Posts tagged “dinosaurs”

• Research from dozens of clinical trials suggests that improving your sleep quality leads to meaningful reductions in depression, anxiety, and repetitive negative thinking… and the more your sleep improves, the bigger the mental health benefit. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• I was pulling for the New England Patriots, but I have to admit it was cool to learn that Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald and the NBC reporter who interviewed him on stage after the game, Maria Taylor, went to high school together. See also: Sam Darnold and Kenneth Walker III riding the tea cups at Disneyland.
• AI Doesn’t Reduce Work. It Intensifies It. – via mergesort.me
• A new study suggests apes can pretend, an ability once thought unique to humans.
• The night before Super Bowl LX, at a North Carolina men’s basketball game, Jordon Hudson – girlfriend of former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick – wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo for ORCHIDS OF ASIA, the massage parlor where Robert Kraft – owner of the Patriots – was arrested a few years ago for soliciting prostitution. (The charges were later dropped, but still…) – via TMQ

Winter Olympics

• Sarah Schleper and son Lasse skiing for Mexico will make history as they become the first mother and son to compete at the same Winter Games.
• Olympic organizers are investigating with “maximum attention” after a spate of medals have fallen off their ribbons during celebrations on the opening weekend of the Games. – via Rodger Sherman
• German ski jumper Philipp Raimund won gold, which is quite a feat for someone afraid of heights.
• Norwegian biathlete wins bronze medal, then, totally unprompted, reveals he cheated on his girlfriend, she left him, and he wants to apologize publicly hoping she takes him back – via @rodger

A Functioning Democracy Does Not Imprison Children:

• Eric Swalwell: “You said you wanted to see a deportation process that was ‘like Amazon Prime but with human beings.’ How many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom 3 times in the face?” – via @atrupar.com
• RFK Jr. Went Dinosaur Bone Hunting with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – via What A Day
• Ha! Paul Thomas Anderson and Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) Want Melania Doc to Remove Phantom Thread Music
• ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps. – via @jamellebouie.net

• Banana! An Olympic figure skater from Spain will not be able to perform his normal routine due to a copyright claim from the Minions.
• I love that the Pope published a Holy See about the dangers of AI.
• A 13-year-old boy has been hailed as a hero after swimming 4 kilometres through rough waters for help after his mother and two siblings were swept out to sea off the coast of Australia.
• A photographer found thousands of dinosaur footprints near an Italian Winter Olympic venue.
• I enjoyed reading the essay Dreaming of Sundance by screenwriter Bob DeRosa about his Hollywood experience.
• Amazon is being forced to repeatedly learn a lesson: Use AI slop, and get people yelling at you until you don’t.
• Bad news for people who can’t stop thinking about bad news: Repetitive negative thinking is associated with cognitive function decline.
• Your friends are still acting like everything is normal in America. What do you do? – via Kottke

Jane! Stop this crazy thing!

• What it’s like to see ICE tear gas kids
• Ugh. Three fraternity members were arrested after the death of a Northern Arizona student following a rush event.
• “It’s perhaps unfair for me to call Melania the worst film ever made, since I haven’t seen every film ever made. But I have seen Porky’s 3, Police Academy 6, and many Rob Schneider vehicles, so you know I mean business when I say it’s the worst film I’ve ever seen.”
• This essay on the rise and fall of Scott Adams (and Dilbert) was mostly depressing.

• A study of 500 diners found “attractive servers earn approximately $1,261 more per year in tips than unattractive servers.” Mostly because of “female customers tipping attractive females more than unattractive females.” – via 52 things I learned in 2025
• A recent randomized trial on exercise for cancer patients breaks new ground in showing the life-extending powers of a workout.
• Scope Creep is an online horror video game about being a project manager.
• “Time is indeed a cruel mistress.”

  History and the Passing of Time is a brilliant (and short) essay by Daniele Bolelli, host of the History on Fire podcast.

• This is your annual reminder that the album Sugar & Booze by SNL alum Ana Gasteyer is chock full of fantastic holiday music and you can stream it on Alexa.
• I have at least eight of these Wyze smart plugs and they are great for scheduling holiday decorations. (I have two Wyze outdoor plugs, too.) This year I bought two more of these battery-to-plug adapters. (They let you convert battery-powered decorations—like snow globes and animated Santas—so you can plug them into the wall.)
• And you may ask yourself, “How did I get here?” (This is actually a fabulous explanation of how the Internet works and not, sadly, a site about Talking Heads. Coincidentally, I just learned a few days ago that David Byrne was at RISD at the same time that my dad was at PC, and my dad said Byrne used to work in the window of a New York System place grilling hot dogs.)
• This might be the most wholesome thing on YouTube. Dad, How Do I? is a collection of videos teaching you how to do all sorts of basic things. – via Jason
• It’s hard for me to believe it’s been a decade since the release of The Force Awakens. (I still love BB-8 and was pleasantly surprised to learn he was imagined into existence by J.J. Abrams himself!)
• In Bolivia a team of paleontologists have discovered and meticulously documented 16,600 footprints left by theropods, the dinosaur group that includes the Tyrannosaurus rex.

