December 31
"Bring back personal blogging." I mean, absolutely. But...this is also the 78th time I've read this exact article since 2007 and I'm beginning to think it's not going to happen.
December 30
TIL that Congress passed the Clean Water Act over Nixon's veto. "It has proved to be one of the most transformative environmental laws ever enacted."
The Great News Quiz of 2022. How much of what happened this year do you remember correctly?
Yet another soft scrambled egg recipe from Kenji López-Alt. "You slowly stream beaten eggs into simmering heavy cream, which results in soft ribbons coated in a custardy sauce..."
New protest tactic for activists in authoritarian countries: blank sheets of paper. "It is a passive-aggressive protest against censorship, a sarcastic performance of compliance that signals defiance."
From Stereogum's Tom Breihan, reviews of every #1 single in the history of Billboard's Hot 100, starting in 1958. He's currently up to mid-2005.
December 29
Austin Kleon's year in reading for 2022. I also loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. "I'm reminded that all bestsellers have this in common: they are page-turners, they make you want to turn the page."
December 28
The company that invented MSG is making big bucks selling an MSG-byproduct to semiconductor companies. "More than 90% of personal computers have ABF insulating their processors."
Ridley Scott is doing Gladiator 2? "The sequel will follow Lucius (son of Lucilla and the nephew of Joaquin Phoenix's villainous Commodus)."
December 22
Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things. The history of the internet and social media, in a nutshell: "Stop benefitting from the internet, it's not for you to enjoy, it's for us to use to extract money from you."
You Don't Know Africa, a series of quizzes about African geography, countries, and flags. Completely embarrassed by how poorly I did on these.
Great interactive visualization of how our economy inevitably creates super-rich people. "This is the crux of the Yard-sale model. In a free market, one person ends up with all of the wealth – completely by chance."
A Parent's Typical Day, as Envisioned by My Child's Preschool. "Shame on me for not reading the twelve-page weekly emails more carefully."
December 21
What It Feels Like When Fascism Starts. An interesting review of a 1933 novel written about a Jewish family living in Nazi Germany. "Identifying that point at which all is lost is not so easy."
Annoyed With Clear, the Company That Fast-Tracks Its Customers Through Airports? "CLEAR is simply a way to pay extra to jump the queue accessing a federally mandated process." I hate it.
How Emiliano Martínez dominated the penalty area during the World Cup final. "He can be warm & lovely at first, which makes people drop their guard, leaving them more vulnerable... This ambiguity is in itself abusive and part of his strategy."
December 20
Archaeologists Uncover Nearly 170 Nazca Lines Dating Back About 2,000 Years in Peru. "Spotted in aerial photos captured by drones, the drawings feature myriad creatures like birds, snakes, orcas, and people likely created between 100 B.C. and 300 A.D."
December 19
This list of The 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years includes books by Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Michael Chabon, and Rachel Kushner. Good discussion about each pick too.
Nintendo has added golf to Switch Sports. Great to get out on the virtual links again.
Whoa, this rainbow has at least five distinct bands! "Supernumerary rainbows only form when falling water droplets are all nearly the same size and typically less than a millimeter across."
Washing machine techno. The washer sets the beat and the lads play along with it.
December 18
Totally, totally pathetic. Twitter is no longer allowing promotion of "prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms" like Instagram, Mastodon, Facebook, Post, etc. Free speech!
The Genius of Lionel Messi Just Walking Around. "Lionel Messi is soccer's great ambler. For him, walking is tantamount to seeing and thinking."
December 16
What?! Today I learned that the Pointer Sisters sang Sesame Street's "Pinball Countdown" song. "One two three four five...six seven eight nine ten...eleven twelve."
We don't really know what the key ingredient in the smallpox vaccine is or where it originated. It's not weakened smallpox, cowpox, or monkeypox. Best guess is it originated from horsepox.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. New book by David Grann? Instant preorder.
December 15
Movemap. Adjust financial, geographical, and demographic filters to see where you might want to move to in the US. There is also an "avoid hurricanes" toggle.
