Tag: links (Page 1 of 22)

I probably should have shared these first three links last week, when we were all still gripped by Olympic fever.

Ranking Every Summer Olympic Sport Based on How Terrible It Would Be for the Average Person

The Winners and Losers of the 2024 Paris Olympics

Merci, Paris: We needed these Olympics

As I continue my re-watch of The Americans, I was horrified by an ad shown within a season three episode, which took place in 1983, for Love’s Baby Soft. It was borderline child porn. I did some digging and they had a problematic ad campaign for a long time. Those ads are long gone, but the product line is still around. That ad is included in this piece.

Girl Powder: A Cultural History Of Love’s Baby Soft

While I remember watching The Gods Must Be Crazy over-and-over again when I first discovered it, sometime in 1986 or 1987 on cable, I don’t remember much about the actual movie. I recall some slapstick comedy, odd acting performances, and even some moments where the film was sped up to make it seem funnier. Not much else.

Thinking about it now, my first reaction is similar to that of the friend of the author in this pull quote.

When I told a friend I was revisiting The Gods Must Be Crazy 40 years later, he said, “Oh, I remember that movie! It must be totally racist.” It really is. It’s also a fascinating artifact, and one that spread myths that persist even today.

This article is a look at how the movie came to be and the impact it had in both the US and South Africa.

The Strange Saga of The Gods Must Be Crazy

Crazy that an animal that is endangered in its natural habitat can get out of control when let loose in the wild somewhere else.

Pablo Escobar’s Abandoned Hippos Are Wreaking Havoc in the Colombian Jungle

Brother, I know how you feel…

News Happening Faster Than Man Can Generate Uninformed Opinions

C and I are off to Bloomington for a campus visit today, so weekend notes will have to wait. To tide you over, a slew of links, including three oral histories.

I’m rarely at the beginning of any trends. But I did get my first Livestrong bracelet right around this time 20 years ago. I was wearing it when M was born, as my first pictures as a father can confirm.

I can’t take any credit for knowing that the bracelets would turn into a ubiquitous accessory within a few months. I was just buying something from Nike.com when they were first released, and there was a suggestion to add one to my basket at checkout. This must have been shortly after they were first released, based on how quickly they became impossible to find. I liked Lance Armstrong. I was into everything Nike. My step-dad was a cancer survivor. Why not for a buck?

One of the proudest moments of my life came a few weeks later when one of our neighbors’ kids, who was in middle school at the time, came running over to me when I was working in the yard to show off his Livestrong bracelet.

Of course, we all know that Livestrong bracelets and clothes went from being everywhere for nearly a decade to something no one wanted to be seen in again. Makes sense for a trend that I was onto at the start.

Anyway, this is a look back at how a 15-cent ring of silicone changed the world.

Whole companies now exist to manufacture silicone bracelets—tens of millions each year—in every color of the rainbow, customized for specific types of cancer, for other diseases, or as individual memorial totems. That all started with a little band of yellow.

Making the Band: An Oral History of the Livestrong Bracelet

I’ve avoided any reviews or discussion of the new Beverly Hills Cop movie because I want to hope it’s decent and not be disappointed when I watch it sometime this week. But I did read this spoiler-free breakdown of the series.

Ashton: I remember the “supercops” thing in the first one. Well, Eddie made all that up. It was just all made up. He said, “Wait a minute.” He walked away for a while and he came back and he says, “OK, I’m ready.” And then it was a three-shot with me and Judge and Eddie, and Eddie’s going, “These guys are supercops. You ought to give ’em capes.” I was trying not to laugh.

The Heat Is On, Again: The Oral History of Axel Foley

This history of Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story features one of the greatest celebrity anecdotes I’ve ever come across.

Williams: I don’t really spend money in strip clubs. I’m making sure that I’m OK for work the next morning. I’m in the bathroom, and Vince is in there. I’m like, “Hey, I’m gonna head back to the hotel.” He’s like, “What are you talking about?” I was like, “You know, we gotta work in the morning.” He’s like, “No, no, no, no.” He pulls out $400, gives it to me, and he goes, “You go back out there, and you make me proud.” So I was like, “OK, I guess I’ll stay for a little longer.” We had such a great time.

Go Balls Deep: The Oral History of ‘Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story’

In advance of the latest Crowded House album, Neil Finn got the full treatment at Stereogum. A terrific, first-hand review of his career.

We’ve Got A File On You: Neil Finn

Where my weather geeks at? A cool site that shows which of the many forecasting tools out there have been most accurate for your location recently.