• 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

• I loved reading this story about an 11-yo who pulled one of the most valuable baseball cards in history. The best quote from the article? “My brain pooped.”
• Hackers are hijacking WordPress sites to push malware on unsuspecting visitors. This is another good reason to make sure your plugins are core files are routinely updated.
• This short article about the psychology of scene transitions in film is really interesting. (Watch the video, too!)
• One of the more concerning consequences of the current administration is that when the most powerful nation in history is ruled by feckless ignorant toads, those who lust for power elsewhere are emboldened:
  • Paramilitary group attacks an open market in Sudan, killing 54 people and wounding scores
  • Congo says 773 dead in week-long fighting as military tries to repel Rwanda-backed rebels
• Last night I realized I can watch Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough on BBC through AppleTV. I had to pay for it, but I think that’s pretty reasonable. I was pleasantly surprised to see Steve Brusatte make an appearance. I read his book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World a year or two ago and loved it. It’s really mind-blowing how much more we know about dinosaurs than we did when I was fascinated with them in elementary school. Scientists might even have finally discovered where dinosaurs first evolved! (The documentary is titled Dinosaur Apocalypse on AppleTV for some reason. I guess that sounds much more dramatic.)
• More Bird Flu Bad News: Infectious disease expert warns wind-blown avian feces may be route of transmission.
• Google searches for “adult tennis lessons” were up 245 percent shortly after the premiere of the Zendaya love-triangle sports-flick Challengers. – via The Athletic
• After reading a few of her Bluesky posts, I decided to subscribe to the tech newsletter rendezvous with cassidoo.
• Just in case you were under the misguided impression that the current administration cares about, y’know, people:
  • The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been fired.
  • On Monday the Senate confirmed fossil fuel executive Chris Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy.
• A Coup in Plain Sight: An Explainer as the Crisis Solidifies

• Everyone should be following Nike Running Coach Bennett on Threads and/or Bluesky.
• Despite some choad that’s selling a nearly-identical knock-off of my app (that is somehow ranked #1 in the Food & Drink category in the App Store), the 48 hours surrounding Thanksgiving was a banner sales day for bartender.live, which was nice to see. If you haven’t yet, please rate and review my little side project. It really helps!
• We have several lighted Christmas decorations that burn through AA batteries. I’ve been buying rechargeable batteries for years and love them, but it still bugs me and I kept thinking there must be a way to convert these things to use AC power. I was ready to start researching amps and volts and power adapters and break out my soldering iron, but then found these cool dummy battery plugs that appear to do exactly what I need!
• Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke are national treasures that should be on money. This scene is incredible.
• Did you like Agatha All Along enough to listen to a ten-hour lo-fi remix of The Witches Road? – via @agentm
• Most of us are famously terrible at comprehending very large numbers, but I find it much easier to wrap my head around the idea that around two and a half billion T. Rex roamed the Earth during the Cretaceous Period than the fact that their reign lasted nearly two and a half million years. That is a long, long, long time to rule the planet. (Humans have been around, at most, for only about 300,000 years. Sharks have been around for something like 400 million years, by the way, which means they’ve been around just a bit longer than trees and probably twice as long as Saturn has had rings.)
• Tania Rascia just redesigned her blog (again) and added light/dark theming, which is something I’ve been meaning to do here for a long time. She also created a nice web developer starter pack on Bluesky.
• I’m a big fan of moo.com’s mini business cards, and they’re having a significant sale through Dec 5: 30% off and free shipping with promo code CYBERYAY
• Bryson DeChambeau’s Viral Golf Challenge: A Marketing Masterclass, How a Simple Idea Captivated Millions and Delivered Big Results – via Culture of Sport

• Potholes are a serious and dangerous road hazard in Los Angeles. Designers in Italy are promoting the idea of a brightly-colored second layer of asphalt which would turn roads into a sort of skin, so you can easily tell when there’s a pothole to avoid.
• It’s so very hard these days — but so very important — to remember that the email address on the other side of the screen is a real person, a lot like you.
• There is much to be learned from analyzing photos of Michael Bublé being stalked by a velociraptor. But you might have more fun looking at a few dozen movie posters recreated to feature Garry Shandling.
• There are only a few single English word domain names still available to register.
• Grab the Airplane and Go: True Tales from the Airplane Repossession Business
• The Los Angeles Department of City Planning audited itself and learned that it does a very poor job of planning.