Posts tagged “comedy”

• 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.

Holy hell. I just saw Seth Meyers new segment, Introducing the Interns and How They Mock Me, and I am dying at his commitment to the foam cinder block bit.

“I never realized how much I hated every single one of my friends and relatives.”
– Homer Simpson, At Long Last Leave, S23:E14

• Every Frame Is a Goodbye is a lovely little essay on photography – via my dad
• I am relieved to report that Happy Gilmore 2 was fantastic. I was worried it might be terrible, but it was a masterpiece sequel and loaded with incredible cameos and great jokes.
• A Friendly Introduction to SVG and a Priority Compass – both via the always brilliant cassidoo
• Someone has put together a compilation of awesome video game maps. – via hiro.report
• Here’s a handy hack to keep squirrels out of your garden.
• “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” I’ve seen that attributed to William Butler Yeats, but Quote Investigator can’t verify it.
• Related: Stop living this way. Make the smallest bit of effort. Be your own person. Research. Take pride in the words you repeat, and … attribute them accurately.
• We truly owe Thomas Jefferson mad, mad props for wonderfully irreverent things like the Season 27 premiere of South Park.
• I’ve been using Markdown for around twenty years now and still often forget what’s what. I love a good cheat sheet.
• Just Give Me Some Normal Damn Dinosaurs
• Mysterious Antimatter Physics Discovered at the Large Hadron Collider
• Military leaders aghast as Meta founder Zuckerberg crashes classified Oval Office meeting
• FEMA response to deadly Texas floods delayed and deficient with Noem in charge

• In September of 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. (I love stories like this!) – via mikeachim.bsky.social
• The Wikipedia List of Unexplained Sounds – via my son
• I enjoyed this quick profile on Howard Katz, the man behind the NFL schedule.
• Someone on bluesky asked, “Do you remember the hardest you’ve ever laughed at anything?” That was an easy answer for me: I remember watching the SNL All-Drug Olympics sketch when it aired in October of 1988. I was fifteen and thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I still think it’s hysterical.
• Related: I’ve seen Overboard (1987, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn) at least 1,000 times and Mother’s Day 2025 was the first time I noticed that one of the VHS tapes in Grant’s collection is clearly a porno titled Pink Clam.
• Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, became an instant hit among trading card collectors.
• Can confirm: It Only Tuesday
• How Is Any of This Happening?
  • POTUS is attempting to place Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the guy who defended him in his porn star hush money trial, as the interim acting librarian of Congress. I cannot fathom how anyone is acting like this is… normal. (How does the AP even allow that headline?!) POTUS and/or anyone in the Executive branch cannot simply hire or fire someone who is de jure employed by the Legislative branch. It’s the Library of Congress, not the Library of the President, ffs!
  • I couldn’t have said it better myself: POTUS accepting a $400 million jet from the royal family of Qatar is banana republic shit.
  • The ICE detainment of progressive Twitch streamer Hasan Piker is a cautionary tale for multiple reasons.
  • A contestant (justifiably!) feels betrayed after spending $10,000 auditioning for a fake singing competition on the Nathan Fielder HBOMAX series The Rehearsal.
  • “This is insane. Republicans have inserted language into the budget reconciliation bill that would ban states from regulating AI in any capacity for 10 years.” – via bcmerchant.bsky.social
  • Employees who use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini at work face negative judgments about their competence and motivation from colleagues and managers, according to a new study. – via sethpartnow.bsky.social

