February 28
From a panel of critics and filmmakers comes The New Black Film Canon, the 75 greatest movies by made Black directors. So much good stuff on here.
How to create a hologram by hand. Before watching this, I didn't really know how holograms worked or how they were made and now I do.
February 27
The MPAA ratings of the 10 top-grossing films from each year from 1980-2022. PG-13 films dominate the domestic box office now.
The Case For Shunning. "People like Scott Adams claim they're being silenced. But what they actually seem to object to is being understood."
Maria Konnikova, who wrote a whole book about con artists, on What Psychology Can Teach Us About George Santos. "Telling lies about yourself can actually make you feel more confident."
February 25
In a recent interview, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong says that the upcoming 4th season of the show will be its last. "You know, there's a promise in the title of 'Succession.' I've never thought this could go on forever."
February 24
The Best Mac Gaming Experience Is a PC Sitting in a Dallas Data Center. My son uses NVIDIA's GeForce NOW streaming gaming service to play Fortnite on his Macbook - it's not as good as on his gaming PC but it's better than you'd think.
February 23
The Surprising Greatness of Jimmy Carter. "The Carter administration prioritized human rights to an extent that no previous president had done, and this was an extraordinarily important thing."
"The distinction between messing with the past, and improving on the present, is a critical one," says Maria Bustillos. "Republish Roald Dahl as he wrote, or don't publish him at all."
The American climate migration has already begun. "More than 3 million Americans lost their homes to climate disasters last year, and a substantial number of those will never make it back to their original properties."
A visualization of which generation controls the Senate. "A middle-of-the-pack Senator in 1947 was maybe 55 or 56-ish years old. Now, the middle seems to be 65 or 66, a whole decade older!"
February 22
Whoa! A24 is auctioning off props from Everything Everywhere All at Once, including the fanny pack, Raccacoonie, the hot dog fingers, and buttplug trophy. Proceeds go to Transgender Law Center, Asian Mental Health Project, and Laundry Workers Center.
A California company is repurposing old electric vehicle batteries for electric grid storage. "Even after a battery no longer meets the needs of a car, however, it can still store enough energy to be useful on the electric grid."
Every decade or so, Warren Beatty slaps together a terrible Dick Tracy TV show for TCM so that he can keep the rights to the character and Disney+ or whoever can't do a reboot/remake. Epic levels of pettiness.
A 4K restoration of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is back in theaters. Go see it if you can - I'm gutted that it's not playing anywhere near me.
February 21
A four-day workweek pilot was so successful most firms say they won't go back. "15% of employees who participated said that 'no amount of money' would convince them to go back to working five days a week."
What a lovely little adventure for Craig Mod: he got a small Japanese city a big mention in the NY Times and ended up getting wholly embraced by the city's residents. "Morioka. Holy smokes."
In Order to Keep Our Editorial Page Completely Balanced, We Are Hiring More Dipshits. "We believe that the truth lies in the middle. The exact mathematical middle. This holds true no matter how far right 'the right' actually is."
February 19
Richard Belzer, who played detective John Munch on Homicide: Life on the Street (and other shows), has died aged 78. "He had lots of health issues, and his last words were, 'Fuck you, motherfucker.'"
February 17
The Onion: It Is Journalism's Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible. "It's about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don't like, then offering misleading evidence..."
A massive collection of travel tips from the vibrant Cup of Jo community. "Always pack a swimsuit."
An Introduction to the World-Renowned Architect Zaha Hadid, "the Queen of the Curve". If you don't know much about Hadid and her work, now's your chance to catch up.
An interview with the cast of Star Trek: TNG on their chance to have a proper ending in season three of Star Trek: Picard. I was lukewarm on catching up on Picard (I've only seen s01) but will after reading this.
"American drivers have a blinding headlight problem." Increasingly prevalent trucks and SUVs are so tall that their lights shine in the faces of mere car drivers. It sucks.
February 16
An Ode to Swearing. "You can establish familiarity, even make friends, with swearing. Start gently."
Interesting shapes cause crazy slow motion fluid dynamics. I am not entirely convinced this isn't computer generated but neither am I convinced it is.
A collection of emulated calculators from The Internet Archive. Alas, they do not have the trusty Casio fx-300H that I all but wore out in college.
