- I have several of these LEGO lighting kits and love them.
- Is it really true that no one buys books? According to the author, in 2020 only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96% of books sold less than a thousand copies. Big, if true.
- I’d never even considered combining an Arnold Palmer with a margarita.
- Was This Little-Known Standoff Between British Soldiers and Colonists the Real Start of the American Revolution? – via my dad
- One of the most surprising revelations in the Peacock comedy Mr. Throwback is that the Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry is a brilliant actor. (Oh, and he also dunked in a game for the first time in six years.)
- I really cannot decide if this article on testing push notifications on the iOS simulator was generated by AI or a human, but it’s got some helpful code that I was able to use.
Just… why?
- GOP blasted for gutting Medicaid to pay for $4.5 trillion tax cut
- Army Deleting Online Content Related to Women, Minorities – via @tyleraking.com
- In a strongly worded statement, Norwegian fuel company Haltbakk Bunkers has announced it will cease supplying fuel to U.S. military forces and criticized what happened when Ukraine president Zelensky visited the White House, referring to it as the “biggest shitshow ever presented live on TV.”
- If “DOGE” is a federal agency, it can’t shield its records from the public. If it’s not an agency, then its tens of millions of dollars in funding weren’t legally allocated and should be returned. – via @propublica.org
- The inside story of mass firings of Tesla Supercharger staff is pretty gross.
- When You’re MAGA, They Let You Do It
- Judge rules firing of federal workforce watchdog was illegal – via @browneyedsusan.bsky.social
Posts tagged “artificial intelligence”
- “This is a concentration camp. They are describing a concentration camp.” – via @rhinosoros.bsky.social
- The “DOGE” Brain Drain Has Begun: “But while [the] rampage has been covered, the scope of its impact remains largely underappreciated. Experts say it can’t be measured in weeks or months or even in government services affected. Rather, it will be felt over the span of decades and defined in metrics like intellectual talent lost.” – via @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social
- An interview with Steven Levitsky, a scholar of democratic breakdown, who explains how the latest threats from [the administration] show telltale signs of a country slipping into authoritarian rule. Gee, if only everyone who could have prevented this had listened to everyone who rightfully predicted this based on everything everyone already knew from every other time this has ever happened in human history… – via @mcspocky.bsky.social
- [Wake Up — Rage Against the Machine]
- Kendrick Lamar Awarded Nobel Beef Prize
- A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft: “I have always taken it for granted that, just as my parents made sure that I could read and write, I would make sure that my kids could program computers.” But now? Not so much. This article is from a year or so ago, but I liked it so much it’s worth it to share again. I took a very, very similar path to the author, and feel the same.
- Welcome to the Atmosphere: The AT Protocol is an open, decentralized network for building social applications.
- I can confirm that Taxi Boat Varenna is the best way to explore Lake Como by water taxi. I’d like to be there now. I hate it here.
- An Evolutionary Biologist Explains Why Cats Are Perfect. (This is from a couple of years ago but it’s a great re-read.)
Dammit. I literally just had a conversation about how I have so many favorite t-shirts that I should seriously never buy another t-shirt in my life and then Jason finds a t-shirt I absolutely must purchase. – via kottke- An underweight baby seal is getting all the fish it could want at an aquarium after being rescued off the streets of Connecticut near Yale University.
- Trust and believe that if I worked for the Federal Aviation Administration and I got an email telling me I was being fired and that email came from an @mail.outlook.com address I would hit print and then delete and continue to go to work every day.
- So, uh, whatever happened to Q? Did we ever learn who he (or she) was? Or was that years-long mania just lost in the firehose of stupidity the last decade has been?
- The world’s darkest and clearest skies are at risk from an industrial megaproject. – via @therickman.bsky.social
- One of the passengers on the Delta flight to Toronto that flipped on the runway did an incredible Reddit AMA. – via @cosmicrami.com
- Mark Cuban posted some bullish remarks about the future of AI that really rubbed me the wrong way and, after a flurry of pushback from his followers, posted a link to an essay that (I think) undermined his original remarks. He didn’t say whether it was enough to change his mind, but I do appreciate that he at least acknowledged the alternative viewpoint. (And all of this is, of course, ignoring the inherent immorality of being a billionaire.)
