It’s Official: NASA Confirms New Interstellar Object Is Zooming Through Solar System : ScienceAlert
Archive
2025
We may have found the first direct evidence of the Solar System’s 9th major planet – and no, it’s not Pluto - BBC Sky at Night Magazine
New home, new backyard.
Facebook is starting to feed its AI with private, unpublished photos | The Verge
Loved this video from the British Film Institute and their examination of an original IB Technicolor dye-transfer print of Star Wars from 1977. www.youtube.com/watch
Appreciate the nod to the ‘79 Sonics title in the NBA Finals intro. Now give us our team back!
Not loving the incredibly passive-aggressive late payment reminders that Quickbooks’ new “AI” features generate for late invoices.
Five layers of birthday lasagna.
Start to finish, Andor is the best thing to come out of the Star Wars universe. What an absolute triumph.
End of season. Whew.
“The same people who used to laugh at the Russians and their five-year plans for wheat production now prostrate themselves before the Committee of One…” thedispatch.com/article/t…
Basketball is good.
Good morning from Rhode Island.
Find you a television and tune it to Clippers-Nuggets!
Happy NBA playoffs day to all who celebrate! 🏀
Just completed the annual rewatch of Wrath of Khan, and can confirm that it is still a perfect film. Will check in again next year, but I’m pretty sure that evaluation will be unchanged.
Wow. The needle drop in the Daredevil: Born Again finale to Radiohead is absolutely perfect. This series is not perfect, but it is everything I need right now.
How deep is the rot inside of ICE? Pretty deep, it seems. thomasjpr.com/2025/04/1…
If you are ever in Boston, highly recommend a restaurant called Mooo. Incredible food and service.
Byssus, or sea silk, is one of the most coveted materials in the world – but after more than 1,000 years in the same matrilineal family tree, this ancient thread may soon unravel. www.bbc.com/travel/ar…
“MAGA Maoism” is a term that I will continue to use. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/…
When I last visited the Satsop site 20 years ago, it didn’t have much going on. Just a handful of abandoned buildings, and the two cooling towers reaching out through the eerie mist. A fascinating history to read about, and I love that it has found a new lease on life: …
Great Moments in Peaceful Protest History thenib.com/great-mom…
This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write.
I’m a grownup and I can spend my money on whatever I want.
I wear suits now.
This is an incredibly cool webpage. Bravo to Bill’s team (it’s a fun story too!) www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill…
Jjajangmyeon.
Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic amplified remote work’s possibilities, worker bees aren’t the only ones resisting the return-to-office call. www.cfodive.com/news/rto-…
Know your rights. www.theverge.com/policy/63…
Centennial Bulb glows strong at age 124, a survivor in turbulent times
Just more embarrassing and childish behavior from the US. www.reuters.com/world/ame…
Majority of Congress has zero clue how Section 230 works, nor how crucial it is to a functioning internet. The consequences of repeal will have dire consequences that they refuse to consider. the-decoder.com/new-bipar…
One of the world’s largest and most populated cities may run out of drinking water in the near future. mexicocitywater.longlead.com
They are coming for your voting rights, and this is just the first move: www.washingtonpost.com/politics/…
Pope Francis is recovering. It hasn’t stopped talk of a succession. - The Washington Post
“What OpenAI and Google are actually asking for is the legalized taking of people’s creative works and intellectual property without compensation. This is also called theft. thomasjpr.com/2025/03/1…
The mRNA technology behind coronavirus vaccines is now being used to create bespoke vaccines for cancer patients. www.wired.com/story/wir…
The Day Southwest Died – Cranky Flier
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a staple meal for NBA players, and the chefs for the Wizards go all-out to make them. www.washingtonpost.com/sports/20…
The ancient diesel trucks of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. raoulpop.com/2012/04/1…
For months, a mystery surrounded Gary Ridgway, one of the worst serial killers in American history. Why was he moved from his prison cell in Walla Walla to the King County Jail from September 9-13, 2024? Gary Ridgway mystery solved: Here’s why the Green River Killer was briefly moved to King County …
“Our country’s constitutional order is withering before us. In the states of the former Confederacy, democracy never fully flourished.” Waiting for Liberal Democracy in the American South
Interesting to re-listen to this in the shadow of recent events. Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy | The Nation
Capital punishment continue to be a stain on the notion of American “justice.” Firsthand account of what a firing squad execution looked like | AP News
Turned on the TV, and was subjected to at least a half-dozen lies that ranged from the bizarre to outrageous. Mercifully I was able to find my basketball game and end the pain.
Banner day: for the first time ever, I spelled plagiarism correctly on the first attempt!
The Golden Age of Japanese Pencils, 1952-1967 The Golden Age of Japanese Pencils, 1952-1967
Conehead.
Robert Caro has spent most of his life asking questions of others, and he rather prefers it that way. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/r…
How Many Episodes Should You Watch Before Quitting a TV Show? A Statistical Analysis www.statsignificant.com/p/how-man…
The Digital Packrat Manifesto www.404media.co/the-digit…
Not great. www.cnn.com/2025/02/2…
The surveillance tech waiting for workers as they return to the office arstechnica.com/informati…
From Reform to Ruin in the USSR - by Jonathon P Sine
This is just full-on dictator bullshit. Trump targets Washington law firm that aided Jack Smith - POLITICO
New Hampshire coping.
