are drained for endotoxin tests, and silkworms are boiled for silk. Science can now replace these practices with synthetic alternatives, but we need to find ways to scale them.