[void] The Void Would Very Much Like You to Stop Screaming Into It … ‘It is, I’ll admit, entirely possible he’ll start another war, or several wars, or even a world war because Melania finally escaped, or his sons were revealed to be Uday and Qusay Hussein in disguise, or something. But he’s just one guy. One freaking guy. You have got to stop coming here, day after day, screaming into me about him. Especially using that many curse words. I think we can both admit at this point that the screaming isn’t working. The screaming isn’t making you feel any better.’
[epstein] Rich Brain … How Epstein’s emails reveal the super-rich’s obsession with preserving their wealth. ‘Something middle-class people may not realize is that an age of yawning inequality actually makes very rich people more anxious, too. Once again, you might imagine a liberating effect of extreme wealth. But that isn’t how it turns out to work. The cost of sinking into the below-ground becomes more unimaginable. The abyss becomes more terrifying. And, therefore, changes to the system, higher taxes, rising populist tides — all of it is terrifying. Wealth taxation, specifically, like the new proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna for a 5 percent annual wealth tax on America’s nearly 1,000 billionaires, triggers especially visceral feelings. The billionaire class often takes it like a punch in their grandson’s stomach.’
[life] A Japanese Glossary of Chopsticks Faux Pas … A list about the etiquette of using chopsticks in Japan. ‘Tatebashi (also known as tsukitatebashi, hotokebashi) !!! (Serious) To stand chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice. This is taboo, as it is the way rice is presented as a Buddhist funeral offering.’
[tech] How Nick Land Became Silicon Valley’s Favorite Doomsayer … Let’s catchup with the populariser of accelerationism. ‘Land can now hold court in the ballroom of a mansion where sushi and seltzer are being served. Clearly, these ideas, and the political energy they carry, have escaped containment. But now, having spread, the new reactionary thought seems to have lost some of its momentum. “Nobody knows where we’re going,” Yarvin said, on the stage. Land agreed, adding, “I think the thing is that muddling through is the world that we are now living in.”’
[life] ‘Like an electrical gong bath!’ The Sheffield supermarket going viral for the symphonic sound of its freezers … A delightful story about three musical freezers in a Co-op in Sheffield. ‘Earlier this week, another Redditor shared a video of the freezers in all their aural glory, later earning a huge second audience when reposted to X. A debate ensued. Was it tuned to C# major? Could you hear the opening of Nothing Compares 2 U somewhere in the electronic hum? “I think it’s developed a slight discordant edge over the last couple of months,” one Reddit user wrote.’
[air-travel] The strange fate of Flight 2069 … Fascinating article looking at an incident nine months before 9/11 where a mentally ill passenger attempted to seize control of a British Airways Flight and nearly crashed it into the Sahara. ‘This is the issue of the flight, as it lives on in the minds of those who survived it: how to measure the price of a disaster averted. Why it torments some of those involved when they came out alive; whether the instinct to seek evidence of cover-up makes any rational sense, or is a feature of trauma. Did 9/11, in changing the scope of potential disaster in the popular imagination, cast Flight 2069 in a sicklier light? Conspiracy theories, in their impulse to look for something bad at work in the machine, are preferable to the awful randomness of what might happen, or nearly happen. Perhaps it is natural for Bill Hagan, bearing the awful responsibility of captain but finding himself out of the cockpit when the attack began, to be poring over counter-factuals 25 years later. Others, like Watson, are at pains to see the story of Flight 2069 rationally, as a neutral “event” and an accident that did not happen – but there was nothing emotionally neutral about it. It was a confrontation with the deeply irrational, with madness, and with death, for everyone onboard.’
[til] 52 things I learned in 2024 … Fifty-two TIL from Tom Whitwell. ‘British Chaos refers to a cluster of TikTok personalities that “once might have just been a local character in a pub in Stevenage but have become international celebrities.”’
[ai] OpenAI Usage Plummets in the Summer, When Students Aren't Cheating on Homework … ‘In May, ChatGPT users generated an average of 79.6 billion tokens per day — compared to 36.7 billion for the same period in June, when schools typically let out. Interestingly, there were some dips during the school year as well — which just so happened to line up with weekends.’
