Posts tagged “Japan”

• Okay, I am late to the party on this one, but my heart just grew two sizes when I discovered that Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr managed to surreptitiously, throughout the course of the 2022/23 NBA season, insert all the lyrics from the Taylor Swift song All Too Well into his post-game press conferences.
• The story of the Archimedes Palimpsest is fascinating. I saw someone mention it on Instagram and couldn’t believe it was true, but it appears to be a legitimate tale.
• The team at The Athletic put together a compelling argument that not only is Mahomes worth his new half-a-billion-dollar contract, but he might actually be better than Brady.
• I doubt you need me to tell you this, but Sally Field is just incredible in Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix. The movie is wonderful and we loved it.
• Renewables have surpassed global coal power for the first time in over a century! (The last time coal lost its lead as the world’s largest electricity source, the Treaty of Versailles was in review and Congress had just established a national park in Arizona named for its big hole in the ground.)
• Shohei Ohtani meets 100-year-old Nagasaki survivor
• Sure, they may be trying to jump on the Wordle bandwagon, and it’s a bit tricky to play, but the new Catalogues game from The New Yorker is pretty fun once you get the hang of it. – hat-tip @heidiyounggrasshopper
• You can’t produce a Field Notes edition of The Maltese Falcon and not expect me to automatically purchase it.
• This Smithsonian article explaining The Science Behind Honey’s Eternal Shelf Life was pretty interesting.
• Some good news on the public health front: Florida Republicans Refuse to Take Up DeSantis Bill Loosening Vaccine Mandates
• Need another reason to stop eating meat? A flesh-eating cattle parasite is spreading beyond Texas.
• The Voting Rights Act Was the Nice Version
• Asian jumping worms, an invasive, soil nutrient-gobbling earthworm that can leap a foot in the air, are moving rapidly across the country.
• A second detainee has died at an ICE facility in Louisiana where a recent inspection report found insanitary conditions, problems with medical care, and the use of excessive force.

• A French hospital was reportedly forced to evacuate after medical staff discovered an unexploded World War I artillery shell stuck in a man’s rectum. – via standard.co.uk
• Covid was the #3 killer in 2020, but has now slipped out of the top 10; an American is more likely to die these days from cirrhosis or suicide.
• How to turn off only the cursed AI summary feature in Gmail. – via Laura Olin
• Oh, look! I found yet another excellent article that does a great job of explaining why Substack is the worst. – via @paperalphabet (and me)

Winter Olympics

• Five minutes into the first event of the Games, they lost the stadium lights in the middle of a mixed doubles curling match.
• Mary Carillo will replace Savannah Guthrie as the co-host of the NBC coverage. (I always loved her wonderful 2004 rant about badminton.)
• Facing a 1,000-metre drop, the Milano Cortina 2026 freestyle skiers must overcome more than just their competitors, but their nerves as well. (See also: Japanese freestyle skier Kokone Kondo hurt in training crash, taken to hospital)
• Ice Hockey Underdog Italy earns first Olympic win
• The World Anti-Doping Agency could investigate if evidence emerges that male ski jumpers are injecting their penises in a bid to improve sporting performance.

Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness:

• This should be terrifying to everyone: DHS Hunts Down 67-Year-Old US Citizen Who Criticized Them in Email
• How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism
• If the Fourth Amendment permits the government to tear down your door with nothing more than an administrative warrant, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t exist.
• South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace is getting dragged after a damning New York Magazine profile revealed she forced staffers to create burner Reddit accounts to boost her standing in a “hottest women in Congress” forum. – via Comic Sands

• Let’s kickstart 2026 with two brilliant essays from Anil Dash. How the Hell Are You Supposed to Have A Career in Tech in 2026? and How Markdown Took Over the World should both be required reading for every high school sophomore in America.
• In April of 2010 a diver found a nearly seven inch Megalodon tooth.
• I missed this bit of good news from last year: Vatican City Is Now Powered By Solar
• How to Turn Toilet Paper Rolls Into DIY Boxes – via cassidoo
• A massive 535-pound bluefin tuna sold for a record $3.2 million at the first auction of 2026 at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market.
• Spend a few minutes watching these interviews with dads outside Taylor Swift concerts. – via paulscheer.com
• Netflix released the Stranger Things series finale in 600+ theaters over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, generating north of $25M in concession revenue. (That’s more than Avatar: Fire and Ash earned in actual ticket sales over the same stretch ($23.7M).) – via The Dailies
• And finally, a handful of wonderful links from Laura Olin that I keep meaning to share:
  • I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers
  • Frolicking in the snow
  • This is mesmerizing.
  • How to Disable AI on Various Platforms
  • Desire is never about the object itself.

