- 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 “Pete Hegseth”
- When ancient Romans felt wronged, they didn’t ask for revenge from the gods. Instead they scratched their anger into thin lead sheets called defixiones, folded them carefully, and buried them in wells, graves, or temples, trusting that some power beneath the earth would take care of the rest.
- Buckle up, buttercup. This essay is going to be tough to swallow. Collagen Sits on a Throne of Lies: How the supplement industry took meat garbage and turned it into a $9B business
- A single HPV vaccination appears just as effective as two doses at preventing the viral infection that causes cervical cancer.
Finding it impossible to stop thinking about The Chair Company? You can get a Tecca t-shirt or hat, but they’re sold out of chairs.- One of the hardest parts of being a parent is attempting to balance, “Please study! School and your grades are very important,” with, “Don’t be stressed! This one history test isn’t going to matter at all in twenty years.” – via me
- Have you ever wondered how a touch screen knows you are touching it?
- Chindōgu: The Japanese Art of Unuseless Inventions
- How a UF engineer found purpose Below Deck
- Man unexpectedly cured of HIV after stem cell transplant
- “Anyone who was born an American and therefore feels superior to someone who had to work to become an American doesn’t know the first thing about being an American.” – via @harrymccracken.com
- Good News for People Who Like Bad News:
- A 6-year-old boy is missing after ICE arrested him and his dad in NYC last week and shipped them to separate facilities. – via @clauirizarry
- Zillow has removed climate risk scores from over a million real estate listings after realtors complained that information such as how at risk a home is from wildfires was causing them to lose sales. – via @carnage4life
- Crucial is shutting down — because Micron wants to sell its RAM and SSDs to AI companies instead. – via @papapishu
- “You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” – Penelope Hegseth to her son, Pete
- The Supreme Court is siding with the current administration 84 percent of the time; it sided with the Biden administration only 53 percent of the time. And of course only one of those administrations is habitually laying waste to the rule of law.
- Lawsuits allege USA Gymnastics, SafeSport failed to prevent sexual abuse by coach
- 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
- The AARP strikes again, this time with a quick and easy form you can use to urge your representatives to protect Social Security.
- A few weeks ago I was behind a woman in a bright blue Jeep Wrangler with one of those custom spare tire covers on the back. It was emblazoned with “Life Is Better in Flip-Flops” in cursive. Now, I cannot stand flip-flops. I hate them with the burning intensity of a million suns. I think they’re annoying and slovenly and uncomfortable and I detested every time either of my beloved grandmothers bought me a pair for the beach. (Even though they hardly knew each other and were separated by 1200 miles, they somehow both bought me and my siblings multiple pairs over the years.) Wearing flip-flops gave me blisters every time and they always broke or got snagged on something. I hate flip-flops. But, and I mean this so hard, that crazy woman in her Jeep does not hurt me at all by loving flip-flops. This is America. If it doesn’t hurt you (or anyone else), let people love what they love. [This is not about flip-flops.]
- Tina Fey Sparks Debate After Calling Out Rich Celebrities Who Have A ‘Side Hustle’… on an episode of the Amy Poehler side hustle podcast Good Hang.
- The Hubble Space Telescope explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday. – via kottke
- It’s too bad there’s no trustworthy way to add third-party custom Apple Watch faces, because I would love making mine look like the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy.
- One more thing? It just feels wrong to watch The Handmaid’s Tale on Disney+.
Garbage World:
- Here’s a depressing (but important) crowdsourced Google Doc detailing all the resignations, layoffs, terminations, and general bad news from the US Department of Health and Human Services – via YLE
- POTUS pardoned a company sentenced to $100 million in fines for breaking money laundering laws, because he clearly thinks money laundering is what makes America great.
- The national security of the United States is in the hands of incompetent miscreants who don’t understand anything about technology or security.
- The U.S. Naval Academy has removed nearly 400 books from its library after being told by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to review and get rid of ones that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
- The current administration is actually dedicating federal resources to investigate the feasibility of invading Greenland.
- The administration has fired staff who were working on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration bird flu response as part of its mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services.
