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Pat Patriot

The legacy New England Patriots logo of a minuteman center about to hike a football (that looks suspiciously like an eggplant) is officially known as Pat Patriot. ¹ When I was at Super Bowl XLII in Arizona as a guest of the NFL, I was gifted an awesome distressed / vintage white Reebok retro t-shirt featuring Pat Patriot. It was my favorite t-shirt. It was accidentally incinerated in an industrial furnace several years ago — it’s a long story — and I’ve never been able to find another one exactly like it. I’ve looked far and wide, Googled and eBayed repeatedly, set alerts, but no luck. I’ve seen a red version a few times on eBay, but never the same white one I had and loved. I can’t even find an image of the same shirt anywhere online!
Questlove created a trailer for the 50 Years of SNL Music documentary and it is completely mind-blowing. You have got to see it.
When our TV enters screensaver mode, it shows images from Google, including the artist’s credit. One cute photo prompted me to search for Aravind Krishnaswamy and we were delighted to discover he has a plethora of pleasing penguin pictures.
The latest issue of Culture of Sport (from David Skilling) examines why paying $7M for a 30-second Super Bowl ad is, incredibly, still a good deal.
The entire global cosmetic Botox industry is supported by an annual production of just a few milligrams of botulism toxin. Pure toxin would cost ~$100 trillion per kilogram. – via Tom Whitwell
TV & Movies
- We watched Mr. Popper’s Penguins recently and it was a big hit. It’s a great kid movie, especially if your kids are infatuated with penguins. (And it’s Jim Carrey acting like a [mostly] normal human being, which is my favorite version of him.)
- We have finally started watching Skeleton Crew, the latest Star Wars series. I read somewhere last year that the concept was supposed to be The Goonies, but Star Wars, and they nailed it. So far I think it’s phenomenal and I regret not having started it sooner.
- Fly Me to the Moon (Apple TV+) was a pretty fun family movie, but should have been at least a half hour shorter. It was campy and painfully predictable, but the kids liked it. Woody Harrelson was great.

¹ I would guess that the “new” logo (that looks suspiciously like a windswept Elvis) is probably officially known as Pat Patriot, too, but that’s a different issue.

More good news for those looking to exit Meta’s social app ecosystem in favor of a more open alternative: An independent developer is building a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. – via phillewis
Misinformation isn’t random. It’s strategic. Misinformation is not a general condition; It is driven by populist radical right parties. When Do Parties Lie? Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries – via pettertornberg
“The entire health insurance business model is built on scamming customers and denying the coverage they pay premiums for. Health insurance is not healthcare. It’s an unnecessary middleman that preys on the sick, and only exists because lobbyists pay off our politicians.” – via darrigomelanie
“Is it like the old Playboy Magazine? You have essays there by the modern day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?” – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, asking if people visit Pornhub to read articles during a hearing about minors having access to pornography. – via crooked media
You can watch the three (newer) seasons of The Animaniacs on Disney+ / Hulu, so why are you wasting your time reading this when you could be doing that instead? Five stars. Highly recommend. (The original five seasons are available on Amazon Prime and AppleTV.)
In the US, table saws are responsible for around 4,300 amputations per year. All other products are responsible for 3,600 amputations per year combined. – via Tom Whitwell
I have no idea how, when, or why I subscribed to the Making It Work newsletter from Youngna Park, but I’m always happy when it lands in my inbox. This week’s issue, which includes some beautiful writing about the horrific L.A. wildfires, was exceptional.

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.

I thought Brie Larson was phenomenal in the AppleTV+ limited series Lessons in Chemistry. The 1950s period drama is based on Bonnie Garmus' 2022 novel and includes not only a brilliant pair of scientists in love, sexism, homophobia, racism, cooking, a legal battle over eminent domain, Beau Bridges, and dastardly Christians, but several scenes about rowing and a homemade erg. And don’t even get me started on the dog’s point of view episode. <chef’s kiss>

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