A list of advice for defeating the authoritarian threat. “Authoritarians want you to feel powerless because it makes their work easier. Courage, faith, and optimism are essential. Fascism feeds on cynicism and pessimism. Starve it.”
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Depictions of children dying were rife in 19th century literature, mirroring high child mortality levels in real life. “People who want to dismantle a century of resolute public health measures, like vaccination, invite those horrors to return.”
An online-only conversation from the British Library with Lauren Groff about her novel Matrix, Marie de France, and “violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in the medieval world”. Jan 14, £10.
Fact-Checking the Spiciness of ‘Hot Ones’ Sauces
The team at Howtown closed out 2024 by investigating the spice level (i.e. the Scoville ratings) of the lineup of hot sauces on the popular YouTube interview series Hot Ones while also teaching us about how hot peppers evolved and how pepper spininess is measured. (Spoiler: the sauces are not as hot as advertised.)
Cheers to Adam Cole for Peter Pipering this particular passage:
By picking peppers, they could pinpoint the precise percentage of each patch that was pungent, and some patches were more pungent than others.
Perfect.
Huh, there’s going to be a Blade Runner 2099 TV series. It stars Michelle Yeoh & Hunter Schafer and will premiere at some point on Amazon Prime.
Say Nothing TV Series
Somehow I missed that Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent book on The Troubles, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, has been turned into a 9-part TV series (now available on Hulu in the US & on Disney+ elsewhere).
Spanning four decades, the series opens with the shocking disappearance of Jean McConville, a single mother of ten who was abducted from her home in 1972 and never seen alive again.
Telling the story of various Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, Say Nothing explores the extremes some people will go to in the name of their beliefs, the way a deeply divided society can suddenly tip over into armed conflict, the long shadow of radical violence for all affected, and the emotional and psychological costs of a code of silence.
It’s gotten good reviews and has also attracted at least one lawsuit from one of the people depicted in it.
Veteran Republican Marian Price intends to sue Disney+ after she was depicted shooting Jean McConville in one of the most notorious murders of the Troubles, a law firm has said.
Mrs McConville was abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA in 1972, becoming one of the disappeared.
Her body was eventually found more than 30 years later at a beach in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland.
Ms Price, 70, also known by her married name Marian McGlinchey, has denied any involvement.
The 20 Best Podcasts of 2024, including podcasts about the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, Stevie Wonder, the NYPD, and guns.
Last week, Alessandro Slebir rode one of the largest waves ever surfed, a 100-ft monster at Mavericks.
Embroidery Journaling
Since January 2020, Sophie O’Neill has been keeping an embroidery journal. Each day, she sews an “icon” to represent that day’s events and memories.
“I embroider an icon every day,” Sophie says. “So at the end of this year, I’ll have 366 icons.”
The 29-year-old has now embroidered more than 1,800 one-pence-coin-sized symbols to represent every stage of her life over the past five years.
A self-taught sewer, she picked up the craft in 2019 when looking for a new hobby.
But as for her embroidery journal, Sophie said: “I had just started a new job and I thought it would be a really cool way to track everything I learned throughout the year.”
Little did she know, several years later, she would have embroidered icons to document moving from California to Glasgow, starting her business and buying a house, among others.
O’Neill also keeps track of the books she reads by filling in an embroidered bookshelf. You can keep up with her activities on The Stir-Crazy Crafter and Instagram. If you’d like to try your hand at embroidery journaling, O’Neill sells a kit on Etsy.
Mapping Police Violence: “Police killed more people in 2024 than any year in more than a decade.” And: “Black people were 30% of those killed by police in 2024 despite being only 13% of the population.”
The top 10 videos shared by The Kid Should See This in 2024. Includes how wire photos worked in 1937 and “living in a tree for 3 weeks to film 10 million bats”.
Happy Public Domain Day!
