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A 2016 UK study found folks who participated in Dry January had improved confidence around abstinence, did not rebound, and drank less alcohol overall six months later, regardless of their January success. – via YLE
Friendly reminder: There are exactly two things you can try and do. You can try and fail or you can try and succeed. Otherwise you try to do something.
Research suggests that even taking small breaks from sitting could significantly improve your cardiovascular health, making it easier than ever to protect your heart and improve your overall well-being. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club
“If you’re only going to open a book on the off chance you have several hours to kill in a comfy chair with a glass of scotch, it’s only ever going to happen when you have several hours to kill in a comfy chair with a glass of scotch.” How to Read a Whole Damn Book Every Week – via Links You’ll Love
33 Ways To Improve Your Life, Japanese Style – via pretty much everyone I follow
Quantum physics is wild: “Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time.”
“You shouldn’t be driving over 100 mph—and your car shouldn’t let you.” – via kottke

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.

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

A man in Canada’s far north leapt on to a polar bear to protect his wife from being mauled, police say. – via Crooked Media (threads / bluesky)
I love this quote: “[Software bugs] are a lot like prime numbers. There are always more, but after you find the first couple billion they do thin out quite a bit.” – via @philcrissman (threads / bluesky)
It’s a good idea to occasionally revisit the story of Roger and Elaine.
Mark Ruffalo sounds like the name a dog would give if he was pretending to be a man. – via @the.yael
Need to buy something for someone you can’t stand? Check out My Heinous Gift Guide for Sworn Enemies. And note that you don’t actually have to stay on Twitter. – both via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
Jonathan Edward Durham is a good follow on threads and/or bluesky.
Your Local Epidemiologist is a super informative newsletter that translates complicated health news, especially about viruses and colds.
19 Useful Mac Startup Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know
What do you call a pig that does karate? A pork chop! – via 172 Corny Jokes To Tell To Kids You Love

“Don’t let your dreams give up on you.” – via @austinkleon
“The supplement industry is a multi-billion dollar industry built on hype and deception. Here’s an inside look at what works, what doesn’t, and how to ensure you only use products you can trust.” – super informative, well-researched notes on everything from Vitamin D and collagen to fish oil and creatine, – via Arnold’s Pump Club
“Personally, I’m making a choice to not be fearful.” – via Starship Casual
“America’s collective decision in the 20th century to make cars and the roads serving them the bedrock of all urban and regional planning will go down in history as just another of our nation’s awful, ruinous ideas that we nevertheless clung to for generations, like slavery or lead paint.” – via kottke
“If you must read one post-election assessment of what went wrong, [The Daily] Kos’s “What went wrong: Part 1” is worth your time.” – via @zeldman
“If things really go south, expect MAGA Republicans to devour each other as hungrily as the worm who feasted on RFK Jr.’s brain.” – via @heidiyounggrasshopper
“You know things are really bad when you’re Kübler-Rossing completely out of order.” – via @gatordavid
I’ve been a fan of Daring Fireball for more than twenty years, and his How It Went essay might just be the best thing he’s ever published. If you’re looking for a tiny sliver of hope after the election, I highly recommend reading it. (Maybe grab a box of tissues first.)
And remember, “This is the same country that elected Barack Obama… twice.” – via @geoffbaron

Biden Administration Proposes a Rule to Make Over-the-Counter Birth Control Free
I guess this counts as good news: EPA imposes stricter standards to protect children from exposure to lead paint. (We’ve known that lead is dangerous for close to 2,000 years!)
The moon hasn’t changed since the 1960s, while every technology we used to get there has seen staggering advances. But twenty years and $93 billion after the space agency announced our return to the moon, the goal seems as far out of reach as ever. – via hiro.report
If your website aggressively pushes me to use your AI support and/or search features, I will not assume you have a bunch of radical, hip, cutting-edge tech bros on your web development team. I will assume your CEO surrounds himself with a bunch of greedy, soulless sycophants who refuse (for the worst possible reasons) to pay humans a living wage to do valuable work. – @gatordavid
I feel like every single time I receive an email from LinkedIn, I click the unsubscribe button. Yet every day I seem to receive at least one completely new type of email from LinkedIn. – @gatordavid
Penguin Random House is adding a clause to all their copyright pages explicitly stating the contents of their books are not to be used to feed generative AI models. It’s a lovely sentiment, of course, but about as effective as the FBI warnings they used to play at the beginning of VHS tapes. (The tech bros building these resource hogs certainly aren’t going to respect copyright law.) – via @clairecameron123