Posts tagged “science fiction”

• 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

• 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

• A Masters win for Rory McIlroy gives him, at last, a seat at the table.
• The Last of Us S2 on HBOMax premiered this weekend, so it’s a great time to read some perspectives from an epidemiologist and a plant scientist.
• What can we learn from the books being read by the characters in White Lotus S3?
• Lorne Michaels is going to produce a British version of Saturday Night Live starting in 2026.
• Great quote from physicist Brian Greene: “My best teachers were not the ones who had all the answers. They were the ones deeply excited by questions they couldn’t answer.” – via Austin Kleon
• Dreaming of a song, but something went wrong:
  • A federal judge sided with the [current] administration in allowing immigration agents to conduct enforcement operations at houses of worship for now.
  • Death is the point.
  • Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard signed a sworn declaration stating that she was a resident of the State of Texas, and then voted in Hawaii. – via mehdirhasan.bsky.social
  • Vice President JD Vance fumbles trophy during Ohio State football’s White House visit
  • I can think of a few thousand better ways the AP could have worded this headline to more accurately convey just how corrupt this weirdo is: DeSantis Defends $10M Donation from State Agency Settlement to Charity Linked to His Wife
  • The American Dream Is Over: He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement, and a plurality of American voters.

• Your Worst Is Not the Worst, the latest issue of Making It Work from Youngna Park, is powerfully relatable. Trying to explain to young children what’s happening in the world in 2025 is so, so hard.
• Behind the Collapse of Technicolor and Why Its Failure Is Sending Shockwaves Through the VFX Industry
• I quickly fell in love with the Hulu sci-fi series Paradise, starring Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden. Check it out.
• How Pop-Tarts turned an easy-to-forget bowl into one of the college football season’s best moments
• “There is not one Yeezy shoe left,” said Adidas chief financial officer. “It has all been sold and that episode is behind us.”
• And now, the bad news:
  • How “DOGE” Cuts to the IRS Threaten to Cost More Than DOGE Will Ever Save
  • Marco Rubio is often the last to know when foreign policy decisions are made in the White House.
  • A truly troubling read: “We believe this rush to comply is a sign that universities are willing to become an institutional wing of the new segregationists.”
  • POTUS Signs Executive Order Handing U.S. Public Forests Over to Private Logging Industry
  • The Strategic Crypto Swindle: A bitcoin reserve would be a government-backed grift.
  • A leaked memo calls for VA to lay off as many as 83,000 employees this year.

The Andor finale was a masterpiece, easily the best Star Wars series to date (and I loved Mando and BoBF). – via @diegoluna_

• The iPhone just keeps getting better. (I’ve had each one.)
• What Broke My Father’s Heart
• I have been in hysterics reading quotes from the fascinating lives of the people who live in my furniture catalogs… “Oh, dear. Our Q-Tip decanter is almost 1/5th depleted!”
• Lake Street Creamery. We guarantee IT WILL TURN YOU INTO A GOD.*
• The Swedish Chef cooks popcorn shrimp.
• The oil spill? “It’s heartbreakin’, baby.”
• The Who Tall Are You? mirror looks like it would be fun for a teenager’s room.
• It will probably be light years centuries before the Sci-Fi Airshow makes its way to Los Angeles, and I sadly won’t get to see it.
• Real Life vs. CSI:Miami
• Proper punctuation is important. Seriously.

• That’s What Bea Said!
• Avoid customer service prompts and long hold times with GetHuman.com. (And, of course, there’s an iPhone app for that.)
• The graphic Jish found depicting a Visual Explanation of Family Relationships is the first I’ve ever seen that made sense.
• If you live here, you already know this: Los Angeles is a lonely city.
• “If you believe what you read in scientific literature, you shouldn’t believe what you read in the scientific literature.” This is (probably) why everything you think we know might be wrong.
• Behold! The Periodic Table of Science Fiction!
• Chris Coyier explains the genius of asking for the hard part first.

And if you care about football and the NFL Draft at all, ignore what all the pundits are predicting and make sure to read what Cold, Hard, Football Facts says in A Tale of Six Quarterbacks:

Tebow not only passed the ball far more effectively than any of these No. 1 overall picks (Peyton Manning, Tim Couch, Eli Manning, JaMarcus Russell, and Matt Stafford). It pays to remember that, in his spare time, he set the SEC career record for rushing touchdowns. Oh, and he won a Heisman Trophy and two National Titles. Other than that, he didn’t do much.
But Tebow didn’t just put up big stats … he put up supremely efficient stats. He was more accurate, and produced more big passing plays, and was more likely to put the ball in the end zone, and more likely to keep it out of the hands of opposing defenders, than any of the recent collection of No. 1 passing phenoms to come out of the SEC.