Chuck Klosterman is a writer I admire. I think his books are fantastic. Here he is doing a massive list post for Vulture and really knocking it out of the park. You may disagree with the ranking, but sometimes that’s the fun and the point of the whole thing.

Isaac Butler at Slate has a decent examination of Crooked Media. Since the 2016 election, the media company, formed by the podcast hosts of Pod Save America, has become a progressive beacon.

Butler states that the actual news and political analysis is low. I agree, but it’s more a reflection of the time we are living in versus an actual point of view. His biggest insight is one sentence –

Pod Save America exists to do three things: confirm to the audience that they are not crazy and This Is Not Normal, rile the audience up with humor and outrage, and direct that energy toward concrete action items that will help elect Democrats and push back against the GOP’s agenda.

I hope it succeeds.

Benjamin Frisch in Slate has one of the best opening paragraphs I’ve read in a long time.

Apple, a secretive organization staffed by technological visionaries able to predict the future of technology, has ordered a television series based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, an epic saga about … a secretive organization staffed by technological visionaries able to predict the future of technology. There is one major difference between the two: Apple is located on the edge of the continent, while Asimov’s tale takes place on the edge of the galaxy.

Since the Foundation series is one of my all-time favorites, I’m looking for to this.

Rick Hummel in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch relives the story of third-string catcher Glenn Brummer stealing home to pull off one of the most memorable plays in St. Louis Cardinals history.

It’s a hell of a read and it does make me smile when I remember it.

Joshua Rivera writing for GQ makes an interesting argument.

Kill Bond. It’s never been done before, and it would be the perfect way to end the Craig era, which also bears the unique distinction of being a stretch of Bond films with actual continuity. Cross the line the Craig films have flirted with, the one that suggests Bond is an archaic destabilizing force that needs to be put down. It’s remarkable, the clarity that Casino Royale had on this from the very start of Craig’s tenure. It’s a story where Bond’s superior, M, regards him with utter disdain, and makes it plain that he’s an archaic brute she’d rather do without—the implication being that the two are forever intertwined, and that if Bond becomes inessential, so does the respectable facade she represents.

This… works. What comes after is wide open and could seriously move the franchise into the 21st century.

Katrina Brooker of Vanity Fair profiled Tim-Berners Lee, the father of the internet. He’s been having some Oppenheimer-esque feelings about his creation, as summed up by Brooker herself:

The power of the Web wasn’t taken or stolen. We, collectively, by the billions, gave it away with every signed user agreement and intimate moment shared with technology. Facebook, Google, and Amazon now monopolize almost everything that happens online, from what we buy to the news we read to who we like. Along with a handful of powerful government agencies, they are able to monitor, manipulate, and spy in once unimaginable ways.

Sounds like he has a plan to fix all that.

Frankie Rain on Medium lists a bunch of techniques to write shorter emails.

In short, writing short emails is a win-win. Now that you know how to do it, you can potentially save up to an hour a day dealing with your email inbox, while come out looking like a thought leader in the process.

Spencer Kornhaber in The Atlantic has a story about Dave Grohl’s new project―Play.

Dave Grohl walks into the studio. Dave Grohl walks in behind him. Then another Dave Grohl, and another. Seven dudes of identical stringy hair and varying tees: This is the committee to evangelize rock and roll, or so goes one implication of Dave Grohl’s mildly baffling new project “Play.”

I don’t quite understand the baffling part. He’s playing all the parts. He’s a one-man studio. That’s the bit with the multiple Grohls. It’s not a stunt. It’s “ah, I get that” funny and nothing else. Kornhaber tacks on more meaning than it’s worth and makes the whole piece read weird.

Watch the entire video.

The Play project is set up to inspire the next generation of musicians. You have to applaud that bit of romanticism.

My workflow includes a lot of copy and pasting of texts into documents. Alas, the formatting often comes with and I have to adjust and rearrange. You can paste without formatting, but that’s not necessarily what I want. More often, I want paste and match style.

Ally MacDonald points out a simple way Mac users can make pasting without formatting the default:

Want to improve your quality of life in 5 seconds?

1. Go to System Preferences

2. Keyboard

3. App Shortcuts

4. All Applications –> add “Paste and Match Style” ⌘V

Done.

What a timesaver.

I remember when the end of the Monday Night Wars happened. I was watching WCW Nitro and Vince McMahon showed up at the top of the show telling everyone he bought the company. It was pandemonium.

The Ringer’s David Shoemaker tells the behind the scenes tale and frames it like a series finale. In a very real way, it was.

