"As baseball teams pursue talent from around the world and as players follow opportunities to far-flung locations, clubhouses become microcosms of the dizzying linguistic diversity found in settings shaped by migration and globalization." (2020) https://www.sapiens.org/language/baseball-bilingualism/
Named after people misremembering Nelson Mandela's death, the term is given to any collective false memories. https://www.iflscience.com/study-finds-the-mandela-effect-is-real-and-incredibly-difficult-to-explain-64526
"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." (1998) http://web.archive.org/web/19980610100009/www.redherring.com/mag/issue55/economics.html
Max Headroom is getting rebooted https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/07/max-headroom-the-strange-pre-internet-ai-phenomenon-is-getting-rebooted
How ancient soldiers used sound to frighten and confuse their enemies. This is fun reading.
Remembering Cordwainer Smith: Full-Time Sci-Fi Author, Part-Time Earthling (2013) https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/03/remembering-cordwainer-smith-full-time-sci-fi-author-part-time-earthling/274344/
In case you missed this -- because I sure did: Amazon and iRobot announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire iRobot. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-and-irobot-sign-an-agreement-for-amazon-to-acquire-irobot
'It’s often said that good photographs should “stand alone” and “speak for themselves.” But this isn’t always true, and, in fact, the truth is more like the opposite.' https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/family-photos
My review of the Slow cooker Through the Seasons cookbook... Meh. It's very midwest white-bread cooking, and I do not mean that in a good way. But I think I provide enough info for you to decide for yourself if this suits your needs. https://amzn.to/3Sv6s1w
I bet @th3j35t3r would enjoy learning about that dude.
The pirate-turned-naturalist-turned-pirate-again inspired generations of British writers and scientists. ...How has this story not been the subject of a historical novel?!
https://sciencehistory.org/distillations/william-dampier-revered-and-reviled
RIP Australian musician Judith Durham, best known as the lead singer of folk music group The Seekers. She was 79.
“Numbers do not speak for themselves. All the same, many people believe that they do. An ideology we call numerism, which accords a privileged epistemic status to quantification, is widespread.” https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/08/number-soup-can-we-make-it-easier-for-readers-to-digest-all-the-numbers-journalists-stuff-into-their-stories/
Across North America, roadkill rates are on the rise. Once, eating this bountiful “street meat” was forbidden both by law and custom. Today, however, around 30 states allow it, and many rural Americans have come to rely on it for sustenance. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/eating-roadkill
In praise of ghee https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220726-the-purest-food-on-earth
"Communicating with executives can be unexpectedly difficult for a less apparent reason: the executive has become accustomed to consuming reality preprocessed in a particular way." https://lethain.com/present-to-executives/
There are just 300,000 Thai-Americans—less than 1% of the the Mexican-American population. Yet there are an estimated 5,342 Thai restaurants in the U.S., compared to ~54,000 Mexican restaurants, 10x the population-to-restaurant ratio. https://www.vice.com/en/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason-that-there-are-so-many-thai-restaurants-in-america
Writer. Editor. Baseball. Cats. Chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.