Yesterday was Public Domain Day and Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has the scoop on what works entered the public domain in the US on January 1, 2025. They include:
- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
- Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (as serialized in Black Mask magazine)
- Agatha Christie, Seven Dials Mystery
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (only the original German version, Briefe an einen jungen Dichter)
- A dozen more Mickey Mouse animations (including Mickey’s first talking appearance in The Karnival Kid)
- The Cocoanuts, directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santley (the first Marx Brothers feature film)
- The Skeleton Dance, directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks (the first Silly Symphony short from Disney)
- Spite Marriage, directed by Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton (Keaton’s final silent feature)
- E. C. Segar, Popeye (in “Gobs of Work” from the Thimble Theatre comic strip)
- Hergé (Georges Remi), Tintin (in “Les Aventures de Tintin” from the magazine Le Petit Vingtième)
- Singin’ in the Rain, lyrics by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown
- Ain’t Misbehavin’, lyrics by Andy Paul Razaf, music by Thomas W. (“Fats”) Waller & Harry Brooks (from the musical Hot Chocolates)
- An American in Paris, George Gershwin
- Rhapsody in Blue, recorded by George Gershwin
The Internet Archive is hosting several of the newly sprung works, free for you to remix, reuse, misuse, and generally do whatever you would like with. Huzzah!
Oh, and here’s why the public domain matters:
The public domain is also a wellspring for creativity. You could think of it as the yin to copyright’s yang. Copyright law gives authors important rights that encourage creativity and distribution — this is a very good thing. But the United States Constitution requires that those rights last only for a “limited time,” so that when they expire, works go into the public domain, where future authors can legally build on the past — reimagining the books, making them into films, adapting the songs and movies. That’s a good thing too! It is part of copyright’s ecosystem. The point of copyright is to promote creativity, and the public domain plays a central role in doing so.
How does the public domain feed creativity? Here are just two examples from 2024. You may have enjoyed the film Wicked in 2024. Like many of its predecessors, it is based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz books, and it offers origin stories for the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good. From the literary realm, Percival Everett’s 2024 novel James reimagines Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, Huckleberry’s friend who is an escaped slave. The novel won the 2024 National Book Award and Kirkus Prize and was a finalist for the Booker Prize. As summed up by a New York Times review: “‘Huck Finn’ Is a Masterpiece. This Retelling Just Might Be, Too.” Mark Twain famously wanted copyright to last forever — if he had his wish, would his heirs have sued Everett? Thankfully, we did not have to find out, and Everett could publish James without such litigation.
Apple TV+ is going to be free this weekend for non-subscribers. You can stream Silo, Severance, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, For All Mankind, etc. to your heart’s content.
Saying Goodbye to 2024
Well, I really don’t know what happened here. One minute it was the second week of January 2024 and the next minute we’re a scant 12 hours away from 2025 — a ludicrously futuristic date, a sci-fi date. And I didn’t do a media diet post all year! I have no excuse; it just…didn’t happen. Over and over and over and over again — it just kept not happening!
As penance, and for my last post of the year, here’s a giant media diet recap of (almost) everything I read, watched, listened to, and experienced in the year of our lord 2024. (I’ll try to break it up into smaller chunks next year… 🤞)
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. I am just totally in the tank for how Rooney writes about power dynamics & interpersonal interactions. I think maybe this is my second-favorite of hers after Normal People? (A)
Shōgun. My favorite show of the year by a mile — so good all around. (A+)
Developing AI Like Raising Kids. Engaging and wide-ranging podcast conversation between Alison Gopnik and Ted Chiang about what caregiving and designing AI systems might have in common. (A)
GNX. The latest album from Kendrick Lamar has been on heavy rotation in my car since it came out. (A)
Dune: Part Two. I loved this, particularly in IMAX. It’s a better film than the first part and very rewatchable (I’ve seen it ~5 times?). I hope Villeneuve does another one. (A+)
Dune. I went back and rewatched this after seeing Dune: Part Two and it all made so much more sense. I can’t remember ever seeing a sequel that improved the first film in retrospect. Empire Strikes Back maybe? (A)
