Posts tagged “facebook”

• Take a minute today to read this tribute to Dan Jezek and the story of his website, bricklink, the world’s largest online LEGO marketplace.
• A Guide to Using Signal for Government Workers – via kottke, who is doing a great job reporting on the ongoing coup
• In less than eight years the NCAA went from banning North Carolina from hosting championships due to its bathroom bill to [kowtowing to a cartoonishly evil conman]. – via @bubbaprog.lol
• The universe could undergo a ‘catastrophic change’ that could alter absolutely everything, quantum machine shows.
• Hopefully reading this will help convince you to dump Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter. The Technological Poison Pill: How the ATProtocol Baked into Bluesky Encourages Competition, Resists Evil Billionaires, Lock-In & Enshittification – via Jodi Ettenberg
• The President’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education could prove more costly for red states than blue.
• Incompetence and desperation are a bad combination. The important thing to remember is that [the “DOGE” attempt to get employees to resign] isn’t about economic efficiency, despite what the billionaire at the helm may say. It’s about efficiently breaking morale within the federal government to make it easier to dismantle from the inside.
• Related: “DOGE” staffer steps down after racist posts emerge
• “NOAA workers ordered to stop all communications with foreign nationals. Workers covering things like air transportation safety, drought, monitor coral reef destruction, and guarding railway shipping carriers against dangerous weather affected.” – via @timmarchman.bsky.social
• “Twenty years ago, when Jeremiah Trotter, Sr won an NFC championship with the Eagles, baby Trotter Jr. was on the field, in his father’s arms. Now he’s playing for the Eagles in this year’s Super Bowl.” – via @npr.org

• The annual Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are always fun.
• I’m sure everyone has seen it already, but this story about a woman in Washington who called the police after nearly 100 raccoons surrounded her property really is something else.
• The Nord-Trøndelag Health Study, a 15-year study of sense of humor and causes of mortality found that laughter is associated with a 48 percent reduction in death from all causes, a 73 percent lower risk of death from heart disease, and an 83 percent lower risk of infection
• Evidence of ‘Negative Time’ Found in Quantum Physics Experiment: This will surely delight my youngest, who is obsessed with The Flash and his time traveling adventures. It also jibes with something I posted on Threads recently!
• Speaking of Threads, one of Meta’s frustrating problems is that they haven’t managed to brand the term “threading” in a way as organic as Twitter did “tweeting”. It doesn’t feel right to say, “I threaded,” or, “I’m threading,” which makes it not-insignificantly more difficult to casually mention their platform, which I think is a primary reason Threads hasn’t already crushed the decaying bird site.
• We’re biologically wired to prevent our children’s suffering, and it can be excruciating to watch them struggle. That’s certainly an understatement. I’ve been desperately trying to not be a helicopter parent but “excruciating” doesn’t come close to describing what it’s like seeing your child suffer. And I promise I’m well aware that a little elementary school teasing or even dealing with high school cliques are light years away from the difficulties other parents – close friends, even – are facing. (Gift link, like most good things online, via Jason’s infrequent newsletter)
• In a very odd cosmic coincidence, Hurricane Milton destroyed the roof of Tropicana Field – home of the Tampa Bay Rays MLB franchise – just a few hours after the implosion of the vintage Tropicana casino in Las Vegas (to make way for a new stadium for the Oakland Athletics).

As a quick follow-up to my note about the lugubrious and lamentable demise of Twitter, I want to point out that I am loving Threads. Yes, I am well aware that it is a Meta product. But so far it has been a fantastic social media replacement for me. It is sorely lacking in sports coverage and the algorithm doesn’t seem to handle breaking news very well, but I’ll counter that it appears to immediately alert me any time anyone anywhere mentions Soapdish. So I call that a win.

• How does a bill become a law? A lovely infographic from Mike Wirth Art is a swell way to learn the answer… but nothing beats the original (YouTube).
• Make your hidden self a little bit cooler with better Facebook default profile images.
• “These are their stories.” RIP L&O.
• “You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand.” — from an interview with Leroy Stick, the man behind @bpglobalpr
• On June 5, 1910 there were only nine mothers of U.S. Senators still alive.
• Book owners have smarter kids.
• Are you an Asker or a Guesser? (I honestly don’t know which one I am.)
• This is the sort of stuff I love: Battleship Island & Other Ruined Urban High-Density Sites. I need the History or Discovery Channel to do a special on this!
• Derek thinks he’s finally figured out why everything sucks. And it’s actually kind of awesome.
• @sbnation presents an explanation of the recent and confusing NCAA conference realignments.

There’s an excellent Kia Sorento commercial right now featuring a sock monkey and a monster (and some other kid toys). They go bowling and the sock monkey gets a tattoo. The best part, though, is the song. It’s How You Like Me Now, by The Heavy. You can find it on the album The House That Dirt Built on iTunes.

Sidebar: I just noticed that the latest version of iTunes now lets you easily post a song or app to Twitter or Facebook. (Savvy guys, those Apple engineers.) But here’s something extraordinarily odd: The URL that iTunes provides for the link is absurdly long. The one for the song mentioned above is http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-house-that-dirt-built/id328490302, which is seventy characters. Twitter only allows 140 characters! Why in the world isn’t Apple running their own URL-shortening service?

• Only XKCD could produce such an emotionally-charged comic strip about the Mars rover Spirit. (How can you not feel badly about that poor little robot?)
• Where do all my taxes go? The New York Times has a great infographic that displays the recently-proposed 2011 US budget.
• You’ll find bunches of (mostly technical) fascinating links if you subscribe to my delicious feed; but in case you don’t and it’s the sort of thing that interests you, check out:
  • All About Cron Jobs
  • A Complete Guide to Regular Expressions
  • The Official Facebook PHP Guide
  • Create Nice 3D Ribbons With Pure CSS3
• Why the iPad will fail and help Windows 7 to succeed is required reading for anyone that is just blindingly stupid. It’s perfect for brilliant minds who also think the government is secretly poisoning us with fluoride and there’s really no hard evidence linking cigarettes with lung cancer.