Posts tagged “journalism”

• This was a surprisingly fun read: A complete guide to juggling, from zero to siteswap notation, by someone who juggles in nightclubs.
• Far too few people understand this crucial statement from this article from The Handbasket on the future of artificial intelligence in journalism: Telling a machine that can’t perceive that it can’t perceive won’t make it perceive that it can’t perceive.
• A New Jersey Teen Finds Treasure, and More, in Abandoned Storage Units
• Periodic and timely reminder that Marisa Tomei is an anagram for “It’s a me Mario!” – via @benoitbruneau
• Y2K 2.0: The AI security reckoning is yet another fantastic essay from Anil.
• I’d somehow never heard of the water-level task and now I can’t stop thinking about it.
• How a blind man made it possible for others with low vision to build LEGO sets
• It’s probably bad for everyone that Meta lost that big social media lawsuit.
• A guy in Australia searching for caves to explore using Google Maps found a huge scar on the landscape that turned out to be evidence of a massive tornado that nobody saw.

I love you, but you are not serious people.

• This article contains some absolutely bonkerballs statistics: Analysis Finds That Google AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization – via @drskyskull
• I think we all agree that the narcissism of our current POTUS makes it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires.
• The Next Coup Attempt, And How to Stop It
• A 19-year-old Mexican migrant died at a Florida immigration detention facility last month, and ICE hasn’t been able to find his arrest record.

• 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.

• T-shirt Worn by Taylor Swift Sparks a $2M Windfall for Sea Otters
• “It turns out playing God is neither difficult nor expensive,” is the catchy lede of this article on editing genes with CRISPR, Editing Nature To Fix Our Failures, that everyone I follow has already posted.
• Got a few hours to kill? Check out the Space Exploration Logo Archive. – via kottke
• Imagine getting burned by the Pope.
• Kohler Wants to Put a Tiny Camera in Your Toilet and Analyze the Contents
• Score one for the good guys: Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules
• Research on 6,000 older adults reveals that optimistic people are up to 50% less likely to develop weak grip strength and lose mobility.
• Any golfer should be able to relate to this essay by Gabby Herzig: I made a 12 during the biggest golf tournament of my life. Here’s what I learned.
• Who doesn’t love a good story about a cursed Egyptian mummy? (Related: The Met is having its first Egyptian exhibit in over a decade.)
• It’s just tech, everything doesn’t have to become some weird religion that you beat people over the head with, or gamble the entire stock market on. – from The Majority AI View, a fantastic essay by Anil Dash.
• The beatings will continue until morale improves:
  • Top US Army general says he’s using ChatGPT to help make key command decisions
  • There is a special place in hell for those who use children as pawns in their quest for power.
  • I don’t understand why the headline on this article about a convicted felon isn’t simply Maliciously Incompetent, Aggressively Ignorant, Lying Buffoon Lies Again.
  • North Carolina Elections Chief Demands Voters’ Full Social Security Numbers from DMV

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning. – Winston Churchill

• On The (Apocryphal?) Rules of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Cartoons – via kottke, natch
• With the possible – possible – exception of Sonny Corleone‘s toll booth scene, I cannot think of anything in the universe that wouldn’t be dramatically improved by adding a college marching band.
• Netflix is developing a reality television series based on the classic board game Monopoly. Fingers crossed that the producers convey that the only realistic way to win the game is to hoard all the money and property, causing everyone else to eventually quit in despair and destitution, and that unfettered capitalism is actually terrible for any species. – via The Dailies
• Good news! AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its journalists
• A federal judge ruled former Florida QB signee Jaden Rashada can proceed with his lawsuit against Gators football coach Billy Napier over a $13M NIL deal gone wrong.
• There are actually a few cool items in this Wirecutter article: 18 Things You Didn’t Know Your iPhone Could Do
• Instagram users under 16 will no longer be able to livestream or unblur nudity in direct messages without parental approval. This seems like something that should have already been the policy, but I guess I’ll take the win. – via me
• Why don’t we remember being a baby? Infants can encode specific memories, a new Yale study shows, suggesting “infantile amnesia” might be a memory retrieval problem.
• When Is This Going to Stop?
  • POTUS signs executive orders to… boost coal production.
  • China slams Vance for ‘peasants’ slur as tariff war intensifies – via thebasement.nz
  • WTF? Administration orders half of national forests open for logging – via moudhy.bsky.social
  • 20 Rude Questions the Media Should Ask – via markjacob.bsky.social
  • Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Looms

• A lovely story about Dav Pilkey, author of the Dog Man series: He paid for a whole school’s book fair!
• I adore this brutally honest bio of Jane Krakowski from a recent Broadway production.
• You need to read this behind the scenes article on Minnesota Timberwolves coach’s decision to start Joe Ingles in a “must-win” game so his 8-yo son with autism could see him play. – via @richarddeitsch.bsky.social
• If you have an Apple computer, you can disable the incredibly annoying feature that attempts to guess what you’re about to type. Go to System Settings > Keyboard > Text Input and click the Edit button next to your input source. Toggle “Show inline predictive text” so it’s disabled and click Done.
• Great reporting on how a false story about the Dropkick Murphys getting banned for mocking the administration went viral.
• Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts mocking Mark Zuckerberg in one day than it has in two years of selling custom domains – via @hpsc24.bsky.social
• Gross Stuff:
  • The story of what happened recently at the United States Institute of Peace is just inconceivable.
  • The USPS Union President has sent out an email to employees warning them of impending privatization concerns after [administration] moves to fire 10,000 postal workers. – via @girlsreallyrule.bsky.social
  • The Constitutional Crisis Is Here: By shipping men to a Salvadoran prison without due process, [the administration] has begun defying court orders in earnest. – via @kairyssdal.bsky.social
  • A lawsuit accuses the [current] administration of unlawfully shutting down the Voice of America and asks a federal court to restore the outlet that for decades has supplied news about the United States to nations around the world — including many that lack a free press of their own.
  • A CDC clone site with false vaccine claims is hosted by Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit, anti-vaxx organization started by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – via YLE
  • “if the democratic party had a functional propaganda arm it could make a lot of hay of the fact that a non-trivial number of MAGA personalities and politicians are child sex offenders“

