Two interesting things about the rock paper scissors game: 1. scissors were actually invented before paper, and 2. an early Japanese variant was frog slug snake (frog beats slug, slug beats snake, snake beats frog).
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A supercut of every point scored by Kobe Bryant in his 81-point...
A supercut of every point scored by Kobe Bryant in his 81-point game in 2006. He only had 26 at the half and his team needed the points…they were losing until just before the 4th quarter.
The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years
The Criterion Collection is releasing a new boxset of Wes Anderson films, The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years.
Wes Anderson’s first ten features represent twenty-five years of irrepressible creativity, an ongoing ode to outsiders and quixotic dreamers, ...
The actor Patrick Stewart exists in the Star Trek universe and “Jean-Luc...
The actor Patrick Stewart exists in the Star Trek universe and “Jean-Luc Picard is aware of him” and other little-known Star Trek facts.
28 slightly rude notes on writing. “Most writing is bad because it’s...
28 slightly rude notes on writing. “Most writing is bad because it’s missing a motive. It feels dead because it hasn’t found its reason to live.”
Grammar movies: Apostrophes Now, Rebel Without a Clause, Gerund Brockovich, Alien vs...
Grammar movies: Apostrophes Now, Rebel Without a Clause, Gerund Brockovich, Alien vs Predicator, Indicative Jones and the Last Clause, Silence of the iambs, etc.
“All three of the country’s largest carriers (American Airlines, United Airlines, and...
“All three of the country’s largest carriers (American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta) are penalizing solo travelers with higher ticket prices than you can book when traveling with a group.” Assholes.
ESA’s Proba-3 is planning on creating an artificial eclipse to study the...
ESA’s Proba-3 is planning on creating an artificial eclipse to study the sun’s corona. The two halves of the solar probe recently achieved “millimetre precision” while flying autonomously in formation for several hours 50km above the Earth.
Caine’s Arcade
Caine is nine years old, lives in LA, and built his own arcade out of cardboard boxes in the back of his father’s auto parts store.
You’ve go to watch until at least 3:10 when he explains how to check the validity of the “Fun Pass” using the calculators located on the front of each game. So so so good!
[This is a vintage post originally from Apr 2012.]
Tags: timeless posts · video
Don’t mind me, I’m just watching old episodes of The Great Space...
Don’t mind me, I’m just watching old episodes of The Great Space Coaster on YouTube (Does anyone else remember this show? I watched it as a kid along with 3-2-1 Contact, Captain Kangaroo, H.R. Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos, etc.)
I Want No One Else to Succeed
In this video, a writer named Hannah shares an experiment her Intro to Psychology professor ran on her class. Here’s a transcript:
It’s 11 years ago, I’m in a massive university Intro to Psychology class. Everybody in my 250-person lecture is freaking out because it’s th...
The 100 best sports moments of the 21st century (so far). Hmm....
The 100 best sports moments of the 21st century (so far). Hmm. That’s all I’m going to say about this list. Hmm.
Re: SpaceX rockets that keep exploding: You Can’t Make an Omelette Without...
Re: SpaceX rockets that keep exploding: You Can’t Make an Omelette Without Exploding Several Billion Dollars Worth of Eggs. “Look, things explode. It’s just part of nature. Cybertrucks explode, and it’s no big deal.”
Alexandra Petri has some advice for the 2025 Harvard grad who will...
Alexandra Petri has some advice for the 2025 Harvard grad who will become ludicrously rich: “After the cataclysmic Event happens that unravels society and sends me scurrying to my luxury bunker, how do I keep my guards loyal?”
Shifting Baselines and the New Normal of the Trump Era
Among a number of things I’ve read online that I think about all the time is David Roberts’ 2020 piece for Vox about shifting baselines.
Humans often don’t remember what we’ve lost or demand that it be restored. Rather, we adjust to what we’ve got.
Concepts developed in...
Pediatrician Dr. Annie Andrews is running against Lindsey Graham for one of...
Pediatrician Dr. Annie Andrews is running against Lindsey Graham for one of South Carolina’s Senate seats. Based on the commercial launching her campaign, I kinda want to move to SC just so I can vote for her.
Harvard student: “I shall fight Secretary of Education Linda E. McMahon in...
Harvard student: “I shall fight Secretary of Education Linda E. McMahon in a televised cage match, the winner of which gets $2.7 billion in federal grants and the power to uphold or destroy America’s continued technological and economic success.”
New apt acronym for America’s lamest president: TACO, which stands for Trump...
New apt acronym for America’s lamest president: TACO, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. He should be hounded about his perpetual lack of spine…this is the sort of thing that really gnaws at fake strongmen.
The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a...
The curse of Toumaï: an ancient skull, a disputed femur and a bitter feud over humanity’s origins. “‘This piece,’ he warned, holding it before her: ‘You forget you ever saw it.’” Great read.
This rings true: “Elon Musk is less like Tony Stark and more...
This rings true: “Elon Musk is less like Tony Stark and more like Michael Scott.” The future he’s selling us is Stark Industries but what we’re getting is Dunder Mifflin.
A Disillusioned Urban Planning Glossary. “NIMBY – Stands for ‘Not in My...
A Disillusioned Urban Planning Glossary. “NIMBY – Stands for ‘Not in My Backyard.’ From the Old English nimm bæc yarde, meaning ‘no change shall occur within sightline of my bird feeder.’”
Happy 20th anniversary to Swissmiss, Tina Roth Eisenberg’s design/creativity/positivity blog....
Happy 20th anniversary to Swissmiss, Tina Roth Eisenberg’s design/creativity/positivity blog.
The Great Span: President John Tyler’s Grandson Dies Aged 96
Born in 1790 just a few months after George Washington took office, John Tyler was America’s 10th president, serving from 1841-1845. Harrison Ruffin Tyler, Tyler’s last living grandson, died this past weekend at the age of 96.
As long as he lived, much of the great sweep of...
A recent study: “Ibn al-Shatir was the first astronomer to have successfully...
A recent study: “Ibn al-Shatir was the first astronomer to have successfully challenged the Ptolemaic cosmological system of planets revolving around Earth and corrected the theory’s inaccuracies about two centuries before Copernicus.”
Top 25 Premier League goals of 2024-25 season. I like a good...
Top 25 Premier League goals of 2024-25 season. I like a good screamer from outside the box as much as anyone, but where are the good team goals? Were there any?
Resourceful: “Shooting down a $100,000 Russian drone with an air-defense missile might...
Resourceful: “Shooting down a $100,000 Russian drone with an air-defense missile might cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Shooting it down with a shotgun from a light plane might cost a few thousand dollars.”
How to Fix Grocery Stores: The Chewy Decimal System
Hank Green believes how grocery stores are organized is broken. (True.) His solution is to take inspiration from libraries and organize the shelves of every grocery store in the entire world according to the Chewy Decimal System.
TIL that maybe librarians don’t like the D...
This a great piece about the challenges many are facing in participating...
This a great piece about the challenges many are facing in participating in activism. “Nothing will feel like enough because everything we know and love is at stake.”
You can play Doom in this NY Times article about how you...
You can play Doom in this NY Times article about how you can run Doom almost anywhere (in a PDF, on an iPod, on a pregnancy test, on a treadmill, etc.) “Doom was developed in a really unique way that lent a high degree of portability to its code base.”
This looks really interesting: Rogue One recut and rescored in the style...
This looks really interesting: Rogue One recut and rescored in the style of a three-episode Andor arc that moves “its energy from emulating the jaunty, swashbuckling [original trilogy] to more in line with its prequel show’s feel”.