Posts tagged “movies”
- The US government wants to start protecting you (and your kids) from Roblox robux scams. – via Anil
- The Moon is part of the Diocese of Orlando, in accordance with the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which states that “any newly discovered territory was placed under the jurisdiction of the diocese from which the expedition which discovered that territory left.” – via Kent Hendricks
- I can’t be the only GenXer really struggling with the fact that it’s 2025. That number seems impossible to me. It sounds like a year from The Jetsons or Space Mountain. (Related: Wikipedia’s list of movies set in 2025 is somewhat disappointing.)
- I thoroughly enjoyed reading this essay on the evolution of the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade screenplay. – via hiro.report, via Phil Gyford
- Bad news for people who hate good news:
- In a 6-1 ruling in favor of sixteen youth who sued, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” – via kottke
- The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear appeals from oil companies challenging a lawsuit in Hawaii that aims to hold them accountable for climate change. – via Crooked Media
- The US jobs market roared to life in December – via Semafor
- Trump can still vote after sentencing, but can’t own a gun and will have to turn over DNA sample – via The Associated Press
- Biden Issues Sweeping Deportation Protections Before Trump Takes Office
- Good news for people who love bad news:
- Global temperatures in 2024 eclipsed 2023’s average by more than a fifth of a degree Fahrenheit. That’s an unusually large jump; until the last couple of super-hot years, global temperature records were exceeded only by hundredths of a degree. – via The Morning Wire
- Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state. – via my dad
- 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
- 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
- If I ever got name-checked on The Simpsons, I think I would spontaneously combust. – via @sepinwall
- How Gen Z Came to See Books as a Waste of Time – via @theatlantic
- For about a year and a half I was really into intermittent fasting. I used a great app called Simple that helped me track my daily water consumption and weight, and also handled reminding me when my fasting windows were, let me log what I was eating and when, etc. The app was so good, I even gladly paid for an annual subscription to unlock bonus features. And then — for reasons I cannot imagine — the developers rolled out a “new” version loaded to the gills with whiz-bang AI features that made the app completely useless and incomprehensibly frustrating. I tried for a few months to get used to the new system, but eventually abandoned it, canceled my subscription, and still haven’t found a decent replacement. I abhor the continued enshittification of everything.
- Male bigfin reef squid may be the best fathers of all cephalopods. [Ed. note: But can they make Sunday morning chocolate chip pancakes?]
- It’s really a shame that Russell Brand has gone crazy, because Forgetting Sarah Marshall is easily one of the all-time best comedies.
- Strong Lloyd Dobler vibes in this essay, and I am here for it: “[P]eople do want to work, just not for the paltry wages they were making before the pandemic.”
- “If you spell your name backwards and place an umlaut over one of the vowels, that’s your IKEA name.” [Ed. note: Mine is Engäg and I’m a kitchen drawer divider.] – via @drewtalbert
- Regular exercisers drink more, a new study confirms, but are less likely to be problem drinkers. – via @outsidemagazine
- Black Friday / Holiday Sales:
The world’s comfiest t-shirts and coziest sweatpants are crazy expensive, but this weekend almost everything is on sale at Aviator Nation.- Everything at ’47 Brand is 30% off this weekend. Get all the best sports gear gifts here.
- Need some everyday walking shoes? Everything is 50% off at Allbirds this weekend.
- I have an AirPods Pro case and a wallet from Saddleback Leather Co. and they’re both exquisite. Not everything is on sale, but they do have some pretty good deals this weekend on a few things. (Their motto is, “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead.”)
- Use promo code BLACKFRIDAY to get 30% off (and free shipping) on everything at J. Peterman this weekend.
- Fun Fact: Jon Gries, the actor who portrayed Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius (TriStar Pictures, 1985), went on to play Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite (Searchlight Pictures, 2004) and the love interest of Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus (HBO, 2021).
- “Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said California will offer electric vehicle subsidies even if Donald Trump kills the $7,500 federal tax credit.” – via @crookedmedia
- Recent research found that men who improve their fitness are 35% less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
- I recently purchased an Anker MagSafe Case with (what I thought) one of those cool little kickstand grips. I sort of liked the kickstand, but I found I couldn’t align the charging area easily (or at all) on anything but a MagSafe base. I also tested for a week, alternating days with my Spigen case, and discovered the Anker one was definitely both (a) getting unreasonably hot and (b) significantly draining my battery. The heat issue was bad enough, but the battery drain is not something I’d ever accept. My 13-mo old iPhone 15 Pro still regularly sticks over 80% charge after a day’s use. With the Anker case it would be down to 50% before 6pm. Obviously, your mileage may vary and IANAAT, but I’m going back to my Spigen case.
- Merging black holes may create bubbles that could swallow the universe. [Ed. note: The word ‘may’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.]
- Most Black Friday deals are pretty worthless, but here’s a good one. All Predictions Wrong — home of TMQ — is offering a 20% discount on all paid subscriptions.
