Posts tagged “NFL”

  • The music industry traded tape for hard drives and got a hard-earned lesson. Roughly one-fifth of the hard disk drives from the 1990s sent to Iron Mountain are entirely unreadable.
  • My son got me hooked on New Rockstars. Erik Voss and his team produce amazing YouTube recaps of all sorts of things in pop culture. The Jessica Clemons breakdown of the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl LIX halftime show is great.
  • The Onion headlineA moving new trailer has been released for Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, an ambitious documentary that explores the final years of John Lennon through archival footage, never-before-seen interviews, and firsthand accounts.
  • A new study shows you can lower your risk of cancer by eating just one serving of cruciferous vegetables per day. Vegetables appear to do the most to help fight gastrointestinal cancers, such as colorectal and stomach cancer, but the protective effects extended to lung and breast cancer as well.
  • Climate change is causing hotter temperatures to become more frequent in the four West African countries responsible for producing approximately 70% of the world’s cacao — the key ingredient in chocolate.
  • Former Florida Gators and Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Kadarius Toney is facing multiple charges, including aggravated assault, following his arrest in Georgia last week.
  • White House says it has the right to punish AP reporters over Gulf naming dispute. (I am rapidly running out of canaries, people.)
  • Was I the only one a little concerned that NASA increased the odds of that asteroid hitting us in 2032 from 1.2% up to 2.3%? This brilliantly simple explanation at Scientific American from astronomer Phil Plait should ease your mind a bit.
  • Recent Media
    • Black Doves (Netflix) was incredible. Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw can act. Splendid plot. A+++
    • We watched the penultimate episode of Skeleton Crew and I am all-in on this show. Fantastic fun. Jude Law is perfect.
    • Four episodes into Slow Horses and love this show, too.

  • Italy has embraced a novel approach to integrate olive oil into its tourism industry through oleotourism, an initiative that invites visitors to engage with the olive oil production process, offering experiences that range from guided tours of olive groves and mills to tasting sessions and educational workshops.
  • Don't Let That Shadow Touch Them: Buy War Bonds -- WWII Poster“In the final analysis, the progress of our civilization will be retarded if any large body of citizens falls behind. Without the help of thousands of others, any one of us would die, naked and starved.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Scottie Scheffler, 2024 PGA Tour Player of the Year, missed the first two tournaments of the season because he needed surgery to repair his hand after slicing it while attempting to make homemade ravioli on Christmas Day.
  • A growing number of US government websites have gone offline as of Saturday, including several related to USAID and others focused on youth programs, Africa, and more.
  • A newly discovered asteroid has a tiny chance of smacking Earth in 2032. It’s very unlikely, thankfully, but what should be truly concerning is that nobody was even aware of it until two days after it made its last closest pass to us.
  • A dire prediction: “[W]hen NIH and other health agencies emerge from the current freeze they will have been emasculated and politicized, prohibited from releasing information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like, banned from making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base.” – via Jodi Ettenberg
  • When I was a kid, most of my possessions were very inexpensive, but tremendously meaningful. A baseball hat or an action figure or a comic book only cost a few dollars, but meant the world to me. My kids have tremendously expensive possessions that are very meaningless. An iPhone or iPad or AirPods cost hundreds or thousands of dollars but have essentially zero sentimental value. I’m sure this says something important about capitalism, but I don’t have time to think about it at the moment.
  • Chris Coyier wrote a little about the pros and cons of maintaining your own website that’s worth a read. (And he mentions POSSE, which is something I love.)
  • Here’s a cool statistical analysis done to determine whether NFL referees unfairly favor the Kansas City Chiefs. (Spoiler: Yup.)

Pat Patriot

  • The legacy New England Patriots logo of a minuteman center about to hike a football (that looks suspiciously like an eggplant) is officially known as Pat Patriot. 1 When I was at Super Bowl XLII in Arizona as a guest of the NFL, I was gifted an awesome distressed / vintage white Reebok retro t-shirt featuring Pat Patriot. It was my favorite t-shirt. It was accidentally incinerated in an industrial furnace several years ago — it’s a long story — and I’ve never been able to find another one exactly like it. I’ve looked far and wide, Googled and eBayed repeatedly, set alerts, but no luck. I’ve seen a red version a few times on eBay, but never the same white one I had and loved. I can’t even find an image of the same shirt anywhere online!
  • Questlove created a trailer for the 50 Years of SNL Music documentary and it is completely mind-blowing. You have got to see it.
  • When our TV enters screensaver mode, it shows images from Google, including the artist’s credit. One cute photo prompted me to search for Aravind Krishnaswamy and we were delighted to discover he has a plethora of pleasing penguin pictures.
  • The latest issue of Culture of Sport (from David Skilling) examines why paying $7M for a 30-second Super Bowl ad is, incredibly, still a good deal.
  • The entire global cosmetic Botox industry is supported by an annual production of just a few milligrams of botulism toxin. Pure toxin would cost ~$100 trillion per kilogram. – via Tom Whitwell
  • TV & Movies
    • We watched Mr. Popper’s Penguins recently and it was a big hit. It’s a great kid movie, especially if your kids are infatuated with penguins. (And it’s Jim Carrey acting like a [mostly] normal human being, which is my favorite version of him.)
    • We have finally started watching Skeleton Crew, the latest Star Wars series. I read somewhere last year that the concept was supposed to be The Goonies, but Star Wars, and they nailed it. So far I think it’s phenomenal and I regret not having started it sooner.
    • Fly Me to the Moon (Apple TV+) was a pretty fun family movie, but should have been at least a half hour shorter. It was campy and painfully predictable, but the kids liked it. Woody Harrelson was great.
1 I would guess that the “new” logo (that looks suspiciously like a windswept Elvis) is probably officially known as Pat Patriot, too, but that’s a different issue.

Grow Your Own, Can Your Own -- WWII Vintage Sign

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