- 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
Posts tagged “video games”
- You can now play the classic 1982 Atari 2600 game Pitfall! in your browser.
- I’ve been using FontAwesome in web projects since late 2012 and they are still the best.
- Scaling Our Rate Limits to Prepare for a Billion Active Certificates – Let’s Encrypt protects a vast portion of the Web by providing TLS certificates to over 550 million websites. They currently issue over 340,000 certificates per hour.
- The parents of a 22-yo Wisconsin man who died after an asthma attack have filed a lawsuit against Walgreens and UnitedHealth Group after they said the price for his medication suddenly rose from $66 to $539.
- Just dropping this here for no particular reason: Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, Revised Edition
- Aides to [the man] charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.
- “The impotence [of the left] is as staggering as the abdication is sickening. But the current message from elected Democrats is loud and clear: You’re on your own. And the message from the … administration is even clearer: You’re next.” – via Marisa Kabas
Apparently federal employees are using Milton’s red stapler from Office Space as a symbol of resistance, which is awesome on so many levels.- An outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City area has grown into one of the largest ever recorded in the United States, with dozens of active cases of the infectious disease reported, according to health officials. (Be alarmed.)
- Newly-appointed U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy signed a memorandum which directs the NHTSA to immediately initiate, “a rulemaking to rescind or replace all existing CAFE standards.” I just can’t get over the fact that this guy got his start on MTV’s Real World: Boston.
- You are the captain of a starship, about to embark on a long journey to a strange planet. You must hire a crew and buy supplies for the long journey ahead, then deal with all sorts of adventures and problems along the way. Space Awesome is a lovely little retro game similar to Oregon Trail* or Zork*. (You can play a complete game in a few minutes.)
- The Comprehensive Guide to Building a Realistic R2-D2 Replica
- A wall of ice the size of Rhode Island is heading toward a penguin-packed island off Antarctica.
- Once again, fans of the Buffalo Bills are the class of the NFL. They’ve raised over $100,000 with a GoFundMe for a diabetes charity supported by Mark Andrews, the Baltimore Ravens player who lost a fumble and dropped what would have been a game-tying catch in his team’s AFC divisional loss to the Bills.
- JK Brickworks is a site with instructions for lots of fun LEGO MOCs.
- “Wikenigma is an encyclopedia of known unknowns. That is, a listing of ‘scientific and academic questions to which no-one, anywhere, has yet been able to provide a definitive answer’.” – via kottke
- Oh, wow. This is awesome. The Public Domain Image Archive is a hand-picked collection of thousands of out-of-copyright works, free to browse, download, and reuse. – via @austinkleon
- If you ever find yourself hungry in Amsterdam, I urge you to try the pink mayonnaise french fries at ‘t Pareltje.
- Explaining how fighting games use delay-based and rollback netcode – How to design your game for optimal play over a network
- Bad news for insomniacs. New research highlights how chronic, insufficient sleep can impair your body’s ability to manage blood sugar – even if your weight stays stable. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
- “The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish.”
- Another good example of enshittification: Companies tend not to pass cost savings from efficiency gains onto consumers… they just sell people more of it. – via kottke
- The Ten Commandments of iOS Development
- At some point I really must make these artichoke soufflés. They look delicious and have been on my to-make list for years.
- When My Father Talked About Larry Bird: The Boston Celtics legend was the north star of my youth, present in every debate and stretch of silence with my dad. This was true on the night when my world stopped, leaving me on a sidewalk seeing stars.
- Were Back to the Future and The Goonies set on the same day? – via kottke
- Here’s a faithful recreation of me in the 1980s explaining my IT job to my grandparents at Christmas. It also perfectly mimics how I imagine I sound any time I talk to my teenager about pretty much anything. (But the danger presented by a poorly-maintained turbo encabulator is no joke!)
- Reverse Engineering Call Of Duty Anti-Cheat
- There are some hidden gems on this MacStories Best Apps of 2024 list.
- I have a generic digital photo frame at home that’s on its last legs. I got it well over a decade ago and was never thrilled with its buttons or input options, but at the time it was pretty awesome. Since then I’ve purchased multiple Pix-Star frames (website, Amazon) for far-off family members; I’m not a huge fan of those, either, and I don’t feel they’re worth the price tag. I just saw the Aura frame recommended in the hiro.report newsletter and it looks pretty nice, but it’s also pretty expensive. I’ve got at least two ancient iPads Mini collecting dust and am going to try repurposing those instead. (I’ll keep you posted.)
