• Evidence is accumulating that the shingles vaccine also protects against Alzheimer’s disease and can slow biological aging. – via The Progress Network
• Mr. Math Blog is a great tool to keep in your back pocket if you have an elementary school student learning algebra.
• Reasons To Watch The Martian For The 47th Time, Ranked – via Lauren
• I highly recommend Night Thoughts, the new stand-up special from Kumail Nanjiani on Hulu.
• The Wirecutter published a quick and easy overview about keeping your text messages secure.
• Wil Wheaton on losing Rob Reiner
• Oh, man. RIP to one of my favorites: Catherine O’Hara – via TMZ
• For decades, Eve Baer remained convinced that her son, unresponsive after a severe brain injury, was still conscious. Science eventually proved her right.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:

• America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker
• An unidentified man dressed as Batman angrily confronted Santa Clara city officials for allowing ICE to operate at the upcoming Super Bowl in the city. – via What a Day
• He reached to grab a toddler he said he thought was falling. Then he spent weeks in jail before the case was thrown out.
• ICE Agents Arrested Don Lemon. Then the Story Got Even Darker. – via @gregsargent

• Symbol Salad is a great resource for those in need of special keyboard characters, like ¢ and ½.
• Organ Donation & Pascal’s Wager – via mergesort.me
• The current administration does not want to FAFO with an organized gang of wine moms. – via @froggyb
• Speaking of FAFO: I can’t believe this academic admitted to losing all his AI-generated research.
• The Ottawa Senators are selling jerseys with the names of the HBO Heated Rivalry characters for $325/ea (and donating the proceeds to a local queer hockey group) and they can’t keep them in stock because they sell out so quickly. – via The Athletic
• Rhode Island might ditch Mr. Potato Head license plates after Hasbro moves to Boston
• Well, fuck. Swearing Actually Seems to Make Humans Physically Stronger and There Really Is Something Soothing About Saying The ‘F’ Word
• This is absolutely wild: Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows (I mostly quit eating beef about 15 years ago and haven’t missed it at all. But now I’m going to feel even more guilty about the milk in my coffee.)
• It’s “Mental Illness Doesn’t Do That” Season Once Again
• This will be the first time the Patriots have been to the Super Bowl since Bill Belichick‘s girlfriend graduated high school. – via @bgoad85
• And now for the bad news:
  • Since beginning operations seven years ago, Brightline, which runs high-speed trains between Miami and Orlando and is the only private rail service in the country, has killed nearly 200 people. – via longreads.com
  • The South Carolina measles outbreak has surpassed the recorded case count in the 2025 Texas outbreak.
  • Immigration agents operating near Vail, CO placed branded ace of spades playing cards — similar to “death cards” left on corpses by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War — in cars left behind after immigrants’ arrests.
  • “FYI, a masked, anonymous, armed paramilitary force denying due process and breaking into people’s homes to arrest and detain people in camps is exactly what fascism looks like.” – via @darrigomelanie
  • Death of Cuban Detainee in El Paso ICE Facility Is Ruled a Homicide
  • America’s Would-Be Surgeon General, Casey Means, thinks improving health is a spiritual project?!

It’s the birthday of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, born on this date in Boston in 1706. He invented bifocal lenses, the Franklin stove, lightning rods, the urinary catheter, and swim fins. He was the first US Ambassador to France and was a prolific author, giving us dozens of common sayings, some of which you probably use all the time without knowing he said them first. And of course there’s a wonderful Ken Burns PBS documentary about him.

• MTV Rewind is an interface through which you can watch music videos from the 70s to the 20s, organized by decade. – via Jason
• A Finnish company has created auto-focus glasses, which use eye-tracking sensors and liquid crystals to automatically adapt to the needs of the wearer. They look like regular glasses, too. – via What Could Go Right?
• You Can Order a Stunningly Detailed LEGO Replica of Your House on Etsy – via my dad
• I have now purchased two Jetsetter Tech Polo shirts and two pairs of Jetsetter Tech Pants from Jack Archer and they’re awesome. I was “influenced” by someone on Instagram and decided to give them a try and have been pleasantly surprised. The shirts look great even after multiple washes, and the pants are just as good as Lululemon ones. (And they even have a stretchy section in the waistband for when you know you’re going to eat a pound of pasta at dinner.)
• Did everyone else know that the fork was popularized in Italy? (I had no idea!)
• Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court ruled that two laws barring the procedure violate the state constitution.
• The Heat Is On:
  • This is infuriating: The House of Representatives voted 341 to 79 to fund the current administration’s war-mongering foreign policy agenda.
  • “Everyone who has gotten rich since Jan 2025 should vote Republican in the midterms and everyone who hasn’t should vote Democrat.” – via @ronfilipkowski
  • Man convicted for carrying the podium belonging to Nancy Pelosi during the January 6 US Capitol riot seeks Florida county office.
  • Great quote: “An economy built on stripmining its populace cannot be sustained.” – via Citation Needed
  • Colorado appeals panel skeptical of sentencing for former county clerk who breached election systems
  • I wholeheartedly agree with this statement: “Democrats should reject any pretense of political normalcy while [the current administration’s] goons wage an ongoing terror campaign against their own constituents. With government funding running out soon, the time to take a stand is now.” – via atrupar.com

