About those stories of the detection of a possible molecular signature of life on a distant planet: the molecule they are talking about can also arise without life. “That’s a rather huge caveat!” (It’s never aliens. (Until it is. (Someday.)))
Spending More to Get Less Is Good?
Brian X. Chen, in a column at The New York Times headlined “Why a Tariff-Inflated $2,000 iPhone Is Nothing to Fear”:
Don’t panic. Even if tariffs did cause the iPhone’s price to
surge, we would have plenty of cheaper options, like buying last
year’s phone model instead o...
“AI discovered wholly new proteins before it could count the ‘r’s in...
“AI discovered wholly new proteins before it could count the ‘r’s in ‘strawberry’, which makes it neither vaporware nor a demigod but a secret third thing.”
Man of the Hour: Judge James Boasberg
Josh Kovensky, reporting for TPM:
In a withering 46-page opinion on Wednesday, D.C. Chief Judge
James Boasberg laid out how he came to believe that the Trump
administration was acting in bad faith during its Alien Enemies
Act removals.
Boasberg set the stage for potenti...
Wink Martindale Dies at 91
latimes.com/obituaries/story/2025-04-15/wink-martindale-dead-game-show-host-tic-tac-dough-gambit
Dennis McLellan, writing for the Los Angeles Times (News+ link):
Over the decades, according to his website, Martindale either
hosted or produced 21 game shows, including “Words and Music,”
“Trivial Pursuit,” “The Last Word” and “Debt.” “That’s a lot of
shows,” he acknow...
Ben Werdmuller on how he would run Bluesky. “Anyone will be able...
Ben Werdmuller on how he would run Bluesky. “Anyone will be able to permissionlessly build on that platform, but Bluesky’s services will be there to provide the best-in-class experience and de facto defaults…”
Was The Great Gatsby’s titular character a Black man who passed for...
Was The Great Gatsby’s titular character a Black man who passed for white? “To read the novel without presupposing any character’s whiteness is to discover which characters are identified as white and which are not.”
Meta Botches Redaction of Slides in Antitrust Trial, Angering Google, Apple, and Snap
theverge.com/news/649834/meta-redactions-apple-google-snap-angry-ftc-antitrust-trial
Wes Davis, The Verge:
During Meta’s antitrust trial today, lawyers representing
Apple, Google, and Snap each expressed irritation with Meta over
the slides it presented on Monday that The Verge found to
contain easy-to-remove redactions. Attorneys for both Apple
and Snap...
On the Real-Life Story of Deep-Cover Russian Spies Living As American Families....
On the Real-Life Story of Deep-Cover Russian Spies Living As American Families. “People who crave external validation would never make the cut as illegals, she said. ‘A spy is an actor, but an actor that doesn’t need a public or a stage.’” Fascinating!
The WSJ Reports on How Elon Musk Manages His ‘Legion’ of Children and Harem of Mothers
Dana Mattioli, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a gift link; also, here’s a News+ link):
Musk has had at least 14 children with four women, including the pop musician Grimes and Shivon Zilis, an executive at his brain computer company Neuralink. Multip...
The Traditional Designs of Ukrainian Egg Decorating
From a 1968 book, a collection of illustrations of regional patterns & designs of the art of Ukrainian pysanky, or egg decorating. From the Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas:
Pysanky are raw eggs that are decorate...
DOGE Dingalings Cut Off Funding for CVE Program
theregister.com/2025/04/16/homeland_security_funding_for_cve/
Jessica Lyons, reporting for The Register:
US government funding for the world’s CVE program — the
centralized Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database of
product security flaws — ends Wednesday.
The 25-year-old CVE program plays a huge role in vulnerability
manage...
Here’s the full trailer for season two of Poker Face (Natasha Lyonne,...
Here’s the full trailer for season two of Poker Face (Natasha Lyonne, Rian Johnson). For this season, they have tripled down on special guest stars, incl. Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Kumail Nanjiani, Justin Theroux, Awkwafina, and Carol Kane.
Figma Files for IPO
You will recall that in September 2022, Figma entered into an agreement for a $20 billion acquisition by Adobe, but abandoned the deal 15 months later.
Glenn Fleishman’s Kickstarter for ‘Six Centuries of Type & Printing’
kickstarter.com/projects/glennf/six-centuries-of-type-and-printing
Glenn Fleishman:
The book Six Centuries of Type & Printing briskly tells the
story of the evolution of type and printing, starting with early
documented efforts and surviving artifacts from China and Korea,
and introducing Gutenberg and his innovations. It then takes...
Timothy Snyder on “the beginning of an American policy of state terror”...
Timothy Snyder on “the beginning of an American policy of state terror” (re: disappearing people to foreign gulags). “Whatever the government does is good, because by definition the its victims are the ‘criminals’ and the ‘terrorists.’”
The First Sighting of the Colossal Squid
A cephalopod captured on video in March has been confirmed as a juvenile colossal squid, the first live colossal squid observed in its native habitat.
It’s been 100 years since the colossal squid was formally described in a scientific paper. In its adult form, the animal...
Here’s a gift link to the WSJ article about Elon Musk’s “legion”...
Here’s a gift link to the WSJ article about Elon Musk’s “legion” of children that he’s had with his “harem” of women. “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse, we will need to use surrogates.” It’s all just so weird, gross, & white supremacist.
Song Exploder
• Hrishikesh Hirway
Key Change: Samin Nosrat on Ani DiFranco
My guest today is my friend Samin Nosrat, the author of the bestselling, award-winning cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat, and the host and executive producer of the hit Netflix show that's based on it. Her second cookbook comes out this fall, and it's called Good Things: Recipes a...
How Well Is [NYC’s] Congestion Pricing Doing? Very. “The number of complaints...
How Well Is [NYC’s] Congestion Pricing Doing? Very. “The number of complaints about excessive car-honking in January and February was 70 percent lower than last January and February.”