- AI is a great idea if you think nobody at your company is great at what they do. This is an absolute must-read from Anil.
- My son sent me a silly YouTube short about a guy stumbling upon some ancient Greek statues buried at the beach. It sounded fishy to me, and the YouTube short gets many of the details wrong, but the Riace bronzes are very much real and the true story is just as wild. – via my son
- The Weird History of Fuzzy Toilet Seat Covers and Accessories – via my dad
- Why isn’t the state of Florida producing highly ranked quarterback recruits?
- I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned these, but I highly recommend getting JETech screen protectors for all your digital devices. There are oodles of companies that make screen protectors, but I like these because they’re so inexpensive, they work well, and they come with a cool installation kit that makes it very easy to apply the thing straight and without any air bubbles.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World:
- The Senate voted down a resolution to block the POTUS global tariffs. Everyone is angry at Whitehouse for skipping the vote, but it was never going to pass the House, and would have gotten vetoed regardless.
- It’s frightfully clear that, worm-infested or not, Kennedy‘s brain is marinated in wild conspiracy theories and dangerous misinformation.
- Internet laughs at White House briefing with Temu Draco Malfoy
- The Vietnam War Is Still Killing People, 50 Years Later
- Staff members at the National Science Foundation were told on April 30th to, “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice.”
- Jill Sobule, Singer-Songwriter of Groundbreaking 1995 Song I Kissed a Girl, Dies in House Fire – via @scalzi.com
Posts tagged “quarterbacks”
- Just in time for Penguin Awareness Day (on Thursday, January 20th), the Wildlife Conservation Society‘s Argentina Program has released amazing underwater selfie video recently taken by a male Gentoo penguin fitted with a special camera.
- Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said, “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.” – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter
- In the city of Poznań, Poland, a group of eight clams controls the local water supply through a clever bio-monitoring system. – via kottke
- I have been trying unsuccessfully for a while now to find the recipe for the Pistachio & Orange “Redemption Cake” that Amelia Le Bruin made on The Great British Baking Show: Holidays (S7: E1 “The Great Christmas Baking Show”). If anyone has any leads, please let me know. [Update: I sent her an Instagram DM and she replied to tell me she’d try to find the recipe in her notes!]
- Oysters and Beer Have Always Been on the Menu at One of America’s Oldest, Most Renowned Restaurants. I have been here many times, including a memorable birthday dinner in my 40s, and can confirm that The Union Oyster House is a national treasure. – via my dad
- Netflix Is Telling Writers to Dumb Down Shows Since Viewers Are on Their Phones – via The Dailies
- The essay Who Goes Nazi? from the August 1941 issue of Harper’s Magazine should be required reading at every high school in America. – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
- It was fun to read about all the wild Christmas gifts NFL quarterbacks got their offensive lineman last week. Did you know that NFL teams are required to provide “three dozen sliced oranges for halftime” for the visiting team? And that each team easily goes through at least 80,000 Uncrustables each year? Oh, and Notre Dame winning the Sugar Bowl on January 2, 2025 ensured a Black head coach will be in an FBS national championship game for the first time ever. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
- People often ask me what I think their children should study to learn how to be a programmer, or create video games or apps and I always answer that they should start with the absolute basics. Learn Bash Scripting in 10 minutes is a great example.
- Shrinking (Apple TV+) is probably the best show on TV right now. Jason Segal and Jessica Williams are phenomenal in it and — as impossible as it is to believe — it might be the best work Harrison Ford has ever done on screen. The show was co-created by Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent from Ted Lasso) and the theme song is Frightening Fishes by Tom Howe & Benjamin Gibbard.
- Engineers found a bottle with a 132-year-old message deep inside the walls of a lighthouse in the south of Scotland. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter from Jodi Ettenberg (threads / bluesky)
- Is there anything better than college football bowl season?
- ProPublica has an online tool that will format a letter to your US health insurance company to demand the records behind a claim denial, which the insurance is then legally required to provide in most cases. – via @broingerm (threads / bluesky)
Rare baseball stats are my jam. When I was an early teen I watched Roger Clemens mow down sixteen Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park and was bored out of my mind. I wish I’d appreciated the feat as much as I did the mini batting helmet ice cream. (I still have the helmet.) It’s wild that there have been fewer 20-K games than perfect games.- On Sunday, December 8, 2024 — in a loss to the Los Angeles Rams — Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills had the best fantasy football performance ever by a QB. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
- Over 21 months, Taylor Swift‘s culture-dominating Eras Tour brought in $2B, more than double the gross of its closest competitor, according to ticket sales figures confirmed for the first time. – via Crooked Media (threads / bluesky)
- Staffers at roughly 600 booksellers are receiving $500 holiday bonuses from James Patterson, the bestselling novelist who has been awarding independent store employees since 2015. – via @abcnews
- You can find something for everyone in The 2024 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide.
- Street drug deaths in the U.S. are dropping at the fastest rate ever seen, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. – via @npr
- Every time he scores a touchdown, Philadelphia Eagles QB Jalen Hurts donates $5,000.00 to purchase air conditioning units for Philadelphia schools. – via @urphillypal
- I found out this week that I am qualified for so many cabinet positions. – via @msfrancesma
- I didn’t expect a Marvel supervillain reference in this surprisingly interesting article about microwave ovens, but I certainly appreciated it. – via @theatlantic
- Using an innovative laser scanning technique, researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland have successfully 3D-printed a robotic hand equipped with synthetic bones, ligaments and tendons. – via @reuters
- Never Have I Ever on Netflix is a scary good under-the-radar laugh-out-loud YA show about grief and families somehow narrated by tennis great John McEnroe. Watch it now.
#FridayFive: NFL Quarterbacks
Getting ready for kickoff
Tom Brady and the NFL
Will the NFL collapse without Brady?
Jesse the Bachelor
Notes on a former UF QB
After watching highlights of several of his runs from yesterday afternoon, I’ve come to the conclusion that Michael Vick cannot possibly be human.