davidgagne.net

Martijn Doolaard is a photographer, filmmaker and travel writer from the Netherlands who is renovating and living in a remote stone cabin in the Italian Alps. – via @thepharmdfoodie
MacKenzie Scott (ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) has now given away more than $19 billion, including more than a quarter of a billion to historically black colleges and universities.
The recently-published list of the Top 100 Comedies of all Time (from Variety) is an abomination. Bull Durham deserves to be in the top ten and it’s not even on the list! (And where is Trading Places?!)
Man Keeps Strange Rock for Years, Hoping It’s Gold. It Turned out to Be Way More Valuable. (See also: Scientists Cracked Open a Lunar Rock and Found a Huge Surprise)
Requiem for Early Blogging doesn’t resonate with me as much as I know it does for many. (I think it’s because I started far, far earlier than the blog boom and, y’know, still haven’t stopped.)
“User behavior suggests people are finding LLMs more convenient for finding answers than Googling, where they must leap over hurdles of ads, dive several pages into the search results, and then pogo in and out of websites to find answers to some of their most banal questions.”
We Asked Golfers for the Best Place to Buy Used Clubs. – via my dad
All’s Fair, the new series from Ryan Murphy, is an atrocity.
Why Is Dad So Mad?
Vocalist and a-ha front-man Morten Harket recently shared that he has Parkinson’s disease.
Black Friday:
- “Imagine the quality of an architect that Trump would pick – and who would want to work for him. Even *that guy* thinks this project is too grandiose.” – via @helenkennedy
- “It should go without saying, but the president has no authority to do this, and anyone reporting the story needs to say as such.” – via @tomtomorrow
- This is, quite literally, what the Germans did. We all agreed it was a big deal and nobody should ever be allowed to do it again. So for anyone in any uniform to allow it to happen by the United States of America is inexcusable.
- Charities that help people pay for medical care say demand is way up, and that’s before scheduled cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare enacted in the new GOP spending bill take effect.
- “The guy shot two random people with a gun, I don’t think you can say he wasn’t assimilating into our culture.” – via @internethippo
- A Story About Illegal Orders is terrifying.

One of the largest sports collectibles forgery rings in the hobby has been busted in a bizarre fraud and forgery case that has rocked the hobby.
A professional toy photographer recreated the amazing story of the Shackleton Arctic expedition using LEGO bricks and a Nikon DSLR camera.
Tragic things are going to happen. Figuring out how and why is the complicated work of serious professionals.
I really cannot argue with any of the films on this list of The Ten Best Screenplays of All Time, but I dramatically disagree with the order. I also cannot imagine not putting Casablanca first and not including Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or any of a half dozen other Spielberg movies.
Spontaneously Exploding Prosecco sounds like it would be a good late-90s Italian punk band name.
The ‘rising fastball’ was a tantalizing myth. Then teams started teaching Induced Vertical Break.
I agree with most of the points made in this essay on why Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in The Natural still resonates with sports fans. (It’s one of my all-time favorite movies.)
An Amateur’s Guide to Working with the Media in a Hostage Crisis

“Even the word hopeless is not devoid of hope.”

– Blinky

Florida surgeon general says state will eliminate all vaccine mandates.
Consider those loonies who believe that the Apollo moon landing never happened. Now imagine a world in which everybody is like that about everything—because nothing can be proven. – Our Shared Reality Will Self-Destruct in the Next 12 Months
The current administration’s shortcut rule-making is shortchanging all of us.
His Book on Charlie Kirk Was About to Come Out. Then His Subject Was Murdered. (See also: Florida Reporter Suspended After Texting MAGA Congressman to Ask If He Still Supports Campus Carry After Kirk Shooting)
The Department of Education has announced that it will partner with right-wing think tanks and organizations to develop and spread what it claims is patriotic education.
It’s painful to read the archived story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them.

Andor was phenomenal. Full stop. It wasn’t simply a great Star Wars story. It was a brilliant story even if you had — quite inconceivably — never even heard of Star Wars. It also managed to stay full-throttle awesome from S1E1 through S2E12, and somehow it did this even though everyone watching knew exactly what happens next, which had to have been unimaginably difficult to execute. (And I am not ashamed to admit that I didn’t realize Andor was “and/or” until several episodes into the first season, even though anyone unlucky enough to be the recipient of a professional email from me can tell you that’s one of my favorite conjunctions.)
Related? The CIA Secretly Ran a Star Wars Fan Site
The New York Liberty Became the First $450M Women’s Team
I (mostly) agree with the list Bruce Feldman compiled of the 25 best players of the millennium (so far). I have bigger issues with the list David Ubben put together of the best college football games since the turn of the century. I was somewhat surprised to see Florida ranked tenth in the list Stewart Mandel made of the best programs of the 2000s. It’s hard to believe how long it’s been since we had the best QB in history.
Take It on the Run by REO Speedwagon holds up.
Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz recently sent a home run out of PNC Park at 122.9 mph (against the Milwaukee Brewers), recording the hardest hit ball in the Statcast era.
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction:
- Dozens of staffers walked out when NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya promoted an unproven COVID origin story.
- [Current] administration orders Michigan coal plant to stay open
- The Belief System Behind the Palm Springs Bombing
- “[D]on’t worry about making your products safe for your customers. Even if you kill them, just pay a small fine and move on.” Apparently not prosecuting criminals is how to make America great again.
- It’s always a bummer to learn that a perfect domain name is already taken.
- Every high school theology, civics, social studies, and American history teacher should show the Bible lesson scene from The West Wing (The Midterms, S2E3) at least once each semester.

I watched Conclave over the holiday break and thought it was pretty good. The acting was great, of course, but I’d expect nothing less from a film featuring John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Ralph Fiennes. If you dig Roman Catholic esoterica, I’d also suggest reading this deep dive into the Vatican’s secret saint-making process.
Ozempic is a modified, synthetic version of a protein discovered in the venomous saliva of the Gila monster, a large, sluggish lizard native to the United States. – via Tom Whitwell’s 52 Things I Learned in 2024, not to be confused with Kent Hendricks’ equally-awesome list of 52 Things I Learned in 2024
Some of the 77 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2024 (from The Atlantic Science Desk) are really pretty wild! – via kottke
The Ghosts in the Machine is a great explainer on the current kerfuffle over Spotify’s nefarious fake music.
Please don’t say just, “hello,” via text. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter, where I also found this awesome food map of Italy
I enjoyed reading this quick essay on how to write readable sentences.
What happens when websites start to vanish at random?
An average of about 900 people per week have died of COVID-19 over the past year in the USA, according to the CDC. – via PBS