Posts tagged “trading cards”

• Italy’s famous Lovers’ Arch collapses into the sea on Valentine’s Day – via my little sister
• What the? There’s a species of mushroom that makes everyone who trips on it think they’re seeing dozens of tiny humans. As far as we know, it’s the only hallucinogenic that makes everyone have the same hallucinations. – via Kottke
• A startup called LightBar is paying everyday internet users to probe AI models for outputs that rip off copyrighted film and TV content, then packaging that evidence for studios to use in lawsuits, settlements, or licensing deals.
• Research suggests that drinking 2 to 3 cups of caffeinated coffee per day (or 1 to 2 cups of tea) is associated with a lower risk of dementia. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• My uncle had two small parts in the 1990 Tom Cruise NASCAR film, Days of Thunder, which was filmed partly in Daytona Beach and the surrounding area. He’s at the very beginning of the film for a few seconds as a reporter interviewing one of the racers and he appears again in the fake police officer prank as a Florida Highway Patrolman. He’s the very tall trooper with a mustache. Uncle Dic (Domenic Albanese) was a supreme exaggerator and teller of tall tales, but for some reason I always believed him – because it sounded so authentic – when he told us that while they were waiting to film the scene he and Robert Duvall got in a farting exchange that had Tom Cruise in stitches. (I am also in the movie. You can see me during the celebration after the last race, right behind Cruise’s car. I’m the dumb teenager wearing a leather jacket in Florida.)
• Take a few minutes to read the fascinating backstory behind the Benjamin Franklin medal that was used in the coin flip at Super Bowl LX and how Topps selected its list of the 75 best baseball cards of all time.
• The official trailer has been released for Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Winter Olympics

• I don’t know if there is any possible way NBC could do a worse job this Olympics. Several times now I’ve managed to avoid all social media and my email, flipped to NBC to start watching, and caught the end of the local news team spoiling everything I was about to watch. Peacock doesn’t help much, either, as it seems every time I try to watch anything there I see a message telling me the event has just concluded or hasn’t started yet, or I click to watch speed skating and am shown women’s hockey instead. It’s all very frustrating.
• France’s Viral Ice Dancing Team Has A Dark Backstory
• Ukrainian Vladyslav Heraskevych is the most important athlete at the Olympics right now
• SNL always has great sketches for the Olympics. I liked this year’s about the terrified luge racer, but it doesn’t top the All-Drug Olympics or Jason Priestley (with Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman announcing) as the worst ice skater in history.
• Norwegian skier Atle Lie McGrath, grieving his grandfather’s passing at the start of the Olympics, was so distraught from losing the men’s slalom gold medal that he threw his poles, unstrapped his skis and walked toward the nearby woods to be alone.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things:

• The highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner.
• Cardi B slammed the Department of Homeland Security after it mocked her for saying she’d “jump” ICE if they came after her fans during a show.
• A Florida handyman who received a pardon from POTUS for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been convicted of multiple state charges of child molestation and exposing himself to children
• A Pennsylvania Olive Garden employee killed himself by plunging his head into a hot deep fryer. (When I was a teenager a broken piece of fryolator equipment caused me to submerge my right arm up to the elbow in 425°F peanut oil. I got second and third degree burns all over my arm and where the oil splashed, and it was easily the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced.)

