Recently, while RSVPing for a wedding, I was asked to share some marriage advice: No, I’ve never been married. Why do you ask? | Continue reading
Don’t invest in a dying industry. | Continue reading
The doors of Antarctica’s McMurdo Station are much more fascinating than you might guess. In fact, all of brr.fyi, a personal blog written by an IT worker currently deployed in Antarctica, is an excellent read.Link: https://brr.fyi/posts/doors-of-mcmurdo | Continue reading
You probably don’t recognize the names Richard Sclafani and Peter Cicero, but it’s a near certainty you’ve seen their work, or at least a lousy knock-off of it. Back in January 1990, the two men came up with the idea for novelty glasses to be worn on New Year’s Eve. The initial i … | Continue reading
Last week, things were a little less than merry over in old England, when a medical practice sent the following two texts: In their defence defense, the keys are like right next to each other.Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64116668 | Continue reading
Mar-A-lago is becoming the place for losers to hang out and lick their wounds.Link: https://theweek.com/jair-bolsonaro/1019625/brazils-bolsonaro-to-skip-successors-innauguration-for-mar-a-lago-vacation | Continue reading
For many years, for-profit prisons have gouged prisoners on things like phone calls and e-books. That may finally be about to change.Link: https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/the-fcc-can-finally-hammer-predatory-prison-phonecall-companies-thanks-to-just-passed-bill/ | Continue reading
The voters of New York’s 3rd district elected George Santos to be their Congressional representative. Since his election, significant parts of his biography have proven to be fradulent. For instance, rather than holding degrees from NYU and Baruch College, Santos instead has no c … | Continue reading
Previously, I was indifferent to Clear, an identity-verification program seen mostly in airports. I’ve seldom seen their services used, and I certainly haven’t felt impacted by them. However, this brief Slate piece presages an unpleasant future. Clear’s existence makes things wor … | Continue reading
The headline “DEA seized enough fentanyl to kill every person in the U.S. in 2022” just makes me think “Fine, fine, let’s just get it over with already”.1. Anyhow, uh, happy holidays! Footnotes: This dark joke is certainly derived from the immortal words of Philip J. Fry, who hi … | Continue reading
At the end of November, The Verge was able to determine that Anker’s Eufy cameras were more than a little insecure. That’s pretty bad. Worse, though, is trying to cover it up by deleting privacy promises, which Anker has now also done.Link: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/16/235 … | Continue reading
If you’re a police officer in a town of 800 people in Iowa, of course you need a machine gun. That’s just a given. And you’re naturally going to want to have a secondary machine gun too, in addition to your main machine gun. To be safe, you really ought to have a backup for each … | Continue reading
Recently, I was shopping online for a step ladder, as one does. I came across a product listing which featured an adult man playing at being a construction worker while point a drill at the sky is if intending to shoot off some celebratory gunfire: This Delxo (Dell-Zoh? Dell-Ex- … | Continue reading
On Saturday, the AquaDom at the Berlin Radisson Blu hotel burst. At 50 feet tall, it was formerly the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium, home to 1,500 fish swimming in over a quarter million gallons of water. Now, it’s just a real mess in the lobby of an evacuated hotel, plus … | Continue reading
Speaking of gender, Effy Elden is collecting all manner of absurd genders from forms on the web. Personally, I’m a man, but I can easily understand identifying as “Do Not Use – Code Updated”.Link: http://genders.wtf | Continue reading
Earlier this week, I had a rather jarring conversation at the supermarket. I needed to flag an employee down to clear an alert on the damnable self-checkout machine. The man had just finished helping another customer, and he was walking away from me, so I said “Sir?”. When turned … | Continue reading
This past Wednesday, Amazon unveiled a program where using Alexa to thank your driver after a delivery would provide them with a $5 tip, paid for by Amazon itself. I first learned about this after hearing a driver ask to be thanked yesterday, explaining that it would net him mone … | Continue reading
Over at my day job, we always encourage our customers to use the latest versions of our software, which have the latest bug fixes and newest features. We pretty much always think of the latest as the greatest version yet. Still, much as we might wish we could, we never force upda … | Continue reading
My mother is quite the puzzle whiz, and we sometimes do the same puzzles. I introduced her to Wordle, and she pointed me toward another New York Times puzzle, “Spelling Bee”. Now, we play them both each day, and often discuss them. Recently, this led to some amazing fun. A fair a … | Continue reading
Something people should know about me is that I’ve had one laundry basket for my entire adult life. If my obituary includes the line “He was the kind of guy who could use the same laundry basket for decades”, well, it will be an accurate reflection of who I am. Or was. Whatever, … | Continue reading
“Jonathan still has a good libido” | Continue reading
Last Thursday, Stéphanie Frappart made history by serving as the first female head referee in a men’s World Cup match. She actually led a trio of women, who were served as the first all-female on-field crew in the men’s World Cup. The best part? It was really no big deal. In taki … | Continue reading
Zach Arnwine is a better FedEx driver than FedEx’s actually driver.Link: https://www.wvlt.tv/2022/11/29/man-delivers-fedex-packages-found-dumped-side-highway/ | Continue reading
Today, let’s discuss a truly one-of-a-kind piece of sports memorabilia, which I call “The Mickey Mantle Letter”. Back in 1972, to prepare for a celebration of 50 years at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees asked many former players to share an outstanding experience: In response, retir … | Continue reading
In the continued quest to put advertising in every conceivable place, Major League Baseball teams are now permitted to sell placement on their actual uniforms. Back in April, the Padres were the first team to announce a partnership, one which will feature hilariously large Motoro … | Continue reading
