Plant Your Garden
Monday, January 20, 2025
Plant your garden 🌱 pic.twitter.com/88COH2VbFk — Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) January 20, 2025
The First of the Weird Bad Days
Monday, January 20, 2025
Chuck Wendig, writing at his site, on how to handle today and the future. It’s just the first of the weird bad days. And if we’re being honest, it’s not even the first of them, it’s just another in a long line of weird bad days where the weird part and the bad part are spiking simultaneously, like an outbreak of a particular kind of illness. It’s not just turbulence on a flight, it’s a turbulent flight, from start to finish, snout to tail.
On the Questionable Side
Monday, January 20, 2025
CJ Moore, writing for The Athletic, did not like the officiating during the Illinois-Michigan State game. I was disappointed when Jakucionis fouled out in only nine minutes of action against the Spartans. Illini coach Brad Underwood was in the same boat. “The best player in the game played eight minutes,” Underwood said at his postgame press conference. “You saw just a little bit of what he can do when he’s in.
BrikTok
Sunday, January 19, 2025
I could not care less about TikTok and would consider it an upgrade to the Internet if it were removed from the US and, frankly, everywhere else. Of course, I watch plenty of Reels, so my opinion is eye-roll-inducing. Anyway, John Gruber has all the details about TikTok and the roller coaster of the last few hours if you need a deep dive.
"Pop! Pop pop! Pop! Pop into Pop Up Video!"
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Between 1996 and 2002, VH1 had a show called Pop Up Video which paired music videos with trivia and jokes that “popped up” on screen, mostly without controversy. Most of it is unavailable today, but the Internet Archive has a number of episodes taped off televion. Here is a list: Episodes 1, 2 & 3, featuring these videos: Tina Turner, “Missing You”; Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas”; Los Del Rio, “Macarena”; George Michael, “Freedom”; Olivia Newton-John, “Physical”; Tom Petty, “Walls”; TLC, “Waterfalls”; Counting Crows, “Round Here”; John Mellencamp, “Pink Houses”; David Lee Roth, “California Girls”; Celine Dion, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”; Alanis Morissette, “You Learn”; Rolling Stones, “Love is Strong”; R.
Instagram Alternatives
Saturday, January 18, 2025
I recently read about a couple of would-be Instagram competitors out. Flashes (based on BlueSky’s protocols) and PixelFed seem to have been created at least in part as a response to Facebook’s decision to stop most content moderation. Personally, more power to them. I won’t be joining either of them.
The Weekly Click 1.18.25
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Mr. Baseball Dead at 90
Friday, January 17, 2025
Ray Ratto, writing for Defector, gets it right. Bob Uecker was just the best: He was the face and voice of baseball cinema, the man whose line-reading made “Ju-u-u-u-st a bit outside” so good that “iconic” doesn’t remotely cover its impact. Even if you’re not a seamhead, you likely came across Bob Uecker and smiled. So Thursday’s announcement that Uecker has died at age 90, due to small cell lung cancer, came as a blow.
Beyond Doomscrolling
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Charlie Warzel, writing in The Atlantic, has some good advice for those still clinging to the chaos that is modern social media. To watch the destruction in Los Angeles through the prism of our fractured social-media ecosystem is to feel acutely disoriented. The country is burning; your friends are going on vacation; next week Donald Trump will be president; the government is setting the fires to stage a “land grab”; a new cannabis-infused drink will help you “crush” Dry January.
I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS—and You Should Too
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Joey Einerhand, writing at his blog, has an interesting post about social media and RSS. I waste too much time scrolling through social media. It’s bad for my health, so why do I keep doing it? Because once in a while, I’ll find a post so good that it teaches me something I never knew before, and all the scrolling feels worth it. But I’ve stumbled upon an old piece of free and open source tech, relatively unknown today, which is THE solution of solving the problems with modern media without sacrificing accessible, good content: RSS.
This Middle-Man, This Monster
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Until 2020 Diamond Comic Distributors had a decades-long near-monopoly as supplier of comics & merchandise to the North American direct market. This changed following the arrival of COVID-19 when many of the biggest publishers signed deals with new distributors. Yesterday Diamond announced that it had filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. Over the years Diamond has been criticised by creators, retailers, consumers, and publishers for the power it wielded over the market.
Marvel Television's Daredevil: Born Again | Official Trailer
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
I haven’t seen any of the previous series. I really need to catch up.
Reading Into the Work
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Patrick Rhone – The problem of learning the turn of your favorite authors personal lives is that it becomes impossible to read their work without reading into their work. Might as well take the ones I have yet to get to and throw them in the bin knowing I likely wont be able to read them now. Sad.
How the Biggest Rock Band in the World Disappeared
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Will Leitch, writing for the Washington Post, has an in-depth story on how R.E.M. quietly quit. At the height of its popularity, R.E.M. regularly played before more than 100,000 fans. It was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. But because the band is so self-effacing and because it has resisted nearly every temptation to do the sort of nostalgia maneuvers that keep retired rock acts in the public mind, if you weren’t around to listen to R.
We Deserve Pete Hegseth
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
David Brooks, in his opinion column for The New York Times, outlines what has happened to expertise, intelligence, and why this new administration wants figureheads and not qualified people in important jobs. We live in a soap opera country. We live in a social media/cable TV country. In our culture you don’t want to focus on boring policy questions; you want to engage in the kind of endless culture war that gets voters riled up.
The 25 Best Films of 2024
Monday, January 13, 2025
Indiewire’s chief film critic, David Ehrlich presented his annual, and expertly edited, montage of his 25 Best Films of 2024.
Sundays
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Sundays are for playing on your phone and unquenchable existential dread — Jonathan Edward Durham (@thisone0verhere.bsky.social) 2025-01-12T20:23:51.581Z
The Great Fire of LA
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Steve Schmidt, writing in his Substack newsletter The Warning, has some eloquent words regarding the horrifying fires in Los Angeles. Like the Great Fire of London in 1666, the Great Fire of Los Angeles will be recalled for 500 years. The scale of the conflagration is biblical. These epochal fires will join Chicago and San Francisco atop an infamous registry of American destruction. The fires are still spreading, still growing.
The Weekly Click 1.11.25
Saturday, January 11, 2025
The Problem with Common Sense
Friday, January 10, 2025
“The problem with common sense is that it isn’t all that common and many people think they have way more sense than they really do.” – Patrick Rhone