The Shitty Technology Adoption Curve. "Successful shitty tech rollouts start with people you can abuse with impunity (prisoners, kids, migrants, etc) and then work their way up the privilege gradient."
The Biden administration has restarted its free at-home Covid test program. Each household can order 4 free tests starting today through the USPS; I just ordered mine.
December 14
Mike Masnick notes Twitter's new policy about not sharing live location info. Ban first, then change the rules. Got it.
Parentification: "when parents rely on their child to tend to them indefinitely without sufficient reciprocity". One parentified child recalled having "a finely tuned emotional radar that was always scanning for who needed what and when".
I just don't like the way Fox announcers have chosen to pronounce "Qatar", even after reading this article. It's not that hard to get close to the actual pronunciation w/o completely Alex Trebeking it.
How Qatar built stadiums with forced labor. The kafala system "ties workers to their sponsors [which] often gives sponsors almost total control of migrant workers' employment and immigration status."
What Happens to the Migrant Workers Who Built the World Cup? "After enduring at times exploitative or dangerous conditions, many workers said they remained stuck in poverty and debt, with no choice but to continue to work abroad, whatever the risks."
The duality of the Respect for Marriage Act. Progressives see it as a "first step to protect marriage equality" while conservatives see it as "codifying permission for religious people to discriminate against L.G.B.T. people".
The 30 Greatest Films Ever Made: A Video Essay. Film enthusiast Lewis Bond picks his 30 favorite films and explains, at length, why he chose each one.
The trailer for 65, starring Adam Driver. "After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills (Adam Driver) quickly discovers he's actually stranded on Earth...65 million years ago." Sort of a Jurassic Park / Planet of the Apes remix?
The Flickr Foundation is a new nonprofit organization "dedicated to keeping the wonderful Flickr collection around for 100 years". The Flickr Commons is one of the best things on the internet and I'm glad they're building on it.
So weird that HBO Max is removing shows (like Westworld?!) to, uh, "make room" for other things? It's a digital service – it has infinite room?
December 13
A good piece in Nature about today's nuclear fusion breakthrough at the US National Ignition Facility. "Although positive news, this result is still a long way from the actual energy gain required for the production of electricity."
Experience: a stranger secretly lived in my home. "As I lay in the [bath], I noticed the attic hatch was open. Suddenly, everything slowed way down."
"The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow." Mmm, pineappley.
For his latest film Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan and his crew recreated the first atomic test without using computer graphics. I'm so looking forward to seeing this.
A NY Times trend piece on married couples living apart. One woman says it was useful to "remember who I am by myself, remember what I like doing by myself".
Major Fusion Energy Breakthrough to Be Announced by Scientists. Reports are that the energy output in a recent experiment exceeded the input. Announcement is at 10am today; let's hope this is actually something.
December 12
US Healthcare. "American healthcare is split into 2 piles: 1. Face holes. 2. Not face holes."
MAR1D, a 1-dimensional version of Super Mario Bros., aka you see the in-game action as Mario would see it, flattened into a single dimension. Sort of a video game version of Edwin Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.
The world's timekeepers are getting rid of the leap second in favor of pure atomic time. "It will take a few thousand years for atomic time to diverge as much as an hour from Earth time."
December 10
I Believe That Marriage Is a Sacred Union. "I believe that marriage is a lasting partnership between one person without health insurance and one person who gets pretty good coverage through work."
December 9
Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing, is coming out with a new book called Saving Time. "Our daily experience, dominated by the corporate clock, is destroying us. It wasn't built for people, it was built for profit."
December 8
A lovely bit of writing by Barney Ronay about Lionel Messi and Argentina at the World Cup. "Lionel Messi doesn't so much trap the ball or kill it but lets it come and nestle, falling asleep on his toe like a fond old cat."
kottke[dot]org posts and links are now available on Mastodon! Come follow the site over there if you'd like.
The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie are doing a joint US tour this year. Big day for Gen X nostalgia; first Tracy Flick returns and now this.
Reese Witherspoon will return as Tracy Flick in a sequel to Election directed by Alexander Payne. YES YES YES.