[london] The Rainham volcano: a waste dump is constantly on fire in east London. Why will no one stop it? … The appalling history of an ilegal waste dump and the toxic underground fires that resulted. ‘At the beginning of 2012, after complaints from Rainham residents, the Environment Agency commissioned an engineering company to assess Arnolds Field for contamination. The company dug 35 pits, each about 4 metres deep. They found landfill waste – including mattresses and pieces of furniture – at each one. They didn’t find any hazardous waste, but there were elevated levels of lead and benzo(a)pyrene, a potent chemical that causes cancer, in the soil – a sign that something toxic might have been buried elsewhere on site. (McClenaghan, the local fire department commander, believes that in some places the waste reaches 12 metres – about four storeys – below the ground, well out of reach of the 2012 survey.) The engineering company noted that the land was so warm that it melted the winter snow.’
[covid-19] Insane after coronavirus? … Patricia Lockwood’s demented experience of Covid-19 in March 2020. ‘‘The love of my life is now my enemy,’ I thought to myself, crawling out of the bedroom on hands and knees to take one million mg of Vitamin C, because what the hell else was I supposed to do – apply leeches? What kind of man would fake a cough while his wife was in the next room perishing? Hadn’t he discouraged me from going to the hospital? At the beginning of lockdown, had he not thrown away the empty detergent bottle I set aside for use as an Apocalypse Bidet, telling me I was being a lunatic? Look at him, I thought to myself evilly: fit as a fiddle and playing video games all day – though later, of course, it turned out that he was also delirious and had been playing the same twenty minutes of Skyrim over and over without ever progressing.’
[life] The Best Time-Management Advice Is Depressing But Liberating … Advice from Oliver Burkeman. ‘It’s about acknowledging that we are finite, limited creatures living in a world of constraints and stubborn reality. Once you’re no longer kidding yourself that one day you’re going to become capable of doing everything that’s thrown at you, you get to make better decisions about which things you are going to focus on and which you’re going to neglect.’
[phones] My first year without an iPhone … A practical guide to living without a smartphone. ‘Some of you are absolutists, and that’s not going to work here. We can’t turn back time. You can absolutely live completely and fully without the internet, but you have to really change your life. You can totally live ethically with a smartphone, but you will also face struggles. In my opinion, living ethically in either path requires a lot of self-discipline and intentionality.
I work as an editor and marketer of books, and as long as I get my work done, I am not obligated to carry an iPhone for my job. Sure, there are apps like two-factor authentication that we use, and occasionally there’s social media marketing that I can’t do on a desktop, but those are pretty easy to work around, and I’ll explain how.’
[disgust] This article will make you want to wash your hands … I came across this long read on disgust and public health and found it fascinating. It was published a few years ago but definitely worth a read. ‘Because of the way meat is produced, the world, McLagan notes, is “awash” with this excellent source of protein and iron, but most of it gets wasted. Some is dumped into rivers and lakes, which causes pollution, increasing the nitrogen in the water. The key to avoiding this pollution – and getting some cheap nutrients into the bargain – would be eliminating our disgust for cooking with blood. McLagan finds pig’s blood a marvellous substitute for eggs, with half the calories. In her Toronto kitchen, she whips fresh blood into a stable pink foam, which she uses for anything from rich brownies to dark brown blood meringues. I tried some of both. They tasted good, with a slight metallic tang. But most western consumers find the very idea of handling blood too horrifying even to contemplate.’
[life] New Evidence Suggests Dinosaurs Would Have Driven Selves To Extinction Through Greed And Complacency Anyway … ‘It appears they were already developing the rudimentary traits for corruption needed to exploit each other. This, combined with a genetic predisposition toward pillaging the earth with no regard for tomorrow, would have derailed the ecosystems that sustained them just as effectively as an extraterrestrial object colliding with the planet and setting in on fire.’
