- Less than 1% of Catholic nuns in the United States today are 30 or younger.
- The sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale starts on April 8, 2025.
- Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared” I feel like there was probably a powerful confirmation bias at work here. This seems like exactly the sort of thing you’d think was obvious, but… as strongly as I would expect the correlation to be, I am guessing we’ll soon hear of all sorts of problems with the statistics.
- I’d forgotten that Taylor Swift hosted SNL a few years ago and performed a ten-minute version of All Too Well. It’s been a long, long time since I needed to convert a YouTube video to mp3.
We’re dealing with actual Nazis.- What “Center” Is That, Exactly? is an essay by A.R. Moxon of The Reframe that includes the wonderful line, “I think of how twisted I would have to become, for the spectacle of diversity and equality and freedom to traumatize me into suicidally-counterfactual reactionary nonsense.” This echoes some of the Kübler-Rossian questions stuck on my mental treadmill since that somehow-malevolent escalator ride that foreshadowed so drastic a national decline. How do you watch Footloose and root for John Lithgow? How do you watch The Muppet Movie and root for Doc Hopper? How do you watch Captain America and root for Hydra? How do you watch Star Wars and root for the Empire?! Or – maybe more terrifying – how do you transform into a stormtrooper but think you’re a Rebel?
- When you’re done reading that, check out It’s The Fascism, Stupid, in which Moxon talks about how “the First Buddy, a Nazi apartheid billionaire/corruption mogul whose name means Flair Odor, who was not elected to anything at all, seized control of our federal infrastructure.”
Posts tagged “muppets”
- “Homicides continued to decline in major U.S. cities — by more than 40% in some communities — during the first nine months of the year.” – via @crookedmedia
- How Marcus Smart’s support for cancer patients transformed children’s hospitals – via @theathletichq
- Please spare ninety seconds of your busy day today to watch Miss Piggy roasting Martha Stewart. – via @kottke
- What’s the roundest human-made object ever made? – via @thebadastronomer
- “Building beats talking. It beats being a full-time employee. It beats being well dressed or well spoken or well known. It beats being popular.” – via @ociubotaru
- “If you’re a parent, you know you don’t need a scientific study or some neuroscientist to confirm what you know from experience. There’s a part of you that didn’t exist until you had kids.” – via @dailydad, a fantastic newsletter
- I’m vehemently opposed to styling browser scrollbars, but I like the other nine items in this list of 10 CSS Tricks for UI developers – via @nnnirajn
- It’s effectively impossible to manage uploaded photos on Amazon Alexa devices using the iOS app because if you’ve uploaded more than about two dozen photos, the screen refreshes back to the top any time you scroll down more than a few pages. I posted about this on Twitter a few years ago, and I can’t believe they still haven’t fixed it.
- The complete lack of urgency from players and coaches, in the NFL and college, when down by two or more scores in Q4, makes me question whether any of these guys have ever played Madden. – via me
- The November 17th Bills–Chiefs matchup wasn’t just the game of the week, it was the most-watched NFL regular-season game of 2024 and the most-watched non-holiday game since 2007. – via @theathletichq
#FridayFive: Muppets
Overture, light the lights
Elmo is the only non-human or puppet ever to testify before the U.S. Congress. At the request and with the assistance of Rep. Duke Cunningham, he testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education in April 2002, urging support for increased funding in music education.
The iPhone just keeps getting better. (I’ve had each one.)- What Broke My Father’s Heart
- I have been in hysterics reading quotes from the fascinating lives of the people who live in my furniture catalogs… “Oh, dear. Our Q-Tip decanter is almost 1/5th depleted!”
- Lake Street Creamery. We guarantee IT WILL TURN YOU INTO A GOD.*
- The Swedish Chef cooks popcorn shrimp.
- The oil spill? “It’s heartbreakin’, baby.”
- The Who Tall Are You? mirror looks like it would be fun for a teenager’s room.
- It will probably be
light yearscenturies before the Sci-Fi Airshow makes its way to Los Angeles, and I sadly won’t get to see it. - Real Life vs. CSI:Miami
- Proper punctuation is important. Seriously.
2024-06-10: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
Mwah-Ha-Ha-HA!
He used to be more sinister — he was able to hypnotize and stun people and he laughed in typical scary-villain-type fashion after completing a count of something and thunder and lightning would occur. He was quickly made more appealing to little kids, though. He is apparently quite the ladies’ man — he has been
Aloysius Snuffleupagus
“Mr. Snuffleupagus is a full-bodied Muppet character who lives with his family in a cave, just off of Sesame Street. He is a snuffleupagus. — from the Muppet wiki Obviously I knew that. Though I didn’t know he had a first name. I just always referred to him as Snuffleupagus. I loved Sesame Street when
Musical Lists
I just found one of the top ten funniest things on the Internet. Some crazy kids started making lists based on songs, and they are just hysterical. Here’s one of my favorites, but there are hundreds. You must go read them. It is time to: play the music light the light put on makeup dress