Posts tagged “Star Wars”

It Could Be All Downhill from Here:

Cards Against Humanity Gives You Your Fucking Money Back

  • In any other universe, this would be the biggest story of the month. But in our current dystopian hellscape, it barely made the news: The US Justice Department withheld testimony that POTUS sexually abused a girl when she was 13 or 14. – via @adamjschwarz
  • In any other universe, this would be the second-biggest story of the month. But in our current dystopian hellscape, it barely made the news: The US Secret Service shot and killed an armed man who entered the secure perimeter of Mar-a-Lago.
  • Companies with backbones should be supported.
  • Wired is reporting that a popular right-wing account that called a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes “a masterpiece” appears to be run by a White House staffer.
  • What is clear is that Kansas Republicans have weaponized the government to target a tiny subset of an already small portion of the population to score political points and institutionalize cruelty.
  • Someone referred to VPOTUS as the Pillsbury Proud Boy and that is simply some top-tier comedy right there.
  • An analysis reveals that the social media accounts of Nicki Minaj, which are now advocating for conservative causes, has been amplified by an army of bots and coordinated activity.
  • U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas resisted growing calls from fellow congressional Republicans to resign over a report of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire.
  • More than a dozen states sued the current administration over its rollback of vaccine recommendations for children, calling the move an illegal threat to public health.

To paraphrase FDR’s grandfather:

Not all conservatives are evil men.
But all evil men are conservatives.

  • Italy’s famous Lovers’ Arch collapses into the sea on Valentine’s Day – via my little sister
  • What the? There’s a species of mushroom that makes everyone who trips on it think they’re seeing dozens of tiny humans. As far as we know, it’s the only hallucinogenic that makes everyone have the same hallucinations. – via Kottke
  • A startup called LightBar is paying everyday internet users to probe AI models for outputs that rip off copyrighted film and TV content, then packaging that evidence for studios to use in lawsuits, settlements, or licensing deals.
  • Research suggests that drinking 2 to 3 cups of caffeinated coffee per day (or 1 to 2 cups of tea) is associated with a lower risk of dementia. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
  • Days of Thunder movie posterMy uncle had two small parts in the 1990 Tom Cruise NASCAR film, Days of Thunder, which was filmed partly in Daytona Beach and the surrounding area. He’s at the very beginning of the film for a few seconds as a reporter interviewing one of the racers and he appears again in the fake police officer prank as a Florida Highway Patrolman. He’s the very tall trooper with a mustache. Uncle Dic (Domenic Albanese) was a supreme exaggerator and teller of tall tales, but for some reason I always believed him – because it sounded so authentic – when he told us that while they were waiting to film the scene he and Robert Duvall got in a farting exchange that had Tom Cruise in stitches. (I am also in the movie. You can see me during the celebration after the last race, right behind Cruise’s car. I’m the dumb teenager wearing a leather jacket in Florida.)
  • Take a few minutes to read the fascinating backstory behind the Benjamin Franklin medal that was used in the coin flip at Super Bowl LX and how Topps selected its list of the 75 best baseball cards of all time.
  • The official trailer has been released for Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Winter Olympics

Milan Winter Olympics 2026

  • I don’t know if there is any possible way NBC could do a worse job this Olympics. Several times now I’ve managed to avoid all social media and my email, flipped to NBC to start watching, and caught the end of the local news team spoiling everything I was about to watch. Peacock doesn’t help much, either, as it seems every time I try to watch anything there I see a message telling me the event has just concluded or hasn’t started yet, or I click to watch speed skating and am shown women’s hockey instead. It’s all very frustrating.
  • France’s Viral Ice Dancing Team Has A Dark Backstory
  • Ukrainian Vladyslav Heraskevych is the most important athlete at the Olympics right now
  • SNL always has great sketches for the Olympics. I liked this year’s about the terrified luge racer, but it doesn’t top the All-Drug Olympics or Jason Priestley (with Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman announcing) as the worst ice skater in history.
  • Norwegian skier Atle Lie McGrath, grieving his grandfather’s passing at the start of the Olympics, was so distraught from losing the men’s slalom gold medal that he threw his poles, unstrapped his skis and walked toward the nearby woods to be alone.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things:

  • The highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner.
  • Cardi B slammed the Department of Homeland Security after it mocked her for saying she’d “jump” ICE if they came after her fans during a show.
  • A Florida handyman who received a pardon from POTUS for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been convicted of multiple state charges of child molestation and exposing himself to children
  • A Pennsylvania Olive Garden employee killed himself by plunging his head into a hot deep fryer. (When I was a teenager a broken piece of fryolator equipment caused me to submerge my right arm up to the elbow in 425°F peanut oil. I got second and third degree burns all over my arm and where the oil splashed, and it was easily the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced.)

  • A study of 500 diners found “attractive servers earn approximately $1,261 more per year in tips than unattractive servers.” Mostly because of “female customers tipping attractive females more than unattractive females.” – via 52 things I learned in 2025
  • A recent randomized trial on exercise for cancer patients breaks new ground in showing the life-extending powers of a workout.
  • Scope Creep is an online horror video game about being a project manager.
  • “Time is indeed a cruel mistress.”

    History and the Passing of Time is a brilliant (and short) essay by Daniele Bolelli, host of the History on Fire podcast.

  • This is your annual reminder that the album Sugar & Booze by SNL alum Ana Gasteyer is chock full of fantastic holiday music and you can stream it on Alexa.
  • I have at least eight of these Wyze smart plugs and they are great for scheduling holiday decorations. (I have two Wyze outdoor plugs, too.) This year I bought two more of these battery-to-plug adapters. (They let you convert battery-powered decorations—like snow globes and animated Santas—so you can plug them into the wall.)
  • And you may ask yourself, “How did I get here?” (This is actually a fabulous explanation of how the Internet works and not, sadly, a site about Talking Heads. Coincidentally, I just learned a few days ago that David Byrne was at RISD at the same time that my dad was at PC, and my dad said Byrne used to work in the window of a New York System place grilling hot dogs.)
  • Dad, How do I?This might be the most wholesome thing on YouTube. Dad, How Do I? is a collection of videos teaching you how to do all sorts of basic things. – via Jason
  • It’s hard for me to believe it’s been a decade since the release of The Force Awakens. (I still love BB-8 and was pleasantly surprised to learn he was imagined into existence by J.J. Abrams himself!)
  • In Bolivia a team of paleontologists have discovered and meticulously documented 16,600 footprints left by theropods, the dinosaur group that includes the Tyrannosaurus rex.

  • Egyptologist in Paris Discovers Secret Messages on the Luxor Obelisk: The 3,300-year-old monument has sat in the French capital’s center for almost 200 years, but no one else noticed these strange encryptions.
  • I took the boys to see Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith in the theater on the 20th anniversary of its release. I saw it in Century City (several days before the official release) two decades ago (and then again a few days later!) and am happy to report that also viewing it hundreds of times on a TV did not detract at all from the thrill of seeing it on the big screen. We loved it. It’s wild that the re-release of a twenty-year old movie made north of $42M over the weekend. Related: I love reading about Star Wars movie mistakes.
  • “The choice of wood was completely incomprehensible,” isn’t the best line in this story about a concentration camp violin, but it’s up there.
  • In sport, turning 30 was once the point where pundits started sharpening retirement speeches. But Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, and Lewis Hamilton didn’t just stretch the narrative, they shattered it.
  • Montgomery BurnsBoulevard of Broken Dreams:

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