Posts tagged “television”

• Oh, boy. This is just a fantastic response to being told you can’t teach DEI at a private university. – via @mjsdc.bsky.social
• If you grew up watching Schoolhouse Rock, you likely need a measles booster.
• I am irrationally upset that The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is ending its 54-year run. – via kottke
• The Last of Us returns for season 2 on April 13.
• I have always loved making paper airplanes.
• Some good news: From 2008-2022, cervical precancer rates dropped by a whopping 80% among women aged 20-24. – via YLE
• Sex, Drinking and Dementia: 25 Lawmakers Spill on What Congress Is Really Like is nowhere near as wild and crazy as the headline would have you believe. If anything, the whole piece reads more like, “Aw, shucks! These people are just plain old good regular folks like you n’ me!” Don’t bother.
• In other news:
  • This is how you become a Nazi bar.
  • After Georgia banned abortion, its maternal mortality committee detailed the “preventable” deaths of two women, which led to the state… dismissing all thirty-four members.
  • Democrats who censured Al Green are as clueless as they are feckless. Right now there’s too much appeasement and not enough fighting.

• Your Worst Is Not the Worst, the latest issue of Making It Work from Youngna Park, is powerfully relatable. Trying to explain to young children what’s happening in the world in 2025 is so, so hard.
• Behind the Collapse of Technicolor and Why Its Failure Is Sending Shockwaves Through the VFX Industry
• I quickly fell in love with the Hulu sci-fi series Paradise, starring Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden. Check it out.
• How Pop-Tarts turned an easy-to-forget bowl into one of the college football season’s best moments
• “There is not one Yeezy shoe left,” said Adidas chief financial officer. “It has all been sold and that episode is behind us.”
• And now, the bad news:
  • How “DOGE” Cuts to the IRS Threaten to Cost More Than DOGE Will Ever Save
  • Marco Rubio is often the last to know when foreign policy decisions are made in the White House.
  • A truly troubling read: “We believe this rush to comply is a sign that universities are willing to become an institutional wing of the new segregationists.”
  • POTUS Signs Executive Order Handing U.S. Public Forests Over to Private Logging Industry
  • The Strategic Crypto Swindle: A bitcoin reserve would be a government-backed grift.
  • A leaked memo calls for VA to lay off as many as 83,000 employees this year.

• Who doesn’t love making paper airplanes? – via cassidoo
• A “secret study” revealed that as the Florida insurance market was allegedly “failing” and companies were “losing money”, executives distributed $680M in dividends to shareholders while diverting billions more to affiliate companies, while Ron DeSantis focused on legal reforms making it harder to sue insurers.
• The world’s best chess players burn more calories during a match than NBA players like Steph Curry do in a game. – via Links You’ll Love
• Media
  • I am irrationally excited for the Andor season two premier on April 22, 2025.
  • So far White Lotus S3 has been just as great as the first two seasons.
  • I thought Kristen Bell did a fine job hosting the SAG Awards, but – as much as I love and respect Martin Short – Harrison Ford deserved the Best Actor in a Comedy Series win for his performance in Shrinking.
  • Believe the hype. Flow is a phenomenal movie.
• Good News for People Who Love Bad News:
  • Climate change is shrinking glaciers faster than ever, with 7 trillion tons lost since 2000.
  • Flu hospitalizations this year have already surpassed the last “very bad” flu season in 2017-2018.
  • There’s a real-time Project 2025 Tracker that allows you to see just how much of the nefarious plot to destroy the United States has been successful.

• The SNL 50th-Anniversary special drew almost 15M viewers, becoming NBC’s most-watched primetime entertainment telecast in five years. (For comparison, Super Bowl LIX had over 127M viewers.)
• Republicans have reintroduced the SAVE Act, a bill that could disenfranchise millions of American voters. Feeling helpless? Email Your Senators to Vote NO. Call Your Senators to Vote NO. It’s not nothing, and it really does make a difference.
• “This is a blunt-force budget cut with no clear strategy—gutting programs without considering their impact or even how services could be improved for the American people, often spinning public health into fear and chaos.”
• Related: The USDA is scrambling to rehire fired workers who were involved in the government’s response to the ongoing bird flu outbreak that has devastated egg and poultry farms over the past three years.
• Senate Democrats have the power to block federal contracts to Tesla and SpaceX. It’s the path to pushing [him] out of politics.
• Scratch Huntington Beach, CA off your list of travel destinations. Former Minnesota Vikings player Chris Kluwe was arrested at a city council meeting there after protesting the installation of a disgusting “MAGA” plaque at a local library.
• I graduated a long, long time ago and I still bleed orange and blue, but there’s something more than a little disgusting about the University of Florida begging me for cash when they have a $6B endowment and are annually paying millions of dollars to multiple football coaches they fired years ago. – via me
• Is ‘Zone 2’ the Magic Effort Level for Exercise?
• A new study on more than 17,000 people discovered that too little sex is linked to cardiovascular disease and a higher risk of all-cause mortality.
• Major League Baseball will employ what it calls the automated ball-strike system, or ABS, in a big-league spring training game for the first time this week.
• Dirpy is a handy site that lets you rip YouTube videos to mp3. (e.g. Doechii rapping about anxiety over the Gotye song Somebody That I Used To Know, Taylor Swift performing You Belong with Me and Untouchable on SNL)