- In the new documentary Secret Mall Apartment, a group of artists recount how they turned a hidden nook in a Providence shopping center into a living space for four years. – via my dad
- If you’re ever in Los Angeles, check out The Nicolosi Estate. The long-abandoned 8700-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 5-bath home is encircled by an amazing 300-foot-long serpentine swimming pool, complete with rock bridges and grotto-style hot tubs, which is visible from the road. The estate was commissioned by Johnny Weissmuller, who won five gold Olympic medals in swimming (and a bronze in water polo!) and portrayed Tarzan in a dozen films from 1932 to 1948.
- Apple is losing a billion dollars per year on Apple TV+ and that’s just fine. – via @TrungTPhan
- I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used these CSS drop-shadow snippets.
- Technofossils: How humanity’s eternal testament will be plastic bags, cheap clothes, and chicken bones. – via kottke
This Is Exhausting:
- “Under the previous administration, we looked like fools. Not anymore.” – Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shortly before accidentally texting war plans to a journalist.
- A federal judge temporarily blocked the Environmental Protection Agency‘s attempt to recoup $20 billion in Biden-era climate grants, dealing the latest judicial setback for [the current administration]’s attempt to assert unilateral control over spending.
- There Is No Method to [the President]’s Madness. He’s Simply Insane.
- The corporation behind Roundup herbicide has paid out nearly $11 billion in lawsuits. Now it’s backing an EPA rule that would stop the bleeding.
- An Austin attorney is suing the Department of Education after seeing her student loan payments skyrocket.
- A Coast Guard Commander Miscarried. She Nearly Died After Being Denied Care.
- If you can’t get excited about Jack Black as Steve, you really need to spend more time interacting with elementary school children.
- We need to work on bringing the phrase, “the whole megillah,” back into regular use. I feel like abandoning this wonderful expression was a bad idea, even though I’ll freely admit that I thought it was spelled “magilla” until about ten minutes ago.
- I have started listening to the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast and really love it. Of course, the three episodes I’ve heard so far were ones featuring interviews with Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, and Jeff Goldblum, three of my favorite actors, so my opinion may be biased. But all three had me laughing out loud at one point or another and it’s nice to hear Conan’s voice again.
- A month after the death of his mother, Tiger Woods says he’s recovering after surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles, likely ending his 2025 season.
- An 11-year-old boy who pulled the Paul Skenes MLB Debut Patch card will likely sell it for more money than Skenes will make from his 2025 Pirates base salary. – via @jacksongagne.com
- Tim Walz to launch national tour of town halls in Republican House districts. (Go get ’em, Tim!)
Madness:
- The Pentagon Keeps Pouring Cash Into Golf Courses – Even As [Administration] Slashes Government Spending
- USDA ends program that helped schools serve food from local farmers
- Department of Justice Official Says She Was Fired After Opposing Restoring Mel Gibson‘s Gun Rights
- Pete Hegseth is expected in the coming weeks to start a sweeping overhaul of the judge advocate general’s corps as part of an effort to make the US military less restricted by the laws of armed conflict. – via @jamellebouie.net
- NIH officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research. – via @kwcollins.bsky.social
- This brilliant bit of investigative reporting (with math!) – into how Threads changed its algorithm to start throttling engagement on posts about climate change – should tell you everything you need to know about which platforms are enshittification engines and which one is not. And with that, I’m effectively done with Meta. (Mastodon might be a safe social network alternative, but it’s currently far too complicated for the general public.)
- Dozens of official government websites have been exploited by spammers to redirect to porn. – via jbhall56.bsky.social
As a diehard Florida Gators fan, I absolutely adore sporting this lapel pin I found recently at LostLustSupply.com. It was designed by artist Emily Elizabeth Miller and she’s got some other great stuff for sale, too.- “What’s the point of being rich if you can’t afford to do the right thing.” – via Kelsey Hightower
- A.J. Brown read his book during a playoff game. The story behind the book is even more unusual.
- Olympic swimmer Gary Hall Jr. to receive replacement medals after losing originals in L.A. fires.
- “You were drunk. You tried to dance with strippers. You had to be held off the stage,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, recounting allegations against Fox News host Pete Hegseth during his confirmation to be Trump’s defense secretary. – via crooked media (See also: Jamelle Bouie speaks the truth.)