Forecast Advisor

While working on a recent RFTS post, I came across this piece about the history of AT40. I loved this line about the catch phrase I named the series for.

It was a very Casey Kasem thing to do. He felt compelled to provide a bit of philosophical advice for listeners — especially the younger ones — rather than simply say goodbye. Coming from anyone else, it might have sounded a bit corny but it sounded just right coming from Kasem. It was all part and parcel of making a countdown show more than a list of songs.

“American Top 40” is a Vital Chapter of Music History

I spent much of the afternoon working through a long read that is probably best shared on its own.

I’m not sure when I first came across Maciej Cegłowski’s work. I know I used his Pinboard bookmarking service a several times, although never as a primary collection tool. At some point I discovered his writing, which is often amazing. I kicked in a few bucks for his Antarctic adventure, too.

He doesn’t write often – his most recent post before the one I’m sharing was 17 months ago – but when he does, you can guarantee it will be worth the considerable effort it takes to read it. His site features the tag line of “Brevity is for the weak,” which should be a warning for readers with short attention spans.

His new post is a scathing takedown of the current NASA/private partnership to return US astronauts to the moon. I don’t know shit about the science of space travel, but if even some of what Cegłowski writes is true, I struggle to believe that we’ll put a human on the moon anywhere close to the current timetable.

While this piece is deep, heavy on science, and long, Cegłowski fills it with sly, hilarious lines like these. He is a master of the simile.

Flying SLS is like owning a classic car—everything is hand built, the components cost a fortune, and when you finally get the thing out of the shop, you find yourself constantly overtaken by younger rivals.

What NASA is doing is like an office worker blowing half their salary on lottery tickets while putting the other half in a pension fund. If the lottery money comes through, then there was really no need for the pension fund. But without the lottery win, there’s not enough money in the pension account to retire on. The two strategies don’t make sense together.

So, like an aging crooner transposing old hits into an easier key, the agency has worked to find a ‘lunar-adjacent’ destination that its hardware can get to.

He can be funny without using similes, too.

And SLS is a “one and done” rocket, artisanally hand-crafted by a workforce that likes to get home before traffic gets bad.

The Lunacy of Artemis

Several car articles, since I’m still in that mode. I’ll slip those stories to the bottom if you aren’t super interested in them.

I’m not a government hater, but shit like this makes me furious. You would think the possibility of preventing the most prevalent forms of cancer would get all our branches of government to move quicker.

The Food and Drug Administration’s ability to approve the chemical filters in sunscreens that are sold in countries such as Japan, South Korea, and France is hamstrung by a 1938 U.S. law that requires sunscreens to be tested on animals and classified as drugs, rather than as cosmetics as they are in much of the world.

When Will America Get Better Sunscreens?

I don’t really get the whole Drake-Kendrick Lamar thing because I am old. But I enjoyed reading about the 30-or-so percent of these that I know.

The Greatest Diss Tracks of All Time, Ranked

Spotify’s recommendation engine has seemed off to me for several months. I’m not quite ready to go down this route, but I’m glad there are still options if you want to find curated music.

Why the Radio Is Still Better Than the Spotify Algorithm

I might dive into this the next time my periodic insomnia pops up.

The Northwoods Baseball Radio Network
Is On The Air.

I don’t love this writer’s style, and it seems like it could have used a pass from a better editor. I also think he undersells the role of the Chinese government in propping up their auto industry. But he makes some provocative and, I think, quite fair points about how the US is falling behind China in EVs, and how our only strategy to compete is by taxing the hell out of Chinese cars to protect our market.

Instead of competing, they’d rather just shut out competition entirely. The concerns about cybersecurity don’t address the elephant in the room here: Your product sucks, compared to what China is putting out now. It doesn’t go as far. It’s not as well-made. It’s not as nice. It’s not as connected.

I Went To China And Drove A Dozen Electric Cars. Western Automakers Are Cooked

Short sighted, fear mongering assholes.

Republicans are pulling out all the stops to reverse EV adoption

This is really dumb on multiple levels. Someone made a mistake, and Hertz refuses to do the human thing and fix it. Between this and Hertz’s issues trying to get customers arrested for not turning in cars that had, indeed, been turned in, I think I’ll avoid them the next time I rent a car.

A rare article when it is worth reading the comments, especially the one from the guy who Hertz screwed over.

UPDATE: Hertz is allegedly working to fix this. But IT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED!!!

Hertz Charges Tesla Model 3 Renter $277 Fee for Gas, Won’t Back Down

Let’s start with a fantastic Q&A with Jerry Seinfeld.

