- What beats rock?
- Pope Francis denounced the current administration’s plan to carry out mass deportations of migrants in a letter to U.S. bishops Tuesday, while appearing to take a direct jab at Vice President JD Vance.
- For decades, casinos scoffed as mathematicians and physicists devised elaborate systems to take down the house. Then an unassuming Croatian’s winning strategy forever changed the game.
Why is Hawaii the rainbow capital of the world?- Is gold hidden under a California peak? This treasure map says so.
- These JETech iPhone screen protectors are a great investment.
- Forensics Experts Challenged the FBI. So the FBI Tried to Censor Their Conference. This story includes a timely reminder that — with the exception of DNA matches — most of the highly-regarded techniques used to put people away (fingerprint examinations, ballistics and toolmarks comparisons, blood pattern analysis) “were developed by law enforcement agencies for law enforcement, and not by scientists first subjecting them to standard, rigorous testing processes designed to ensure they stand on a solid scientific foundation.”
- How did a life-saving pediatric drug – discovered and developed using money from American taxpayers, and spurred by the grassroots fundraising of desperate parents – end up costing $2,000,000 per dose?
- In the span of just weeks, the U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history – not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly-defined government role.
- Harrison Ford said the recent California wildfires burned several Shrinking sets.
Posts tagged “fire”
- Almost 96% of new cars registered in Norway in January were electric. – via kottke
- The Wild True Story Behind Kendrick Lamar‘s Super Bowl Halftime Show
- The Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled that insurance companies can’t bring their own legal actions against those blamed for the catastrophic 2023 Maui wildfire, allowing a $4 billion settlement to proceed.
- Trump’s Driving Legal Principle This Time: “What Are You Gonna Do About It?”
- The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was told by the Department of Justice that they’d lose their funding if the organization didn’t remove any mentions of LGBTQIA+ issues from their public materials.
- Aggeggio is a lovely Italian word for everyday objects.
- The ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’ of the United States Government
- I need to investigate Tapestry, from iconfactory. It looks like a cool iOS app for aggregating content, and I’ve loved pretty much every other app they’ve ever made. – via hiro.report
- “Productivity dysmorphia is the inability to see one’s own success, to acknowledge the volume of your own output.” – via Tom Whitwell
- How NASA has kept Apollo moon rocks safe from contamination for 50 years
- Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of tiki culture
- The Day the Music Burned is the story of the 2008 Universal fire.
- The current Banana Republic is nothing like it was when I was a kid. You can learn all about the company’s history at Abandoned Republic.
- The Launch is the story behind the 2019 debut of the Cosmic Crisp apple.
- The Ultimate Guide to Building a Hot Wheels Race Track
- For a little while now Apple has allowed you to tag someone as a legacy contact who can access and download the data in your account after your death. You can find the feature on the Sign-in & Security tab under your Apple Account at the top of the Settings app on your iOS device.
- More good news for those looking to exit Meta’s social app ecosystem in favor of a more open alternative: An independent developer is building a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. – via phillewis
- Misinformation isn’t random. It’s strategic. Misinformation is not a general condition; It is driven by populist radical right parties. When Do Parties Lie? Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries – via pettertornberg
- “The entire health insurance business model is built on scamming customers and denying the coverage they pay premiums for. Health insurance is not healthcare. It’s an unnecessary middleman that preys on the sick, and only exists because lobbyists pay off our politicians.” – via darrigomelanie
- “Is it like the old Playboy Magazine? You have essays there by the modern day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?” – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, asking if people visit Pornhub to read articles during a hearing about minors having access to pornography. – via crooked media
- You can watch the three (newer) seasons of The Animaniacs on Disney+ / Hulu, so why are you wasting your time reading this when you could be doing that instead? Five stars. Highly recommend. (The original five seasons are available on Amazon Prime and AppleTV.)
- In the US, table saws are responsible for around 4,300 amputations per year. All other products are responsible for 3,600 amputations per year combined. – via Tom Whitwell
- I have no idea how, when, or why I subscribed to the Making It Work newsletter from Youngna Park, but I’m always happy when it lands in my inbox. This week’s issue, which includes some beautiful writing about the horrific L.A. wildfires, was exceptional.
- 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.)
- 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
The 1973 National Personnel Records Center Fire
An unparalleled disaster
A prank turns deadly in New Zealand
A Hard Rain
I guess I really should say something about the fact that last night it rained the most and the hardest and the craziest and the lightningest that is has here in at least two years. It was an amazing downpour. It was biblical. Did I mention that the block of condos behind mine – like