- Utah teen arrested for taping fish to ATMs – via kottke
- Lorne Michaels Is the Real Star of Saturday Night Live
- Egyptian officials announced the discovery of the tomb of King Thutmose II, the last of the lost tombs of the kings of ancient Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty, which reigned for over two centuries. It’s the first royal Egyptian tomb to be discovered since the final resting place of King Tutankhamun was found in 1922. – via @indyfromspace.bsky.social
Mexico threatens to sue Google over name change of Gulf of Mexico on US maps- The most disturbing part of this headline is that anyone — anyone — could be shocked by this: “Julianne Moore in ‘Great Shock’ after POTUS Bans Her Children’s Book Freckleface Strawberry from Schools”
- “DOGE” seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS. Here is an excellent TL;DR of the article: The POTUS has ordered the IRS to hand over all of your personal information to a Holocaust denier who works for the richest man on Earth, who is a Nazi. – via @theophite.bsky.social, via anildash.com
- Related? The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia
- “President Plane Accident” – via @rollingstone.com
- Less than 1% of Catholic nuns in the United States today are 30 or younger.
- The sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale starts on April 8, 2025.
- Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared” I feel like there was probably a powerful confirmation bias at work here. This seems like exactly the sort of thing you’d think was obvious, but… as strongly as I would expect the correlation to be, I am guessing we’ll soon hear of all sorts of problems with the statistics.
- I’d forgotten that Taylor Swift hosted SNL a few years ago and performed a ten-minute version of All Too Well. It’s been a long, long time since I needed to convert a YouTube video to mp3.
We’re dealing with actual Nazis.- What “Center” Is That, Exactly? is an essay by A.R. Moxon of The Reframe that includes the wonderful line, “I think of how twisted I would have to become, for the spectacle of diversity and equality and freedom to traumatize me into suicidally-counterfactual reactionary nonsense.” This echoes some of the Kübler-Rossian questions stuck on my mental treadmill since that somehow-malevolent escalator ride that foreshadowed so drastic a national decline. How do you watch Footloose and root for John Lithgow? How do you watch The Muppet Movie and root for Doc Hopper? How do you watch Captain America and root for Hydra? How do you watch Star Wars and root for the Empire?! Or – maybe more terrifying – how do you transform into a stormtrooper but think you’re a Rebel?
- When you’re done reading that, check out It’s The Fascism, Stupid, in which Moxon talks about how “the First Buddy, a Nazi apartheid billionaire/corruption mogul whose name means Flair Odor, who was not elected to anything at all, seized control of our federal infrastructure.”
- Here’s a really lovely resource: Mister Rogers on How to Talk to Kids About Distressing News Events – via kottke
- Of two drivers heading towards each other down a one-way street, surely it is the one driving the wrong way who is most sorely in need of feedback. But it is unfortunately unusual to get a focused note of timely, specific, and usable criticism before things go too badly wrong.
- Scientists are using AI to decipher old scrolls charred by the Vesuvius volcano.
AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it is a great article from MIT Technology Review about the history of Google and search engines and the wonders of the (inevitable) artificial intelligence future, but I fear we’re looking at yet another Torment Nexus. – via Jodi Ettenberg- “He’s the Veruca Salt of presidents.”
- The current administration is staging a coup, trying to illegally eliminate agencies, seize control of the U.S. government’s payment systems, and gain access to sensitive data on all Americans without any oversight. It’s time to fight back like our democracy depends on it. – via Laura Olin
- “DOGE” has already thrown entire swaths of the federal government and its programs into disarray – programs that serve millions of Americans. ProPublica is is attempting to document who is involved and what they are doing.
- Billionaire’s blitzkrieg on D.C. has brought into focus his vision for a dramatically smaller and weaker government, as he and a coterie of aides move to control, automate – and substantially diminish – thousands of public functions.
- ICE is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations.
- The team at Court Watch is maintaining an ongoing list of Lawsuits Related to Trump Admin Executive Orders.
- On Bill Watterson’s Refusal To License Calvin and Hobbes is a great read. Let’s call this reverse enshittification. – via Links You’ll Love
- “If a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.”