• Super Bowl LIX for Dummies
• A Super Bowl Preview, Minus the Football: A look at the musical acts, the famous fans, the commercials and all of the other things surrounding the NFL’s signature event
• 5 Classic Super Bowl Commercials That Still Warm Our Hearts
• The Tunnel Runway: How Sports Became Fashion’s Newest Catwalk
• Kendrick Lamar aims to infuse his Los Angeles hip-hop flavor into New Orleans while staying true to his storytelling roots during Super Bowl halftime performance.
• Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid loves food as much as football.
• Will there be an interception thrown in the Super Bowl? Patrick Mahomes has not thrown an interception in eight straight games. Jalen Hurts has not thrown an interception in nine straight games. – via Tuesday Morning Quarterback
• Why is Tom Brady worth $375 million to Fox?
• Football’s Hidden Fanbase: How the NFL is Winning Over Women
• Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie reveals how Andy Reid’s legacy led to Nick Sirianni hiring.
• “To listen to a Toni Braxton song about a beautiful man is to realize that she is singing about Jalen Hurts. You can’t be mad about it because it’s never been fair: You are not Jalen Hurts, and he always has been.”
• Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi took on the role of a coach as he trained Parsnip, a 4-month-old puppy, to make his debut at Puppy Bowl XXI.
• If Patrick Mahomes and his Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl, the debate is over. Mahomes would become the greatest playoff quarterback of all time.
• Bonus: The NCAA has a good breakdown of where Super Bowl LIX players attended college.

• More good news for those looking to exit Meta’s social app ecosystem in favor of a more open alternative: An independent developer is building a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. – via phillewis
• Misinformation isn’t random. It’s strategic. Misinformation is not a general condition; It is driven by populist radical right parties. When Do Parties Lie? Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries – via pettertornberg
• “The entire health insurance business model is built on scamming customers and denying the coverage they pay premiums for. Health insurance is not healthcare. It’s an unnecessary middleman that preys on the sick, and only exists because lobbyists pay off our politicians.” – via darrigomelanie
• “Is it like the old Playboy Magazine? You have essays there by the modern day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?” – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, asking if people visit Pornhub to read articles during a hearing about minors having access to pornography. – via crooked media
• You can watch the three (newer) seasons of The Animaniacs on Disney+ / Hulu, so why are you wasting your time reading this when you could be doing that instead? Five stars. Highly recommend. (The original five seasons are available on Amazon Prime and AppleTV.)
• In the US, table saws are responsible for around 4,300 amputations per year. All other products are responsible for 3,600 amputations per year combined. – via Tom Whitwell
• I have no idea how, when, or why I subscribed to the Making It Work newsletter from Youngna Park, but I’m always happy when it lands in my inbox. This week’s issue, which includes some beautiful writing about the horrific L.A. wildfires, was exceptional.

• How to Make the World’s Rarest Pasta – via kottke
• The requirement that homes be built at least 21 meters apart in parts of the UK dates back to a 1902 regulation drafted by two men who determined this was closest they could be to each other before they could see the other’s nipples through their shirts. – via Kent Hendricks
• The Lions–Vikings regular season finale had three times as many viewers as the Golden Globes. – via TMQ
• Bartosz Ciechanowski occasionally publishes incredibly detailed articles on fascinating topics. Last month he tackled the moon and – hoo boy! – this is a deep dive on our nearest celestial neighbor. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter
• I would probably finally switch completely from Firefox to Chrome if it wasn’t for Chrome’s egregious, unforgivable, inexcusable insistence on stealing focus from other apps on launch. – via bluesky
• “I can’t believe the billionaires are unanimously siding with the fascists! This has only happened every possible time throughout history so I am truly stunned!” – via @fousheezy
• “I don’t think people understand how devastating the end of net neutrality, and consumer protections around internet connectivity, are going to be.” – via @anildash
• Animals as Chemical Factories: Horses are bled for antivenom, crabs are drained for endotoxin tests, and silkworms are boiled for silk. Science can now replace these practices with synthetic alternatives, but we need to find ways to scale them.

