- Researchers in Japan have developed a durable and recyclable plastic that fully dissolves in the sea and doesn’t leave microplastic pollution in the oceans because it breaks down in the water over time. – via @oceanbluestar.bsky.social
- Early entry for the best news of the year? Ted Lasso is returning for a fourth season.
- I recently finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It is easily the best work of fiction I’ve read in the last twenty years. After five pages I was enjoying it so much that I decided to pace myself so I could inhabit its story as long as possible, but ended up devouring it in just a couple of days. My only regret is that I will never get to read it for the first time again. 1
- Happy belated 27th birthday to kottke.org, the website that inspired me to start blogging a quarter-century ago.
Notes from the firehose:
- Conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig issued a stark warning about what he described as [the President’s] escalating attacks on the legal system.
- Former Spiritual Adviser to POTUS Indicted for Sexually Abusing a Child
- Top Democrats Warn “DOGE” Employees of Potential Criminal Exposure from Ethical Misconduct – via @beyer.house.gov
- “Mr. Schumer’s stated approach of waiting for Trump to ‘screw up’ and continue this inexplicable embrace of the slippery slope is wholly inadequate and an astonishing failure of leadership.”
- [The President’s] deportation of Venezuelan migrants may have violated a direct court order, leading to what the former general counsel of the FBI, Andrew Weissmann, has called a potential “doomsday scenario.”
- [The President] has already implemented at least half of Project 2025’s objectives in eight areas.
Posts tagged “oceans”
- Some resistance leaders have created a Google Doc to track what members of Congress are doing during this March recess.
- A flooded quarry, a mysterious millionaire and the dream of a new Atlantis: An innovative mission on the Welsh border, funded by an anonymous private investor, has begun work to create a ‘permanent human settlement’ under the sea.
- What do you think are the odds that you will die during the next year? Try to put a number to it — 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? Whatever it is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now. Gompertz Law is fascinating fun with statistics, even if it gets a little more terrifying to read every time.
- If your website’s “LOGIN” menu link opens a new window or browser tab, please know that every single person who clicks it hates you.
Make It Stop:
- Engineers and executives at the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” are drawing healthy taxpayer-funded salaries — sometimes from the very agencies they are cutting.
- A Timeline of the Politicization and Weaponization of the Justice Department – via kottke
- Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told Fox that the solution to high egg prices is for people to raise chickens in their backyards. – via Today in Politics
- The Los Angeles Times removed its new AI-powered “insights” feature from a column after the tool tried to defend the Ku Klux Klan.
- With its ASMR videos of people being forced out of the country, the White House is turning suffering into entertainment. The administration is trying to showcase its program of “mass deportation” as reality-show style entertainment, through which voters will rationalize their cruelty.
- Fired federal employees – some with top security clearances – were not given exit briefings. That means, allegedly, their laptops, security badges, usernames and password, etc. were not collected either. I cannot fathom this level of government incompetence.
- Beyond Apu — Why are there suddenly so many Indians on television?
- Want to save the Gulf of Mexico? Learn how to boom properly.
- The leading web property for yuletide holiday determination is now on your mobile phone. Never be at a loss again. Get the Is It Christmas? iPhone app!
- I got 99 problems but breathing ain’t one.
- It is a little-known fact that you can perform (almost) every pop song ever recorded using just four chords.
- A real-life Batman: This blind man “sees” using echolocation.
- It would be pretty rad to ride an elephant to work where your pet orangutan plays with his dog.
- New Scientist details the eight most amazing commutes in the animal kingdom. (Did you know that the Pacific leatherback turtle swims from Indonesia to Oregon and back every year?)
What could possibly go wrong?
“They that go down to the Sea in Ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.”
Psalm 107
“When I’m playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales.”
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi