Posts in the category “News”

• Almost 96% of new cars registered in Norway in January were electric. – via kottke
• The Wild True Story Behind Kendrick Lamar‘s Super Bowl Halftime Show
• The Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled that insurance companies can’t bring their own legal actions against those blamed for the catastrophic 2023 Maui wildfire, allowing a $4 billion settlement to proceed.
• Trump’s Driving Legal Principle This Time: “What Are You Gonna Do About It?”
• The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was told by the Department of Justice that they’d lose their funding if the organization didn’t remove any mentions of LGBTQIA+ issues from their public materials.
• Aggeggio is a lovely Italian word for everyday objects.
• The ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’ of the United States Government
• I need to investigate Tapestry, from iconfactory. It looks like a cool iOS app for aggregating content, and I’ve loved pretty much every other app they’ve ever made. – via hiro.report

• Stop Calling Them Firings. Business terms provide a totally wrong conceptual framework for the purges underway.
• Within 24 hours of the inauguration, Amazon and UnitedHealth asked regulators to help crush their shareholders’ demands for transparency.
• 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. – via Laura Olin
• When my iPhone is connected to my MacBook Air via USB-C cable, both iOS and MacOS should prioritize that connection over the WiFi connection and maintain the link until I actually remove the cable from one of the devices. I don’t understand why Finder would / could / should ever report that “the connection was lost” when the two devices are physically connected.
• The 24-Hour Reality Check: Musk’s Impossible Power Grab and America’s Crisis
• “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives,” is one of the very eloquent bits of advice in this essay On Tyranny. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• From the Department of Irony: You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism “The internet has conditioned us to constantly seek new information, as if becoming a sponge of bad news will eventually yield the final piece of a puzzle.” – via kottke
• Profiles of Courage, Patriotism, and Resistance in standing up to Trump

• Here’s a really lovely resource: Mister Rogers on How to Talk to Kids About Distressing News Events – via kottke
• Of two drivers heading towards each other down a one-way street, surely it is the one driving the wrong way who is most sorely in need of feedback. But it is unfortunately unusual to get a focused note of timely, specific, and usable criticism before things go too badly wrong.
• Scientists are using AI to decipher old scrolls charred by the Vesuvius volcano.
• AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it is a great article from MIT Technology Review about the history of Google and search engines and the wonders of the (inevitable) artificial intelligence future, but I fear we’re looking at yet another Torment Nexus. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• “He’s the Veruca Salt of presidents.”
• The current administration is staging a coup, trying to illegally eliminate agencies, seize control of the U.S. government’s payment systems, and gain access to sensitive data on all Americans without any oversight. It’s time to fight back like our democracy depends on it. – via Laura Olin
• “DOGE” has already thrown entire swaths of the federal government and its programs into disarray – programs that serve millions of Americans. ProPublica is is attempting to document who is involved and what they are doing.
• Billionaire’s blitzkrieg on D.C. has brought into focus his vision for a dramatically smaller and weaker government, as he and a coterie of aides move to control, automate – and substantially diminish – thousands of public functions.
• ICE is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations.
• The team at Court Watch is maintaining an ongoing list of Lawsuits Related to Trump Admin Executive Orders.

• Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) barged into the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and challenged him about the “DOGE” team gaining access to a sensitive payment system at the Department of the Treasury.
• Workers at NASA were told to ‘Drop Everything’ to scrub any mentions of indigenous people and women from its websites.
• Federal Judge Blocks Executive Order Intended to End Birthright Citizenship
• “It’s sad that Wile E. Coyote will always be remembered for his failures and not his amazingly realistic tunnel paintings.” – via @sean_with_an_ean_damnit
• This is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil. Federal law mandates wholesome lunches, but much of it gets trashed because there isn’t time to eat it. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• The “DOGE” Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame is a chilling plea written by a federal employee.
• The US Treasury Claimed “DOGE” Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did: Sources tell WIRED that the ability of Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.
• All of this, of course, depends on a functioning justice system. (Things Are Going to Keep Getting Worse Until They Get Better, Part 339.)
• CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Spread Between Cats and People
• Conservative “Christian nationalist” Russell Vought, former vice president of Heritage Action for America and one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution — and to burn down the system. And the Senate just confirmed him to be the head of OMB. (I would link you directly to the official White House website for OMB, but… it’s been deleted.)
• This tutorial on installing a newsletter replacement for Jetpack looks promising.
• “Just gonna slide this information in here. The Eagles refused to go to the White House after their Super Bowl victory in 2018. Do with that what you will.” – via @brandi-rene.swifties.social
• Oh, and Taylor Swift is expected to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Obviously, she won’t be sitting in the same suite as POTUS.