The Seven Levels of Busy, from Not Busy ("my schedule is wide open. I can choose infinite paths") to Unsustainable ("eating and other necessities are frequently neglected").
In the 3rd Q, the 5 biggest US banks paid out a paltry 0.4% interest on savings accounts while the 5 highest-yielding banks paid 2.14%. I switched to a higher yield bank in 2019 and they've raised the interest rate ~20 times in 9 mo; it's 2.6% rn.
December 7
More on blower door tests, which measure air leakage from buildings. "It has been estimated that based on standard building practices, air leakage accounts for about 1/3 of the total heat loss of a home."
A Modern Pyramid of Energy Conservation: the recommended order of steps to upgrade your home for energy efficiency. #1 thing? Employ "The Red Door of Truth" (aka the blower door test) to see where air is leaking in/out of your house.
Mari Andrew on the difference between Solitude Food, Lonely Food, and Sad Food. "Few Solitude Foods are better than a bucket of popcorn to oneself in the back of a movie theater on a rainy weekday afternoon."
December 6
A site that rates apples. The SweeTango gets a 93/100 and is called "the best apple ever to grace the world of Gods and men".
The making of New York magazine's "Reasons to Love New York" cover. The moment I saw the image, I knew it was @PelleCass (who I featured back in 2018); fun to see how he pulled it off.
Becoming Athletic In My 50s. "Specifically, I felt the pleasure of figuring out what my body — and what my willpower — was capable of."
December 5
Middlemarch and Me by @Rebeccamead_NYC. I read Middlemarch for the first time over the summer and loved it.
You Are Not Expected to Understand This: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World. The book includes code for the popup ad, the bitcoin paper, the Apollo 11 LM (of 1202 error fame), and the first computer worm.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was published 42 years ago in the US. Here, a number of public figures reflect on the book series and its impact.
The climate case against Elon Musk. In the plus column: EVs, solar, and batteries. In the minus column: investing in car infrastructure, massively polluting rockets, and supporting Republicans.
Interview with @doctorow in the New Yorker. "My best hope for the next three years is that we win against Big Tech, then we take on Big Everything Else."
Craig Mod's Kissa by Kissa is on its 4th edition. "This book is the most beautiful object I own, it might be too perfect."
Lovely thread of bestselling authors commiserating with debut novelist Chelsea Banning after only 2 people came to her author signing event. Min Jin Lee (Pachinko): "I did a book reading where only my husband's cousin showed up. One person."
The 2022 Architecture and Design Awards, compiled by @langealexandra, @marklamster, and @cmonstah. "The new LaGuardia is....not terrible? Maybe even good?"
Have reported on this before but here's a reminder: the US is almost unique among rich nations in that roadway deaths are rising. "On empty pandemic roads, it was easy to see exactly what...the US had built: wide roads...that seemed to invite speeding."
December 4
December 2
Why the Stick Shift Might Actually Survive the Electric Revolution. I own an EV and can drive stick, but I do not miss the manual transmission.
It would seem, as of Nov 28, that the official Kindle version of Robert Caro's The Power Broker is available. A bargain at $10.
I'm Thrilled to Announce That Nothing Is Going On with Me. "Personally, my life revolves around the half-dozen things that comfort me, and nothing more." Saaaaaame.
End-Times Tourism in the Land of Glaciers. "Uncertainty, if not grief, is now part of the Alaska traveler's experience."
December 1
The trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Ok fine I will watch one more Indy movie.
Life, Death, and Total Football. "Soccer that is only about results is boring."
Really interesting piece about Tár by Tavi Gevinson. "What does power look like, feel like, not only within an institution but within an individual psyche?"
Women tell their abortion stories on You're Wrong About. Affecting and compelling – listen to this if somehow you don't know why women choose to have abortions or what it means to them and their lives.
Advice from Ted Gioia on effective public speaking. "By the way, the three best kinds of speakers to study are comedians, preachers, and TV wrestlers. Politicians are surprisingly bad at this kind of stuff."
A Yahoo-style directory of blogs for your reading pleasure. I love that @kottke is in the "Uncategorizable" category – will wear that like a badge of honor.