- The Falconer time travel sketch is genius, and I can’t believe it took me almost twenty years to see it.
- Space Pants is almost as good. (Check out its Reddit thread and backstory, too.)
- Ballad of a Thin Man has always reminded me of The Second Coming. It’s more than a little disturbing that they’re equally relevant these days. – via my dad
- The Roman Empire’s original smartwatch: portable sundials
- I have been using Dotster as my registrar for this site for more than 25 years. I was a little miffed to learn last year that they were acquired by Web.com, but didn’t think much of it because my site’s registration is paid far in advance and I rarely think about it. Today I got an email telling me that Web.com was acquired by Network Solutions, and I cannot stand their platform. Most of my 50+ domains are registered at Dreamhost, so I’ll likely be switching soon.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world:
- “The last ship from China will dock at a West coast port on the 29th, and the last Chinese ship will dock on the East coast around May 10th. […] We’re screwed.“
- [Current] administration officials are placing dozens of posters of arrested unauthorized immigrants along the White House driveway.
- POTUS pardons Nevada politician who paid for cosmetic surgery with funds to honor a slain officer.
- A little-known firm with investors linked to JD Vance, Elon Musk, and POTUS could get a piece of the federal expense card system — and its hundreds of millions in fees.
- Republicans are trying to steal an election in North Carolina.
- Please understand that when 2A cultists point their fingers at bizarre tragedies – like what happened recently in Vancouver – as some sort of justification for their infantile predilection for firearms, an excruciatingly rational response is that the entire automobile industrial complex is also misguided, cancerous, and evil.
Posts tagged “cats”
- 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.)
- Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) barged into the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and challenged him about the “DOGE” team gaining access to a sensitive payment system at the Department of the Treasury.
- Workers at NASA were told to ‘Drop Everything’ to scrub any mentions of indigenous people and women from its websites.
- Federal Judge Blocks Executive Order Intended to End Birthright Citizenship
“It’s sad that Wile E. Coyote will always be remembered for his failures and not his amazingly realistic tunnel paintings.” – via @sean_with_an_ean_damnit- This is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil. Federal law mandates wholesome lunches, but much of it gets trashed because there isn’t time to eat it. – via Jodi Ettenberg
- The “DOGE” Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame is a chilling plea written by a federal employee.
- The US Treasury Claimed “DOGE” Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did: Sources tell WIRED that the ability of Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.
- All of this, of course, depends on a functioning justice system. (Things Are Going to Keep Getting Worse Until They Get Better, Part 339.)
- CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Spread Between Cats and People
- Conservative “Christian nationalist” Russell Vought, former vice president of Heritage Action for America and one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution — and to burn down the system. And the Senate just confirmed him to be the head of OMB. (I would link you directly to the official White House website for OMB, but… it’s been deleted.)
- This tutorial on installing a newsletter replacement for Jetpack looks promising.
- “Just gonna slide this information in here. The Eagles refused to go to the White House after their Super Bowl victory in 2018. Do with that what you will.” – via @brandi-rene.swifties.social
- Oh, and Taylor Swift is expected to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Obviously, she won’t be sitting in the same suite as POTUS.
Happy Birthday, James
On James Joyce
The Timeless Beauty of National Geographic is a wonderful article examining the stability of a famous brand aesthetic. (I used to love reading NG in my elementary school library when I was a kid and just last year decided to get my very own subscription. Every article in every issue is fabulous, just as they always have been.)- “The most well-known use of Spencerian script is, arguably, the Coca-Cola logo. The logo was designed in the 1880s by the company’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson.”
- Repeat after me: Taking Photos In Public Places Is Not A Crime
- National Public Radio is changing its name to NPR. (I guess that’s better than Dweezil.)
- Finally! More photos of kitties in wigs!
- “Losing friends is inevitable. Making enemies is not.” — from 35 Lessons in 35 Years
- “This year is the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, the Star Wars sequel that many fans consider the pinnacle moment in a franchise that has pulled in $16 billion in box office and merchandising. But 1980 was also the year that Kurtz and Lucas realized the Jedi universe wasn’t big enough for the both of them.”
- Technology is great, for sure, but you’ll never pick up your iPad and find a perfectly preserved, century-old press pass to a World Series game in its digital pages.
- “Resizing my browser window to make sure it fills up my entire screen will not make me focus on your pretty pictures or admire your wicked design.”
- If you’re looking for seriously advanced computer knowledge — like how to determine the size of an image of Robocop riding a unicorn — take a look at Unicorn Tips.
- I think it’s safe to say that bluntcard.com is my new favorite ecard site.
- Ferris Club
- Few things are as cool as Batman riding a robotic unicorn over a rainbow full of dolphins.
- There was once a woman who had immortal cells.
- True fact.
- I live in Los Angeles, so I am almost always “near” the ocean. There’s nothing like being in Hawaii, though. I need to be near a big body of water on a regular basis. I need it to reset my psychic metronome.
- To promote his new novel, Doubles, author Nic Brown challenged pro tennis player Tripp Phillips to a tournament. The story of the match is terrific.
- Fantastic feline fun for the whole family!
- Is anything sadder than a sad bear?
2024-06-07: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
- Four agencies that specialize in Internet marketing — 10e20, Search and Social, Infinitenine, and Brent Csutoras Inc. — are joining forces in a roll-up to form BlueGlass Interactive.
- Why, yes, I do very much want a lightsaber.
- “It’s sort of nonsensical for a twice-divorced single mother of two to be using this line as seduction.” (a classic from @anildash)
- Why do foreign commercials always seem so much better than ours?
- Must read: Seven Reasons I’m Glad I’m an SEC Fan After Conference Expansion
“Is there a large mammal standing on your phone right now, such as a mountain goat or cheetah?”- No Mouse Is Safe: Cat Gets World’s First Bionic Paws
- The preview video of the new EA Sports NCAA 11 looks amazicredible.
- I really don’t know what to say about phoneballs.com.
2024-06-28: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
- You would think that a prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson sticker would be hard to miss, or at the very least hard to forget about and leave behind.
- The shortest possible game of Monopoly requires only four turns, nine rolls of the dice, and twenty-one seconds.
- Fuck Yeah Cats! is cute. But FUCK YEAH SHARKS is cool.
- “The economic slave never realizes he is kept in a cage going round and round basically nowhere with millions of others,” said the totalitarian Buddhist who beat SimCity3000.
- I have got to agree that putting an awesome costume on your observatory is the greatest astronomy-related college prank ever.
- Web developers should always be mindful of the commander’s intent.
- It looks like the AT&T tethering plan for the new iPhone is going to suck and be absurdly expensive. I’m shocked. Shocked.
- And, finally, I love this quote from an article about the murder of porn actor Tom Dong: “That’s why I have a gun in my office. Weird things happen all the time. We’re in the Valley.”
2024-07-12: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
- Babies with Laser Eyes is a website featuring exactly what you think it does.
- Someone with plenty of free time on his hands compiled a list of the thirty most important cats of 2009.
- The Mariana Trench is very, very, very deep.
- Do you remember life before Google?
- Make sure to view Greg Rutter’s Definitive List of the 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced on the Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something. And then take a look at Greg Rutter’s Second Definitive List of the 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced on the Internet Unless You’re A Loser or Old or Something.
- URL-shorteners have become quite popular lately. You’ve probably heard of (or used) TinyURL, a service that lets you convert really long web addresses into shorter ones for use in Twitter posts or email messages. ShadyURL is sort of — but not quite — totally unlike that. It’s a service that takes a web address and converts it into one that looks suspiciously like spam or a virus link. Why anyone would ever want to do that is a mystery.
2024-04-24: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.