- Scientific American published a list of all the interesting things to see in the night sky in 2025.
- Spotify’s Secret Star Wars Easter Egg: The Hidden Lightsaber Feature (I don’t usually stream music, but this is pretty cool.)
- Are you responsible for designing or developing any type of authentication for a website or app? Take a second and read the UX of login codes by Brad Frost.
- “You can’t speak to the weather’s manager. Mother Nature has no concierge. Your investment portfolio will not halt an inferno. A college degree won’t tame the blaze. In the way we all inhabit the same Earth, we are all made of blood and flesh that burns the same.” – via The Handbasket
- Own a Kindle? You can read the complete works of Shakespeare for free.
- The Jabberwocky was one of my mom’s favorite poems. I love that I can still recite most of it from memory and it always makes me think of her.
Posts tagged “astronomy”
- “Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said California will offer electric vehicle subsidies even if Donald Trump kills the $7,500 federal tax credit.” – via @crookedmedia
- Recent research found that men who improve their fitness are 35% less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
- I recently purchased an Anker MagSafe Case with (what I thought) one of those cool little kickstand grips. I sort of liked the kickstand, but I found I couldn’t align the charging area easily (or at all) on anything but a MagSafe base. I also tested for a week, alternating days with my Spigen case, and discovered the Anker one was definitely both (a) getting unreasonably hot and (b) significantly draining my battery. The heat issue was bad enough, but the battery drain is not something I’d ever accept. My 13-mo old iPhone 15 Pro still regularly sticks over 80% charge after a day’s use. With the Anker case it would be down to 50% before 6pm. Obviously, your mileage may vary and IANAAT, but I’m going back to my Spigen case.
- Merging black holes may create bubbles that could swallow the universe. [Ed. note: The word ‘may’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.]
- Most Black Friday deals are pretty worthless, but here’s a good one. All Predictions Wrong — home of TMQ — is offering a 20% discount on all paid subscriptions.
Anyone who is a fan of the doomed voyage of Ernest Shackleton and his crew aboard the Endurance [Ed. note: Dad!] has got to be thrilled right now. In addition to the epic book that was released a few years ago, and the Kenneth Branagh mini-series from a few years before that, there’s a new National Geographic special on Disney+ and now even a LEGO set!- Nice to see the Florida Gators climbed all the way up to No. 33 after beating Ole Miss, one week after the win against LSU. The Gators are the highest-ranked 6-5 team, with all five losses coming to top-25 teams. – via @theathletichq
- The ugly math behind Florida’s low SAT scores: “Among all states, Florida students ranked fourth from last on the standardized exam used to gauge readiness for college. Among states where at least 50,000 students took the test, Florida ranked last.” – via @aspar1605
- Just want to confirm your household is safe for my kid: Is your family up to date on vaccines? Will there be raw milk served? Is there a gun in the house? – brilliant advice via @designmom
- Fun fact: The Portuguese garbage scow captain from Overboard (1987, Goldie Hawn) went on to become the Beverly Hills hotel manager in Pretty Woman (1990, Julia Roberts).
- A child might ask, “Why is the sky dark at night?” Astronomers asked that for centuries, but it took a poet to answer it. And you’ll never guess which one… – via @thebadastronomer
- “What’s a first down?”: Meet Tobi Haastrup, the accidental superstar and coveted recruit – via @austinflack
- There have been a few articles lately about the terrifying amount of deadly recycled plastic in black kitchen utensils, so we got rid of ours and replaced them with this gorgeous beige silicone set. Highly recommend.
- For ages the only copy I had of the 1989 Kon Kan hit “I Beg Your Pardon” was a cassette recording I captured from local FM radio, so any time I hear it I am reminded of Casey Kasem explaining how cool it was that they sampled the theme song from The Magnificent Seven.
There’s a Threads account that is posting album covers recreated with LEGO and it’s wonderful.- My superpower is not being able to stop thinking about an apostrophe error in one of the fake newspaper headlines in the 1994 Nicolas Cage/Bridget Fonda rom-com It Could Happen to You. – via me, Dec 27, 2021
- Serious question: Why aren’t Moonlighting and Remington Steele on just as frequently as Law & Order?
- Literally any task can be made dramatically more complicated with the simple addition of a six year old narrating your every move on a karaoke microphone set at maximum volume. – via me, Dec 28, 2021
- “To say that we’re losing the war on plastic is to flatter ourselves with a lie. The fact is that we’re not even fighting it.”: How Plastic Liberated and Entombed Us
Venus and Mars / Rock Show
All the stars
- You would think that a prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson sticker would be hard to miss, or at the very least hard to forget about and leave behind.
- The shortest possible game of Monopoly requires only four turns, nine rolls of the dice, and twenty-one seconds.
- Fuck Yeah Cats! is cute. But FUCK YEAH SHARKS is cool.
- “The economic slave never realizes he is kept in a cage going round and round basically nowhere with millions of others,” said the totalitarian Buddhist who beat SimCity3000.
- I have got to agree that putting an awesome costume on your observatory is the greatest astronomy-related college prank ever.
- Web developers should always be mindful of the commander’s intent.
- It looks like the AT&T tethering plan for the new iPhone is going to suck and be absurdly expensive. I’m shocked. Shocked.
- And, finally, I love this quote from an article about the murder of porn actor Tom Dong: “That’s why I have a gun in my office. Weird things happen all the time. We’re in the Valley.”
2024-07-12: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
You left me standing …
What is a blue moon?