[life] The Onion: Study: 97% Of Average American’s Day Spent Retrieving 6-Digit Codes … ‘“Our findings suggest that U.S. residents spend roughly 23 hours each day—or 160 hours every week—attempting to log in to online services, being told they need to check their phone for a six-digit code, and then entering that code into the website or app for verification,” said lead researcher Andrew Singh, adding that many Americans have to skip meals and forgo showering in order to find time to read and transfer over the hundreds of codes needed daily to access their medical records, work emails, and food delivery accounts.’
[life] What does Werner Herzog’s nihilist penguin teach us about life? … ‘We then see footage of another of these “deranged” penguins, 80 kilometres off course, sliding on its belly towards certain death. These shots of the solitary birds marching to their demise, mere black dots against the white expanse, are perfect in their portrayal of loneliness and desolation.’
[life] 100 Men vs. 1 Gorilla: Primatologists Explain Who Would Win … … ‘Most silverbacks would much rather take a nap, eat some good food, play with the kids, take another nap … gorillas know how to live a pretty good life, and none of it is wasted wondering if they could knock out 100 humans’
[tech] Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World … ‘The hysterical tinfoil-hat crowd urges you to turn off your phone whenever you’re going to discuss something private—like your political opinions, religious beliefs, or medical conditions—as if the phone is somehow going to “hear” them and tech companies will use that info against you. In reality, they already know all those things because they know what news sources you read, the contents of your emails, what WebMD pages you’ve visited, and how long you’ve spent at which church, synagogue, mosque, or ethical humanist center. So don’t even worry about it.’
[life] Merlin Mann’s Wisdom Project … I always find something useful in these lists of advice and lifehacks. YMMV. ‘Open your mail over the recycling bin.’
[life] What are your beliefs about the nature of reality? … Analyse your beliefs with this quiz. ‘Inflationary Multiverse — You accept the cosmological model where our universe is one bubble in an eternally inflating space, with other universe “bubbles” having potentially different physical laws, constants, and dimensions.’
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30 March 2025
[todo] Who Uses To-Do Lists? … Donald Knuth: ‘… my scheduling principle is to do the thing I hate most on my to-do list. By week’s end, I’m very happy.’
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24 February 2025
[life] Live-updating Version of the ‘What a week, huh?’ Meme [Day | Week | Month | Year] …
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23 February 2025
[food] This is my final OFM column. Here’s what I’ve learned about buffets, ‘clean eating’ and what not to serve food on … Some advice on food and dining out from Jay Rayner in his final Happy Eater column. ‘Eating alone in a restaurant is dinner with someone you love and a delicious opportunity for people watching. Great food can be found in the scuzziest of places. Gravy stains down your shirt are not a source of embarrassment; they are a badge of honour. Expensive restaurants are wasted on the people who can afford them. And food should always, always, be served on plates. Not on slates. Not on garden trowels. Not on planks. On plates.’
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7 February 2025
[life] What parking apps tell us about the UK… A deep dive into why digitisation is leading to the eshittification of society. ‘Our 5G is patchy; our internet speeds middling; our websites crash; the train plug sockets are out of action, etc. There are so many hidden costs to digitisation, and most are passed on to the consumer. I call this ‘techno-admin’. Large firms use automation to cut staff and reduce administrative overheads, especially when it comes to customer service. But what they have actually done is outsource the admin work to the customer. We are the ones now form-filling, changing passwords, self-serving, and (this is the worst bit) fixing errors. I sometimes wonder if the UK’s productivity problem – which has flatlined since 2010 – is partly caused by a surge in techno-admin.’
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6 February 2025
[art] What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? … I reread this article from 2017 recently about the complexity of enjoying the work of men like Woody Allen. ‘Just as Manhattan never authentically or fully examines the complexities of an old dude nailing a high schooler, Allen himself—an extremely well-spoken guy—becomes weirdly inarticulate when discussing Soon-Yi. In a 1992 interview with Walter Isaacson of Time, Allen delivered the line that became famous for its fatuous dismissal of his moral shortcomings: “The heart wants what it wants.” It was one of those phrases that never leaves your head once you’ve heard it: we all immediately memorized it whether we wanted to our not. Its monstrous disregard for anything but the self. Its proud irrationality.’
