Like “spotting a firefly buzzing around a powerful searchlight from thousands of miles away." How the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope searches for planets in other star systems.

Watched: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4E7, Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass . I do not expect to have adult emotions watching Star Trek, particularly not during a gimmick episode. 📺

The original “Star Trek” often told morality tales about the Cold War, with the Klingons standing in for the USSR. Tom Nichols, writing at The Atlantic: I retired from a long teaching career a few years ago, but during my later years in the classroom, I offered a course on ...

New research shows sleeping in an extra hour and a half on weekends is good for you. Previous research said you shouldn’t do that. Either way, it’s nothing to lose sleep over.

“I’m going to have to conduct a pot sobriety test.” Funny. youtube.com/shorts/Pr…

Robert B. Parker tapped into his own academic literary background to write his brilliant Spenser detective novels. Parker was a doctorate in English literature, wrote his dissertation in part on Raymond Chandler and taught for several years at Northeastern University. He tap...

I’m remembering a time in the 2000s when Julie and I did the Universal Studios tour in Los Angeles and went to the Terminator attraction. In many of these types of attractions, including the Terminator one, the plot is that the audience is a group of VIP visitors taking a t...

Søren Kierkegaard, 1847 www.reddit.com/r/walking…_danish_philosopher_s%C3%B8ren_kierkegaard_in_1847/ The Coming Meat, 1880 reddit.com/r/vintage…_coming_meat_1880/ King of the Fourth Planet, by Robert Moore Williams. Cover artist: Ed Emshwiller reddit.com/r/CoolSci…_of_the_fourth_planet_by_robert_moore/

I just spent an hour shredding cardboard boxes that I was saving because they could be useful for something. Perfectly good boxes, destroyed like garbage.

This is a very difficult moment for me and I ask for your emotional support.

I preordered a Clicks Power Keyboard at the beginning of the year and it arrived a few weeks ago. It’s a BlackBerry style thumb keyboard that attaches to your phone using the phone’s built-in MagSafe or Qi2 magnet.

So far, I’m not finding it to be practical — it’s uncomfortable to use with my Pro Max iPhone. Typing on the screen keyboard is faster and more comfortable than using Clicks.

But it’s a fun little gadget and maybe I’ll get faster and more comfortable with practice.

After first trying it, I decided to send it back but i kept putting it off and now I’m glad I hung on to it.

On Reddit: What’s a small quality-of-life upgrade at home that you now refuse to live without?

My response: This cushioned lap desk. I bring my laptop into our sunroom, sit on the daybed cross-legged and read and type in comfort. I’m using it with my MacBook right now!

The original post has been removed by the subreddit’s overzealous moderators (an example of why I rarely post to Reddit anymore)), but you can still read the comments.

On Reddit: When did iced coffee take off in America?

I remember my Mom drinking iced coffee in the 1970s, but it’s only in the past couple of years I’ve noticed that iced coffee seems to have become the default in hot weather, even when you’re ordering at an airport or some other large, enclosed air conditioned space. I think iced coffee is as popular as hot coffee now.

I’ve always personally preferred hot coffee, even in hot weather.

Craig Mod walks the length of Manhattan:

I arrived at Marble Hill–225th St. Station in not shorts. You’re not wearing shorts?! Michael screamed at me from across the street. I am a self-respecting adult male, so no – I wasn’t wearing shorts. He couldn’t believe it. He was convinced I’d die fifteen steps into the walk. I was less interested in my pants and more interested in the world’s worst-rated Starbucks (https://maps.app.goo.gl/5CPxpMu7nsSJDamq7) around the corner.

The Great Awakening from General Electric (1979) reddit.com/r/vintage…_great_awakening_from_general_electric_1979/ Can confirm. I was a heavy smoker 30 years ago and my posture is terrible.

Tim Curry was a heck of a storyteller. Among other tales, he describes in this 2005 Fresh Air interview how he was mistaken for in imposter during a 1970s midnight showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and ejected from the theater.

There’s a new Twitter, launched by a startup that says Musk gave up the name.

How Canada can save Americans and defeat America. Canadians and Americans have a common enemy: Trump. By Cory Doctorow,

What is the cringiest midlife crisis you’ve witnessed? : r/AskReddit

What is a talent or skill you have that is completely useless 99% of the time, but made you look like a god the one time you needed it? : r/AskReddit. From the comments: Balloon animals makes a woman a hero at a corporate retreat.

The Ig Nobel Prize, a whimsical science award that honors “achievements that make people LAUGH, and then THINK,” is moving out of the US after 35 years, because the US is now unsafe for international visitors.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch Sunday, uses a mirror from a canceled spy satellite to study dark energy and other astronomical phenomenon. My brother worked on this project — we’re bursting with pride!

In MAGAstan, “freedom” means your freedom to obey, bend the knee, and do as you are told.

Florida Catholic schools require students and staff to get vaccines, but the Florida State Attorney general wants to require the church to permit religious exemptions in the name of “religious freedom.”

The Florida Attorney General says the bishops are reading the Bible wrong.

Make Claude stop talking like a Buzzfeed article, using this Claude Code skill. Claude “talks like it’s delivering a TED talk about its own pull request. You ask why a test is flaky and you get a “load-bearing assumption,” three numbered revelations, and a solemn note that t...

Meta doesn’t want to be a social media company anymore. By Anna Merlan at Mother Jones.

Milo Yiannopoulos has been arrested and detained by ICE and has been ordered removed from the US. Yiannopoulos, a British immigrant to the US, has advocated “ICE checkpoints at supermarket entrances, gas stations, strip malls, intersections and government buildings, with on the spot deportation for anyone who can’t prove they are in the US legally,” “total legal immunity” for ICE agents and “zero immigration in the next 20 years. No ifs, no buts.”

Buh-bye Milo. Don’t let the leopards eat your face on the way out.

The Qataris Gave Trump an Airplane. He Crippled Their Country in Return.. By Shane Harris at The Atlantic.

A character in a Robert A. Heinlein novel described an “honest politician” as one who stays bought.

A Turning Point in AI Writing. The Wall Street Journal is defending an op-ed written by a chatbot. By Will Oremus at The Atlantic.

We watched the latest episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” last night and I am still clenched.

The only unrealistic part of “Reacher” is he can go into a random thrift store and get clothes that fit.

I received a very important business email that began, “I hope this message finds you well,” and had to resist temptation to reply with this.