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The latest links
The Humbling Tyranny Of The Photos Our Kids Take Of Us. "These pictures remind us that while we study our children, they study us back."
I will also never tire of looking at photos of waves crashing on shore - these from Kevin Krautgartner of O'ahu's Banzai Pipeline just exude power and complexity.
A Map of Places in the US with the Same Name. "We calculated what place someone is most likely referring to, depending on where they are." For instance, in most of the country, when you say "Springfield", people think "Springfield, MA".
Poverty, By America is a new book by Matthew Desmond in which he argues that a major cause of poverty in the US is because "affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor". Here's a review in The Atlantic.
A collection of recent photos taken from the International Space Station. I will never get tired of looking at photos of Earth taken from space.
Zoos being closed to visitors during the pandemic gave scientists the opportunity to study how visitor interactions benefitted or harmed the welfare of the animals.
March 21
Oh man, Amazon is shuttering DPReview, effective early next month. I spent a lottttt of time on this site before my phone camera got too good to think about carrying something else.
US maternal mortality is more than 10 times higher than in Australia. "What do we make of a nation that has made giving birth so dangerous - yet forces more and more women to do it?"
How Loneliness Reshapes the Brain. Lonely people "tend to end up with a more negative spin on whatever information they receive — facial expressions, texting, whatever — and that drives them even deeper into this loneliness pit."
Essential Japanese Cinema: A Journey Through 50 of Japan's Beautiful, Often Bizarre Films.
This year in Serious Eats' Starch Madness bracket, rice dishes from around the world go grain-to-grain. Some personal faves: risotto, halal cart chicken & rice, sushi rice, arancini, and broken rice.
Photos of houses completely buried by snow in Mammoth Lakes, CA. If you haven't been following, more than 65 feet of snow has fallen in the area this winter.
Will Sharpe (Ethan from White Lotus s02) will direct the film adaptation of Michelle Zauner's Crying in H Mart, which I read last summer and loved.
The latest IPCC report on the climate crisis says it's the last chance for humanity to keep warming under the critical 1.5°C threshold - "only swift and drastic action can avert irrevocable damage to world".
March 20
Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu produced the first experimental evidence of quantum entanglement in 1949 but faced both sexism and racism in gaining recognition for this and her other achievements. Many scientists believe she should have won a Nobel.
This is lovely: a keyboard visualization of an instrumental piece from Howl's Moving Castle. The piece is instantly recognizable as Studio Ghibli - Joe Hisaishi "composed the music for nearly all of Ghibli's films".
2023 anti-trans bills tracker. "We track legislation that seeks to block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition, and the right to publicly exist."
America's Test Kitchen: you can use your SodaStream to double the life of your salad greens. Carbon dioxide "slows the respiration process of the greens and in turn slows the process of ripening and wilting".
Everything Is Temporary. One man stands alone against the flow of time.
Cargo e-bikes are selling like hotcakes now. "It feels as if the industry and the government have simultaneously woken up to the enormous potential of cargo e-bikes to replace car trips and improve the environment."
Kenji López-Alt Spent 5 Months Studying Chicago Thin-Crust Pizza. Here's What He Learned. "Among his many revelations: a game-changing technique for yielding that crisp crust at home."
This weekend, 41-year-old Zlatan Ibrahimovic became the oldest goal scorer in Serie A history. He could have retired after a serious knee injury last year, but he did surgery & rehab and now he's back scoring goals. Incredible.
March 18
Museums Rename Artworks and Artists as Ukrainian, Not Russian. "Museums in the United States and Europe are complicit in its colonization, the critics argue, if they don't honor the artistic contributions of Ukrainians."
Deadline's chief film critic: "Not only have I never played the iconic '80s video game Tetris, I had never heard of it before encountering this new film Tetris..." How is this even possible?!
March 17
So this is a bit of a mind-bender: the release of Tetris is closer to the World War II than it is to today. WTAF?
The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum recently announced the establishment of a digital curatorial department, "which will collect and care for born-digital work".
Lance Reddick, who played Cedric Daniels on The Wire, has died at the age of 60.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine, namely the forced deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
The FCC is ordering phone companies to block scam text messages. Carriers must block texts from "invalid, unallocated, or unused numbers" and those from numbers that never send text messages. Finally!
Here's the new spacesuit that astronauts will wear when they return to the Moon. The prototype is dark gray but the actual suits will be white for thermal reasons.
March 16
The Media Better Be Smart and Get Wise to DeSantis' Bad-Faith Press Operation. "If a reporter can't recognize propaganda and call it out when he sees it, then what's even the point?"
Alex Hollender led the recent redesign of Wikipedia and wrote up some notes on the project and process. "We felt confident that if we gave it some overdue attention we could make it better for both reader and editors."
From the University of Colorado Boulder, a five-week mini-course on web scraping. The syllabus and code samples are available on Github.
Interesting class from Ana Marie Cox that sounds like part writing workshop, part therapy. The Third Story Workshop is "designed to help people reclaim the narrative of their lives in an essay they can share with others".
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, Jelani Cobb contrasts the central place it occupies in our culture with "the disparities of health, health care, and longevity" in America's Black and brown communities.
Most rare book librarians don't wear special white gloves when handling old books and manuscripts. "The best way to handle a rare book is with clean hands and caution."
The American Kennel Club: the most popular purebred dog in the US in 2022 was the French Bulldog. "This ends the Labrador Retriever's 31-year reign as the most popular dog breed in America."
From Wikipedia, a list of extraterrestrial volcanoes - a tally of "active, dormant, and extinct volcanoes located beyond planet Earth".
Recent analysis of images from the early-90s Magellan mission has revealed signs of active volcanism on Venus.
We're getting (at least) two more seasons of The Last of Us TV series because the "more expansive" Part II of the video game will be split into two TV seasons.
March 15
Loving these articles about the secrets of successful people. "Winners Wake Up at 4:30 a.m.: The Science of How We Can All Become Rich by Being Less Pathetic."
On the difficulty of ranking Steven Spielberg's movies (also includes several rankings of his movies). "Spielberg has dipped into every genre, flexed every cinematic muscle, and made too many classics for too many varying tastes."
A hard truth for websites who want people to log in before they can read their free content: "Not reading is easier than reading — and *way easier* than logging in."
Nebraska state senator Machaela Cavanaugh is 3 weeks into filibustering an anti-trans bill. "If this Legislature collectively decides that legislating hate against children is our priority, then I am going to make it...painful for everyone."
Cony Hawk, Pro Skater. This traffic cone is a way better skater than I'll ever be and I'm not even mad about it.
50 Years Later, We're Still Living in the Xerox Alto's World. "Using it feels so familiar and natural that it’s sometimes difficult to appreciate just how extraordinary, how different it was when it first appeared."
Almost every letter in English speech can be silent, except for possibly V. "The letter E quietly resides in the middle of the word vegetable."
It Took Me Nearly 40 Years To Stop Resenting Ke Huy Quan. "I blamed Quan, Gedde Watanabe, Pat Morita, and any number of other Asian-American actors for perpetuating these constructed stereotypes."
March 14
Teaser trailer for season two of The Bear. Always interesting to see if the lightning-in-a-bottle of shows like this can carry over into a second season.
OpenAI has introduced their GPT-4 language model. You can try it out right now if you're a ChatGPT Plus user. "GPT-4 is more reliable, creative, and able to handle much more nuanced instructions than GPT-3.5."