Interstellar (10th anniversary IMAX re-release). An incredible experience, worth the 6-hour roundtrip drive from the boondocks of VT. The docking scene with the damaged ship is one my all-time favorite movie scenes and to see it on massive screen accompanied by the teeth-rattling sound of Han Zimmer’s soundtrack was a real treat. (A+)
XOXO 2024. It was so good to see so many old friends and meet some new ones. (A)
The 2024 total solar eclipse. Not quiiiite as mind-blowing as my first time, but it was great to bust out the telescope and share the experience with friends and eclipse newbies. (A+)
May December. Natalie Portman & Julianne Moore were both fantastic in this. (A-)
Girl, so confusing featuring lorde. The earnestness, the working it out on the remix — I’m so here for it. (A)
The Incredibles. A perfect movie. No flab. Hits all the right notes. (A+)
The Incredibles 2. When this came out, I preferred it to the first movie. Now having seen them back-to-back, the sequel is not quite the equal to the original. But still great. (A)
What Relationships Would You Want, if You Believed They Were Possible? Ezra Klein’s conversation with Rhaina Cohen (author of The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center) was probably my favorite single podcast episode of the year. It really helped me think through what sorts of relationships I want to have in my life in a way that I hadn’t before. (A+)
Anatomy of a Fall. A gripping legal & family drama from director Justine Triet. (A-)
The Big Dig. A nine-part, in-depth podcast on how the massive Boston highway project got done. Would recommend for governance and infrastructure nerds but also for anyone who is curious about how things get done (or not) in America. (A)
Princess Mononoke. My favorite Ghibli movie — so great to be able to see it at the theater. Just gorgeous. (A)
Mad Max: Fury Road. My umpteenth rewatch confirms: a perfect movie. (A+)
Godzilla Minus One. Not a Godzilla scholar, but this is certainly the best Godzilla movie I’ve ever seen. A real gem of a movie. (A)
Funspot. Billed as “the world’s largest arcade”, the real attraction of Funspot for me is the 250+ classic games and pinball machines (Star Wars, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Burgertime, Gorgar, Dig Dug, Mr Do!, etc.) I took my teenaged kids here last summer and they loved it. Plus, $20 in tokens kept the three of us entertained for almost two hours. (A)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I watched this twice — the first time I thought it was alright (was Anya Taylor-Joy the right choice for the lead?) but I loved it the second time around (Anya Taylor-Joy was the right choice for the lead). (A)
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham. The most complete account and investigation of how the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened and its aftermath, from both the technological and political angles. Fantastic book. (A)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It’s been awhile since I’ve fallen in love with a Star Trek series, but this one got me hooked right away. (The commenters in this thread were spot on with their recommendations.) I absolutely love the cast and the episodic format. I blazed through season one, am still stinge watching season two, and am delighted that the show has been renewed for two more seasons. (A)
All Fours by Miranda July. A truly weird book that I loved. Listen to the audiobook version if you can…July’s voice acting (I can’t really call it mere narration) really adds to the experience. (A)
Lawrence of Arabia. I’d never seen this before but I got a chance to see it on a big screen this summer and was blown away by it. A truly gorgeous film. (A)
The Zone of Interest. I’m not a particular fan of Jonathan Glazer, but this film was brutal and chilling and boring. The sound design was absolutely brilliant. (A-)
Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Brodesser-Akner is a hell of a writer. (A)
Capitalism. Another banger from Scene on Radio, which you may remember from their excellent podcast series on whiteness, American history, and the climate crisis. Their series on capitalism is typically thought-provoking and informative. (A)
The Great British Bake Off (2023 season). When each new season of Bake Off starts, I’m always like “who are these chuck-a-lucks?” and by about the fourth episode I’d run through a wall for any of the bakers. Such a great format & vibe to this show. (A)
Poor Things. Really enjoyed this. Emma Stone was fantastic. (A-)
Scriptnotes, Episode 622: The One with Christopher Nolan. Fascinating conversation with Christopher Nolan about how he approaches scriptwriting and then translating those scripts into action on the screen. (A-)
Ratatouille. The scene near the end, when Ego tastes the ratatouille that Remy cooks for him, always gives me chills — one of cinema’s great flashbacks. (A)