"There was a time when shame was a powerful force in American politics. That time is not now." This is the true legacy of Trump: if you're shameless & your group stays united in support, you can do almost anything you set your mind to.
February 15
Blue Origin says they can make solar cells and wire from simulated lunar regolith (the rocks and dust on the Moon's surface). "Oxygen for propulsion and life support is a byproduct."
What's Homelessness Really Like? The NY Times asked 30 people about their experiences of being homeless.
Bill Watterson (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) has a new book coming out, a collaboration with caricaturists John Kascht called The Mysteries. "In a fable for grown-ups...a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities."
A fantastic unofficial archive of Melvyn Bragg's radio show In Our Time, organized by Dewey Decimal category and year. Related episodes, track guests across multiple episodes, reading lists, and more.
February 14
The stock market is broken. "In an ideal world, there would be no continuous trading. A series of auctions would be much more effective at providing investors with the liquidity they need."
Tuning Into Brainwave Rhythms Dramatically Accelerates Learning in Adults. "Participants who received a simple 1.5-second visual cue at their personal brainwave frequency were at least three times faster..."
Review of a gasoline car from the alt-universe where EVs are standard. "Imagine if a steam locomotive had a baby with a machine gun. That's the sort of noise that comes out of a gas car."
Fears about nuclear energy, and nuclear waste in particular, have been overstated. "We should celebrate what humankind can achieve with clean energy: a high quality of life for everybody, without the negative impacts of burning fossil fuels."
Teaser trailer for season three of Ted Lasso. "In this third season of Ted Lasso, the newly-promoted AFC Richmond faces ridicule as media predictions widely peg them as last in the Premier League..."
America's teenagers aren't getting enough sleep because school starts too early. "Despite years of evidence that starting school later promotes better health and improved grades, too few schools have adopted this measure."
February 13
Cars are rewiring our brains to ignore all the bad stuff about driving. "People tend to have a giant blindspot when it comes to certain behaviors associated with driving, whether it's speeding, carbon emissions, traffic crashes..."
10 rules for communicating with Gen Z online. "2. Never text without emojis or text emojis."
These updates about the Twitter API continue to be insulting and full of bullshit. Enthusiasm. Optimal experience. What a bunch of crap.
Interesting how web3-obsessed VCs pretty much don't care about the self-governed decentralization of the Fediverse. "web3 nonsense was never about new paradigms. It was about constructing bags and conscripting bag holders."
George Toma, now 94, is a groundkeeper who has worked on the field for all 57 Super Bowls. "Still hale despite walking with a cane, he suffers from a lifelong case of perfectionism."
TIL that Super Bowl halftime performers get paid union scale for their performance. Their actual pay is in exposure – a SB halftime show usually means a huge jump in album sales, tour ticket sales, etc.
The trailer for All That Breathes, which The Guardian called "a beautiful, meditative film about an Indian bird sanctuary". It's up for an Oscar and is out on HBO Max right now.
Nope, coffee won't give you extra energy. It'll just borrow a bit that you'll pay back later. "While it feels energising, this little caffeine intervention is more a loan of the awake feeling, rather than a creation of any new energy."
February 10
NYPL librarians have discovered that "up to 75 percent of books published before 1964 may now be in the public domain". Rights holders used to have to renew their copyrights; most didn't.
An imperfect list of books like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. "Never before have I read a book and felt as seen across multiple dimensions of my personality."
The Relentless Attack on Trans People Is an Attack on All of Us. "There is no world in which their freedom is suppressed and yours is sustained."
English football club Bristol City has not been awarded a penalty kick for 65 straight matches. "Amateur statisticians have created charts to demonstrate how ludicrous the streak has become."
Nominations for the 2023 Stunt Awards, featuring the best stunt work in films made last year. Top Gun: Maverick, RRR, and Everything Everywhere All at Once are up for multiple awards.
February 9
The always-thoughtful Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: What I Think About LeBron Breaking My NBA Scoring Record. "LeBron makes me love the game again."
The subway in San Francisco still runs on 5 1/4-inch floppies. "Our train control system in the Market Street subway is loaded off of five-and-a-quarter inch floppy drives."
A flowchart of when it's acceptable to turn the heat on in New England. "Chrissakes, just put on a sweater! If you're still cold in an hour (I bet you won't be), then we can talk about touching the dial."
February 8
Billy Mitchell and the telltale joystick. The entertaining saga of the disgraced Donkey Kong champion rolls on; this time, a photo suggests his world record was set using an improper joystick.
The Fleishman Effect. "In a city of Rachels and Libbys, [Fleishman Is in Trouble] has some New York moms worried they're the ones in trouble."
February 7
City of the Rails, a new podcast series about railroads and hobos. "When journalist Danelle Morton's daughter skips town to hop trains, she follows her into the train yard, and across America."
Rereading this classic by Frank Chimero: There is a Horse in the Apple Store. "There is a horse in the Apple Store and no one sees it but me."
This sort of thing is infuriating: Connecticut Parents Arrested for Letting Kids, Ages 7 and 9, Walk to Dunkin' Donuts. Kids need to develop independence away from their parents and "stranger danger" is overblown.
Fodor's No List for 2023, a list of places you probably shouldn't travel (because people are ruining them), e.g. Lake Tahoe, Antarctica, Venice, and Thailand.
Marcin Wichary's Shift Happens, a book about the history of keyboards, is now available for purchase on Kickstarter. Instant buy for me.
Creatures That Don't Conform. "In the woods near her home, Lucy Jones discovers the magic of slime molds and becomes entangled in their fluid, nonbinary way of being."
In this comic, Rueben Bolling dreams up some "non-woke" children's books that won't get teachers charged with felonies in fascist Florida. "The Very Fine Stop & Frisk" is particularly (depressingly) on-point.
How to Paint Like Hayao Miyazaki, a small guide to painting from the animation master. "What Miyazaki makes clear throughout the guide is that he is, proudly, a cheapskate who isn't fussy about tools."
Was not aware that Vermont has the second-highest per capita homeless rate in the US. But VT also "provides temporary shelter to a higher share of its unhoused residents than any other state".
February 6
As part of this profile, David Remnick nabs the first on-the-record interview with Salman Rushdie since last year's attempt on his life. "I've found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens."
Ted Gioia offers 8 techniques for judging someone's character (even, perhaps most usefully, your own). "See how they treat service workers. Their true self comes to the forefront."
You guys, new kind of ice just dropped. The new ice "more closely resembles liquid water than any other known ices" and "may rewrite our understanding of water".
If you missed it (better vid): the Grammys incredible 50 years of hip hop performance (ffwd to ~1:46:00). Like I said, it was thrilling to see all those artists sharing a stage – none of those folks have lost a single step. Wow.
This is the best video I can find of the Grammys incredible 50 years of hip hop performance. It was thrilling to see all those artists sharing a stage – none of those folks have lost a single step. Wow.
Viola Davis achieved EGOT status last night. Emmy: How To Get Away With Murder (actress). Grammy: Finding Me (audiobook recording). Oscar: Fences (actress). Tony: King Hedley II, Fences (both actress).
February 5
February 4
Gene editing company Colossal Biosciences is going to try to bring back the dodo bird. It wouldn't be an exact replacement...more of a dodo-ish pigeon.
February 3
It's so cold in New England right now that "the troposphere could dip below the summit of Mount Washington", which would then be briefly located *in the stratosphere*. WHAT?! This is literally a plot point in The Day After Tomorrow.
The Italian Futurists declared war on pasta on the early 20th century. "Too traditional!" said Filippo Marinetti. "Holding us back!" - so of course they named a pasta sauce after him.
A Eulogy for Gawker. Despite having designed the logo & the initial website (for a pittance, I might add), I do not have fond feelings for Gawker. "Gawker sometimes bullied people, and it sometimes punched down."
February 2
"In academia the Soviet Jew has long been seen as an ideological suitcase ripe for stuffing." Gary Shteyngart reviews a new book about the national ethnic group that's usually been marked more by what it's not than what it is:
What's the most successful Hollywood movie of all time? By gross = Avatar. By inflation-adjusted gross… still Avatar. But if you start to look at other metrics, like return on investment, the data gets a little more surprising…
The Academy loves the gritty, gory new German adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, rewarding it with nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Who hates it? German critics.
February 1