That night was the last night of Nitro. It was the last night of WCW as its own entity entirely. WWF talked about reviving WCW as its own show under the WWF banner, but it never came to be. And so we were right about the stakes of the Monday Night Wars. WWF won and, a silly invasion feud aside, WCW was gone. And if WWF had ended that night too, it would have been the greatest series finale of all time. It was certainly the end of the best story ever told, because it was a story that actually mattered. For all of pro wrestling’s forced hyperbole, a story line bigger than Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant ended that night, and it was a clean finish. The last episode of WCW Monday Nitro was without question the greatest series finale of all time.

Julia Belluz at Vox does a deep dive into the increasingly high decibel levels of restaurants.

Being exposed to noise levels above 70 and 80 decibels — which many restaurants boast these days — causes hearing loss over time, Gail Richard, past president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, told me. This kind of hearing loss is “preventable, but it’s also irreparable,” she added.

I’ve noticed the rising levels, and my wife and I avoid those locations when dining out. The piece outlines ways to fix acoustics, but unsurprisingly, they are expensive.

Jeff Maysh in The Daily Beast has one of the summer’s most engrossing stories.

Jerome Jacobson and his network of mobsters, psychics, strip-club owners, and drug traffickers won almost every prize for 12 years, until the FBI launched Operation ‘Final Answer.’

I knew a little bit about this story, but not all of it. The McSting is awesome.

Mark Manson on change:

You can’t change yourself, so don’t even try. I know that’s not what the infomercials and self-help seminars tell you. But fuck it. They’re wrong. You can’t change. Like a thirsty man in a desert chasing a mirage, or a fat man peering into an empty fridge—there’s nothing there. So stop chasing it. Go do something else instead.

The Village Voice does a deep dive into The Dark Knight on its ten year anniversary.

I haven’t watched it in a good long while, so I wonder what I’d take from it today?

Seth Godin on making your presentation better. Good advice all around.

1. Make it shorter. No extra points for filling your time.
2. Be really clear about what it’s for. If the presentation works, what will change? Who will be changed? Will people take a different course of action because of your work? If not, then why do you do a presentation?
3. Don’t use slides as a teleprompter. If you have details, write them up in a short memo and give it to us after the presentation.
4. Don’t sing, don’t dance, don’t tell jokes. If those three skills are foreign to you, this is not a good time to try them out.
5. Be here now. The reason you’re giving a presentation and not sending us a memo is that your personal presence, your energy and your humanity add value. Don’t hide them. Don’t use a prescribed format if that format doesn’t match the best version of you.

Chris Thompson at Deadspin pretty much sums up my feelings on this half-season St. Louis Cardinals baseball. It finally culminated in a firing I honestly thought wasn’t going to happen until October at the earliest―the firing of Mike Matheny.

Sloppy and boring may actually go away now. Obviously, TPTB think the Cardinals can still make the playoffs. I hope so.

Karl Smallwood writes about a strange vending machine with a mysterious history in Today I Found Out. It’s a great read about a truly odd tourist attraction.

A new member of the family arrived in our household a little over a week ago. He has completely upended our idyllic life. His name is Rocco and this little puppy has cuddled his way into everyone’s hearts.

For as long as I’ve known her, my step-daughter has wanted a dog. Unfortunately, it was not possible in the rental properties we were all living in at the time. With the move now complete to the club of proud owners of our own home, the next logical step was finding the perfect opportunity to give her the dog she has desired. Her birthday in July made the most sense and after navigating the web, an appropriate breeder was found within a day’s drive and she picked him out immediately.

Rocco is a combination of the Shih Tzu and Bichon Frise dog breeds and is commonly referred to as a teddy bear (or Shichon or Zuchon). He’s quite affectionate and loves getting his belly rubbed. As of this writing, he’s nine weeks old and teething like crazy so he’s constantly gnawing on his chew toys.

He’s just the cutest puppy ever.

Everybody else in the house has owned a pet of some kind before. Me… not so much. No dog, cat, hampster, beta fish, etc. My neighbors around the house I grew up in all had little dogs. My uncle had a large black labrador named Star. My other uncle had a small little dog named Sammy. Lastly, my brother’s family had a dog for a long time with Ozzie just recently passing away after living a long, great life.

I’ve never had a dog.

Of course, technically the dog is my step-daughter’s 100%. She’s the one taking care of the dog nine times out of ten. Still, Roccco is dominating our household. For the better, I might add.

I thought buying a house was going to be the biggest adjustment I was going to face this year, but I think living with Rocco is taking the cake. I never knew how much fun it would be to have this dog chasing after chew toys, rolling over for belly rubs and watching him learn his name and get acclimated to his new surroundings. After these first few days, this pup has done nothing but put a smile on my face and everyone else’s face for that matter.

A welcome addition.