The Diplomat (season two). I can’t tell if this show is actually good or if I just really, really like it. But I’ll tell you who’s actually good though: Allison Janney — she swooped in for the final two episodes and upstaged the rest of the really talented cast. (A-)
Gladiator. Rewatched in anticipation of the sequel. A neeeearly perfect movie. I can’t really even put my finger on why it isn’t quite flawless — there’s like 3-5 minutes that could be reworked or cut or something. But still, a great film that I love to watch. (A)
Things Become Other Things. I regret to inform you that the irritatingly nice & talented Craig Mod is also good at writing memoirs. The bastard. (A)
Chernobyl. I rewatched this with my son this fall and I’d forgotten just how good it is. One of the best TV things of the past decade. The courtroom scene with Legasov and his blue & red cards is one of the best & simplest explanations of the reactor’s explosion you’ll find anywhere. (A)
James by Percival Everett. It’s a close call, but I think this retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was my favorite book of 2024. The audiobook version, narrated by Dominic Hoffman, is fantastic. (A)
Dookie Demastered. Green Day “demastered” their 1994 album Dookie into 15 “obscure, obsolete, and inconvenient” formats, like wax cylinder, Fisher Price record, Teddy Ruxpin, and player piano roll. Brilliant. (A)
Shōgun by James Clavell. I’m nearly halfway through this 1300-page behemoth, but I wanted to include it here because I’m blazing through it and enjoying it so much. (A-)
How Playwright Annie Baker Made the Movie of the Summer. This podcast conversation between Sam Fragoso and Annie Baker is fascinating because of Baker’s polite but insistent refusal to adhere to the social conventions of a media interview. (A)
Conclave. I can’t decide if this film is overwrought or just the right amount of wrought. Well-acted though and compelling. (B+)
Cléo from 5 to 7. I appreciated this film more than I enjoyed it. (B)
Fallout. A promising first season; I’m glad they’re doing another. (B+)
Past Lives. Greta Lee is great in this. And that last scene, ooof. (B+)
Moonbound by Robin Sloan. Was pretty charmed by this, in part because it was fun trying to connect the narrative & themes of the book to Sloan’s preoccupations on his mailing list over the past 2-3 years. (B+)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Solidly entertaining and the teens liked it. (B)
For All Mankind (season four). My pre-season musing about this show being “a prequel/origin story for The Expanse” hold up pretty well, I think. (B+)
The Holdovers. A mostly wholesome Christmas-time Breakfast Club. (A-)
The Great (season three). This didn’t have the zing of the first season, but it was better than the second. (B+)
Reservation Dogs. I am going to get yelled at for this but I enjoyed the first season more than the subsequent two. I appreciate what they did with the second and third seasons on an intellectual level (it’s brilliant, multi-generational storytelling) but I found my attention drifting as I tried to keep up with all of the connections. (A-)
Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly. A compendium of life advice from one of the most interesting people I know. (B+)
Civil War. I’d like to see this again — I’m still not sure if I liked it or if it was any good. (B)
Constellation. Was disappointed with this show. Would have been an interesting three-episode series — instead we got eight ponderous episodes. (C)
3 Body Problem. Netflix did pretty well with this adaptation and the changes made sense. Looking forward to see where they go with the next season. (B+)
The Three-Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu. Well, after watching the TV series, I went back to read the three-book series for the third time. Was a little let down this time for whatever reason. (B)
Alien. Saw this in the theater over the summer and didn’t like it quite as much as I have in the past. (B+)
The Gilded Age. A gorgeously filmed and costumed guilty pleasure. Who is going to keep making this kind of series after Julian Fellowes retires? (A-)
Rebel Moon. Aka Zach Snyder’s Star Wars. Couldn’t finish this it was so bad. What a hack. (D)
Leave the World Behind. I watched this way back in January and had to paste the title into Google to see what it even was. I remember it being pretty uneven. But it also introduced me to Myha’la. (B-)
The Marvels. I honestly don’t remember much of this, just that it didn’t have the, uh, goodness of the first one. (B)
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Saw this on the big screen this summer, which was worth it for the pod race and the “duel of the fates” lightsaber battle at the end. (B-)
Petite Maman. A film of quiet impact by Céline Sciamma. I didn’t know anything about this going in and was delighted by where it went. (A-)
Frankenstein. Hot Frank Summer! I really tried to get into this but just couldn’t…I got bored and gave up a third of the way in. (C+)
The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson. Not Larson’s best effort but it was illuminating to read about how the Civil War started. (B)
