June 28
Kirstie Perez's intimate photography shows the intensity (pain, joy) of human childbirth. Possibly NSFW.
June 27
Bag on @gruber all you want for being a fanboy, but his analysis of Apple is second-to-none. Loving something can bring greater understanding than indifference or hate. Here's his take on Jony Ive leaving the company.
A lovely short piece by @parul_sehgal on the use of breaking the 4th wall in Fleabag. "She uses the audience to hide from the other characters, to hide from herself."
Cases of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses are exploding in the US and it's getting worse. "Climate change and human sprawl have triggered a pandemic."
June 26
June 25
Why has the price of insulin tripled in the US over the past 10 years? The first three paragraphs of this story are heartbreaking. Jesus Christ, this country and its crap-can "health" "care" "system".
I love reading about restaurant regulars. It makes me miss my regular NYC haunts though...
June 24
Flamin' Hot Cheetos, a multi-billion dollar snack, was invented by a janitor at Frito-Lay. "I was naive. I didn't know you weren't supposed to call the CEO... I didn't know the rules."
In the late 70s, the Lego police officer was a friendly neighborhood beat cop. Now he's a grimacing cop in riot gear.
New piece from Errol Morris: The Pianist and the Lobster. "One of the world's greatest pianists takes the stage. He panics. Where is the plastic lobster? He doesn't know. He only knows he can't play without it."
Nineteenth-Century Novels with Better Birth Control. "Epic life isn't possible in these modern times – but not having ten kids by age thirty brings one a bit closer."
June 23
June 20
June 19
A delightful short interview with 101-year-old Apple enthusiast George Jedenoff (who still skis as well). "When I turned 70, I decided I needed mental exercise [so] I purchased my first computer, a Macintosh Plus."
Today is Juneteenth, a celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. It should be a federal holiday.
June 18
How people live affects their skeletons. For instance, heavy phone & laptop users are more likely to have a spike-like growth at the base of their skulls.
A milestone quietly passed last month: the 20th anniversary of Peter Merholz coining the word "blog". It's fun to wonder how the whole thing would have played out had that coinage not occurred.
June 17
Only four people named in Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire are still living. One of them is Bob Dylan...
An interview with the costume designer from Fleabag. "Fleabag is slightly French, so there's the idea that the French are quite chic and actually Fleabag is quite chic in her own way."
June 14
Touristy Things I Still Do After Five Years of Living in New York. "Put sunset pics on my Instagram Story."
What if All I Want is A Mediocre Life? "What if all the striving for excellence leaves me sad, worn out, depleted. Drained of joy. Am I simply not enough?" I have been feeling this lately.
June 13
Trailer for Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining. It stars Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance decades after the events at the Overlook Hotel.
Recool is Igloo's new biodegradable cooler that they're marketing as an alternative to styrofoam coolers. It's reusable, holds 75 pounds, and can keep ice frozen for 15 hours.
20 Things I've Learned from TV. "12. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth."
June 12
What was used for the letter X in alphabet books before the discovery of X-rays and the xylophone became popular? Mostly the Persian king Xerxes.
June 11
Farhad Manjoo wants to live in Elizabeth Warren's America. "The Massachusetts senator is proposing something radical: a country in which adults discuss serious ideas seriously."
NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media. Is Google making $4.7 billion/year from the news industry? Perhaps not...
June 10
Is Meat Bad for You? Is Meat Unhealthy?
Google Made $4.7 Billion From the News Industry in 2018. "That $4.7 billion is nearly as much as the $5.1 billion brought in by the United States news industry as a whole from digital advertising last year."
June 7
Epic bouncy 3-hour playlist of music from & inspired by Booksmart. (If you haven't seen Booksmart yet, what the hell are you waiting for? It's fricking delightful!)
June 6
June 5
A cache of photos by Weegee was recently discovered in a kitchen cabinet. "It's like discovering 73 unknown poems by Walt Whitman or unearthing a novella by Melville."
June 4
An iOS shortcut called Pulled Over By Police. You activate it during police stops via Siri and it starts recording video. There are options to alert friends and send the video to them or to iCloud/Dropbox.
Min Jin Lee: "I'd read so many novels that, in my mind, I'd sort of been everywhere." I'm reading Lee's Pachinko right now & blazing through it.
Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Fall, just came out — *checks watch* – today! "An eternal afterlife — the Bitworld — is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls."
June 3
June 1