- To age on the internet is to exist in an accidental version of [a] time tunnel.
- I’m wondering for how long what you don’t know can’t hurt you. It’s definitely not forever, but it is still for today.
- I just received a text message that read, “Please be advised that we are currently conducting a lockdown drill at [your son’s high school]. This is a routine practice to ensure student and staff safety. Thank you for your understanding. STOP to end”
What a utopia it would be if simply texting STOP to end was actually the solution.
- The US government wants to start protecting you (and your kids) from Roblox robux scams. – via Anil
- The Moon is part of the Diocese of Orlando, in accordance with the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which states that “any newly discovered territory was placed under the jurisdiction of the diocese from which the expedition which discovered that territory left.” – via Kent Hendricks
- I can’t be the only GenXer really struggling with the fact that it’s 2025. That number seems impossible to me. It sounds like a year from The Jetsons or Space Mountain. (Related: Wikipedia’s list of movies set in 2025 is somewhat disappointing.)
- I thoroughly enjoyed reading this essay on the evolution of the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade screenplay. – via hiro.report, via Phil Gyford
- Bad news for people who hate good news:
- In a 6-1 ruling in favor of sixteen youth who sued, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” – via kottke
- The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear appeals from oil companies challenging a lawsuit in Hawaii that aims to hold them accountable for climate change. – via Crooked Media
- The US jobs market roared to life in December – via Semafor
- Trump can still vote after sentencing, but can’t own a gun and will have to turn over DNA sample – via The Associated Press
- Biden Issues Sweeping Deportation Protections Before Trump Takes Office
- Good news for people who love bad news:
- Global temperatures in 2024 eclipsed 2023’s average by more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit. That’s an unusually large jump; until the last couple of super-hot years, global temperature records were exceeded only by hundredths of a degree. – via The Morning Wire
- Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state. – via my dad
When Indiana Jones tells you he needs your help fighting Nazis, you help Indiana Jones fight Nazis. – via @laurenthomanwrites (Vote!)- If you’re looking for some good news: The population decline of honeybees has actually reversed! – via @dirtyrealism42
- In 2034 people are going to rediscover these unhinged John Mulaney musical sketches and realize they were incredibly brilliant and hysterical. #SNL – via @gatordavid
- The Boss opening his show in Montreal with a cover of Ghostbusters makes me really happy. – via @coachbennett
- I wonder how many of the rabid anti-immigration folks in the US could pass a citizenship test?
- Learn programming by playing games! – via @denicmarko_
- I’m no rocket scientist, but this headline seems bad. The International Space Station Has Been Leaking for Five Years – via @laura.helmuth
- The Athletic just published a great article about sports video game soundtracks that’s worth a read.
- “Can you imagine the beautiful chaos if LinkedIn allowed commenting on open job positions?” – via @regina.thequeen.bee (I love this idea! Couldn’t someone make a browser extension for this?)
- Some excellent climate news: United States greenhouse gas emissions peaked in 2005 and have been declining ever since. — via All Predictions Wrong
- Some excellent environmental news: The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Chinook salmon have returned to the Klamath Basin for the first time since the construction of hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in 1912. – via @saramontourlewis
- “Sorry I missed your call. I was sitting on the couch holding my phone and watching it ring.” — @scottevandavis
- Allbirds are great everyday shoes. They’re stylish, comfortable, and you can toss them in the washing machine. I have three pairs and love them. They’re having a 30%-off Fall sale ending October 27, 2024.
A few days ago I realized that my sons have never heard of Snidely Whiplash. They don’t know Dudley Do-Right or Grape Ape or Hong Kong Phooey, either. I feel like I’m a terrible parent.- I currently have a fourteen-year old. And I absolutely remember being a fourteen-year old. This video about growing pains from Amsterdam’s NEMO Science Museum is <chef’s kiss> good. – via @dsnyderuk
- In order to pass your CCNA exam, you need to be proficient at converting decimal numbers to binary numbers and binary numbers to decimal numbers — and do so quickly. Cisco made the challenge into a video game, and it’s pretty fun! – via Jason
Space Awesome is a fun and quick little text-based video game similar to Oregon Trail.