- Do your shoelaces sit crooked? Do you retie your shoes several times a day? These are both signs of a Granny Knot. Learn the trick for keeping your shoes neatly and securely tied. – via Jodi Ettenberg
- Handy tool if you ever deal with email configurations: Quickly view your DomainKeys, DKIM, and SPF validity, and SpamAssassin score with DKIMValidator. – via @ofaolain.com
- Even the best parents of the best kids have had this thought: “Children are overbearing, supercilious, passionate, envious, inquisitive, egotistical, idle, fickle, timid, intemperate, liars, and dissemblers; they laugh and weep easily, are excessive in their joys and sorrows, and that about the most trifling objects; they bear no pain, but like to inflict it on others.” – Jean de La Bruyère, via Daily Dad
- The International Energy Agency has said the electricity usage of data centers worldwide might double in just four years. US electricity demand alone could jump 20 percent by 2030, driven mostly by AI. – via @longreads.com
- No. I don’t think I’ll ever get over Macho Grande.
- Jumblie is yet another fun little word game you can add to your morning routine of Wordle, Connections, &c.
- The appeal to nature fallacy is not a viable healthcare strategy. Sometimes “all natural” is far better, but other times nature tries to kill us. – via @kmpanthagani.bsky.social
- Matthew Green wrote a post about how AI will interface with end-to-end encryption. TL;DR: Maybe not so well! – via @matthewdgreen.bsky.social
- Related: Another day, another horrific and troubling example of AI going wrong – via @emily.space
- Related: Scientists covered a robot finger in living human skin.
- Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately those who do study history are also involuntarily dragged along for the ride.
- In college a friend suggested I read The Myth Adventure series by Robert Asprin. At the time it had been almost a decade since I’d read The Hobbit and the rest of Tolkien, and I thoroughly enjoyed returning to stories of dragons and wizards and swords. It looks like they’re no longer being published, but if you’re into that sort of tale, I’m sure you can find them used somewhere.
- 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
- If I ever got name-checked on The Simpsons, I think I would spontaneously combust. – via @sepinwall
- How Gen Z Came to See Books as a Waste of Time – via @theatlantic
- For about a year and a half I was really into intermittent fasting. I used a great app called Simple that helped me track my daily water consumption and weight, and also handled reminding me when my fasting windows were, let me log what I was eating and when, etc. The app was so good, I even gladly paid for an annual subscription to unlock bonus features. And then — for reasons I cannot imagine — the developers rolled out a “new” version loaded to the gills with whiz-bang AI features that made the app completely useless and incomprehensibly frustrating. I tried for a few months to get used to the new system, but eventually abandoned it, canceled my subscription, and still haven’t found a decent replacement. I abhor the continued enshittification of everything.
- Male bigfin reef squid may be the best fathers of all cephalopods. [Ed. note: But can they make Sunday morning chocolate chip pancakes?]
- It’s really a shame that Russell Brand has gone crazy, because Forgetting Sarah Marshall is easily one of the all-time best comedies.
- Strong Lloyd Dobler vibes in this essay, and I am here for it: “[P]eople do want to work, just not for the paltry wages they were making before the pandemic.”
- “If you spell your name backwards and place an umlaut over one of the vowels, that’s your IKEA name.” [Ed. note: Mine is Engäg and I’m a kitchen drawer divider.] – via @drewtalbert
- Regular exercisers drink more, a new study confirms, but are less likely to be problem drinkers. – via @outsidemagazine
- Black Friday / Holiday Sales:
The world’s comfiest t-shirts and coziest sweatpants are crazy expensive, but this weekend almost everything is on sale at Aviator Nation.- Everything at ’47 Brand is 30% off this weekend. Get all the best sports gear gifts here.
- Need some everyday walking shoes? Everything is 50% off at Allbirds this weekend.
- I have an AirPods Pro case and a wallet from Saddleback Leather Co. and they’re both exquisite. Not everything is on sale, but they do have some pretty good deals this weekend on a few things. (Their motto is, “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead.”)
- Use promo code BLACKFRIDAY to get 30% off (and free shipping) on everything at J. Peterman this weekend.
- Fun Fact: Jon Gries, the actor who portrayed Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius (TriStar Pictures, 1985), went on to play Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite (Searchlight Pictures, 2004) and the love interest of Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus (HBO, 2021).