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (season two). I was somewhat in the minority in liking the first season of this show, and I liked this season even more. Patiently awaiting the next season. (A-)
Devs. Rewatched this with my son and didn’t like as much as I did the first time. I found it a little too self-serious. (B+)
Star Wars: The Acolyte. Uneven but with some good moments. Glad I watched it, even though the show got cancelled. (B)
Avatar: The Last Airbender. I thought they did a good job casting the characters for this live-action series. But there’s a magic to the animated series that they didn’t capture. (B)
Fall Guy. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt were charming and the rest of it was fine. I enjoyed the dragging of Tom Cruise. (B)
Deadpool & Wolverine. Rotten Tomatoes has this at 78% and that seems right…I liked it about 78%. (B+ (I grade on a scale apparently))
Ponyo. Another Ghibli movie I got to enjoy on the big screen. (B+)
North Woods by Daniel Mason. I would have liked this more without the magical realism. Some great parts though. (B+)
Rebel Ridge. I really enjoyed this one. This movie felt like a throwback of sorts: a solid thriller with no bells and whistles. Reminded me a bit of The Fugitive. (A-)
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon. I enjoy the Shaun shorts more than the films, but this one had an impressive number of sci-fi references in it…the kids got annoyed at me pointing them out. (B+)
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Clare North. An interesting twist on the Groundhog Day plot mechanic that…well, I won’t spoil it. (B)
The Wild Robot. Hilarious at times, but a bit too pat when it came to the main plot/emotional core. (B)
The Good Place. Third time through on this one…a comedy classic that stuck the landing. (A)
Gladiator II. I wanted this to be better. Denzel Washington was fantastic, as was his sleeve-work. Love that the co-emperors were basically crypto YouTube bros. (B)
Alien: Romulus. Very good Alien installment. I was on the edge of my seat for the last third of the movie as the heroes raced against the inevitability of gravity — one of the best action/thriller sequences of the year, I’d reckon. (B+)
Moana. Watched in preparation for Moana 2. You can see why this movie is the #1 streamed movie over the last 5 years. (A-)
Moana 2. Watched this with an audience filled with little kids and when Maui appeared on the screen for the first time, a little boy said “Maui” in a quietly awed voice, instantly charming the entire theater. (B)
Mr Salary by Sally Rooney. I had no idea this short story existed until a few months ago. It was written before she published her debut novel. (B+)
Elf. It was nice to see Bob Newhart — I’d forgotten he was in this. (B)
Inside Out 2. Pixar is still the best studio for making kids’ movies that appeal to all ages. My kids were like, yep, pretty much what it’s like being a teenager. And I identified both with Riley and her parents. (A)
Radical Optimism. Underwhelming compared to Future Nostalgia, but I do like Houdini a lot. (B)
Philip Glass Solo. Lovely and personal. (A-)
Cowboy Carter. This is not my cup of tea, but I love that it exists. (B-)
Brat. My favorite track (other than the aforementioned Girl, so confusing featuring lorde) is Von Dutch. (B+)
Dos Hermanos Bakery. The chopped sandwiches here are very messy but very delicious. (B+)
Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody. Loved seeing this retrospective of Haring’s work at the Walker. (A-)
Zoozve. A very entertaining episode of Radiolab. (B+)
Past installments of my media diet are available here. Butter shipping container photo by yours truly.
What were your favorite things that you watched, read, or listened to in 2024?
Inside Zildjian, a 400-year-old cymbal-making company in Massachusetts. Their business took off after The Beatles’ Ed Sullivan appearance and the alloy they use for making cymbals is a closely guarded secret.
Great Art Explained: The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci
Curator James Payne’s Great Art Explained channel is one of YouTube’s gems. For his latest video, he takes a look at Leonardo da Vinci’s mural The Last Supper and explains what makes it such an unusual, impressive, and revolutionary work of art. Here’s how the main part of the video begins:
Milan, 1494: Leonardo da Vinci was an exceptional man, and everyone who met him described him as a genius. And yet, he was now 42 years old — a middle-aged man in an era when life expectancy was 40 — And he still hadn’t produced anything that would be considered a masterpiece by his contemporaries. Many of his works were unfinished or in private collections, there were no great public works that people could see, no architectural marvels and no distinguished altarpieces for cathedrals. Nothing that could be considered worthy of his potential.
Then, he was asked to paint a wall.
