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A preview of the Whitney Biennial, which opens in April in NYC.  nytimes.com
The release of two cookbooks, Dinner in One by Melissa Clark and Turkey and the Wolf by Mason Hereford, has been delayed for months because all the copies might be at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (container ship accident).  instagram.com
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As the events of that horrific period in human history slip from living memory, it becomes more important to not forgot what happened and why.  npr.org
"A new study suggests that regular cash payments to parents can speed up brain activity in infants."  vox.com
Seven technologies to watch in 2022. They're almost all biological/genetic: targeted genetic therapies, precise genome manipulation, CRISPR-based diagnostics, etc.  nature.com
CityLab: How the Dutch Delivered a Traffic Safety Revolution. The safety of Dutch and US streets in the 70s was roughly the same but "by 2019, the fatality rate in the Netherlands had plummeted to 34 per million, 70% lower than that in the U.S."  bloomberg.com
Research reveals four factors that may increase chances of Long Covid: the level of coronavirus RNA in the blood early in the infection, presence of autoantibodies, reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus, and Type 2 diabetes.  nytimes.com
A school board in Tennessee has banned Maus, a Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, because of some curse words and a naked cartoon mouse.  theguardian.com
January 26
A photo of Olympic skateboarder Lizzie Armanto was chosen for the cover of Macmillan's Preparation for Calculus textbook.  instagram.com
Wow, Jad Abumrad is stepping away from hosting Radiolab after almost 20 years. One of the absolute best of the OG podcasters.  wnycstudios.org
January 25
The winner ran the world's coldest marathon (held in Yakutia, Siberia) in 3h 22m. The temperature was -53°C.  siberiantimes.com · via @davepell
Kurt Andersen on how the mass deaths of the deliberately unvaccinated spurred by right-wing media and politicians since mid-2021 tracks with the history of human sacrifice in other cultures & eras.  theatlantic.com
"Thinking that endemicity is both mild and inevitable is more than wrong, it is dangerous: it sets humanity up for many more years of disease, including unpredictable waves of outbreaks."  nature.com
All Your Favorite Cartoon Characters Are Black. "Bugs Bunny, black. Scrappy Doo, black. Elmo, definitely black."  vice.com
January 24
The Anne of Green Gables VR Experience. "Marilla says 'Fiddlesticks!' a lot. Matthew doesn’t speak but can grimace, shrug, grunt, nod, or frown."  newyorker.com
The James Webb Space Telescope has arrived safely at its new home nearly 1 million miles from Earth.  blogs.nasa.gov
Super-interesting episode of Invisibilia about the transformation of "the entrenched macho culture of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico" and the Russian social norms upended by Moscow's first McDonald's.  npr.org · via @nikolayvanchev
Great long piece about how the mRNA vaccines were developed, from the discovery of mRNA in 1961 to the development of gene therapy techniques to the push to develop an AIDS vaccine in the 90s.  nytimes.com
January 21
Meat Loaf Was My Softball Coach. "To the scrappy group of girls he was trying to mold into softball players, he was Coach Meat."  deadspin.com
Results of a new study suggest that CBD can treat and slow the transmission of Covid-19. "Our results suggest that CBD can block SARS-CoV-2 infection at early and even later stages of infection."  vice.com
Brian Eno on crypto & NFTs: "right now I mainly see hustlers looking for suckers" and "now artists can become little capitalist assholes as well".  the-crypto-syllabus.com · via @openculture
"There Will Be Another Variant. Here's What the World Can Do Now." But the world probably won't do anything so basically what you're saying is...there's going to be another variant.  nytimes.com
Actress Jessica Chastain: "I'm the first person in my family to not be pregnant when I was 17. [Having access to birth control pills at Planned Parenthood] had a great impact on my life because it gave me choice."  huffpost.com
January 20
On the benefits of deliberate ignorance. "It's a way to maintain our beliefs about ourselves and others, it can be a mechanism for fairness or to remove bias, or a way to avoid overwhelm when bombarded with information."  vice.com
Cat Power's newest album features covers of songs by Iggy Pop, Frank Ocean, Lana Del Rey, and Nick Cave.  open.spotify.com