[lifehacks] The Most Powerful Life Hacks I’ve Found … I always seem to find something useful in these posts with lists of life hacks. Maybe you will too. ‘Be reliable. You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work. Reliability is one of the most underrated traits. In the short run, it is much harder to be exceptional than it is to be reliable, and in the long run, being consistently reliable makes you exceptional.’
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28 January 2025
[life] Wikenigma … An Encyclopedia of the known unknowns. Paracetemol:‘One of the most widely prescribed drugs in history works by mechanisms which have not yet been agreed upon by the medical establishment. It‘s currently thought that paracetamol acts via more than one neurological pathway…’
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1 January 2025
[til] 52 things I learned in 2024 … Fifty-two TIL from Tom Whitwell. ‘The London Underground has a distinct form of mosquito, Culex pipiens f. Molestus, genetically different from above-ground mosquitos, and present since at least the 1940s.’
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[ambient] A Soft Murmur … Ambient background noise generator to relax with.
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12 November 2024
[ronson] 10 Chaotic Questions for Jon Ronson … ‘Q: What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? A: I think I was in genuine danger going to Aryan Nations. I was walking past all these signs that said “No Jews”, “Jews turn back now”, and I was like, “Oh, they’ll be fine with me!”’
[onion] Everyone In Restaurant Jealous Of Toddler Who Gets To Wear Pajamas And Watch iPad … ‘“I can’t believe this! He doesn’t even have to talk to anybody or pay attention to what’s going on around him—he gets to just sit and watch Bluey,” said Ray’s Italian Bistro patron Finn Delamore, echoing the sentiment of dozens around him who reportedly couldn’t help but cast longing looks at the 2-year-old whose eyes were glued to the screen in front of him, his hands clasping a bright red toy fire truck.’
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30 July 2024
[life] The Scale of Life … Fascinating real-time statistics about what is happening right now all over the world. ‘Year to date, Number of Hours Worked: 5,224,497,264,667’ [via Andrew Ducker]
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26 July 2024
[life] The surprising data behind supercentenarians … Tim Harford sugggests a surprising reason why some people live so long. ‘In the US, Newman finds that the outstanding predictor of longevity is patchy birth records. Introducing proper records in the late 19th century reduced by more than two-thirds the number of babies who would eventually seem to reach the age of 110. That suggests that, until recently, seven out of 10 apparent supercentenarians were, in fact, younger than claimed. This all points to error or outright fraud.’
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11 July 2024
[podcast] Things Fell Apart… A BBC Podcast by Jon Ronson on the many, varied stories behind the culture wars.
[travel] Obvious Travel Advice … Useful list of thoughts on travel. ‘Time seems to speed up as you get older. And you wonder—is it biological, or is it because life had more novelty when you were a child? Travel partly answers this question—with more novelty, time slows way down again.’
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27 June 2024
[vending] A day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in the world … A wonderfully written profile on the world of vending machines. ‘At 12.45am, a white-chocolate Twix dropped into the well of a machine in Blackfriars in London. At a taxi depot in Belfast, drivers on overnight standby thumbed in coins to buy keep-awake Cokes. Cans of sugar-free Tango slammed down in the surgeons’ staffroom at an Edinburgh hospital. Bottles of Mountain Dew, already long past expiry, turned another hour older inside a Covid-shuttered office in North Carolina. A Japanese accountant, several hours ahead of Europe and the US in a southern prefecture called Ehime, eyed the familiar choices in a cup-noodle machine by his desk…’
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24 June 2024
[dads] Trolley Problem Variations for Dads … Another list from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. ‘Dad is given both options of the Trolley Problem. But as he begins to think it over, he keeps saying, “This is exactly like the Kobayashi Maru!” He then spends so much time explaining how Captain Kirk cheated to win the scenario that he never pulls the lever.’
[life] A Billionaire Can Never Be Held Accountable… [via]
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10 May 2024
[life] 101 Additional Advices … More Advice From Kevin Kelly. ‘When you are stuck or overwhelmed, focus on the smallest possible thing that moves your project forward.’
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