• Renewable energy was the world’s leading source of electricity in the first half of 2025 for the first time ever, knocking coal off its longtime throne. – via The Progress Network
• Narrative String Theory (NST) is an awesome collection of movies, television shows, and other assorted media that feature detectives (or conspiracy theorists) connecting pictures on a wall or whiteboard with thread.
• Taylor Swift gave her Eras Tour crew jaw-dropping bonuses because of course she did.
• Mississippi State will face Wake Forest in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, which requires head coaches to sign an agreement saying the winner will accept having a bucket of mayonnaise dumped on his head.
• RIP Tom Stoppard
• The Athletic did a great story on the current value of the sports collectibles seen in Home Alone.
  Related: Meet the family that pulled the most expensive Shohei Ohtani baseball card to date.
• Why do we have two nostrils instead of one big hole in our face? – via Jason
• 51% of the animals in farms across the world are shrimp. – via Tom Whitwell
• I know I’ve linked to this already, but I’m going to once again urge you to read the fascinating backstory of the Duck Tales theme song, history’s catchiest single minute of music.
• I’ve certainly experienced the Abilene Paradox plenty of times. I didn’t know it had a name, though. – via cassidoo
• Can Magnus Carlsen, the best chess player in the world, beat a novice while facing increasingly-difficult disadvantages?
• Jingle Bell Rock:
  • WTF? White House installs plaques mocking former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden
  • WTF? Liam Neeson Narrates Anti-Vax, Pro-RFK Documentary
  • WTF? Fake social media accounts attempted to push a ridiculous narrative framing Taylor Swift as a white supremacist.
  • Massachusetts Catholic Church Angers Conservatives with Its ICE-Themed Nativity Scene
  • Am I the only one thinking that there’s something really sus about this whole insane Venezuela lunacy? They’re not flooding us with drugs. We don’t need their oil. Why all the trumped up aggression? I feel like we’re living in the first few chapters of a 007 novel and we’re soon going to learn 90% of some critical part of cryptocurrency or artificial intelligence computer chips can only be found buried underneath some mountain range there or something like that.
  • “It makes my blood boil. It’s so ridiculous, so petty, so small minded,” wrote Maria Shriver, about the latest stupidity out of the current administration.

• The Philadelphia Eagles have produced yet another awesome and fun Christmas video. – via The Kids Kickoff
• Missing Flamingo Thought to Be Living in France
• Beginning in the 1970s, Alan Rosen – the Indiana Jones of vintage sports cards – professed that there would always be a market for older cards and memorabilia, and history has proven him right.
• The Fascinating History of Tarot Card Decks: From the Renaissance to the Modern Day – via kottke
• It’s tough to argue with anything on this list of 100 small steps you can take to live to 100. And some of them are even pretty fun. – via hurly
• The Food and Drug Administration unveiled a new blueprint for the regulation of bespoke drug therapies, a way for these treatments to quickly get to market if they meet certain standards.
• A cannon, three coins, and a porcelain cup were among the first objects Colombian scientists recovered from the depths of the Caribbean Sea where the mythical galleon San José sank in 1708.
• This Is Fine dot gif:
  • Over 30,000 Charlotte, North Carolina students skipped school in protest of ICE operations in the area.
  • The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state: How the AI Crash Happens
  • Sales of AI-enabled teddy bear suspended after it gave advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives
  • I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. Students chose to actively avoid learning because it’s boring and hard.
  • Paul Bojerski, a 79-year-old who was born to Polish parents in a WWII German refugee camp and who legally emigrated to the U.S. when he was 5, has been abducted by ICE in Florida. – via @oliviamesser
  • Prominently displaying the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom is a clear and obvious violation of the First Amendment. How is this even an issue?
  • Sex Workers & A Secret Charity: The Story Of Cory Mills’ ‘F*cking Bananas’ Afghanistan Mission – via @ronfilipkowski
  • This story is simply heartbreaking. A Teen in Love With a Chatbot Killed Himself. Can the Chatbot Be Held Responsible? – via New York Times Magazine

It’s easier to put your hand in the next guy’s pocket if he’s illiterate.

American society is dominated by wealthy mountebanks and literally demented politicians who are happy to take on all the risks of AI because it promises to create workers who cannot even conceptualize quitting, much less striking.
from We Used to Read Things in This Country, by Noah McCormack

• 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

• 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.

