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Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz

There’s an episode of Phineas and Ferb in which the evil plan of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz is to use a small army of giant robotic penguins to freeze the city with their icy breath and then get the citizens hooked on his delicious hot cocoa.

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.

You are the captain of a starship, about to embark on a long journey to a strange planet. You must hire a crew and buy supplies for the long journey ahead, then deal with all sorts of adventures and problems along the way. Space Awesome is a lovely little retro game similar to Oregon Trail * or Zork *. (You can play a complete game in a few minutes.)
The Comprehensive Guide to Building a Realistic R2-D2 Replica
A wall of ice the size of Rhode Island is heading toward a penguin-packed island off Antarctica.
Once again, fans of the Buffalo Bills are the class of the NFL. They’ve raised over $100,000 with a GoFundMe for a diabetes charity supported by Mark Andrews, the Baltimore Ravens player who lost a fumble and dropped what would have been a game-tying catch in his team’s AFC divisional loss to the Bills.
JK Brickworks is a site with instructions for lots of fun LEGO MOCs.
“Wikenigma is an encyclopedia of known unknowns. That is, a listing of ‘scientific and academic questions to which no-one, anywhere, has yet been able to provide a definitive answer’.” – via kottke
Oh, wow. This is awesome. The Public Domain Image Archive is a hand-picked collection of thousands of out-of-copyright works, free to browse, download, and reuse. – via @austinkleon

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.

A seal has been caught on camera trying to have sex with a penguin.

Pen-Pen

And this is Pen-Pen’s web site. No kidding. Really.

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