I found the discussion of how Leonardo’s knowledge of theatre — he was charged with “creating lavish plays and pageants for the Duke of Milan” — informed his work on The Last Supper particularly interesting. You’ll never see this painting the same way again after watching this video.
If the highly unlikely Silurian hypothesis is true (if the Earth was home to an intelligent civilization prior to ours), “it’s the cephalopods…who are the most likely candidates to have reached at least some level of civilization”.
52 things Kent Hendricks learned in 2024, incl. “walking speed on the streets of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia has increased 15% since 1979” and “after fluoride is introduced into a city’s drinking water, the number of dentist offices drops 9%”.
77 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2024
From The Atlantic Science Desk, 77 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2024. Some that caught my eye:
5. Your body carries literal pieces of your mom — and maybe your grandmother, siblings, aunts, and uncles.
15. The weight of giant pumpkins increased 20-fold in half a century.
19. In the Middle Ages, people took their pet squirrels for walks and decked them out in flashy accessories.
31. One breadfruit tree can feed a family of four for at least 50 years.
38. Classical composers used dice to randomly compose songs.
52. Dogs may be entering a new wave of domestication.
71. The 10,000-steps-a-day goal doesn’t originate from clinical science. Instead, it comes from a 1965 marketing campaign by a Japanese company that was selling pedometers.
Haalarit are overalls worn by Finnish university students, covered in patches they get from attending events, organization affiliations, and friendships. It’s giving NASCAR merit badge pajamas?
The Walmart Effect. According to new research, “Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all. Sometimes consumer prices are an incomplete, even misleading, signal of economic well-being.”
Eight Clams Control This Polish City’s Water Supply
In the city of Poznań, Poland, a group of eight clams controls the local water supply through a clever bio-monitoring system:
These biological systems are comprised of eight mussels with sensors hot-glued to their shells. They work together with a network of computers and have been given control over the city’s water supply. If the waters are clean, these mussels stay open and happy. But when water quality drops too low, they close off and shut the water supply of millions of people with them.
According to The Economist (archive), more than 50 such systems are now deployed in Poland and Russia to help protect water supplies:
The system is nifty. When the molluscs encounter heavy metals, pesticides or other pollutants, they close their shells, explains Piotr Domek of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, who has worked on the project for three decades. To create a natural early-warning system, Mr Domek and his colleagues collect the clams from rivers or reservoirs, and attach a coil and a magnet to their shells. Computers register whether their shells are open or closed by detecting changes in the magnetic field.
“In the case of a terrorist attack, an ecological disaster or another contamination of the water supply, the clams will close,” says Mr Domek. This, in turn, will automatically cut off the water supply. The clams, he thinks, are life-savers. “If contaminated water goes straight to our taps, we will get poisoned,” he says in “Fat Kathy”, a short film that celebrates the invaluable bivalves.
You can watch that short film here:
Each clam serves a tour of duty of a few months:
Each worker mussel spends three months on duty — after that, they become too accustomed to their new surroundings and are no longer sensitive enough to properly monitor the water. For retirement, they are gently tossed back where they came from.
Great read: Heather Cox Richardson on Jimmy Carter’s “life characterized by a dedication to human rights”.
Former President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. Easily the most impactful former President in US history and, too rarely for that powerful position, a good man.
“Depending on the printer, trying to photocopy money might result in a warning message or the paper being completely ink-filled.”
Crazy Football Commentary, Animated!
I’ve shared animator Nick Murray Willis’ videos before — he takes snippets of sound & dialogue from sports commentary & movies and creates context-shifted animations from them. For instance, in the two videos above with football (soccer) commentary, a commentator’s chant of “Messi, Messi, Messi” becomes a French street performer thanking the crowd (“merci, merci, merci”).
(Ok, I’ve caught myself attempting to explain humor, so I’m gonna wrap this up by urging you to watch the videos if you want.)
The 7 Coolest Mathematical Discoveries of 2024, including “the biggest prime number yet, a new formula for pi, mysterious patterns in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and even a whole new kind of shape”.
“Architecton is an epic, intimate, and poetic meditation on architecture and how the design and construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal our destruction — and offer hope for survival and a way forward.”
You can use this game to narrow down 30 monospaced typefaces to find your favorite font for coding. I somehow ended up with Courier Prime (🤔) and promptly sent myself to my room for the rest of the day. (I use Menlo in VSCode.)