• In September of 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. (I love stories like this!) – via mikeachim.bsky.social
• The Wikipedia List of Unexplained Sounds – via my son
• I enjoyed this quick profile on Howard Katz, the man behind the NFL schedule.
• Someone on bluesky asked, “Do you remember the hardest you’ve ever laughed at anything?” That was an easy answer for me: I remember watching the SNL All-Drug Olympics sketch when it aired in October of 1988. I was fifteen and thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I still think it’s hysterical.
• Related: I’ve seen Overboard (1987, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn) at least 1,000 times and Mother’s Day 2025 was the first time I noticed that one of the VHS tapes in Grant’s collection is clearly a porno titled Pink Clam.
• Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, became an instant hit among trading card collectors.
• Can confirm: It Only Tuesday
• How Is Any of This Happening?
  • POTUS is attempting to place Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the guy who defended him in his porn star hush money trial, as the interim acting librarian of Congress. I cannot fathom how anyone is acting like this is… normal. (How does the AP even allow that headline?!) POTUS and/or anyone in the Executive branch cannot simply hire or fire someone who is de jure employed by the Legislative branch. It’s the Library of Congress, not the Library of the President, ffs!
  • I couldn’t have said it better myself: POTUS accepting a $400 million jet from the royal family of Qatar is banana republic shit.
  • The ICE detainment of progressive Twitch streamer Hasan Piker is a cautionary tale for multiple reasons.
  • A contestant (justifiably!) feels betrayed after spending $10,000 auditioning for a fake singing competition on the Nathan Fielder HBOMAX series The Rehearsal.
  • “This is insane. Republicans have inserted language into the budget reconciliation bill that would ban states from regulating AI in any capacity for 10 years.” – via bcmerchant.bsky.social
  • Employees who use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini at work face negative judgments about their competence and motivation from colleagues and managers, according to a new study. – via sethpartnow.bsky.social

• Whoa! Archaeologists Discover Tomb of Unknown Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. (Doesn’t that make two this year?!)
• My son and I somehow got sucked into a rabbit hole watching Michael Jordan YouTube highlight videos and I had fun trying to explain to him just how jaw-dropping the 1997 flu game was to watch live.
• I recently listened to the Smartless podcast interview with John Lithgow, which reminded me that for a couple of years I lived on the fringe of Beverly Hills and frequently saw him walking his dog around the neighborhood when I’d go on my morning runs. (We never interacted beyond a gentlemanly nod, but he seemed like a lovely man.)
• France‘s far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from seeking office for five years after being found guilty of embezzling funds from the European Union. It’s always refreshing to see powerful politicians held accountable for breaking the law. We should try that in the US.
• The first Shohei Ohtani card to sell for $1 million included a coveted piece of his pants.
• I really love these LEGO picture frames, shelves, and office organizers.
• Apple is pretending to sell the computers from Severance, which I think is a cute little marketing gimmick.
• Good News for People Who Like Bad News:
  • Turkish student at Tufts University detained by masked men claiming to be police
  • Top FDA Vaccine Official Resigns, Citing RFK Jr.‘s ‘Misinformation and Lies’
  • FCC commissioner opens investigation into Disney and ABC for diversity policies
  • How a Landlord and a Florida PR Firm Helped POTUS Kick Off the Tren de Aragua Gang Panic
  • Administration Abruptly Cuts Billions from State Health Services
  • The Florida State Health Department released a letter with a surprising new recommendation that contradicts standard of practice guidelines for measles outbreaks. – via YLE

• A paralysed man can stand on his own after receiving an injection of neural stem cells to treat his spinal cord injury.
• From the Department of NSS: Media Use Is Linked to Lower Psychological Well-Being “The more time spent on screens, the greater the negative effects—especially among young people. The study suggests excessive media consumption disrupts essential psychological needs, such as real-world social interaction, physical activity, and sleep quality.” – via Arnold’s Pump Club, which is a surprisingly informative daily newsletter
• Lionel Messi trading card controversy: Who is signing his autographs? (See also: Why do companies buy memorabilia like the Ohtani ball and Skenes card? It goes back to Babe Ruth.)
• Tesla Is Dying, and Polestar Wants to Kill It
• The nightmare scenario for Hollywood has arrived: Viewers are choosing free creator content over premium subscriptions. Nielsen data for February 2025 show YouTube now dominates nearly 12% of total TV viewing time—more than Disney and about equal to Netflix and Amazon combined. And this doesn’t even count viewership on phones and tablets, where creators dominate even more. – via The Dailies
• Good news: Kentucky governor vetoes GOP abortion bill, says it undermines doctors and endangers pregnant women.
• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad opened at the Magic Kingdom in 1980 and I still think of it as one of the newer rides.
• Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
  • I don’t understand why the AP bent over backwards to avoid mentioning the political party affiliation of an ex-North Dakota lawmaker sentenced to ten years in prison for going to Europe with intent to pay for sex with a minor.
  • Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of [the Current Administration’s] Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes
  • “DOGE” claims it’s not an agency that has to comply with FOIA requests, so The Intercept is suing them.
  • POTUS nominates Republican once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds as HHS watchdog
  • For Fascists, Hypocrisy Is a Virtue

