- I can’t speak or read Spanish, but used Google to translate this article about a tiger being captured in a Mexican taco shop. That this is the third time this has happened in the last two months seems like a big deal!
Anyone still holding out hope for a ‘compromise’ on abortion rights needs to give it up. When the state oppresses women, more babies die. This isn’t rocket science. The best quote, I think, applies to so much more than just this one issue: “You don’t ask the guy with the boot on your neck to wear a softer shoe. You rip his fucking foot off.”- How the Hims & Hers Super Bowl Ad Exposed the Dangerous World of Unregulated Weight Loss Drugs
- This is from 2+ years ago, but still pretty amazing: A paralyzed man with a severed spinal cord has been able to walk again, thanks to an implant developed by a team of Swiss researchers.
- Good news for people who like bad news: The Texas measles outbreak doubled in size to 48 cases, including 13 hospitalizations mostly among kids. (None were vaccinated.) Another measles case was reported in New Mexico in a county that shares a western border with Texas. And on the other side, the Louisiana Department of Health stopped promoting routine vaccinations by banning vaccine events and ordering staff not to promote vaccinations. – via @yourlocalepidemiologist
- I used to use scotch tape to splice together 8-tracks to expand the available “memory” on my first computer. Being able to copy something on my iPhone and then paste it over the air to my laptop is pretty mind-blowing. And, yes, I remember punch cards and being excited about BASIC. The things is, I know how all this stuff works – even today – which is why I think I appreciate these little conveniences so much. (Yet it’s still amazing to me that we’ve come this far so quickly.) But maybe that’s also why I get so angry about incompetent inexperienced incel “DOGE” choads gleefully doing the bidding of their faux-evangelical Smaug-like Nazi masters. When I was a kid I was certain we’d have jetpacks and R2-D2s by now and instead a few dozen truly evil Montgomery Burns are deplorably clawing us back to the 1400s.
Posts tagged “health”
- Italy has embraced a novel approach to integrate olive oil into its tourism industry through oleotourism, an initiative that invites visitors to engage with the olive oil production process, offering experiences that range from guided tours of olive groves and mills to tasting sessions and educational workshops.
“In the final analysis, the progress of our civilization will be retarded if any large body of citizens falls behind. Without the help of thousands of others, any one of us would die, naked and starved.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt- Scottie Scheffler, 2024 PGA Tour Player of the Year, missed the first two tournaments of the season because he needed surgery to repair his hand after slicing it while attempting to make homemade ravioli on Christmas Day.
- A growing number of US government websites have gone offline as of Saturday, including several related to USAID and others focused on youth programs, Africa, and more.
- A newly discovered asteroid has a tiny chance of smacking Earth in 2032. It’s very unlikely, thankfully, but what should be truly concerning is that nobody was even aware of it until two days after it made its last closest pass to us.
- A dire prediction: “[W]hen NIH and other health agencies emerge from the current freeze they will have been emasculated and politicized, prohibited from releasing information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like, banned from making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base.” – via Jodi Ettenberg
- When I was a kid, most of my possessions were very inexpensive, but tremendously meaningful. A baseball hat or an action figure or a comic book only cost a few dollars, but meant the world to me. My kids have tremendously expensive possessions that are very meaningless. An iPhone or iPad or AirPods cost hundreds or thousands of dollars but have essentially zero sentimental value. I’m sure this says something important about capitalism, but I don’t have time to think about it at the moment.
- Chris Coyier wrote a little about the pros and cons of maintaining your own website that’s worth a read. (And he mentions POSSE, which is something I love.)
- Here’s a cool statistical analysis done to determine whether NFL referees unfairly favor the Kansas City Chiefs. (Spoiler: Yup.)
- You can now play the classic 1982 Atari 2600 game Pitfall! in your browser.
- I’ve been using FontAwesome in web projects since late 2012 and they are still the best.
- Scaling Our Rate Limits to Prepare for a Billion Active Certificates – Let’s Encrypt protects a vast portion of the Web by providing TLS certificates to over 550 million websites. They currently issue over 340,000 certificates per hour.