The most popular Wikipedia articles of 2024 (thru Nov 22), including Deaths in 2024, Project 2025, Griselda Blanco, UEFA Euro 2024, ChatGPT, Taylor Swift, and Kamala Harris.
Costco Board Pushes Back Against Anti-DEI Activists
A group of Costco shareholders, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s continued assault on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, called on the company’s board to “conduct an evaluation and publish a report” on the risks involved in maintaining their DEI program, which these shareholders called “illegal discrimination” against employees who are “white, Asian, male or straight”. The board responded with a recommendation to vote against this proposal:
Our Board has considered this proposal and believes that our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary. The report requested by this proposal would not provide meaningful additional information to our shareholders, and the Board thus unanimously recommends a vote AGAINST this proposal.
Our success at Costco Wholesale has been built on service to our critical stakeholders: employees, members, and suppliers. Our efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion follow our code of ethics:
For our employees, these efforts are built around inclusion – having all of our employees feel valued and respected. Our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our Company the importance of creating opportunities for all. We believe that these efforts enhance our capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our business succeed. This capacity is critical because we owe our success to our now over 300,000 employees around the globe.
But the board then went further, blaming these shareholders for wasting their time and resources:
The proponent professes concern about legal and financial risks to the Company and its shareholders associated with the diversity initiatives. The supporting statement demonstrates that it is the proponent and others that are responsible for inflicting burdens on companies with their challenges to longstanding diversity programs. The proponent’s broader agenda is not reducing risk for the Company but abolition of diversity initiatives.
This is the way. The whole shareholder proposal and the board’s response is worth reading. (via @heartwoodandsteel.bsky.social)
Absolutely brilliant interactive explainer on everything about the Moon: how it moves, how it formed, what causes tides, solar eclipses, etc. So fun to play with all the gravity widgets in this.
A reader found her father in a photo on the back cover of Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste. The photo was of a crowd of people at the 1963 March on Washington.
The unbearable slowness of being: “Streaming a high-def video takes about 25M bits/sec. The download rate in a typical American home is about 262 million bps. Now researchers have estimated the speed of information flow in the human brain: just 10 bps.”
An Epic 2024 Movie Trailer Mashup
Sleepy Skunk’s end-of-the-year movie trailer mashups are always worth a look. This year’s installment got me wondering how many of these movies I’ve actually seen — not that many, I don’t think. (via @rands)
How to Make 80s School Cafeteria Pizza
Food historian Max Miller stumbled upon the original recipe for 1980s/90s school cafeteria pizza (you know, with the iconic rectangular slices) and decided to whip up a batch (with “pourable dough”).
Tastes just like it. You can like — all of those herbs are exactly the same as they were. I think maybe it tastes a little fresher than I remember, like the flavors are a little heightened…but that’s that’s them. This is the pizza…
While the pizza was baking, Miller talked about the history of school lunches (following up on his video about school lunches during the Depression) — it’s a story that features J. Edgar Hoover and The Black Panthers.
You can find the pizza recipe on Miller’s website or in the original 1988 USDA publication Quantity Recipes for School Food Service courtesy of the Internet Archive. The pourable dough recipe is on page B-15 and the cheese pizza recipe is on D-30. (via @ernie.tedium.co)
You can watch the first five seasons of The Dick Van Dyke show on YouTube for free — the first season is here.
Minnesota Guaranteed Free School Meals for All Kids. Now Let’s Do It Nationwide. It’s been a big success: “We can see that students are just better prepared. They’re better able to learn and focus.”
California’s raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers and contrary to some bad press & much industry outcry, it’s been a success. “California’s fast-food sector gained jobs in all but one month since September 2023.”
Whooping cough cases reach highest level in a decade. “The U.S. has recorded over 32,000 whooping cough cases this year, compared with around 5,100 as of mid-December last year. Infants are most vulnerable…” (Guess why?)
10 years ago, I wrote about why I support Wikipedia with a monthly donation. “I consider it a subscription fee to an indispensable and irreplaceable resource I use dozens of times weekly while producing kottke[dot]org.”
Louis Armstrong Reads ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas
While poking around for Christmas music, I found this little-known recording of Louis Armstrong reading ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, recorded shortly before he died.
