davidgagne.net

A man in Canada’s far north leapt on to a polar bear to protect his wife from being mauled, police say. – via Crooked Media (threads / bluesky)
I love this quote: “[Software bugs] are a lot like prime numbers. There are always more, but after you find the first couple billion they do thin out quite a bit.” – via @philcrissman (threads / bluesky)
It’s a good idea to occasionally revisit the story of Roger and Elaine.
Mark Ruffalo sounds like the name a dog would give if he was pretending to be a man. – via @the.yael
Need to buy something for someone you can’t stand? Check out My Heinous Gift Guide for Sworn Enemies. And note that you don’t actually have to stay on Twitter. – both via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
Jonathan Edward Durham is a good follow on threads and/or bluesky.
Your Local Epidemiologist is a super informative newsletter that translates complicated health news, especially about viruses and colds.
19 Useful Mac Startup Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know
What do you call a pig that does karate? A pork chop! – via 172 Corny Jokes To Tell To Kids You Love

Eight vignettes about power and (mis)understanding, and children, I guess, from Making It Work – via kottke
For the first time in 37 years scientists have observed orcas wearing dead salmons as hats – via @nerdist (threads / bluesky)
Take notes, not photos: Recent research found that if you want to strengthen your memory, taking notes by hand beats taking pictures every time—because it keeps your brain engaged and focused. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club (threads / bluesky)
Florida’s furious finish on the recruiting trail caps stellar month for Billy Napier – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
Just one retail chain was enough for Taylor Swift to have the top-selling book last week and the biggest publishing launch of 2024. – via The Hollywood Reporter (threads / bluesky)
“No big deal, just a 12-foot long jump wearing football pads while clearing another human being.” – via @cfbalerts (threads / bluesky)
Where to donate your money to fight climate change effectively – via @vox (threads / bluesky)
Bluesky brings the fun, weird vibes of old Twitter back to life – also via @vox
“I accidentally used my mom’s fabric scissors to cut wrapping paper and now the cops are here.” – via @wdgoodnight

Want 33,000 classic sound effects for free? Check out the BBC Sound Effects Archive.
I am very much concerned about the many, many, many possible negative consequences of nefarious, incompetent, and/or misguided generative AI. Ruining wikipedia should have been on my bingo card.
A University College London demographer’s work debunking ‘Blue Zone’ regions of exceptional lifespans won an Ig Nobel prize. I always thought blue zones sounded fishy.
Ugh. Scientists are worried that persisting cognitive issues sparked by COVID-19 may signal a coming surge of dementia and other mental conditions.
Philip Moscovitch‘s Halifax Examiner article Beyond the Link Tax: Journalism and the Changing Nature of the Internet contains some interesting ideas about potentially taxing megacorporations to subsidize good reporting. But what grabbed me was the line, “Essentially, what we are seeing is the slow death of the hyperlink […]” Sites like Threads, Instagram, Twitter / X, et.al. have a vested interest in keeping you from leaving. They are, in fact, designed to make it more difficult for you to get to the “rest” of the Internet. I have been occasionally combing through old posts here and it is alarming — for someone who’s been blogging regularly for more than a quarter of a century — how many links simply no longer work. And I’m not talking about links from twenty years ago which should work but don’t (because the site’s gone offline or developers didn’t bother to redirect URLs). I’m talking about links from just a year or two ago. The wayback machine has been a fantastic resource to help me find archived content, but it’s not perfect and it’s grossly underfunded for how important it is to anyone who cares. See also: link rot
Speaking of being extremely online, you should read Reclaiming Social Media in a Fragmented World. I love the concept of POSSE and it’s been something I’ve really tried to remember the last few years, especially after what’s happened with Twitter.
On Ghost Networks: Ravi Coutinho bought a health insurance plan thinking it would deliver on its promise of access to mental health providers. But even after twenty-one phone calls and multiple hospitalizations, no one could find him a therapist.

As a quick follow-up to my note about the lugubrious and lamentable demise of Twitter, I want to point out that I am loving Threads. Yes, I am well aware that it is a Meta product. But so far it has been a fantastic social media replacement for me. It is sorely lacking in sports coverage and the algorithm doesn’t seem to handle breaking news very well, but I’ll counter that it appears to immediately alert me any time anyone anywhere mentions Soapdish. So I call that a win.

The Death of Twitter

In which he laments the demise of a once-beautiful service

Things are definitely going downhill on the bird site. I logged on this morning and was greeted with multiple hardcore xxx videos / images when viewing a fairly innocent trending topic. First time that’s happened in 15+ years.