• 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

• I will jump on the Last Week Tonight bandwagon and spread the word about how to change your settings to make yourself less valuable to Meta. (And, yes, that’s the correct link.)
• The surprisingly hopeful What Felt Impossible Became Possible is an excellent essay about the downfall of the Ku Klux Klan and how it relates to our current American crisis. The key takeaway — as many others have noted — is that fascism always fails. “It is destructive and it is awful and not everyone lives to see the other side, but it always, always fails.”
• A “super pod” of thousands of dolphins was spotted off the California coast.
• Disney’s Star Wars Succession Problem: Who Will Replace Kathleen Kennedy? – via The Dailies
• What happens when you pull a wildly valuable Jayden Daniels rookie card? For “Dr. Moist Muffins”, it literally changed his life.
• Scientists have found that eating more fiber could help reduce microplastic absorption and minimize its harmful effects on your body.
• Neither vaccines nor the virus prompted an increase in the number of cardiac arrests in athletes, contrary to misinformation that continues to circulate repeatedly.
• Annoying News:
  • Starlink gets FAA contract, raising new conflict of interest concerns. – via @joshtpm.bsky.social
  • The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., declined to sign an arrest warrant sent to them by local police for Republican congressman Cory Mills who happens to be an ally of the President.
  • Trump Administration Litigation Tracker
  • An analysis by ProPublica showed that dozens more pregnant and postpartum women have died in Texas hospitals since the state banned abortion. And while the national maternal mortality rate dropped, it rose in Texas by 33%. – via @joncooper-us.bsky.social
  • Here’s a handy list of sixteen Democrats who simply aren’t doing enough. If your rep is on that list, get on the phone.

• I loved reading this story about an 11-yo who pulled one of the most valuable baseball cards in history. The best quote from the article? “My brain pooped.”
• Hackers are hijacking WordPress sites to push malware on unsuspecting visitors. This is another good reason to make sure your plugins are core files are routinely updated.
• This short article about the psychology of scene transitions in film is really interesting. (Watch the video, too!)
• One of the more concerning consequences of the current administration is that when the most powerful nation in history is ruled by feckless ignorant toads, those who lust for power elsewhere are emboldened:
  • Paramilitary group attacks an open market in Sudan, killing 54 people and wounding scores
  • Congo says 773 dead in week-long fighting as military tries to repel Rwanda-backed rebels
• Last night I realized I can watch Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough on BBC through AppleTV. I had to pay for it, but I think that’s pretty reasonable. I was pleasantly surprised to see Steve Brusatte make an appearance. I read his book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World a year or two ago and loved it. It’s really mind-blowing how much more we know about dinosaurs than we did when I was fascinated with them in elementary school. Scientists might even have finally discovered where dinosaurs first evolved! (The documentary is titled Dinosaur Apocalypse on AppleTV for some reason. I guess that sounds much more dramatic.)
• More Bird Flu Bad News: Infectious disease expert warns wind-blown avian feces may be route of transmission.
• Google searches for “adult tennis lessons” were up 245 percent shortly after the premiere of the Zendaya love-triangle sports-flick Challengers. – via The Athletic
• After reading a few of her Bluesky posts, I decided to subscribe to the tech newsletter rendezvous with cassidoo.
• Just in case you were under the misguided impression that the current administration cares about, y’know, people:
  • The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been fired.
  • On Monday the Senate confirmed fossil fuel executive Chris Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy.
• A Coup in Plain Sight: An Explainer as the Crisis Solidifies