Posts tagged “death”

• An oral history of Industrial Light and Magic
• Always Invite Anna
• Don’t cry for millennials or Gen Z. Save your pity for those in their 50s. Why Gen X is the real loser generation.
• Fat Bear Week is here.
• This is now incredibly the 16th consecutive year I’m linking to this: It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers
• The truth is not always beautiful nor beautiful words the truth. – via @swiftonsecurity.com
• I’ve always loved the Jabberwocky.
• For more than a century in the 18th & 19th centuries, an edited version of Romeo & Juliet, with “a 67-line final conversation between Romeo and Juliet“, was more popular than Shakespeare‘s original. – via kottke
• And now for the bad news:
  • A little chat about genAI is well worth your time. Don’t be the kind of person who says, “I hear you. I understand. But also, I don’t care.”
  • He’s Been On Louisiana’s Death Row for Decades. A Judge Just Vacated His Conviction.
  • “A former director of the North Carolina Republican Party – who resigned amid election fraud and corruption scandals – has been appointed to a new role overseeing North Carolina’s state and local election officials…” – via @maddow.msnbc.com
  • Bear shot, killed after wandering into Central Florida home
  • POTUS Fired a U.S. Attorney Who Insisted on Following a Court Order
  • Hollywood Union Files Complaint Against Use of James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader Voice—Which He Sold Before His Death

• Dave Barry wrote a lovely essay on what it was like to learn from Google’s AI-powered search results that he’d recently passed away. Allison Parrish wrote a bonkers analysis detailing more than you wanted to know about how Game Boy cartridges work. – both via cassidoo
• If you still have any subscriptions on their platform, send the author this detailed piece on how and why to leave Substack. – via kottke
• Related: Substack has once again revealed itself to be a Nazi bar.
• Some notes on the iPhone’s New Satellite Messaging Function – via @sweat_science
• New research reveals that Americans have abandoned a simple daily habit that reduces stress as well as — and, at times, more effectively than — exercise, meditation apps, or massage. Taking just 15 minutes to read for pleasure can reduce your stress levels by 68 percent — but 84 percent of American adults no longer do it daily. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• Related: More than half of American adults now read below a sixth-grade level. – via Kimchi & Gabagool
• Nobody Knows How to Make a Pencil is a brilliant essay from 1958 which I first read on Jason’s site forever ago. (The original link is gone but I found a copy on the Internet Archive.)
• I Am An AI Hater
• Help save Ned the snail!
• Introduction to AT Protocol – via cassidoo
• Things Can Only Get Better:
  • The United States, just months before its 250^th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism. – via Laura Olin
  • Scientists say flesh-eating bacteria cases are rising because of climate change.

• Some resistance leaders have created a Google Doc to track what members of Congress are doing during this March recess.
• A flooded quarry, a mysterious millionaire and the dream of a new Atlantis: An innovative mission on the Welsh border, funded by an anonymous private investor, has begun work to create a ‘permanent human settlement’ under the sea.
• What do you think are the odds that you will die during the next year? Try to put a number to it — 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? Whatever it is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now. Gompertz Law is fascinating fun with statistics, even if it gets a little more terrifying to read every time.
• If your website’s “LOGIN” menu link opens a new window or browser tab, please know that every single person who clicks it hates you.
• Make It Stop:
  • Engineers and executives at the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” are drawing healthy taxpayer-funded salaries — sometimes from the very agencies they are cutting.
  • A Timeline of the Politicization and Weaponization of the Justice Department – via kottke
  • Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told Fox that the solution to high egg prices is for people to raise chickens in their backyards. – via Today in Politics
  • The Los Angeles Times removed its new AI-powered “insights” feature from a column after the tool tried to defend the Ku Klux Klan.
  • With its ASMR videos of people being forced out of the country, the White House is turning suffering into entertainment. The administration is trying to showcase its program of “mass deportation” as reality-show style entertainment, through which voters will rationalize their cruelty.
  • Fired federal employees – some with top security clearances – were not given exit briefings. That means, allegedly, their laptops, security badges, usernames and password, etc. were not collected either. I cannot fathom this level of government incompetence.

• The key difference between a calque and a loanword is that a loanword isn’t translated into English whereas a calque is. – surprisingly not via kottke, although he posted it, too!
• Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Jose Molina are television writer/producers with over forty years of combined experience — on shows including Lost, Firefly, Sleepy Hollow, and Helix — and they have a great podcast.
• Should We Be Punching Nazis? You already know where I stand on this.
• My sons and I love Cautionary Tales, the Tim Harford podcast about mistakes and what we should learn from them. (He’s also written a children’s book, The Truth Detective: How to Make Sense of a World That Doesn’t Add Up.)
• Horror stories of cryonics: The gruesome fates of futurists hoping for immortality
• Is your heart a hardworking pump or a mystic miracle?
• What are Progressive Web Apps?

• “Productivity dysmorphia is the inability to see one’s own success, to acknowledge the volume of your own output.” – via Tom Whitwell
• How NASA has kept Apollo moon rocks safe from contamination for 50 years
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of tiki culture
• The Day the Music Burned is the story of the 2008 Universal fire.
• The current Banana Republic is nothing like it was when I was a kid. You can learn all about the company’s history at Abandoned Republic.
• The Launch is the story behind the 2019 debut of the Cosmic Crisp apple.
• The Ultimate Guide to Building a Hot Wheels Race Track
• For a little while now Apple has allowed you to tag someone as a legacy contact who can access and download the data in your account after your death. You can find the feature on the Sign-in & Security tab under your Apple Account at the top of the Settings app on your iOS device.

I probably have twenty P.J. O’Rourke books on my shelves. Truly one of the greats. I’ll miss him.