- The parents of a 22-yo Wisconsin man who died after an asthma attack have filed a lawsuit against Walgreens and UnitedHealth Group after they said the price for his medication suddenly rose from $66 to $539.
- Just dropping this here for no particular reason: Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, Revised Edition
- Aides to [the man] charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.
- “The impotence [of the left] is as staggering as the abdication is sickening. But the current message from elected Democrats is loud and clear: You’re on your own. And the message from the … administration is even clearer: You’re next.” – via Marisa Kabas
Apparently federal employees are using Milton’s red stapler from Office Space as a symbol of resistance, which is awesome on so many levels.- An outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City area has grown into one of the largest ever recorded in the United States, with dozens of active cases of the infectious disease reported, according to health officials. (Be alarmed.)
- Newly-appointed U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy signed a memorandum which directs the NHTSA to immediately initiate, “a rulemaking to rescind or replace all existing CAFE standards.” I just can’t get over the fact that this guy got his start on MTV’s Real World: Boston.
- Between 7AM and 7PM Eastern you can watch Bao Li and Qing Bao – the two new Giant Pandas at Smithsonian’s National Zoo – live on the Panda Cam as they explore their indoor and outdoor habitats at the David M. Rubenstein Family Giant Panda Habitat.
- I know everyone is already drowning in what seems like an unrelenting torrent of insane news lately, but I feel like it’s important to highlight that last week Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett said he believes aliens have underwater bases on Earth.
- New research suggests that your coffee habit might help protect against type-2 diabetes. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
- The Unassuming Town of Bristol, Rhode Island, Is One of America’s Best Hidden Gems for a Weekend Getaway – via my dad
- I recently watched the 1991 Steven Spielberg film Hook for – I think – the first time. Great fun.
- The new MCU-themed Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl hype video is pretty intense.
- Anyone interested in iOS app development with SwiftUI should be reading Swift with Majid.
- Workout.lol is a handy one-page web app that gives you an exercise routine based on what equipment you have available and which muscles you want to target. (Pairs well with musclewiki.com.) – via kottke, from way back in July of 2023
- It’s a bummer that the Dead Bothans Society has been abandoned. It looks like most of the site was archived, thankfully, and many of their videos are still available on YouTube.
- Jumblie is yet another fun little word game you can add to your morning routine of Wordle, Connections, &c.
- The appeal to nature fallacy is not a viable healthcare strategy. Sometimes “all natural” is far better, but other times nature tries to kill us. – via @kmpanthagani.bsky.social
- Matthew Green wrote a post about how AI will interface with end-to-end encryption. TL;DR: Maybe not so well! – via @matthewdgreen.bsky.social
- Related: Another day, another horrific and troubling example of AI going wrong – via @emily.space
- Related: Scientists covered a robot finger in living human skin.
- Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately those who do study history are also involuntarily dragged along for the ride.
- In college a friend suggested I read The Myth Adventure series by Robert Asprin. At the time it had been almost a decade since I’d read The Hobbit and the rest of Tolkien, and I thoroughly enjoyed returning to stories of dragons and wizards and swords. It looks like they’re no longer being published, but if you’re into that sort of tale, I’m sure you can find them used somewhere.
- A 2016 UK study found folks who participated in Dry January had improved confidence around abstinence, did not rebound, and drank less alcohol overall six months later, regardless of their January success. – via YLE
- Friendly reminder: There are exactly two things you can try and do. You can try and fail or you can try and succeed. Otherwise you try to do something.
- Research suggests that even taking small breaks from sitting could significantly improve your cardiovascular health, making it easier than ever to protect your heart and improve your overall well-being. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club
- “If you’re only going to open a book on the off chance you have several hours to kill in a comfy chair with a glass of scotch, it’s only ever going to happen when you have several hours to kill in a comfy chair with a glass of scotch.” How to Read a Whole Damn Book Every Week – via Links You’ll Love
- 33 Ways To Improve Your Life, Japanese Style – via pretty much everyone I follow
- Quantum physics is wild: “Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time.”
