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Jumblie is yet another fun little word game you can add to your morning routine of Wordle, Connections, &c.
The appeal to nature fallacy is not a viable healthcare strategy. Sometimes “all natural” is far better, but other times nature tries to kill us. – via @kmpanthagani.bsky.social
Matthew Green wrote a post about how AI will interface with end-to-end encryption. TL;DR: Maybe not so well! – via @matthewdgreen.bsky.social
Related: Another day, another horrific and troubling example of AI going wrong – via @emily.space
Related: Scientists covered a robot finger in living human skin.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately those who do study history are also involuntarily dragged along for the ride.
In college a friend suggested I read The Myth Adventure series by Robert Asprin. At the time it had been almost a decade since I’d read The Hobbit and the rest of Tolkien, and I thoroughly enjoyed returning to stories of dragons and wizards and swords. It looks like they’re no longer being published, but if you’re into that sort of tale, I’m sure you can find them used somewhere.

This brilliant bit of investigative reporting (with math!) – into how Threads changed its algorithm to start throttling engagement on posts about climate change – should tell you everything you need to know about which platforms are enshittification engines and which one is not. And with that, I’m effectively done with Meta. (Mastodon might be a safe social network alternative, but it’s currently far too complicated for the general public.)
Dozens of official government websites have been exploited by spammers to redirect to porn. – via jbhall56.bsky.social
As a diehard Florida Gators fan, I absolutely adore sporting this lapel pin I found recently at LostLustSupply.com. It was designed by artist Emily Elizabeth Miller and she’s got some other great stuff for sale, too.
“What’s the point of being rich if you can’t afford to do the right thing.” – via Kelsey Hightower
A.J. Brown read his book during a playoff game. The story behind the book is even more unusual.
Olympic swimmer Gary Hall Jr. to receive replacement medals after losing originals in L.A. fires.
“You were drunk. You tried to dance with strippers. You had to be held off the stage,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, recounting allegations against Fox News host Pete Hegseth during his confirmation to be Trump’s defense secretary. – via crooked media (See also: Jamelle Bouie speaks the truth.)

A 2016 UK study found folks who participated in Dry January had improved confidence around abstinence, did not rebound, and drank less alcohol overall six months later, regardless of their January success. – via YLE
Friendly reminder: There are exactly two things you can try and do. You can try and fail or you can try and succeed. Otherwise you try to do something.
Research suggests that even taking small breaks from sitting could significantly improve your cardiovascular health, making it easier than ever to protect your heart and improve your overall well-being. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club
“If you’re only going to open a book on the off chance you have several hours to kill in a comfy chair with a glass of scotch, it’s only ever going to happen when you have several hours to kill in a comfy chair with a glass of scotch.” How to Read a Whole Damn Book Every Week – via Links You’ll Love
33 Ways To Improve Your Life, Japanese Style – via pretty much everyone I follow
Quantum physics is wild: “Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time.”
“You shouldn’t be driving over 100 mph—and your car shouldn’t let you.” – 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.

Eight vignettes about power and (mis)understanding, and children, I guess, from Making It Work – via kottke
For the first time in 37 years scientists have observed orcas wearing dead salmons as hats – via @nerdist (threads / bluesky)
Take notes, not photos: Recent research found that if you want to strengthen your memory, taking notes by hand beats taking pictures every time—because it keeps your brain engaged and focused. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club (threads / bluesky)
Florida’s furious finish on the recruiting trail caps stellar month for Billy Napier – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
Just one retail chain was enough for Taylor Swift to have the top-selling book last week and the biggest publishing launch of 2024. – via The Hollywood Reporter (threads / bluesky)
“No big deal, just a 12-foot long jump wearing football pads while clearing another human being.” – via @cfbalerts (threads / bluesky)
Where to donate your money to fight climate change effectively – via @vox (threads / bluesky)
Bluesky brings the fun, weird vibes of old Twitter back to life – also via @vox
“I accidentally used my mom’s fabric scissors to cut wrapping paper and now the cops are here.” – via @wdgoodnight