The poem, first published in 1823, would be Armstrong’s final commercial recording. Armstrong taped it on February 26, 1971, on a reel-to-reel recorder at his home in Queens, New York, during his last spell of good health.
Truly one of the great voices of all time.
You can watch the first 8 minutes of Severance season two right now on Apple TV+. The season starts on Jan 17. To prep, you might want to watch a recap and/or the excellent season one finale.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
Blockbuster auteur Christopher Nolan’s next movie will be an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. Here’s what we know and don’t about it so far:
- The film will be a “mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX technology” distributed by Universal Pictures.
- The Odyssey will open in theaters on July 17, 2026.
- The cast is said to include Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson.
- Given the recent interest in retelling these tales in a more contemporary way from the perspective of women (Emily Wilson’s The Odyssey, Madeline Miller’s Circe, A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes), it’ll be interesting to see if Nolan is sourcing from any of these texts and where he lands on who is the focus of the story. (Nolan has historically not been great with female characters.)
- How on earth is this movie going to be under 4-5 hours long? Will this be a Part I?
- It would be cool for TSG Entertainment to have a hand in producing this…their logo features Odysseus shooting an arrow through several axe heads.
This hotel in Monterey Bay, CA has a stick library available for dogs. “Every morning my dog would carefully pick one out to take to the beach.”
You shouldn’t be driving over 100 mph — and your car shouldn’t let you. “The NTSB recommended that automakers be required to install technology to prevent reckless speeding.”
A roundup of the words of the year for 2024, including brat, manifest, kakistocracy, polarization, brain rot, enshittification, sanewashing, girl mossing, vibe, and broligarchy.
Pricing calculator for creator economy platforms. For instance, if you have a newsletter with 1000 subscribers that pay $5/mo, Substack will cost you $500/mo, Patreon $400/mo, Ghost $19/mo, Beehiiv $39/mo, Ko-fi $6/mo, Buttondown $29/mo.
Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants
Well this is something special, a holiday treat for the end of 2024: a group of archivists (including Chris Person) has uploaded an HBO magic special by Ricky Jay that has been largely unavailable since it aired in 1996.
This is an RF rip of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, to date the greatest card magic special ever produced, directed by David Mamet of all people. This special was produced by HBO and to date has never had a home release, although poor home recordings of this special exist online.
Person described his process for archiving videos at Aftermath:
Before getting into preservation generally, it’s worth considering how we got here. Why is so much media lost or badly preserved? A recurring reason is that the people in charge are sometimes, but not always, asleep at the wheel. Media is forgotten or stored improperly, and humidity and heat have destroyed more of our history than we will ever know. Sometimes companies handle the material sloppily (I’ve blogged about the use of AI before, but there are countless examples in audio too).
Having shared all that, I feel like the quality of this YouTube video of the special is not perceptibly worse than the one uploaded to archive.org? What am I missing?
And as always when I post about Ricky Jay, I recommend Mark Singer’s irresistible 1993 profile of Jay, which begins with this story:
The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened:
Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive, was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet and Mosher’s named Christ Nogulich, the director of food and beverage at the hotel. After twenty minutes of disbelief-suspending manipulations, Jay spread the deck face up on the bar counter and asked Nogulich to concentrate on a specific card but not to reveal it. Jay then assembled the deck face down, shuffled, cut it into two piles, and asked Nogulich to point to one of the piles and name his card.
“Three of clubs,” Nogulich said, and he was then instructed to turn over the top card.
He turned over the three of clubs.
Mosher, in what could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive act, quietly announced, “Ricky, you know, I also concentrated on a card.”
After an interval of silence, Jay said, “That’s interesting, Gregory, but I only do this for one person at a time.”
Mosher persisted: “Well, Ricky, I really was thinking of a card.”
Jay paused, frowned, stared at Mosher, and said, “This is a distinct change of procedure.” A longer pause. “All right — what was the card?”
“Two of spades.”
Jay nodded, and gestured toward the other pile, and Mosher turned over its top card.
The deuce of spades.
A small riot ensued.
Gisèle Pelicot, Dominique Pelicot, and what many men would do. “What would a woman do to an unconscious man if she thought no-one would find out?”
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