• Dark energy is probably doing something weird, and we don’t know why.
• The Scale of Time
• New research suggests that being even slightly dehydrated can reduce muscle thickness after lifting weights—potentially limiting growth and recovery. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• Prosecutors who resigned rather than carry out what they saw as an unethical, improper and potentially illegal order were 100% vindicated by [the judge]’s extensive findings.
• “Only one thing / I did wrong / Stayed in Mississippi / Way too long” – For some reason I had no idea that this was a “newer” (relatively speaking) Dylan song, or that it was released on 9/11. It feels much older than that. (It’s also weird that the Sheryl Crow cover was released in 1998!)
• On the Best (Worst) Best Man Speech Ever (at My Super Mario-Themed Wedding) – via kottke, of course
• How to optimize files and fix your storage problems on Macs, iPhones, and iPads
• We Can Do Better:
  • Several members of [the President]’s National Security Council have been fired a day after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed [the President] to get rid of them.
  • The state of Florida is prepared to convict [a woman] for killing her son, despite the fact that the only direct evidence of arson has been thoroughly discredited. This story is as infuriating as it is heartbreaking.
  • JD Vance Would Throw His Own Kids Under A Bus If [POTUS] Were Driving It
  • How the [Current] Administration Learned to Obscure the Truth in Court
  • Texas GOP Congressman Ronny Jackson has been fundraising with what appears to be an unauthorized legal expense fund.
  • [Administration] Declares a Trade War on Uninhabited Islands, US Military, and Economic Logic
  • Georgia Woman Arrested After Having Miscarriage
  • The [current] administration is planning to halt more than half a billion dollars in contracts and grants awarded to Brown University.

• You probably never considered how awesome it would be to hear Rick Astley perform an acoustic cover of the Chappell Roan hit Pink Pony Club, did you? – via @jacksongagne.com
• The team at The Athletic put together a sweet Bluesky college football starter pack.
• Mustaaaaaaaaaard! – via kottke
• As a kid I only ever barely paid attention to Star Trek — we were a Star Wars family — but the way Chekov (Walter Koenig) repeats, “Botany Bay,” as he realizes his predicament is just phenomenal.
• Humor is vital to effective protest, and the Democrats suck at it. – via @kurtandersen.bsky.social
• I may have linked this already, but it’s worth a repost: “Wherever you get your podcasts,” is a radical statement.
• “If no laws have been broken, there should be nothing to hide.” – via @beyer.house.gov
• I’m terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought:
  • The detention of Mahmoud Khalil means we are a hop, skip & jump away from political persecutions. It’s a steep, slippery slope from here to “speak out against [the administration] and go to jail.” – via @joycewhitevance.bsky.social
  • I don’t even want to include the subject matter here, but these people are pure evil.
  • McLaurine Pinover, the chief spokesperson at OPM and the current administration’s official tasked with defending “DOGE” personnel cuts, posted fashion influencer videos from her office.
  • Listening to Chris Hayes interview Robert Garcia (D–CA) on his Why Is This Happening? podcast is not likely to make you feel any better about the future of our country, but it is pretty interesting.
  • California, New York, and Maryland all confirmed their first cases of measles this week.
  • EPA head says he’ll roll back dozens of environmental regulations, including rules on climate change

• “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.

• Were Back to the Future and The Goonies set on the same day? – via kottke
• Here’s a faithful recreation of me in the 1980s explaining my IT job to my grandparents at Christmas. It also perfectly mimics how I imagine I sound any time I talk to my teenager about pretty much anything. (But the danger presented by a poorly-maintained turbo encabulator is no joke!)
• Reverse Engineering Call Of Duty Anti-Cheat
• There are some hidden gems on this MacStories Best Apps of 2024 list.
• I have a generic digital photo frame at home that’s on its last legs. I got it well over a decade ago and was never thrilled with its buttons or input options, but at the time it was pretty awesome. Since then I’ve purchased multiple Pix-Star frames (website, Amazon) for far-off family members; I’m not a huge fan of those, either, and I don’t feel they’re worth the price tag. I just saw the Aura frame recommended in the hiro.report newsletter and it looks pretty nice, but it’s also pretty expensive. I’ve got at least two ancient iPads Mini collecting dust and am going to try repurposing those instead. (I’ll keep you posted.)
• To age on the internet is to exist in an accidental version of [a] time tunnel.
• I’m wondering for how long what you don’t know can’t hurt you. It’s definitely not forever, but it is still for today.
• I just received a text message that read, “Please be advised that we are currently conducting a lockdown drill at [your son’s high school]. This is a routine practice to ensure student and staff safety. Thank you for your understanding. STOP to end”
  What a utopia it would be if simply texting STOP to end was actually the solution.