If I ever got name-checked on The Simpsons, I think I would spontaneously combust. – via @sepinwall
How Gen Z Came to See Books as a Waste of Time – via @theatlantic
For about a year and a half I was really into intermittent fasting. I used a great app called Simple that helped me track my daily water consumption and weight, and also handled reminding me when my fasting windows were, let me log what I was eating and when, etc. The app was so good, I even gladly paid for an annual subscription to unlock bonus features. And then — for reasons I cannot imagine — the developers rolled out a “new” version loaded to the gills with whiz-bang AI features that made the app completely useless and incomprehensibly frustrating. I tried for a few months to get used to the new system, but eventually abandoned it, canceled my subscription, and still haven’t found a decent replacement. I abhor the continued enshittification of everything.
Male bigfin reef squid may be the best fathers of all cephalopods. [Ed. note: But can they make Sunday morning chocolate chip pancakes?]
It’s really a shame that Russell Brand has gone crazy, because Forgetting Sarah Marshall is easily one of the all-time best comedies.
Strong Lloyd Dobler vibes in this essay, and I am here for it: “[P]eople do want to work, just not for the paltry wages they were making before the pandemic.”
“If you spell your name backwards and place an umlaut over one of the vowels, that’s your IKEA name.” [Ed. note: Mine is Engäg and I’m a kitchen drawer divider.] – via @drewtalbert
Regular exercisers drink more, a new study confirms, but are less likely to be problem drinkers. – via @outsidemagazine
Black Friday / Holiday Sales:
- The world’s comfiest t-shirts and coziest sweatpants are crazy expensive, but this weekend almost everything is on sale at Aviator Nation.
- Everything at ’47 Brand is 30% off this weekend. Get all the best sports gear gifts here.
- Need some everyday walking shoes? Everything is 50% off at Allbirds this weekend.
- I have an AirPods Pro case and a wallet from Saddleback Leather Co. and they’re both exquisite. Not everything is on sale, but they do have some pretty good deals this weekend on a few things. (Their motto is, “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead.”)
- Use promo code BLACKFRIDAY to get 30% off (and free shipping) on everything at J. Peterman this weekend.
Fun Fact: Jon Gries, the actor who portrayed Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius (TriStar Pictures, 1985), went on to play Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite (Searchlight Pictures, 2004) and the love interest of Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus (HBO, 2021).

Congratulations to Dr. Patric Gagne, author of Sociopath: A Memoir, which was recently included in the NPR Books We Loved list for 2024. – via @patricgagne
This is probably a day late and a dollar short, but I found great success following the suggestions in this How to Cook a Turkey: Turkey Temperature & Doneness guide from ThermoWorks. Maybe bookmark it for next year?
If, like me, you save every cool knot-tying video you find, give a follow to @knot_short on Threads or Instagram.
Pretty much everything is 25% off at Field Notes this weekend. An annual subscription makes a great gift for the lovers of little notebooks in your life. [Ed. note: This is not an ad! I just really like the brand.]
There are far too many football games to watch this weekend. If you get tired of leftovers, bake a batch of my favorite chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. I promise you’ll love them.
If you are worried about your writing, just remember that somehow, Palpatine returned. – via @zacharyseda
It’s in the Game: MADDEN NFL on Amazon Prime is a new 4-part documentary series all about the Madden NFL video game (which I’ve been playing for 34 years). There’s a great article at The Athletic with all kinds of details.
Just started watching the latest Keri Russel show The Diplomat on Netflix. Only through S1E3 but so far it’s at least as good as The Americans, which I loved.
Selling Christmas wrapping paper that is impervious to standard scotch tape should be considered a war crime.
Anyway here’s a cheerful piece about how the Sun will eventually destroy all life on Earth (but not by exploding, so, you know, there’s that) – via @astrokatie.com

Biden Administration Proposes a Rule to Make Over-the-Counter Birth Control Free
I guess this counts as good news: EPA imposes stricter standards to protect children from exposure to lead paint. (We’ve known that lead is dangerous for close to 2,000 years!)
The moon hasn’t changed since the 1960s, while every technology we used to get there has seen staggering advances. But twenty years and $93 billion after the space agency announced our return to the moon, the goal seems as far out of reach as ever. – via hiro.report
If your website aggressively pushes me to use your AI support and/or search features, I will not assume you have a bunch of radical, hip, cutting-edge tech bros on your web development team. I will assume your CEO surrounds himself with a bunch of greedy, soulless sycophants who refuse (for the worst possible reasons) to pay humans a living wage to do valuable work. – @gatordavid
I feel like every single time I receive an email from LinkedIn, I click the unsubscribe button. Yet every day I seem to receive at least one completely new type of email from LinkedIn. – @gatordavid
Penguin Random House is adding a clause to all their copyright pages explicitly stating the contents of their books are not to be used to feed generative AI models. It’s a lovely sentiment, of course, but about as effective as the FBI warnings they used to play at the beginning of VHS tapes. (The tech bros building these resource hogs certainly aren’t going to respect copyright law.) – via @clairecameron123

A special kind of fall.

In which he finally reads The Catcher in the Rye

Posts tagged “books”

A special kind of fall.

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