Posts tagged “Christmas”

• 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.

• Congratulations to Dr. Patric Gagne, author of Sociopath: A Memoir, which was recently included in the NPR Books We Loved list for 2024. – via @patricgagne
• This is probably a day late and a dollar short, but I found great success following the suggestions in this How to Cook a Turkey: Turkey Temperature & Doneness guide from ThermoWorks. Maybe bookmark it for next year?
• If, like me, you save every cool knot-tying video you find, give a follow to @knot_short on Threads or Instagram.
• Pretty much everything is 25% off at Field Notes this weekend. An annual subscription makes a great gift for the lovers of little notebooks in your life. [Ed. note: This is not an ad! I just really like the brand.]
• There are far too many football games to watch this weekend. If you get tired of leftovers, bake a batch of my favorite chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. I promise you’ll love them.
• If you are worried about your writing, just remember that somehow, Palpatine returned. – via @zacharyseda
• It’s in the Game: MADDEN NFL on Amazon Prime is a new 4-part documentary series all about the Madden NFL video game (which I’ve been playing for 34 years). There’s a great article at The Athletic with all kinds of details.
• Just started watching the latest Keri Russel show The Diplomat on Netflix. Only through S1E3 but so far it’s at least as good as The Americans, which I loved.
• Selling Christmas wrapping paper that is impervious to standard scotch tape should be considered a war crime.
• Anyway here’s a cheerful piece about how the Sun will eventually destroy all life on Earth (but not by exploding, so, you know, there’s that) – via @astrokatie.com

• Everything designed for children should be dishwasher safe. Everything. Lunch boxes. Water bottles. T-shirts. Nintendo controllers. Nikes. Backpacks. All of it. – via @gatordavid
• “Only a twisted type of fantasy can see [pornography] in a biblical figure, in a statue that is also an icon of the Renaissance and the most famous statue in the world. It’s not only absurd, it’s a worrying sign of sheer ignorance, in its most literal sense: a lack of knowledge of history – religious history, of Christianity and Judaism, and art history.” – via @italo.americano
• Transitioning to clean energy would reduce the volume and harm of mining dramatically, because a fossil fuel economy requires 535× more mining than a clean energy economy. – via distilled
• The research linking alcohol to breast cancer is deadly solid: Alcohol, regardless of whether it’s in Everclear or a vintage Bordeaux, is carcinogenic.
• The curious case of two Scott Stallings and one Masters invitation – via TheAthletic
• Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs.
• Beyoncé to perform halftime show at Ravens-Texans on Christmas on Netflix

The last regular season NFL game was a banger. After spending the day logging and wrapping and putting away all the decorations, my son and I spent a few lovely hours watching the Bills beat the Dolphins before I shushed him off to brush his teeth and get in bed. Goodbye, Christmas 2023.

Funny Farm (Chevy Chase, 1988) is the best Christmas-adjacent movie.

Fun activity: Any child who licks their elbow can open one Christmas present early.