When I first ran into QR codes in 2011, I had an amusingly miserable experience. In the decade-plus since, the technology has gotten a bit more usable, particularly after QR code scanning was built in to the camera app on smartphones. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many restaurant … | Continue reading
You’ve probably heard something about FTX recently. They were one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges right up until they collapsed into dust earlier this month. Financial funnyman Matt Levine has covered the saga in depth, but the short of it is that FTX lost a whole bunch o … | Continue reading
COVID-19 is still with us, and it’s still killing people. In 2021, however, the people it killed were not evenly distributed when it came to their political affiliation. The study, titled Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic, used voter re … | Continue reading
The Bowls Cheez-It aren’t the only confusing orange things to discuss this week. America has two franchises which I perpetually conflate: “Orange Leaf” and “Orangetheory”. The former is chain of fitness studios started in Florida, while the latter is self-serve frozen yogurt by w … | Continue reading
Today in fun plurals, there is a fairly famous actor named Brian Cox as well as a reasonably famous physicist named Brian Cox. The two Brians Cox appeared on BBC together last week, and discussed a recent hotel problem.Link: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/nov/18/i-dont- … | Continue reading
Recently, Apple turned on a new “Emergency SOS” feature, which uses satellites in space to make it possible to call for help even when no cellular service is available. That’s both impressive and something I hope I never need, but I want to note Apple’s press release, whose headl … | Continue reading
Recently, a 50-year-old man known as “Uncle Chen” ran the Xin’anjiang Marathon while chain-smoking cigarettes. That’s both impressive and awful. My least favorite part about this story is that my own current best marathon time is a full 10 minutes slower than Chen’s 3 hours and … | Continue reading
College football has long had bowl games to close out the season. For nearly a century, only the very best teams were given a chance to compete in prestigious games like the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the adorably-named Sugar Bowl. In recent years, however, the number of bow … | Continue reading
How exactly did the property owners think this would go? Raising Cane’s, a restaurant famously known for exclusively selling chicken fingers, is suing a northwest Indiana shopping center after being told — eight months and over a million dollars in construction later — that it wo … | Continue reading
It’s a week much too full of Twitter news, but I’m hopeful this will be the last post about the flailing company for awhile. On Wednesday, Elon Musk issued an ultimatum via email to the folks who currently remain at Twitter. Twitter is shifting to an engineer-driven operation — o … | Continue reading
Today in Twitter problems, Chief Twit Elon Musk decided to get snarky with Massachusetts senator Ed Markey, after the latter raised legitimate gripes about fake-but-verified accounts on Twitter. It’s pretty pathetic for the world’s richest person to try and zing a sitting politic … | Continue reading
Speaking of checkmarks stripped of all meaning, boy howdy does Tumblr have a deal for you. I find myself compelled to note that, just like Twitter, these are not in fact blue checkmarks. Tumblr instead has black checkmarks on a blue starburst, while Twitter has white checks on b … | Continue reading
As you might be aware, quite a few things have happened with the newly-owned-by-Elon-Musk Twitter in recent days. Just a week after Musk took ownership, half the company was laid off. Since then, many more have quit. Despite a greatly depleted workforce, Twitter has been cranking … | Continue reading
On Veterans Day, I wonder what people who’ve seen real-world combat will think of Palmer Luckey’s new virtual reality headset. The device is designed to kill its wearer if they die in the game they’re playing. Personally, it makes me a little sick. This real-world device which s … | Continue reading
Let’s enjoy a quick laugh today, with these ridiculous sheep: A flock of sheep are sporting a pretty pink look after a new feeder managed to dye their wool. The Swiss Valais Blacknose have been rubbing themselves against the red feeder while eating, turning heads at Cannon Hall … | Continue reading
Visitors to America’s national parks need to stop licking the Sonoran desert toad.Link: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/06/1134615997/the-national-park-service-wants-humans-to-stop-licking-this-toad | Continue reading
This just in, you have now lost the Powerball jackpot. It took a little longer than expected. The largest lottery jackpot ever was due to be drawn last night at 11 PM Eastern, but it was delayed almost 12 hours. All 48 participating lotteries are required to submit their sales an … | Continue reading
The headline “US Air Force Says Penis-Shaped Flight Path Pointed at Russian Base Is a Coincidence” really caught my eye. That would be quite a coincidence. However, the story is better than that. Near as I can figure, the Air Force didn’t actually say that at all. Here’s the quot … | Continue reading
Artist Sam Cox, also known as “Mr. Doodle”, had a dream: “[M]y dream was to have a doodle house and doodle over everything within that house,” he said, adding that he funded his current home through sales of his increasingly popular doodle art. Now, he’s done it, both inside and … | Continue reading
Recently, a video showing a Chinese drone dropping off a machine gun-laden robot has been making the rounds on the internet. I am certainly dismayed to see such a dystopian nightmare being made real. We really don’t have to do this, humanity! It seems likely we will do this, thou … | Continue reading
The world is already so damned weird, why shouldn’t tomatoes be purple? I have to admit, it looks neat. I’d try it.Link: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/17/business-food/purple-tomato-gmo-scn-trnd/index.html | Continue reading
Though Halloween has passed, today still feels like a good time to post something scary. It comes courtesy of friend-of-the-site Colin T, who encountered the picture that follows in his hotel room at a Marriott. In Colin’s own words: I don’t say this lightly, but I’d like someone … | Continue reading
I need to track down that house in Woburn with $1500 worth of skeletons. | Continue reading