Category: Friday Unrelated Information

1. This is right up there with the best McSweeney’s article of all time (Decorative Gourd Season): We Must Create The Shit Machine. It’s an allegory!

The miraculous Shit-Raining Machine, from which there will be NO HOPE OF RELIEF, promises to unlock PREVIOUSLY UNIMAGINABLE AND CURRENTLY VAGUE BENEFITS FOR HUMANKIND, such as:

• • Business things
  • Other stuff
  • WE MUST CREATE IT

2. Speaking of shittiness, I think of this every time I get an email about a mysterious price “change.”

3. This is us this morning: We thought the boys might have worms and got their 💩 tested (it’s a theme today!). Turns out they have GIARDIA, so…still a parasite, just a more surprising one. We’ll get them some meds and get them sorted out, though.

 

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1. Any Human Ever is a fun little way to remind ourselves how good some modern technology can be (the “children per woman” stat is GRIM, as is the “died before age 5” one). Get assigned “a place, a life, each taken at random from real data” and learn about how someone lived and died in the past.

2. I’m always here for a Gilbert and Sullivan parody (the fonts being shown match what’s being sung, of course):

 

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3. Presented without comment:

1. Some more Wendell Berry, from Life is a Miracle: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

2. One week into unemployment and I’m not finding a job like this??

3. Here’s Ordinary Abundance, an interactive appreciation of all the (good) things modern society has given us: “All the items in this room were once out of reach; some not yet invented, others too rare or costly for the vast majority of people. Today, most of us lucky enough to live with them walk past without a second thought.”

1. Mike Monteiro had an excellent newsletter this week about making art in bad times. Read about the town of Guernica, Picasso’s Guernica, and this incredible crop art from the Minnesota State Fair (by Jennifer Nelson):

2. Speaking of art, The Last Museum lets you explore a collection of museum catalogs by any subject you want and then links you to the artifact page.

3. Feeling this lately:

1. Take a look at Japanese matchboxes from the 20s and 30s and learn the history of the safety match and a new word, phillumeny.

2. A beautiful headline: Salem Brought a Guillotine To Oppose New Data Center. Company Reps Left, Feeling “Unsafe”.

3. Not me tearing up at Punch the monkey as an adult. We can all be what we needed when we were younger!

 

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1. Red alert: Gap is re-releasing their 90’s fragrances. Obviously I need to buy some and smell the Grass one again and see if I’m transported back to 1995.

2. Here’s Dan Sheehan on airport lounges:

The product that airport lounges offer turned out to not be a luxurious alternative to the airport, but rather a fulfillment of what reasonable expectations for an airport would be. The experience is defined not by the consumer’s objective standard of a fancy lounge (a club for admirals!) but by the neglected hellscape that surrounds it.

3. Look at this orange cat version of Pinky and the Brain I saw on the Best Friends site this week. (I thought I wanted a dog? I thought it was too soon? But just look at them!)

1. It’s a weird time to be in the creative industry; I hate how accurate this is.

2. This reminds me of all the best things on the Old Internet: niche subject, obsessive research, just posting for the joy of it: “Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail”

3. A fun scroll: “Little People,” David Gilliver’s miniature photos.

1. I will always read something about the heyday of printed catalogs. “Longing” is such a apt word choice here:

As a form of media, mail-order catalogs themselves were a story of longing and aspiration that came to define shopping as an American way of life. What you bought and where you bought it from was a statement about who you were and who you could be. This was as true of the inch-thick catalogs from department stores like Sears (whose holiday-season edition was upgraded from mere catalog to “Wish Book”) as it was of the thousands of specialty retail catalogs, from J. Crew and Tweeds to Swiss Colony and Fingerhut, that followed its lead.

(What I wouldn’t give to have saved the mid-90s J. Crew and Tweeds catalogs!)

2. It’s So Hot That Japan Needs a New Word for It: “kokushobi,” or “cruel heat day,”

3. Now that the floor in the garage is done it’s time to start organizing stuff (and painting the footings, and maybe the door, and then adding more lights). This will be me rearranging the tool cart:

1. I’d heard that Jon Oliver had a guest appearance on General Hospital and this piece collects all the clips and gives us details of the bonkers plots. As the subhead says, “It’s nice to sit back and watch a man have the time of his life.”

2. Perfect headline: Australian officials ask fans to respect the privacy of Neil, a 1,000 kg seal who respects nothing

3. “There’s a lot you can do in a hi-viz vest”

@elisejoshiBench + Fully Funded Transit > Waymo

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