• FDA has given two biotechnology companies approval for clinical trials that will transplant organs from genetically modified pigs into patients with kidney failure.
• That “fresh” apple you just grabbed at the grocery store was probably picked a thousand miles away and over a year ago. The latest episode of Radiolab, Forever Fresh, was full of surprising facts about the food industry. (Spoiler: It’s all about plastics.)
• Here are two fascinating links on the importance and function of sleep: Our Sleep, Brain Aging, and Waste Clearance and Scientists Uncover How the Brain Washes Itself During Sleep – both via Jodi Ettenberg
• I’m considering adding my bluesky feed to a (new) sidebar on this site using Robert Devore’s WordPress Plugin.
• How do MAGA voters feel after the first two weeks of idiotic executive orders, flagrant disregard for the Constitution, economic upheaval, and diplomatic absurdities? They’re mostly fine with it, which is as horrible and disturbing as it is unsurprising. It was never about eggs.
• Five VSCode Extensions to Supercharge Your Markdown Writing has me interested in looking into VSCode again. (I’ve been using Nova (née Coda) from Panic forever, but really hate the way it handles remote servers and connections.)
• Rather than understand – or even acknowledge – the paradox of intolerance, the increasingly-popular newsletter / publishing platform Substack has decided to double-down on it.
• “Dr. Potter will not be silenced by UnitedHealthcare‘s attempts to threaten and harass her.” Pop Quiz: Without knowing any of the details about this legal issue, would you root for the health insurance company or the doctor?
• A second grade teacher in Philadelphia is using football to help her students score big in math. Her students take inspiration from their hometown football team — the Eagles — practicing their math skills by counting rushing statistics held by Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. – via George Conway

• 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.

• Just a few days ago I said Shrinking was the best show on TV right now. Obviously I didn’t think I needed to include an “except for Bluey“ disclaimer, because certainly everyone agrees Bluey might well be the best show in the history of television. And they’re working on a Bluey movie?!
• “A well-placed swear word triggers emotional and physiological arousal, like an adrenaline boost, where your heart beats faster, and your sympathetic nervous system is given a charge, which enhances focus and energy just enough to help you perform better.” – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club (threads / bluesky)
• “As we continue to face adversity in our daily lives, I’m reminded of the power of the deep breath and the walk in the woods, the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system.” – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter from Jodi Ettenberg (threads / bluesky)
• I’m very frustrated that we haven’t made time to watch the new Disney+ Star Wars series Skeleton Crew yet. Winter break starts this weekend so I imagine big bowls of popcorn and a few hours—in between football games—glued to the TV. (I’m worried that shareholders will look at the streaming numbers and decide it’s not worth the cost to keep producing Star Wars content.)
• Sotheby’s just auctioned off a 115-pound, two-foot-tall slab of marble that, around a millennia and a half ago, was inscribed with the Ten Commandments. – via crooked
• You are cutting it close if you haven’t gotten all your Christmas and/or Hanukkah shopping done yet. Might I suggest a plain white bolt t from Aviator Nation? They are crazy comfortable, cozy, stylish, and on sale right now. (Or you could buy someone an Apple App Store gift card and tell them to use it to download my handy cocktail recipe app!)
• Health department medical detectives find 84% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable.
• The latest issue of Simple Apple Tutorials from Gannon Nordberg is a killer iPhone Notification Detox Guide.
• Bad news for people who hate good news:
  • 93% of kindergarteners in the U.S. are up to date on their childhood vaccines. – via Your Local Epidemiologist
  • HPV vaccines have been linked to a 62% drop in cervical cancer deaths in young women over the last decade. – via kottke