• Japan’s sushi legend Jiro Ono turns 100 and is not ready for retirement
• Wait. What? College golfer aces same hole twice in one day!
• Feisty Otters Are Once Again Hijacking Surfboards in Santa Cruz
• “When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.” – via Joe Hanson
• Like the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, researchers say some AI models may be developing their own survival drive, seeming to resist being turned off and even sabotaging their own shutdown.
• New to me: Italian time
• The average energy bar is anywhere from 6 to 15 times more expensive per calorie than a good ol’ PB&J.
• Hoo boy. Care to read about how chatfishing has made finding love on dating apps even weirder? – via kottke
• “[On] Sunday, [October 26, 2025,] the [New York] Times had more column-inches dedicated to urging readers to gamble on football than to China’s control of rare-earths minerals.” – via TMQ
• Some good reasons to vote:
  • Before [POTUS], and Before the Young Republicans, There Was the Dartmouth Review – via my dad
  • [I] really resent the continued assertion that there’s so much anger on both sides, as if the causes of the anger are equally legitimate. [W]e’re angry because masked maniacs are violently snatching our family and neighbors off the street, and they’re angry because we’re calling them out for it. – via Marisa Kabas
  • As improbable as it had seemed just minutes ago, it now appeared that I really was texting with interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. [See also: New York AG Letitia James pleads not guilty to mortgage fraud charges]
  • “the speaker of the House is refusing to seat a duly elected member of Congress to protect the president from a vote to investigate his extensive connections [to] the world’s most notorious human trafficking pedophile” is one of those things you simply cannot put into New York Timesese – via ryan cooper

• Researchers in Japan have developed a durable and recyclable plastic that fully dissolves in the sea and doesn’t leave microplastic pollution in the oceans because it breaks down in the water over time. – via @oceanbluestar.bsky.social
• Early entry for the best news of the year? Ted Lasso is returning for a fourth season.
• I recently finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It is easily the best work of fiction I’ve read in the last twenty years. After five pages I was enjoying it so much that I decided to pace myself so I could inhabit its story as long as possible, but ended up devouring it in just a couple of days. My only regret is that I will never get to read it for the first time again. ¹
• Happy belated 27^th birthday to kottke.org, the website that inspired me to start blogging a quarter-century ago.
• Notes from the firehose:
  • Conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig issued a stark warning about what he described as [the President’s] escalating attacks on the legal system.
  • Former Spiritual Adviser to POTUS Indicted for Sexually Abusing a Child
  • Top Democrats Warn “DOGE” Employees of Potential Criminal Exposure from Ethical Misconduct – via @beyer.house.gov
  • “Mr. Schumer’s stated approach of waiting for Trump to ‘screw up’ and continue this inexplicable embrace of the slippery slope is wholly inadequate and an astonishing failure of leadership.”
  • [The President’s] deportation of Venezuelan migrants may have violated a direct court order, leading to what the former general counsel of the FBI, Andrew Weissmann, has called a potential “doomsday scenario.”
  • [The President] has already implemented at least half of Project 2025’s objectives in eight areas.

• 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

• What kind of drug are you?
• If you have an iPhone and a guitar, you simply must get the Gibson Learn & Master Guitar app.
• James Dean was seriously one badass dude.
• The Japanese apparently have a game show for every conceivable challenge. I never realized that the old “yank a tablecloth” trick was something you could turn into a competition.
• “The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that once emails have been received by a third party, no Fourth Amendment protection applies to any copies.” Maybe this will be the first step in getting people to stop adding those absolutely ridiculous and pointless signatures to their messages.
• Let’s just say that — for whatever reason — you’re the first human ever to make contact with an alien civilization. Are you prepared to handle it? Make sure to read this handy tip sheet so you won’t make us look like idiots.
• Tons of terrific tales can be found at the Illinois Poison Control Center blog. There’s the story of the woman who accidentally grabbed toothpaste instead of lube when having sex; and don’t miss the episode about the boy who super-glued his fingers into his nose!