- This LA Times interactive map of the Southern California wildfires has been very handy. – via @dansinker.com
- “Just a reminder that the French revolution started with a climate crisis-induced famine, an empire that had overexpanded into too many foreign wars, and parasitic nobility that funneled all the wealth upward while regular citizens suffered.” – via @chris.writes.books
If you want to “follow” me somewhere (other than here, of course), you should use my verified account on bluesky. I adored Twitter when it launched, and for many years after. But I haven’t looked at that social network in months and deleted my account a while ago. I’ve been enjoying Threads, but it looks like it’s time to abandon that platform, too. I’m very, very glad I have my own personal website. (I hardly ever look at Instagram, and doubt I’ll keep my account there for much longer. If I didn’t feel obligated to remain on LinkedIn, I’d quit that site, too.)- In China, there are registries of haunted apartments. If you’re willing to live somewhere with a sinister history, you can get a discount of 30%. – via @tomwhitwell
- I am starting to get concerned about the bird flu, H5N1. Paying attention to updates from Your Local Epidemiologist is a good way to be prepared.
- A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends. Then, in 2023, a ProPublica reporter received an envelope with no return address. Inside was a flash drive containing tens of thousands of secret files. – via @propublica
- “In species where males invest in weaponry (antlers, horns, tusks, etc.), female brains are bigger.” – via Kent Hendricks
Posts tagged “dailydavid”
- How to Make the World’s Rarest Pasta – via kottke
- The requirement that homes be built at least 21 meters apart in parts of the UK dates back to a 1902 regulation drafted by two men who determined this was closest they could be to each other before they could see the other’s nipples through their shirts. – via Kent Hendricks
- The Lions–Vikings regular season finale had three times as many viewers as the Golden Globes. – via TMQ
- Bartosz Ciechanowski occasionally publishes incredibly detailed articles on fascinating topics. Last month he tackled the moon and – hoo boy! – this is a deep dive on our nearest celestial neighbor. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter
- I would probably finally switch completely from Firefox to Chrome if it wasn’t for Chrome’s egregious, unforgivable, inexcusable insistence on stealing focus from other apps on launch. – via bluesky
- “I can’t believe the billionaires are unanimously siding with the fascists! This has only happened every possible time throughout history so I am truly stunned!” – via @fousheezy
- “I don’t think people understand how devastating the end of net neutrality, and consumer protections around internet connectivity, are going to be.” – via @anildash
- Animals as Chemical Factories: Horses are bled for antivenom, crabs are drained for endotoxin tests, and silkworms are boiled for silk. Science can now replace these practices with synthetic alternatives, but we need to find ways to scale them.
- I watched Conclave over the holiday break and thought it was pretty good. The acting was great, of course, but I’d expect nothing less from a film featuring John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Ralph Fiennes. If you dig Roman Catholic esoterica, I’d also suggest reading this deep dive into the Vatican’s secret saint-making process.
- Ozempic is a modified, synthetic version of a protein discovered in the venomous saliva of the Gila monster, a large, sluggish lizard native to the United States. – via Tom Whitwell’s 52 Things I Learned in 2024, not to be confused with Kent Hendricks’ equally-awesome list of 52 Things I Learned in 2024
- Some of the 77 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2024 (from The Atlantic Science Desk) are really pretty wild! – via kottke
- The Ghosts in the Machine is a great explainer on the current kerfuffle over Spotify’s nefarious fake music.
Please don’t say just, “hello,” via text. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter, where I also found this awesome food map of Italy- I enjoyed reading this quick essay on how to write readable sentences.
- What happens when websites start to vanish at random?
- An average of about 900 people per week have died of COVID-19 over the past year in the USA, according to the CDC. – via PBS
- Just in time for Penguin Awareness Day (on Thursday, January 20th), the Wildlife Conservation Society‘s Argentina Program has released amazing underwater selfie video recently taken by a male Gentoo penguin fitted with a special camera.
- Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said, “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.” – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter
- In the city of Poznań, Poland, a group of eight clams controls the local water supply through a clever bio-monitoring system. – via kottke
- I have been trying unsuccessfully for a while now to find the recipe for the Pistachio & Orange “Redemption Cake” that Amelia Le Bruin made on The Great British Baking Show: Holidays (S7: E1 “The Great Christmas Baking Show”). If anyone has any leads, please let me know. [Update: I sent her an Instagram DM and she replied to tell me she’d try to find the recipe in her notes!]
- Oysters and Beer Have Always Been on the Menu at One of America’s Oldest, Most Renowned Restaurants. I have been here many times, including a memorable birthday dinner in my 40s, and can confirm that The Union Oyster House is a national treasure. – via my dad
- Netflix Is Telling Writers to Dumb Down Shows Since Viewers Are on Their Phones – via The Dailies
- The essay Who Goes Nazi? from the August 1941 issue of Harper’s Magazine should be required reading at every high school in America. – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
- It was fun to read about all the wild Christmas gifts NFL quarterbacks got their offensive lineman last week. Did you know that NFL teams are required to provide “three dozen sliced oranges for halftime” for the visiting team? And that each team easily goes through at least 80,000 Uncrustables each year? Oh, and Notre Dame winning the Sugar Bowl on January 2, 2025 ensured a Black head coach will be in an FBS national championship game for the first time ever. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
- People often ask me what I think their children should study to learn how to be a programmer, or create video games or apps and I always answer that they should start with the absolute basics. Learn Bash Scripting in 10 minutes is a great example.
- “Hey gamers remember, on Dec 26 a lot of kids are gonna be online playing with their gifted console/game/pc for the first time. Be nice.” – via @dinocornel
- An Ode to Christmas Eve
- It’s a Christmas miracle! Netflix subscribers can play Civilization VI on iOS devices, free and with no ads. – via hiro.report
- In 1996 Sir Purr became the only NFL mascot to ever be involved in a live play. – via @gregstreetz83
- Is it just me or does every Instagram link shared via Apple Messages on iOS 18 take you to the wrong post? And the preview of the link in Messages never works.
The Alphabet Fades Away – via @anthony_onumonu- Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger, on lawmakers’ unfounded theories about those weird drones over New Jersey: “Members of Congress need to not be opportunistic idiots who say shit that’s not true.” – via crooked
- Drinking caffeine (the equivalent of a very strong cup) thirty minutes before aerobic exercise increases fat oxidation by 11% in the morning and by 13% in the afternoon. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club
- A pregnant woman in Texas claimed her fetus was an HOV lane passenger, but got a ticket anyway.
- New England’s largest outdoor sculpture park is in Brookline, New Hampshire, about an hour north of Boston. – via my dad
- 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 thought this was a super interesting article about the ethical and legal issues of using CT scanners to “hack” boxes of trading cards. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
- I cannot wrap my head around the fact that it’s now been more than two years since I first complained to Amazon about a bug in their Alexa iOS app—which makes it impossible to manage your Echo Show photo library once you add more than 120 photos—and they still haven’t fixed it. How can I be the only one who cares about this?
- A lone dolphin has been yelling into the Baltic Sea for years and no one is responding. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter from Jodi Ettenberg (threads / bluesky)
- I’m a sucker for creative gift wrapping tutorials.
- Far too many of our Christmas decorations do not have a power switch. I got several of these inexpensive power switches and it took me about five minutes to splice them into the wires so now we can turn things off and on without needing to unplug them.
- “imagine falling in love with someone to find out they got you 8 maids a milking and a combined 23 birds for Christmas” – via @teewatterss
- I recently watched Little Shop of Horrors (Warner Bros., 1986) for the first time in probably 25 years and I’m happy to report that it’s still pretty great.
- Happy holidays! After considering risk factors such as age and exercise, scientists found that people who enjoyed at least five ounces of dark chocolate per week had a twenty-one percent lower risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club (threads / bluesky)
- Nike, NFL Announce 10-Year Contract Extension – via @sportslogosnet
- I can think of no insult worse than being told, “Go Back Home, Your Mother Made You Waffles.” – 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.