• Open the microwave door as close to the timer hitting 0:00 as you can without the bell dinging. (My high score: 9766.) – via Kottke
• We would not accept [this] from a pizza company. Why do we from healthcare? – via @greg_meyer61
• Go to Amazon (app or website) and type “Thank My Driver” in the search bar. Doing this will prompt Amazon to give your last delivery person an extra $5 tip at no cost to you. – via @froggyab
• I hate that I love you: The neuroscience of heartbreak, a paper on what happens to your brain when you experience pain from love. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter from Jodi Ettenberg (threads / bluesky)
• Wordiply is my new favorite daily mental challenge.
• Keira Knightley said she won’t have more kids because she can’t watch more Peppa Pig – via jezebel (threads / bluesky)
• Oprah‘s list of The Most Thought-Provoking Books of 2024 includes my favorite.
• The Gas Industry Is Paying Instagram Influencers to Gush Over Gas Stoves – via Mother Jones (threads / bluesky)
• Always follow the money, and especially when it comes to climate change. As newspapers withered in Florida and Alabama, a consulting firm filled the void – using money from power companies to prop up news sites promoting their corporate agendas. – via NPR (threads / bluesky)

• Shrinking (Apple TV+) is probably the best show on TV right now. Jason Segal and Jessica Williams are phenomenal in it and — as impossible as it is to believe — it might be the best work Harrison Ford has ever done on screen. The show was co-created by Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent from Ted Lasso) and the theme song is Frightening Fishes by Tom Howe & Benjamin Gibbard.
• Engineers found a bottle with a 132-year-old message deep inside the walls of a lighthouse in the south of Scotland. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter from Jodi Ettenberg (threads / bluesky)
• Is there anything better than college football bowl season?
• ProPublica has an online tool that will format a letter to your US health insurance company to demand the records behind a claim denial, which the insurance is then legally required to provide in most cases. – via @broingerm (threads / bluesky)
• Rare baseball stats are my jam. When I was an early teen I watched Roger Clemens mow down sixteen Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park and was bored out of my mind. I wish I’d appreciated the feat as much as I did the mini batting helmet ice cream. (I still have the helmet.) It’s wild that there have been fewer 20-K games than perfect games.
• On Sunday, December 8, 2024 — in a loss to the Los Angeles Rams — Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills had the best fantasy football performance ever by a QB. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
• Over 21 months, Taylor Swift‘s culture-dominating Eras Tour brought in $2B, more than double the gross of its closest competitor, according to ticket sales figures confirmed for the first time. – via Crooked Media (threads / bluesky)
• Staffers at roughly 600 booksellers are receiving $500 holiday bonuses from James Patterson, the bestselling novelist who has been awarding independent store employees since 2015. – via @abcnews
• You can find something for everyone in The 2024 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide.

• Reminder that Breaking Bad was a TV show about the U.S. healthcare system. – via Melanie D’Arrigo (threads / bluesky)
• I’m confused by the many complaints I’ve seen online recently about the streaming quality of NFL games on Amazon Prime. I have AT&T Gigabit fiber at home and for regular TV use the DirecTVStream app embedded in my Samsung TV. If I want to watch something on Amazon Prime, I use their app instead, also baked into the TV software. I honestly think the image quality of the Amazon NFL games beats what I see on NBC, CBS, FOX, and ESPN on DirecTVStream most of the time, which seems crazy to me. You’d think AT&T would either boost DirecTVStream bandwidth (since they own them) or somehow hamstring the Prime bandwidth. But that’s not the case at all.
• Anyway. This joke about berry packaging made me laugh out loud. – via Matt Margolis (threads / bluesky)
• I am a big fan of Wyze and have their front door deadbolt, doorbell camera, several security cameras, two outdoor plugs (for controlling Christmas lights), a bathroom scale, and at least a half dozen WiFi outlets around the house. They’re great.
• For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
• Threes is the iOS game I’ve played most frequently over the last decade. According to its lovely Statistics page, I’ve played it 7,838 times and my high score is 90,147.
• “Learning from other people’s mistakes is a lot less painful than learning from your own.” – via Tim Harford
• Feel-good story of the day? Giant Spoon Taken From Arizona Dairy Queen Found Thanks To Pokemon Go – via @pourmecoffee
• I’ve returned to this article a dozen times since he published it. If you’re working with iOS widget development, check out Launching iOS Apps with a Custom URL Scheme

If you want to add a “Share on Bluesky” hyperlink to your WordPress theme, this is the snippet I’m using. Also note that my theme requires FontAwesome for the bluesky icon.

<span class="label label-primary nobreak me-3"><a target="_blank" href="https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=<?php echo urlencode( get_the_title() ); ?>%0A%0A<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Share on Bluesky" rel="noreferrer"><i class="fa-brands fa-bluesky"></i></a></span>