The great joy to me is: I’m making this up, but let me see if I can make it sound like it makes sense to me. That’s what comedy is to me. They know I’m lying from the first line, and they don’t care.

Jerry Seinfeld Says Movies Are Over. Here’s Why He Made One Anyway

I found this summary of how and why Congress actually seemed to work like a functioning body for a few days recently really informative and interesting. Especially this section. Another reminder of how extreme gerrymandering hurts our political system far more than creating “safe” districts for the party in power.

…even as emotional hatred towards the other party (“affective polarization”) has skyrocketed, “ideological polarization” — the distance between Democratic and Republican voters on the issues — has barely grown.

Unlike in Congress, where ideological polarization has increased to the point that members of the two parties almost always vote in two distinct blobs (see above), a plurality of Americans still hold a mix of liberal and conservative views.

The week fluidity returned to Congress

Obligatory share of some terrific science news.

NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

Your mileage may vary, but I geeked out over this insider look at one of the first in-car navigation systems. As impressive as our current technology is – our vehicle and phones are connecting to outer space to keep us on the correct route! – it is often more impressive to see how things were accomplished in less advanced times.

A Curious Phenomenon Called ‘Etak’

This piece focuses on how our mobile phones aren’t changing as much, year-to-year, as they used to and what that means for Apple’s business model. That’s true for all technology. Where you almost had to get a new laptop every two years not that long ago, now a good one will last you half a decade. Much of that is because way more of what we do is on the web rather than in apps, and the value of and need for highly-specced machines is much more limited.

As much as Apple would like us to think otherwise, this is where we are: iPhones are just phones. To most people — even to someone who spends all day selling them — they’re just a tool, and getting a new one feels like an inevitability, not an event. Something about as exciting as upgrading your washing machine.

The walls of Apple’s garden are tumbling down

I’ll admit that I’ve never been a KISS fan, even ironically. Yet I’m still flabbergasted they could sell their catalog for over $300 million in 2024. Can you really put their two or three songs that resonate with the general public into enough movies, shows, and ads, count on streaming revenue, and sell enough clothing to justify that outlay?

Kiss sells catalog, brand name and IP. Gene Simmons assures fans it is a ‘collaboration’

You take everything written about Apple with a grain of salt because of the company’s notorious secrecy, but even if this piece is only partially true, it is a fascinating look at their failed attempt to get into the car business.

How Apple Sank About $1 Billion a Year Into a Car It Never Built

And I liked this effort to find something good in Apple’s car program. Or any EV manufacturer, for that matter. Even if we all know it’s more money and market share than saving the planet.

A More Charitable Take on Apple’s Self-Driving Car Ambitions

OK, maybe my EV search is over!

Microlino electric bubble car review: urban delight

This is an interesting article about whether or not changing the clocks twice a year has a real effect on people and their health. It barely mentions one truth: the sun comes up really late in the winter no matter how we set our clocks.

The science behind why people hate Daylight Saving Time so much

This was written before Krazy Kim’s latest outburst.

Kim Mulkey is an asshole

As a counter, this woman is an absolute badass.

Jasmin Paris first woman to complete gruelling Barkley Marathons race

Rob Harvilla just completed his wonderful 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s podcast, going well beyond 60 songs before he shut it down. I didn’t listen to them all, but the ones I did listen to were all great.

Here’s a full accounting of the songs he covered, broken down by genre, with links to their corresponding episode.

‘60 Songs That Explain the ’90s’: The Complete Collection

It’s been a good year for albums so far. Hurray For The Riff Raff’s The Past Is Still Alive is one of my favorites of the bunch.

Hurray for the Riff Raff has made the next great American road album

A semi-insider looks back on Lost In The Dream.

Bring It Home: The War on Drugs’ Lost in the Dream 10 Years Later

A cool visual presentation on how, and why, The Rolling Stones Greatest 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list has changed over the years.

WHAT MAKES AN ALBUM THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME?

Weird week here. It was in the 70s Monday, high 60s Tuesday, then the wind chill was in the teens all day Wednesday. The sun is bright and dazzling today, but it is still very chilly. That combined with some other things has thrown my body clock off.[1] I’m having trouble sleeping at night then struggle all day to avoid taking a nap, usually unsuccessfully, so I can go to bed tired. The cherry on top was our tornado sirens going off at 2:00 AM Wednesday morning as severe thunderstorms blew through. Pretty sure I got less than four hours of sleep that night.