• Just a few days ago I said Shrinking was the best show on TV right now. Obviously I didn’t think I needed to include an “except for Bluey“ disclaimer, because certainly everyone agrees Bluey might well be the best show in the history of television. And they’re working on a Bluey movie?!
• “A well-placed swear word triggers emotional and physiological arousal, like an adrenaline boost, where your heart beats faster, and your sympathetic nervous system is given a charge, which enhances focus and energy just enough to help you perform better.” – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club (threads / bluesky)
• “As we continue to face adversity in our daily lives, I’m reminded of the power of the deep breath and the walk in the woods, the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system.” – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter from Jodi Ettenberg (threads / bluesky)
• I’m very frustrated that we haven’t made time to watch the new Disney+ Star Wars series Skeleton Crew yet. Winter break starts this weekend so I imagine big bowls of popcorn and a few hours—in between football games—glued to the TV. (I’m worried that shareholders will look at the streaming numbers and decide it’s not worth the cost to keep producing Star Wars content.)
• Sotheby’s just auctioned off a 115-pound, two-foot-tall slab of marble that, around a millennia and a half ago, was inscribed with the Ten Commandments. – via crooked
• You are cutting it close if you haven’t gotten all your Christmas and/or Hanukkah shopping done yet. Might I suggest a plain white bolt t from Aviator Nation? They are crazy comfortable, cozy, stylish, and on sale right now. (Or you could buy someone an Apple App Store gift card and tell them to use it to download my handy cocktail recipe app!)
• Health department medical detectives find 84% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable.
• The latest issue of Simple Apple Tutorials from Gannon Nordberg is a killer iPhone Notification Detox Guide.
• Bad news for people who hate good news:
  • 93% of kindergarteners in the U.S. are up to date on their childhood vaccines. – via Your Local Epidemiologist
  • HPV vaccines have been linked to a 62% drop in cervical cancer deaths in young women over the last decade. – via kottke

• Reminder that Breaking Bad was a TV show about the U.S. healthcare system. – via Melanie D’Arrigo (threads / bluesky)
• I’m confused by the many complaints I’ve seen online recently about the streaming quality of NFL games on Amazon Prime. I have AT&T Gigabit fiber at home and for regular TV use the DirecTVStream app embedded in my Samsung TV. If I want to watch something on Amazon Prime, I use their app instead, also baked into the TV software. I honestly think the image quality of the Amazon NFL games beats what I see on NBC, CBS, FOX, and ESPN on DirecTVStream most of the time, which seems crazy to me. You’d think AT&T would either boost DirecTVStream bandwidth (since they own them) or somehow hamstring the Prime bandwidth. But that’s not the case at all.
• Anyway. This joke about berry packaging made me laugh out loud. – via Matt Margolis (threads / bluesky)
• I am a big fan of Wyze and have their front door deadbolt, doorbell camera, several security cameras, two outdoor plugs (for controlling Christmas lights), a bathroom scale, and at least a half dozen WiFi outlets around the house. They’re great.
• For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
• Threes is the iOS game I’ve played most frequently over the last decade. According to its lovely Statistics page, I’ve played it 7,838 times and my high score is 90,147.
• “Learning from other people’s mistakes is a lot less painful than learning from your own.” – via Tim Harford
• Feel-good story of the day? Giant Spoon Taken From Arizona Dairy Queen Found Thanks To Pokemon Go – via @pourmecoffee
• I’ve returned to this article a dozen times since he published it. If you’re working with iOS widget development, check out Launching iOS Apps with a Custom URL Scheme

If you want to add a “Share on Bluesky” hyperlink to your WordPress theme, this is the snippet I’m using. Also note that my theme requires FontAwesome for the bluesky icon.

<span class="label label-primary nobreak me-3"><a target="_blank" href="https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=<?php echo urlencode( get_the_title() ); ?>%0A%0A<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Share on Bluesky" rel="noreferrer"><i class="fa-brands fa-bluesky"></i></a></span>


• Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premieres December 3^rd on Disney+ Wow. The trailer looks amazing.
• If you know anyone with an iPhone — and, duh, of course you do — one of these MagSafe power bricks is a great gift idea.
• Superman Is Still America’s Greatest Superhero: We need Christopher Reeve now more than ever.
• How Selling $160 Sweatpants Turned a SoCal Surfer into One of America’s Richest Women – via @forbes
• Forget Matt Gaetz. Merrick Garland Is America’s Worst Attorney General. – via @usnews
• I would rather watch three straight hours of Progressive commercials than another Avatar movie.
• Pamela Hayden, the voice behind Milhouse Van Houten, will retire from The Simpsons after 35 years. – via @dailycosmicmarvel
• It’s always been somewhat puzzling that Donald Duck chooses to use an airplane to fly and a boat when he’s in the water. I don’t have a problem with his insistence on eschewing pants. But I find it deeply, deeply disturbing that he carves a Thanksgiving turkey for his family. – via me
• Here’s everything you need to know about the new 12-team college football playoff format.