Thread on the Omicron wave in the US. "Having ~40% of the population infected by a single pathogen in the span of 8 weeks is remarkable and I can't think of an obvious modern precedent."  twitter.com
Substack is providing a safe home for anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, and QAnon influencers to spread their misinformation.  isdglobal.org · via @waxy
January 19
The five levels of hype. Marketing claims > exaggerated claims > utopian futures > magical thinking > othering ("The technology has become a group identity for its boosters.")  johannesklingebiel.de
Play a 9-hole course of mini-golf where each hole is shaped like a gerrymandered voting district. The 8th hole, of comically shaped 4th district in Illinois, is a par 12. (Hole 9 is a par 26 in Maryland.)  washingtonpost.com
Being Bad at Wordle Doesn't Mean You're Dumb. "Simply put, intuiting the perfect word to fit in a sentence requires different knowledge of a language from thinking of a five-letter word starting with A and E as its fourth letter."  lx.com
Fashion editor André Leon Talley has died at the age of 73.  nytimes.com
January 18
The Wirecutter recommends the best pandemic partner for most people. "Licensed carpenters have abilities that are transferrable to home and leisure pursuits, e.g., slicing summer squash and Thai eggplants on a mandoline without cutting off fingertips..."  newyorker.com
Fun thread about a castle that some jackass built in Connecticut. "Suits of armor watching you eat!"  twitter.com
The site is live a day ahead of schedule: "Every home in the U.S. is eligible to order 4 free at-home COVID-19 tests. The tests are completely free." (This is only working for some people. Site should be live for everyone tomorrow.)  covidtests.gov
January 14
My least favorite thing about chocolate chip cookies is the chocolate chips, so this recipe speaks to me: "1. Follow literally any chocolate chip cookie recipe. 2. Omit the step where you add the chocolate chips."  jonnysun.bulletin.com
"Every home in the U.S. can soon order 4 free at-home COVID-19 tests." No shipping costs, ordering begins Jan 19.  covidtests.gov
A list of the best data visualization lists of 2021. Lots of fantastic work in here.  maartenlambrechts.com
A collection of scenes from movies with inaccurate binocular shots (seeing two circles instead of one merged circle).  binocularshot.tumblr.com
bell hooks reviews Beyoncé's Lemonade (2016). "Images of female violence undercut a central message embedded in Lemonade that violence in all its forms, especially the violence of lies and betrayal, hurts."  theguardian.com
In a recent experiment by a Turkish farmer, outfitting cows with VR goggles that simulate being in a pasture upped milk production by 2 gallons per cow per day.  interestingengineering.com
January 12
For the first time in history in 2020, the weight of things produced by humans (concrete, metals, plastic) was greater than the weight of the global living biomass.  visualcapitalist.com
The Physics of Wile E. Coyote's 10 Billion-Volt Electromagnet. I am here for any vigorous fact-checking of cartoon physics.  wired.com
January 11
A list of lesser-known attachment styles, e.g. caffeine attachment, dance-battle attachment, and psychoanalyzing attachment ("you read that one book about attachment styles and now can't stop psychoanalyzing everything and everyone").  newyorker.com
"Maybe crypto is only for people who like playing with money, its mechanics and rules. That's not all there is to the software or to the web. And that's not for me."  seldo.com
Forget Wordle, Letterle is the new hotness.  edjefferson.com
For the first time, water has been detected directly on the surface of the Moon, by the Chang'e 5 lunar lander.  phys.org
January 10
Movies whose opening titles don't finish until well into the movie (The Fugitive: 15 min, No Time to Die: 27 min, Drive My Car: 42 min, The Departed: 20 min).  twitter.com
Let's Settle This. "Internet debates have raged for too long. It's time to settle the big questions so we can move on." Marvel or DC? Is a hot dog a sandwich? Could Jack have fit on the door in Titanic?  neal.fun
An important point related to the transition between epidemic and endemic Covid: if society is still experiencing significant disruptions, we're still in the epidemic phase.  twitter.com
The Insurrection Index is a database of "individuals and organizations in positions of public trust who were involved in the deadly attack on the Capitol" on Jan 6, including elected officials, law enforcement, etc.  insurrectionindex.org
January 2022 »  •  December 2021 »  •  November 2021 »
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