Loved this look behind the scenes of Studio 8H. www.youtube.com/watch
This is kinda gross. English Teacher was one of my favorite new shows last year, and FX is my all-time favorite network, but their handling of this situation is not great. Did they even conduct their own investigation of the allegations?
If there was ever a case of “I wish a plague upon both their houses…” it was here: www.washingtonpost.com/technolog…
This is why competition in broadband is good. This is why we cannot leave it up to the entrenched local monopolies and major telcos to be our only source of connectivity: arstechnica.com/tech-poli…
The human toll of these evil and thoughtless policies is going to be immeasurable. As always with these people, the cruelty is the point. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/20…
The human toll of these evil and thoughtless policies is going to be immeasurable. As always with these people, the cruelty is the point.
Sportsball!
A serious throwback for us old(er) Mac users! GitHub - mierau/hotline: A modern Hotline client for Mac, iOS, and iPadOS
The Numbers Hut: T-Mobile Park is Good, Actually
It. Is. Happening! #CivVII
FDA approves first non-opioid pain medicine in more than 20 years arstechnica.com/health/20…
Just caught a thought-provoking episode of Tech Won’t Save Us, wherein Paris Marx and Chris Gilliard discussed the late David Golumbia’s book “Cyberlibertarianism”. Definitely worth a listen: www.techwontsave.us/episode/2…
Sorting through some boxes of books today and found this old classic. I’m not sure it would save us now.
Today we saw a blue sky for a change. #NewHampshire
New Hampshire is New Hampshire-ring again.
Chili con carne in progress!
My Hugo-based blog, which should render Markdown without complaint, was not rendering my Markdown links correctly. Spent 20 minutes trying to debug the problem, failed, and so I reverted to regular HTML links. They rendered perfectly. Realized that I have been writing HTML since 1997 and it is still …
Scientists Say If We’re Extremely Lucky, This Asteroid May Put Us Out of Our Misery
Near Coulee City, WA, October 2024.
Was sorting through some files on an ancient backup server and stumbled upon an decade-old Bitcoin wallet. I vaguely remember trying some mining back in the day – had I just unearthed some forgotten treasure?? Could I be rich??? Nope. Totally empty.
Mike Masnick: Advertisers Aren’t Thrilled With Zuckerberg’s Embrace Of Hate Speech “Just as a bar that tolerates Nazis soon becomes a Nazi bar, a platform that embraces “controversial” content risks becoming defined by its most extreme voices.”
Loving seeing some competition in this space. www.theverge.com/tech/5971…
Knowing less about AI makes people more open to having it in their lives – new research
The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a total disaster | ZDNET
Something I do most Sundays: prepping the garlic for the meals that I will be preparing during the week. It’s just a small thing, but it probably saves me 5-10 minutes of prep time for 2-3 meals. It’s still plenty fresh and I know what I am getting (you can buy containers of pre-peeled …
I guess I’m a little behind (forgive me, but my un-played game queue is decades long) but Thronefall is a pretty fun little game! Great twist on my beloved tower defense genre. It’s also great on the Steam Deck!
Cloudflare is out here doing the lord’s work for those of us who generate content online (since if I mainly just shitpost, I figure I am doing humankind a favor by enabling this.)
Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy www.404media.co/decentral…
Now is your time to shine, boomers! Can You Read This Cursive Handwriting? The National Archives Wants Your Help | Smithsonian
Sportsball weekend in Rhode Island.
I could not possibly more excited for season 2 of Severence to debute. The early reviews are all great, and the “promo” at Grand Central this week was brilliant marketing: deadline.com/2025/01/s… I’ll admit that the first 2-3 episodes of the series were an incredibly slow …
Thousands of photos documenting 1960s San Francisco discovered in storage
2023
No matter the role — TV, movies, video games — Lance Reddick brought his A-game. RIP to an absolute legend who elevated everything he acted in. Gone too soon. What a loss for us all.
In the ride home, I made sure to share (with my teenage daughter and her friend) the greatest song ever written about a night light. The reaction was mixed. music.apple.com/us/album/…
Wherein, I discuss my life-long love of computers. thomasjpr.com/2023/02/0…
In 11 months, I will make my final student loan payment! I probably would have had them paid off five years ago if not for a number of deferments I took over the years. The penance of being an occasionally unemployed political campaign nomad…
I’ve been back living on the east coast for six months now and one thing is still manifestly true: being a sports fan in the eastern time zone sucks. Especially as a fan of many west coast teams, but even as a fan of sports in general. Ugh.
I have nearly perfected my bar-style pizza.
2022
Peak Christmas television. youtu.be/bhUtuli7p…
Me to my 13-year old daughter: “you can’t name the sizes of batteries? How are you even my child?”
It’s that magical time of year when I buy a bunch of games on the Steam holiday sale that I will probably never play!
Wednesday, December 21, 2022 →
Kenji Lopez-Alt’s beef with brocolli never fails to delight.
Wednesday, December 21, 2022 →
I have a lot of thoughts about the Twitter situation, but nothing that treads any new ground. “Starting over” on Mastodon (an experiment for the moment) is a bit more interesting though. I’ve made a concious effort to not follow any overly political accounts – that includes …
Recently moved to New Hampshire and am not enjoying the complete lack of Mexican food. Now I’m in Florida for the week for work and am taking advantage of the local cuisine at every opportunity. Today I might have had the best tamale of my life. Food is magic.