• Please enjoy watching this 45-second clip of a group of penguins meeting a kitten for the first time in their lives.
• Alzheimer’s Fully Reversed in Mice, Scientists Say
• If You Give A Crocodile A Kawasaki Ultra 310LX
• I’m excited to build this Andor LEGO MOC of the Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) Covert Resistance Art Gallery with my son.
• America’s Most Reliable Public Transportation Subway Belongs To A Thriving East Coast City – via my dad
• A Little Good News on a Saturday Night
• Pioneering Olympic snowboarder Ueli Kestenholz dies in Swiss avalanche
• Meet the Aphantasics, Those Who Can’t See Mental Images
• None of This Is Normal:
  • “It’s shameful that the government can come out and lie about what happened when there’s video and witnesses who have all come out and disputed what the government is saying.” – Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr – via @benross
  • The laws of armed conflict forbid combatants from feigning civilian status, a war crime called perfidy. The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first boat attack off the coast of Venezuela. – via @kylegriffin1
  • Jonathan Gerlach was arrested as he walked back toward his car with a crowbar and a burlap bag in which officers found the mummified remains of two small children, three skulls, and other bones.
  • Six federal prosecutors quit amid the Department of Justice push to investigate the wife of Renee Good, the mother killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week. – via What A Day
  • ICE detention has expanded rapidly under the current administration, both in terms of the number of facilities and people held.
  • I Was Kidnapped by Idiots

• Let’s kickstart 2026 with two brilliant essays from Anil Dash. How the Hell Are You Supposed to Have A Career in Tech in 2026? and How Markdown Took Over the World should both be required reading for every high school sophomore in America.
• In April of 2010 a diver found a nearly seven inch Megalodon tooth.
• I missed this bit of good news from last year: Vatican City Is Now Powered By Solar
• How to Turn Toilet Paper Rolls Into DIY Boxes – via cassidoo
• A massive 535-pound bluefin tuna sold for a record $3.2 million at the first auction of 2026 at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market.
• Spend a few minutes watching these interviews with dads outside Taylor Swift concerts. – via paulscheer.com
• Netflix released the Stranger Things series finale in 600+ theaters over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, generating north of $25M in concession revenue. (That’s more than Avatar: Fire and Ash earned in actual ticket sales over the same stretch ($23.7M).) – via The Dailies
• And finally, a handful of wonderful links from Laura Olin that I keep meaning to share:
  • I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers
  • Frolicking in the snow
  • This is mesmerizing.
  • How to Disable AI on Various Platforms
  • Desire is never about the object itself.

• The death of Brigitte Bardot, 1960s sex symbol turned militant animal rights activist, means there are now only three people mentioned in the 1989 Billy Joel song We Didn’t Start the Fire who are still alive: Chubby Checker, Bob Dylan, and… Bernie Goetz. – via Simon Kuestenmacher
• There’s really no way to explain to anyone under the age of about forty what a big deal MTV was when it launched. It’s not at all surprising — I haven’t watched in at least twenty years — but it’s still a bit sad to learn they’re shutting down all music-only channels as of December 31.
• Also nostalgic: The HTML Elements Time Forgot
• Prepare to waste some time playing the Top 10 Free Browser Games of 2025.
• Rome just unveiled two new subway stops that transform its metro into a museum experience. – via Ciao Bella
• Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a runaway supermassive black hole ten million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at 2.2 million miles per hour.
• I had no idea there was a sequel to one of my favorite SNL sketches.
• “That first post-game sacrifice only aired online, but the explosion was immediate.”
• A new study suggests moderate fitness appears to act like an insurance policy against alcohol’s long-term negative health effects. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• It’s hard to believe that Steven Spielberg has made only four studio films about aliens, primarily because his first two were so incredible. Disclosure Day, coming in 2026, will be his fifth.
• “If you want a job in the moisturizer industry, the best advice I can give is to apply daily.” – via Cassidy Williams
• Not securing domain names before announcing something idiotic has been a perpetual epic failure of the current administration.

• Take a moment this holiday season to indulge in the Southern University sousaphones playing the Veggie Tales theme in the Superdome parking lot.
• Actor Michael Sheen purchased and then forgave $1.3 million of his neighbors’ debts.
• This first-person account from a high school kicker of what it’s like to miss a game-tying PAT is riveting.
• There are no words to convey how excited I am about the return of The Muppet Show, even if it’s just a one-off. See also: Forks Out: A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery
• Yes, There’s a Parallel Parking Championship – via Jason
• “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken

  If you’ve been extremely online (and building things on the web) since the middle of the 1990s, you will enjoy reading this Christoffer Artmann essay: 30 Years of <br> Tags

• After much cajoling, last night our son finally convinced us to watch Interstellar (2014, Matthew McConaughey) and I loved it. Brilliant film.
• I feel like this archive of fictional companies is missing a few thousand references from The Simpsons alone, but it’s a good start.
• Fahlo is a wonderful service that (for a nominal fee) allows you to track an animal in the wild. I can confirm that kids love this app.
• The full story of Fedora Man is in the running for the best thing on the Internet this year.
• Ugh: The rise of deepfake cyberbullying poses a growing problem for schools.
• The serial killer epidemic in 1970–80s US may have been caused by lead fumes from cars and factories, and solved by environmental regulations. – via Tom Whitwell
• Take a minute to recall The 2017 Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog – via Lauren
• Friendly reminder: The mass deportation of undocumented people was one of Hitler’s largest coercive policies before the war.
• Just in time for Christmas! “This lightproof, soundproof vat filled with our signature vine-ripened, zesty sauce marks the beginning of an exciting new era in tomato-based relaxation.

• 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.