- I have several of these LEGO lighting kits and love them.
- Is it really true that no one buys books? According to the author, in 2020 only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96% of books sold less than a thousand copies. Big, if true.
- I’d never even considered combining an Arnold Palmer with a margarita.
- Was This Little-Known Standoff Between British Soldiers and Colonists the Real Start of the American Revolution? – via my dad
- One of the most surprising revelations in the Peacock comedy Mr. Throwback is that the Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry is a brilliant actor. (Oh, and he also dunked in a game for the first time in six years.)
- I really cannot decide if this article on testing push notifications on the iOS simulator was generated by AI or a human, but it’s got some helpful code that I was able to use.
Just… why?
- GOP blasted for gutting Medicaid to pay for $4.5 trillion tax cut
- Army Deleting Online Content Related to Women, Minorities – via @tyleraking.com
- In a strongly worded statement, Norwegian fuel company Haltbakk Bunkers has announced it will cease supplying fuel to U.S. military forces and criticized what happened when Ukraine president Zelensky visited the White House, referring to it as the “biggest shitshow ever presented live on TV.”
- If “DOGE” is a federal agency, it can’t shield its records from the public. If it’s not an agency, then its tens of millions of dollars in funding weren’t legally allocated and should be returned. – via @propublica.org
- The inside story of mass firings of Tesla Supercharger staff is pretty gross.
- When You’re MAGA, They Let You Do It
- Judge rules firing of federal workforce watchdog was illegal – via @browneyedsusan.bsky.social
Posts tagged “cocktails”
- Plenty of excellent stories from Longreads: The Most Popular Editors’ Picks of the Year and Our Most Popular Stories of the Year
- My friend Steve the Bartender recently did a Christmas Cocktail Special livestream!
- Brilliant: ElevationLab has created an AirTag battery booster that lets you replace the default CR2032 battery with a pair of AA batteries instead, theoretically extending the charge of an AirTag for a decade.
- You’ve got less than a week until the big day, so don’t forget to check out my quick list of easy Christmas gifts for parents.
- This short video on the effects of a smartphone on your child is painfully accurate.
I know you’re getting tired of me talking about Shrinking, but I think it’s important to note that in a series featuring freaking Harrison Ford giving the performance of his career, it’s Ted McGinley – who plays Derek, the neighbor of Jason Segal – who rules the show. (McGinley was also in Happy Days, The Love Boat, and Revenge of the Nerds!)- A Tiny Christian College in Michigan Is Infiltrating Florida’s Schools
- My son and I just happened to be watching TNF and were able to see the NFL’s first successful fair-catch free kick since 1976.
- I adored Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes from the Afterlife. Just astounding writing. Beautiful in the best way, including the gut-punch, “In Memory Care, one sees and hears many things one wishes to forget.”
- 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
- I created a Bluesky account back in April, but then fell into Threads. I think I’m going to try using the former more than the latter. I very much appreciate that you can get verified there without paying for it, and their verification process is excellent.
- Whether he’s writing a television pilot, a comic book, or one of the greatest superhero movies of all time, Sam Hamm always has Virginia basketball on the brain. I loved this story about the Batman writer who hides UVA basketball Easter eggs in his work. – via David Betancourt @ The Athletic
- After a Montana man illegally cloned and bred an endangered giant sheep species, government agencies must now contend with the illicit offspring.
- I’m very happy to report that my cocktail guide iOS app, bartender.live, is still chugging along. If you’re a fan, please leave a review and/or spread the word. (Thanks!)
- The Miraculous Resurrection of Notre-Dame: This is the story of how an army of artisans turned back centuries to restore the crown jewel of France by hand, and wound up reviving something even greater than the cathedral itself. – via Curious About Everything
- Ok, NOW I’m thinking a lot about the fall of the Roman Empire. – via @chrisjbrinkman
- “Billionaires” puts the focus on an arbitrary number. Bring back “robber barons,” or at the very least, “tycoons” – via @king_mattking
FridayFive: Side Projects
Some of my gig work
Hemingway describes it as a cocktail to be enjoyed from 11:00am on.
To Have and Have Another
How to drink like Hemingway