So rather that write about the Jayhawks and get mad again, finish up a Reader’s Notebook post, or share some more thoughts on the car-buying process, here are a few pretty solid links.

Sally Jenkins with a fantastic piece about how the NCAA’s stance on Lynette Woodard’s scoring mark – which Caitlin Clark passed last night – is just another hypocritical stance in its long history of them.

There is nothing trivial about this. It’s an act of erasure. Example: the NCAA regards Michigan as the holder of the record for most college football victories of all time, with 989. Yet the NCAA didn’t come into existence until 1910, and Michigan began playing football in 1879. The NCAA doesn’t strike or asterisk anything Michigan won “pre-NCAA.”…The NCAA wouldn’t dream of ignoring those years.

Yet they do so with women’s basketball.

The NCAA erased an entire generation of women’s sports

If someone writes about the Voyager spacecraft, I’m obligated to share it. I loved the opening line of this piece about Voyager 1’s impending death.

Billions of miles away at the edge of the Solar System, Voyager 1 has gone mad and has begun to die.

Death, Lonely Death

You know those sketchy texts you get occasionally about some package that can’t be delivered unless you do X or Y? In this piece, the author did a deep dive and learned that a text he thought was a phishing attempt was actually legit. Things are just going to get more confusing as AI takes over more and more of the logistics/customer service stack.

Thanks FedEx, This is Why we Keep Getting Phished

I dig stories about submarines, so this was pretty awesome. Well, other than the fact the Navy signed off on it because the world is as unstable and close to major war as it has been since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe

I meant to post these yesterday and got sidetracked by this-and-that. Thus Wednesday links become Thursday links.

As someone who dabbles in obsessive, esoteric pastimes, this article fascinated me. I know I occasionally get into weird little spaces where I am beyond consumed by a particular topic, but I’m pretty sure that has never gotten in the way of my relationships with friends and family. It seems to me that the payoff in this story was not worth the cost along the way, both monetarily and personally.

You probably know a Ken Fritz. Maybe you are a bit of one yourself. Prosperous mid-century America produced a lot of Kens. The kind of people who gave their all to their hobbies — bowling, gardening, woodworking, stamp collecting — and refused to pay somebody else to manifest their dreams for them.

He spent his life building a $1 million stereo.

Speaking of obsessions, I have a couple friends who are really into Air Jordans. They insist that despite what this piece suggests, prices haven’t dropped all that much, but would appreciate it if they did.

“Somebody who is 18 years old doesn’t know the brand because MJ ~laced up the Concord 11s~ when he came back to the NBA. They know the brand because Jordan shoes have recently sold out or have otherwise been very hard to buy.” In other words, young people know Jordan’s shoes. They know the formally elegant Jumpman logo. But they may not know much about the man himself.

Air Jordan Is Finally Deflating

I’m not a big car guy, but I do have a short list of cars I would chase if I had the funds to do so. There are realistic ones, like simply upgrading to an Audi Q8. If we didn’t have to put three kids in college and I had an serious income of my own, I would jump up to an Audi SQ8 Sportback e-tron or RS e-tron GT. Take another leap, say we won the Powerball, and I would order a heavily-customized Aston Martin DB12.

However, the car that has always been coolest to me is the Ferrari Daytona Spyder that was featured in the early years of Miami Vice. I know I read a lot about the car back when the show aired, but I can’t recall if I knew that the car used in the show was actually a replica built on a Corvette frame. Crazy!

The Story Behind the 1972 Ferrari 365 GTS/4 Daytona Spyder in Miami Vice

Finally, all of these are good, some of them are incredible. S and I both lost it over the “I’m the dumbest person at work…” one.

Men Explain Why They Prefer Low-IQ Wives

Tuesday we learned that Sinéad O’Connor died of natural causes. As so often happens in these situations, that initially came as a relief but then was even more heartbreaking. I’ve been sitting on this very good remembrance of her by people who knew and admired her for a bit. Seems like the right time to finally share it.

Yes, she was controversial and ahead of her time, but aren’t all our favorite artists controversial and ahead of their time?! Isn’t that what art is for? To challenge us, to disturb us, and to break open our hearts?

The Unwavering Sinéad O’Connor

I love quizzes like these, especially since my results seemed perfect. My top three cites were Kansas City, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. I lived in or around Kansas City for 23 years and have lived in Indy for 20+ years. St. Louis? Well my first four years of school were in towns where the closest big city was St. Louis. While I might not have picked up the St. Louis accent – “Farty. Farty-far.” – it did have an influence on some of my vocabulary.

How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk

A great, multi-section, multi-media breakdown of the year in Twitter.

