- A limited-edition, Fabergé egg pendant, inspired by the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, was (grossly) recovered after six days of closely watching the man accused of swallowing the jewelry in a New Zealand store.
- Scientists found that taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 daily slowed telomere shortening by the equivalent of about 3 years of biological aging over 4 years. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
- Fifteen Years
If you need a good gift for anyone over 80 years old, these hard candies are great. My grandmother loved them and I used to send her a tin every year on her birthday and Christmas.- We didn’t see it in the theater, but the 1986 comedy Ruthless People was on high rotation at our house for a while (from Blockbuster, once it was released on VHS). Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Judge Reinhold, Helen Slater, and Bill Pullman had us in stitches and I still occasionally quote it. (Now you can rent it on Amazon.)
- An Indian boy, just 3 years old, became the youngest rated chess player in history.
- These Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights are awesome. They’re super easy to install and you can control them with an app on your phone and/or via Alexa, HomeKit, etc. (The cost has been fluctuating wildly for months now, by hundreds of dollars, and I wish you the best of luck in finding them listed at the absurdly low price we paid.)
- I can relate to this guy’s 2025 Parenting Wrapped. – via hiro.report
- My Kid’s Insane Christmas Wish List, Annotated – via my friend Lauren
- University of Florida Honors Program class teaches Gainesville‘s punk history – via my little sis
- This holiday season, consider giving the gift of independent journalism. – via @marisakabas
- ‘Tis the Season:
- The president’s Florida mortgages match his description of mortgage fraud. – via @charlesornstein
Pete Hegseth Should Be Charged with Murder – via @elienyc- I Left the CDC 100 Days Ago. My Worst Fears About the Agency Are Coming True – via @brandyzadrozny
- Spotify is garbage on every count: Its treatment of artists, its ICE advertising, the CEO’s investment in military AI, its leading role in the commodification and AI slop-ification of music, its terrible audio quality—you name it. A Guide to Finding the Best Spotify Alternative – via @bcmerchant
- “If you’re a complete idiot life sure does have a lot of surprises for you.” – via @samthielman.com
- “All I want for Christmas is for the worst people in the world to experience some consequences.” – via @gracelp
- The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on the president’s birthday next year, but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.
Posts tagged “India”
Eternal, The Honor It Bore
Reunited ‘Marauders’ Recall War’s Hell in Burma’s Jungles
- The sketches on Funny Or Die keep getting better. This week Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes / Spock from the new Star Trek) appears as a convenience store robber who manages to get his life on track… sorta.
- Here’s the feel-good story of the day: A Portland couple — and their ’57 Chrysler — are still going strong after 50 years.
- Slate has published an interesting article on how the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting, and why that’s dangerous.
- I work with a developer in India who frequently complains that Outlook does not display messages from me correctly. He insists that it’s because my mail program — Apple’s Mail.app — doesn’t compose messages properly. I insist that it’s because Outlook sucks. (See also: Windows crashes displays at new Cowboys stadium during Oklahoma / BYU game.)
- When is it not cool to see recently-declassified video of decades-old nuclear weapons tests?
- Make sure to read TMQ’s all-haiku 2009 NFL preview.
- Daring Fireball mentioned that he hasn’t actually ever seen a Palm Pre in the wild, which might explain why its sales numbers are well below their projections. A guy in my office has one. Every time I see it I wonder what would possess someone to get anything other than an iPhone.
- AT&T says MMS for iPhones will launch on 9/25. I really don’t see why everyone is freaking about this. I don’t really like MMS. It’s simple enough to email something from an iPhone; why not just do that? Everyone was freaking about copy and paste and I didn’t understand that either. Sure C&P is a great feature, but I’ve probably used it ten times in the last 3 months… Three years ago I had a BlackBerry Pearl and before that a RAZR and I was always thrilled just to be able to actually receive telephone calls on them. As far as I’m concerned the iPhone is the best American invention since… well… the iPod.
- I completely agree with Chris Coyier: It would be brilliant to invest in Red Box… if this was 1997.
- DirecTV NFL Mobile: The most expensive free app in the world
- It took forever, but there is finally an official Flickr app for the iPhone.
2024-02-07: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
Monkey Man!
Panic-Hit City Hunts ‘Ape-Like’ Attacker! ‘Monkey Man’ Hysteria Grips New Delhi Suburbs! New Delhi (Reuters) – Fear gripped some suburbs of the Indian capital on Tuesday after dozens of residents reported attacks by an ape-like creature able to leap from roof to roof. Media reports said that the collective hysteria claimed a second life early