• Steve Carell helped make sure high school students affected by LA wildfires wouldn’t have to worry about paying for prom tickets.
• For reasons I cannot explain, I have still not managed to watch A Knight’s Tale, even though I know it was one of my mom’s favorite movies.
• It doesn’t look like they’ve released their 2025 operating dates yet, but the Breathtaker Alpine Coaster is a must for anyone visiting Aspen in the summer.
• Take a moment to complete The Heritage Foundation DOGE Survey and give them a piece of your mind. (If you decide to use your real email address, you’ll have to unsubscribe from their garbage newsletter.)
• Friendly reminder: There’s seriously no sane reason to drill for oil in Alaska and anyone saying otherwise doesn’t understand math.
• I had no idea that watermarks were invented in Italy in the 13th century.
• Practically all of Spain’s population growth since the COVID-19 pandemic is due to immigration.
• Can confirm: “the democratic party leadership sorely underestimates how much young people fucking despise them” – via @junlper.beer
• Make It Stop:
  • POTUS signs order designating English as the official language of the US
  • This whole story is nuts: With its top lawyer placed on leave after less than one week in the role, a culture of fear has paralyzed FEMA. – via The Handbasket
  • After the POTUS joint address to Congress earlier this week, Hayden Haynes, the chief of staff to House Speaker Mike Johnson and one of the most powerful aides on Capitol Hill, was arrested for driving drunk.
  • Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not) “[W]hat’s happening in the US right now is some sort of weird hybrid of the kind of power grabs we’ve seen in the tech industry, combined with a more traditional collapse of democratic institutions.”
  • The Iowa GOP advanced a bill making it a misdemeanor for a healthcare provider to administer a COVID vaccine. – via @piperformissouri.bsky.social

• New jazz fellowship honors the genre’s elders and gives them each an unrestricted $100,000 grant. – via @phillewis.bsky.social
• Welcome to Chicken Town presents exactly what its URL says it does. – via @erikahall.bsky.social
• Thomas Perry is likely the strongest player in the 2025 NFL Draft. You’ve probably never heard of him.
• While the individual accumulation of wealth offers an illusion of safety, does it simply create more instability and insecurity in the long run?
• After Pressure from Georgia Senator Ossoff, White House Restores Funding for HBCU Students Studying Agriculture
• College Football 25 broke video game records. Can EA Sports keep everyone happy?
• You Have No Rights
• Good News for People Who Love Bad News
  • Once social security checks stop showing up, millions of Americans will finally understand the scope.
  • After All This
  • The Environmental Protection Agency will move to reverse its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare — a step that would threaten most major climate regulations and make it harder for future presidents to enact new ones. – via @vanhollen.senate.gov
  • “You’re not going to like what I’m saying next, but we are in the middle of a totalitarian fascist coup in this country.” – via @anildash.com
  • FDA Cancels Meeting of Vaccine Experts Scheduled to Advise on Flu Shots
  • It IS Happening Here
  • The White House on Wednesday denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to [the administration’s] first cabinet meeting.
  • It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession.

• Want 33,000 classic sound effects for free? Check out the BBC Sound Effects Archive.
• I am very much concerned about the many, many, many possible negative consequences of nefarious, incompetent, and/or misguided generative AI. Ruining wikipedia should have been on my bingo card.
• A University College London demographer’s work debunking ‘Blue Zone’ regions of exceptional lifespans won an Ig Nobel prize. I always thought blue zones sounded fishy.
• Ugh. Scientists are worried that persisting cognitive issues sparked by COVID-19 may signal a coming surge of dementia and other mental conditions.
• Philip Moscovitch‘s Halifax Examiner article Beyond the Link Tax: Journalism and the Changing Nature of the Internet contains some interesting ideas about potentially taxing megacorporations to subsidize good reporting. But what grabbed me was the line, “Essentially, what we are seeing is the slow death of the hyperlink […]” Sites like Threads, Instagram, Twitter / X, et.al. have a vested interest in keeping you from leaving. They are, in fact, designed to make it more difficult for you to get to the “rest” of the Internet. I have been occasionally combing through old posts here and it is alarming — for someone who’s been blogging regularly for more than a quarter of a century — how many links simply no longer work. And I’m not talking about links from twenty years ago which should work but don’t (because the site’s gone offline or developers didn’t bother to redirect URLs). I’m talking about links from just a year or two ago. The wayback machine has been a fantastic resource to help me find archived content, but it’s not perfect and it’s grossly underfunded for how important it is to anyone who cares. See also: link rot
• Speaking of being extremely online, you should read Reclaiming Social Media in a Fragmented World. I love the concept of POSSE and it’s been something I’ve really tried to remember the last few years, especially after what’s happened with Twitter.
• On Ghost Networks: Ravi Coutinho bought a health insurance plan thinking it would deliver on its promise of access to mental health providers. But even after twenty-one phone calls and multiple hospitalizations, no one could find him a therapist.