Posts in the category “WebLinks”

  • Less than 1% of Catholic nuns in the United States today are 30 or younger.
  • The sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale starts on April 8, 2025.
  • Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared” I feel like there was probably a powerful confirmation bias at work here. This seems like exactly the sort of thing you’d think was obvious, but… as strongly as I would expect the correlation to be, I am guessing we’ll soon hear of all sorts of problems with the statistics.
  • I’d forgotten that Taylor Swift hosted SNL a few years ago and performed a ten-minute version of All Too Well. It’s been a long, long time since I needed to convert a YouTube video to mp3.
  • We're in the endgame now.We’re dealing with actual Nazis.
  • What “Center” Is That, Exactly? is an essay by A.R. Moxon of The Reframe that includes the wonderful line, “I think of how twisted I would have to become, for the spectacle of diversity and equality and freedom to traumatize me into suicidally-counterfactual reactionary nonsense.” This echoes some of the Kübler-Rossian questions stuck on my mental treadmill since that somehow-malevolent escalator ride that foreshadowed so drastic a national decline. How do you watch Footloose and root for John Lithgow? How do you watch The Muppet Movie and root for Doc Hopper? How do you watch Captain America and root for Hydra? How do you watch Star Wars and root for the Empire?! Or – maybe more terrifying – how do you transform into a stormtrooper but think you’re a Rebel?
  • When you’re done reading that, check out It’s The Fascism, Stupid, in which Moxon talks about how “the First Buddy, a Nazi apartheid billionaire/corruption mogul whose name means Flair Odor, who was not elected to anything at all, seized control of our federal infrastructure.”

  • I can’t speak or read Spanish, but used Google to translate this article about a tiger being captured in a Mexican taco shop. That this is the third time this has happened in the last two months seems like a big deal!
  • You don't ask the guy with the boot on your neck to wear a softer shoe. You rip his fucking foot off.Anyone still holding out hope for a ‘compromise’ on abortion rights needs to give it up. When the state oppresses women, more babies die. This isn’t rocket science. The best quote, I think, applies to so much more than just this one issue: “You don’t ask the guy with the boot on your neck to wear a softer shoe. You rip his fucking foot off.”
  • How the Hims & Hers Super Bowl Ad Exposed the Dangerous World of Unregulated Weight Loss Drugs
  • This is from 2+ years ago, but still pretty amazing: A paralyzed man with a severed spinal cord has been able to walk again, thanks to an implant developed by a team of Swiss researchers.
  • Good news for people who like bad news: The Texas measles outbreak doubled in size to 48 cases, including 13 hospitalizations mostly among kids. (None were vaccinated.) Another measles case was reported in New Mexico in a county that shares a western border with Texas. And on the other side, the Louisiana Department of Health stopped promoting routine vaccinations by banning vaccine events and ordering staff not to promote vaccinations. – via @yourlocalepidemiologist
  • I used to use scotch tape to splice together 8-tracks to expand the available “memory” on my first computer. Being able to copy something on my iPhone and then paste it over the air to my laptop is pretty mind-blowing. And, yes, I remember punch cards and being excited about BASIC. The things is, I know how all this stuff works – even today – which is why I think I appreciate these little conveniences so much. (Yet it’s still amazing to me that we’ve come this far so quickly.) But maybe that’s also why I get so angry about incompetent inexperienced incel “DOGE” choads gleefully doing the bidding of their faux-evangelical Smaug-like Nazi masters. When I was a kid I was certain we’d have jetpacks and R2-D2s by now and instead a few dozen truly evil Montgomery Burns are deplorably clawing us back to the 1400s.

  • Elephants trumpet, squeak, and flap their ears after their complex move across an Australian city.
  • Bridge Grades score Congress members on their ability to collaborate, build coalitions, deliver consensus solutions, and bridge America. – via @froggyb.bsky.social
  • Men Actually Crave Romantic Relationships More Than Women Do: According to more than fifty studies of mixed-gender relationships, men tend to experience greater mental and physical health benefits from being in a relationship, are less likely to initiate breakups, and struggle more with the emotional toll of a breakup.
  • Kudos to Anker customer support. The ring stand on my wife’s iPhone case snapped and when I contacted them via the Amazon product support page, they sent me a new one right away.
  • “I resent having to have so much anger in my heart all the time. Because it’s not my default. I’m a happy person by default.” – via @anildash.com
  • A recent survey revealed that 83% of Americans say the President is required to follow Supreme Court rulings. (It’s the other 17% that bother me.)
  • This is just pathetic: The “DOGE” website created to document how the ‘team’ is eviscerating the US federal government is wide open for anyone to edit.

  • The music industry traded tape for hard drives and got a hard-earned lesson. Roughly one-fifth of the hard disk drives from the 1990s sent to Iron Mountain are entirely unreadable.
  • My son got me hooked on New Rockstars. Erik Voss and his team produce amazing YouTube recaps of all sorts of things in pop culture. The Jessica Clemons breakdown of the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl LIX halftime show is great.
  • The Onion headlineA moving new trailer has been released for Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, an ambitious documentary that explores the final years of John Lennon through archival footage, never-before-seen interviews, and firsthand accounts.
  • A new study shows you can lower your risk of cancer by eating just one serving of cruciferous vegetables per day. Vegetables appear to do the most to help fight gastrointestinal cancers, such as colorectal and stomach cancer, but the protective effects extended to lung and breast cancer as well.
  • Climate change is causing hotter temperatures to become more frequent in the four West African countries responsible for producing approximately 70% of the world’s cacao — the key ingredient in chocolate.
  • Former Florida Gators and Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Kadarius Toney is facing multiple charges, including aggravated assault, following his arrest in Georgia last week.
  • White House says it has the right to punish AP reporters over Gulf naming dispute. (I am rapidly running out of canaries, people.)
  • Was I the only one a little concerned that NASA increased the odds of that asteroid hitting us in 2032 from 1.2% up to 2.3%? This brilliantly simple explanation at Scientific American from astronomer Phil Plait should ease your mind a bit.
  • Recent Media
    • Black Doves (Netflix) was incredible. Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw can act. Splendid plot. A+++
    • We watched the penultimate episode of Skeleton Crew and I am all-in on this show. Fantastic fun. Jude Law is perfect.
    • Four episodes into Slow Horses and love this show, too.

  • What beats rock?
  • Pope Francis denounced the current administration’s plan to carry out mass deportations of migrants in a letter to U.S. bishops Tuesday, while appearing to take a direct jab at Vice President JD Vance.
  • For decades, casinos scoffed as mathematicians and physicists devised elaborate systems to take down the house. Then an unassuming Croatian’s winning strategy forever changed the game.
  • image of German soldier captioned He's Watching YouWhy is Hawaii the rainbow capital of the world?
  • Is gold hidden under a California peak? This treasure map says so.
  • These JETech iPhone screen protectors are a great investment.
  • Forensics Experts Challenged the FBI. So the FBI Tried to Censor Their Conference. This story includes a timely reminder that — with the exception of DNA matches — most of the highly-regarded techniques used to put people away (fingerprint examinations, ballistics and toolmarks comparisons, blood pattern analysis) “were developed by law enforcement agencies for law enforcement, and not by scientists first subjecting them to standard, rigorous testing processes designed to ensure they stand on a solid scientific foundation.”
  • How did a life-saving pediatric drug – discovered and developed using money from American taxpayers, and spurred by the grassroots fundraising of desperate parents – end up costing $2,000,000 per dose?
  • In the span of just weeks, the U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history – not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly-defined government role.
  • Harrison Ford said the recent California wildfires burned several Shrinking sets.

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