The Year Twitter Died

At first I resisted this article. Can we really learn anything new about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Eventually I had to read it, though. This piece suggests that the official record points to clear CIA involvement. I believe the full, honest-to-goodness truth will never be discovered, as every person who could have answered that question is long gone, and their knowledge was, most likely, never fully documented.

The Secrets of the JFK Assassination Archive

As promised, I have a big batch of articles to share. I read most of these while on our trip last weekend, thus on my Kindle, which meant I couldn’t clip pull quotes as I read. With a couple exceptions, you’ll just have to trust me that these are worth your time. Most are pretty lengthy, so if you have travels planned for next week, or just need some distractions to get away from “loved ones” who rub you the wrong way, these could be ideal.

I went to Target the day before Halloween to grab the small amount of candy we need every year. The Halloween section was being cleared out and replaced with Christmas candy. Again, on the day BEFORE Halloween.

This story popped up the next day. Target isn’t alone, and there are a lot of factors that go into it. But, seriously, could you wait until November 1 to do the change-over?

‘Christmas creep’: Why holiday candy hits shelves so early

I was re-reading a post from 2013 and came across this article I linked to back then. At the time it marked the 30th anniversary of one of the most dangerous years in the Cold War, and it seemed hopelessly in the past. Add ten more years, the rise of authoritarianism around the globe, a ground war in Europe, an expansionist China, the latest conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, plus everything going on in our fair country, and it seems like we could pretty easily slip back into the dark days when global nuclear conflict is not a totally unrealistic option.

Inescapable, apocalyptic dread: The terrifying nuclear autumn of 1983

As the parent of a Swiftie, I enjoyed this quite a bit.

My Delirious Trip to the Heart of Swiftiedom

This is an incredible story, both in the audacity of the crime and the utter lack of recourse most victims have. If you plan on doing any major projects around your home, I recommend reading it closely. And write checks or wire money. Never, ever use a peer-to-peer payment system for anything other than childcare or reimbursing a friend for lunch.

The Great Zelle Pool Scam

There is a movie coming out about Diana Nyad’s exploits. Apparently it has pissed a lot of people off, which is something she’s been doing her whole life. I don’t really know or care what the truth of situation is, but this was an enthralling piece.

Diana Nyad’s Swimming Brought Her Glory, Fame, And An Adversary Dedicated To Exposing Her Lies

I’m always suspicious of articles like this about retiring politicians as they try to claim the moral high ground, suggesting if their colleagues just behaved like them our political process would be less dysfuncitonal. But Mitt Romney’s viewpoint here is compelling and yet another sign our country is well-down a dangerous path that will likely take decades to get off, if we’re lucky.

What Mitt Romney Saw In The Senate

Here is a piece I did go back and find a pull quote for. It is about the small group of lawyers and support staff in Germany who are still searching for surviving Nazis. Their search has expanded to include administrative staff who worked at the death camps. It raises an interesting moral discussion about whether a young woman who typed orders given and followed by others is responsible for the deaths of the names on those pieces of paper.

This passage was especially chilling and powerful, given it was a German taking his own people to task for just going along or following orders rather than standing up to genocide.

The Furchner case upturned his thinking about the Holocaust, Kleist told me, finally making sense of the number of people the Nazis were able to murder in a mere 12 years in power. “This genocide wasn’t efficient because of the crazy people at the top,” he said. “It was efficient because every day, thousands of Germans like Frau Furchner showed up at an office and did their jobs. This is why they got so far. This genocide. It was so…so ordinary.” He hoped her case would lay a new inscription on the past: that ordinary people did this too. He hoped it would send a different sort of message to the future: that ordinary people could do this too.

The Race to Catch the Last Nazis

What if someone who had a similar name and similar career to yours turned into a conspiracy-spouting nut job and you were the target some of the blowback for their behavior? Author Naomi Klein has been dealing with exactly that for the past few years.

I realize I’m on her side here, but I continue to find it baffling how the Covid pandemic has pushed so many people from various perspectives into the lunatic fringe, where government actions designed to contain the virus and prevent deaths are seen as a way of crushing the individual, implementing socialism, etc. It’s even more amazing that while the pandemic began with our former president in office, many of these people have decided our government’s entire response to the pandemic is part of a Biden-led plot. I mean, look at a calendar, people…

Naomi Klein on following her ‘doppelganger’ down the conspiracy rabbit hole – and why millions of people have entered an alternative political reality

Finally, a fun, lighthearted, and educational piece.

Are any words the same in all languages?