Anyone who is a fan of the doomed voyage of Ernest Shackleton and his crew aboard the Endurance [Ed. note: Dad!] has got to be thrilled right now. In addition to the epic book that was released a few years ago, and the Kenneth Branagh mini-series from a few years before that, there’s a new National Geographic special on Disney+ and now even a LEGO set!- Nice to see the Florida Gators climbed all the way up to No. 33 after beating Ole Miss, one week after the win against LSU. The Gators are the highest-ranked 6-5 team, with all five losses coming to top-25 teams. – via @theathletichq
- The ugly math behind Florida’s low SAT scores: “Among all states, Florida students ranked fourth from last on the standardized exam used to gauge readiness for college. Among states where at least 50,000 students took the test, Florida ranked last.” – via @aspar1605
- Just want to confirm your household is safe for my kid: Is your family up to date on vaccines? Will there be raw milk served? Is there a gun in the house? – brilliant advice via @designmom
- Fun fact: The Portuguese garbage scow captain from Overboard (1987, Goldie Hawn) went on to become the Beverly Hills hotel manager in Pretty Woman (1990, Julia Roberts).
- A child might ask, “Why is the sky dark at night?” Astronomers asked that for centuries, but it took a poet to answer it. And you’ll never guess which one… – via @thebadastronomer
- “What’s a first down?”: Meet Tobi Haastrup, the accidental superstar and coveted recruit – via @austinflack
- There have been a few articles lately about the terrifying amount of deadly recycled plastic in black kitchen utensils, so we got rid of ours and replaced them with this gorgeous beige silicone set. Highly recommend.
- For ages the only copy I had of the 1989 Kon Kan hit “I Beg Your Pardon” was a cassette recording I captured from local FM radio, so any time I hear it I am reminded of Casey Kasem explaining how cool it was that they sampled the theme song from The Magnificent Seven.
There’s a Threads account that is posting album covers recreated with LEGO and it’s wonderful.- My superpower is not being able to stop thinking about an apostrophe error in one of the fake newspaper headlines in the 1994 Nicolas Cage/Bridget Fonda rom-com It Could Happen to You. – via me, Dec 27, 2021
- Serious question: Why aren’t Moonlighting and Remington Steele on just as frequently as Law & Order?
- Literally any task can be made dramatically more complicated with the simple addition of a six year old narrating your every move on a karaoke microphone set at maximum volume. – via me, Dec 28, 2021
- “To say that we’re losing the war on plastic is to flatter ourselves with a lie. The fact is that we’re not even fighting it.”: How Plastic Liberated and Entombed Us
- These printable gratitude zines are a wonderful idea. There are kid versions, too! – via @austinkleon
- All children’s clothes should have a blank tag where you can write your kid’s name. How is this not a thing? – via me
- “[W]hat’s most needed is not new recycling technologies but stronger regulations on plastic producers.” – The False Promise of Plastic Recycling
- Annual tooth and gum cleaning may be the single most cost-effective therapy in all of medicine, and millions skip this, causing avoidable problems down the road. – via All Predictions Wrong
- Do yourself a favor. Get an Amazon Subscribe & Save subscription to a six-pack of comfy socks. It’s fairly inexpensive, and it’s a great way to stop hoarding old socks. (Set it to deliver them every six months. You’ll thank me in May.)
- The number of Italian same-sex civil unions rose to a six-year high, defying the country’s conservative government’s attempts to make it more difficult for same-sex couples to start families. – via @crookedmedia
- I had no idea the standard movie disclaimer — “Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.” — is because of Rasputin! – via @kottke
- It’s unfair that Someone Like You (from Bang Tango’s 1989 album Psycho Café) isn’t more popular.
- Defeated Man Too Tired To Fight New $14.99 Fee On Phone Bill – via @theonion
- “In one hour alone, the sun pummels the earth with more power than the world uses in the span of an entire year.”
- “Look, nothing I can write in this letter could possibly prepare you for everything that is about to happen. I don’t even know where to start, to be honest with you. There’s just so much.” – via @playerstribune
- Big sports moments are when I miss my mom the most. Even little ones. I could text her at 2AM to ask if she was watching two unknown, unranked Hungarian tennis players locked in a tight match on ESPN3 and the answer would always be, “Of course.”
- Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premieres December 3rd on Disney+ Wow. The trailer looks amazing.
- If you know anyone with an iPhone — and, duh, of course you do — one of these MagSafe power bricks is a great gift idea.
- Superman Is Still America’s Greatest Superhero: We need Christopher Reeve now more than ever.
- How Selling $160 Sweatpants Turned a SoCal Surfer into One of America’s Richest Women – via @forbes
- Forget Matt Gaetz. Merrick Garland Is America’s Worst Attorney General. – via @usnews
- I would rather watch three straight hours of Progressive commercials than another Avatar movie.
- Pamela Hayden, the voice behind Milhouse Van Houten, will retire from The Simpsons after 35 years. – via @dailycosmicmarvel
- It’s always been somewhat puzzling that Donald Duck chooses to use an airplane to fly and a boat when he’s in the water. I don’t have a problem with his insistence on eschewing pants. But I find it deeply, deeply disturbing that he carves a Thanksgiving turkey for his family. – via me
- Here’s everything you need to know about the new 12-team college football playoff format.
#FridayFive: A Better House
View the Friday Five from November 15th, 2024