Posts tagged “games”

• 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.

• 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.

• 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)

• Reminder that Breaking Bad was a TV show about the U.S. healthcare system. – via Melanie D’Arrigo (threads / bluesky)
• I’m confused by the many complaints I’ve seen online recently about the streaming quality of NFL games on Amazon Prime. I have AT&T Gigabit fiber at home and for regular TV use the DirecTVStream app embedded in my Samsung TV. If I want to watch something on Amazon Prime, I use their app instead, also baked into the TV software. I honestly think the image quality of the Amazon NFL games beats what I see on NBC, CBS, FOX, and ESPN on DirecTVStream most of the time, which seems crazy to me. You’d think AT&T would either boost DirecTVStream bandwidth (since they own them) or somehow hamstring the Prime bandwidth. But that’s not the case at all.
• Anyway. This joke about berry packaging made me laugh out loud. – via Matt Margolis (threads / bluesky)
• I am a big fan of Wyze and have their front door deadbolt, doorbell camera, several security cameras, two outdoor plugs (for controlling Christmas lights), a bathroom scale, and at least a half dozen WiFi outlets around the house. They’re great.
• For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
• Threes is the iOS game I’ve played most frequently over the last decade. According to its lovely Statistics page, I’ve played it 7,838 times and my high score is 90,147.
• “Learning from other people’s mistakes is a lot less painful than learning from your own.” – via Tim Harford
• Feel-good story of the day? Giant Spoon Taken From Arizona Dairy Queen Found Thanks To Pokemon Go – via @pourmecoffee
• I’ve returned to this article a dozen times since he published it. If you’re working with iOS widget development, check out Launching iOS Apps with a Custom URL Scheme

If you want to add a “Share on Bluesky” hyperlink to your WordPress theme, this is the snippet I’m using. Also note that my theme requires FontAwesome for the bluesky icon.

<span class="label label-primary nobreak me-3"><a target="_blank" href="https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=<?php echo urlencode( get_the_title() ); ?>%0A%0A<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Share on Bluesky" rel="noreferrer"><i class="fa-brands fa-bluesky"></i></a></span>


• If you’re bored with the standard New York Times puzzles — or looking for more ways to avoid thinking about the impending collapse of society — Alphaguess and Wordiply are two other fun word games. Worldle is a fun geography game and Framed is a fun movie game. Or see if you can beat my streak of 19 at WikiTrivia. There’s also a sports version of Connections.
• Being a “safe space for both sides” means you’re not a safe space for one side. – via @lingeringperception
• Art Garfunkel describes tearful reunion with Paul Simon: “I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him.” – via @timcarmody
• “I know that you have what it takes to start healing.” – via Coach Bennett’s Newsletter
• “It’s 91 degrees in November… no idea why I’m saving for retirement. At no point did Mad Max check his 401k.” – via @rpgregory87
• The Story Behind Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and the Poet’s Own Stirring Reading of His Masterpiece – via @mariapopova
• This lovely Martha Wainwright track (from the absolutely fantastic Big Little Lies soundtrack) might resonate with some of you lately.
• See also: “The point of winning was not to make themselves happy, it was to make everyone else miserable.” – via @duckswithpants
• These 10 CSS Code Snippets Every UI Developer Should Know and 10 Bootstrap Tricks Every UI Developer Should Know are both handy. – via Niraj Narkhede

The team at iconfactory has been producing quality apps for a quarter of a century. (I first found them when I started playing the iPhone game Frenzic.) They have some really useful tools for developers as well as a few games and handy utilities for everyone else.

This is going to kill my weekend. I’ve maxed out at 13 and can’t seem to beat that.