- “You shouldn’t be driving over 100 mph—and your car shouldn’t let you.” – via kottke
- 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.
- I thought this was a super interesting article about the ethical and legal issues of using CT scanners to “hack” boxes of trading cards. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
- I cannot wrap my head around the fact that it’s now been more than two years since I first complained to Amazon about a bug in their Alexa iOS app—which makes it impossible to manage your Echo Show photo library once you add more than 120 photos—and they still haven’t fixed it. How can I be the only one who cares about this?
- A lone dolphin has been yelling into the Baltic Sea for years and no one is responding. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter from Jodi Ettenberg (threads / bluesky)
- I’m a sucker for creative gift wrapping tutorials.
- Far too many of our Christmas decorations do not have a power switch. I got several of these inexpensive power switches and it took me about five minutes to splice them into the wires so now we can turn things off and on without needing to unplug them.
- “imagine falling in love with someone to find out they got you 8 maids a milking and a combined 23 birds for Christmas” – via @teewatterss
- I recently watched Little Shop of Horrors (Warner Bros., 1986) for the first time in probably 25 years and I’m happy to report that it’s still pretty great.
- Happy holidays! After considering risk factors such as age and exercise, scientists found that people who enjoyed at least five ounces of dark chocolate per week had a twenty-one percent lower risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club (threads / bluesky)
- Nike, NFL Announce 10-Year Contract Extension – via @sportslogosnet
- I can think of no insult worse than being told, “Go Back Home, Your Mother Made You Waffles.” – via kottke
- A man in Canada’s far north leapt on to a polar bear to protect his wife from being mauled, police say. – via Crooked Media (threads / bluesky)
- I love this quote: “[Software bugs] are a lot like prime numbers. There are always more, but after you find the first couple billion they do thin out quite a bit.” – via @philcrissman (threads / bluesky)
- It’s a good idea to occasionally revisit the story of Roger and Elaine.
- Mark Ruffalo sounds like the name a dog would give if he was pretending to be a man. – via @the.yael
- Need to buy something for someone you can’t stand? Check out My Heinous Gift Guide for Sworn Enemies. And note that you don’t actually have to stay on Twitter. – both via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
Jonathan Edward Durham is a good follow on threads and/or bluesky.- Your Local Epidemiologist is a super informative newsletter that translates complicated health news, especially about viruses and colds.
- 19 Useful Mac Startup Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know
- What do you call a pig that does karate? A pork chop! – via 172 Corny Jokes To Tell To Kids You Love
- “Don’t let your dreams give up on you.” – via @austinkleon
- “The supplement industry is a multi-billion dollar industry built on hype and deception. Here’s an inside look at what works, what doesn’t, and how to ensure you only use products you can trust.” – super informative, well-researched notes on everything from Vitamin D and collagen to fish oil and creatine, – via Arnold’s Pump Club
“Personally, I’m making a choice to not be fearful.” – via Starship Casual- “America’s collective decision in the 20th century to make cars and the roads serving them the bedrock of all urban and regional planning will go down in history as just another of our nation’s awful, ruinous ideas that we nevertheless clung to for generations, like slavery or lead paint.” – via kottke
- “If you must read one post-election assessment of what went wrong, [The Daily] Kos’s “What went wrong: Part 1” is worth your time.” – via @zeldman
- “If things really go south, expect MAGA Republicans to devour each other as hungrily as the worm who feasted on RFK Jr.’s brain.” – via @heidiyounggrasshopper
- “You know things are really bad when you’re Kübler-Rossing completely out of order.” – via @gatordavid
- I’ve been a fan of Daring Fireball for more than twenty years, and his How It Went essay might just be the best thing he’s ever published. If you’re looking for a tiny sliver of hope after the election, I highly recommend reading it. (Maybe grab a box of tissues first.)
- And remember, “This is the same country that elected Barack Obama… twice.” – via @geoffbaron
