Friday Links!
Leading off this week, a brilliant story from the past. This is true heroism:
The Plunge.
Wood Stickers Covered This Nicely
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
"I think I can put together this table without the instructions," I said. "It's dead simple."
It was. I still did it wrong:
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Finally, Someone with a Spine
This is a transcript of Mark Carney's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Hopefully, this will be looked back on as the moment when the rest of the world stopped bending the knee to a madman.
I'm Just A Boy, Standing Here, Wanting to be Loved, and also Wanting an EZ-Bake Oven
I don't think I've ever told anyone this, but I always wanted an EZ-Bake Oven.
I was in third or fourth grade the first time I saw a commercial on television, and it was magic. I had zero interest in baking, per se, but unlimited interest in abundant dessert supply. Even better, it was dessert I could make myself. No more asking Mom. I would come home after school and bake until the cookies reached the ceiling, then eat them all. Every day.
Better still, I distinctly remember icing packets. Icing makes any baked good taste twice as delicious immediately. It's just math.
I never told anyone about this as a kid because back then there were "boy things" and "girl things," and an EZ-Bake Oven was definitely a girl thing. Stupid cultural pressure. I never forgot about it, though.
Here's the irony. Even now, at this "advanced" stage of my life (ugh), I've never really baked anything from scratch. I've made my share of slice and bake cookies, but that's about all. Maybe if there wasn't the stupid insistence on boy and girl things when I was a kid, I would have spoken up and gotten an EZ-Bake Oven for a holiday gift, and I would have fallen in love with baking. Right now, I could be baking a batch of homemade something or other.
It would definitely have icing. I'm sure of that.
A Dream Joke
As I sit here and watch the world burn, I did have a dream last night in which I told a joke.
This was the joke:
Curtains are on trial. After the jury finds the curtains guilty, the judge sentences them to hang. One person in the gallery looks at the person next to him and says, "They got off pretty light."
Trust me, in the dream, it killed.
MLK Day 2026
I started making this post over a decade ago, and I'll be making it every year for as long as I do this.
I'd also like to mention that while we can all feel angry for what is happening in Washington today, history is long. Many bad moments seem long-lasting and inevitable, but they will all be overcome.
I hope they will be, anyway.
__________
Today is a national holiday in the United States to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
It's easy to forget the kind of hatred and stupidity that King was fighting against, but a good place to start is here: What was Jim Crow. The Wikipedia entry for Jim Crow laws also has detailed information. And the Wikipedia entry for King is here.
We're still fighting against that hatred and stupidity today.
Also, here's a link to a 2006
post when Eli asked me about Martin Luther King for the first time. It's still one of my favorite posts.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, a haunted man: Heavy Is the Crown: George R.R. Martin on His Triumphs and Torments.
Accurate in every way: Fascists are Pathetic.
WHAT? Senegal's Spear-wielding Savannah Chimps Yield Clues On Humanity's Past.
This is brilliant: The loving lies a father wrote to his daughter from a gulag.
This is from Texas Monthly's archives and it's a tremendous piece of journalism: Love and Death in Silicon Prairie, Part I: Candy Montgomery’s Affair.
Here's an excerpt from the article I'm about to link:
The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ come from the seating arrangements in the National Assembly during the French Revolution, where the combatants used the medieval estate groupings to define their battle lines. According to their writings, land-owning aristocrats (the Second Estate) were the party of the Right, while the interests of nearly everyone else (the Third Estate) belonged to the Left.
Landholder vs stockholder: In 1752, David Hume discerned that wealth was becoming untethered from land. Here lies the origin of our political divisions.
A fantastic list: From Dylan to disco, Beyoncé to Bob Marley: the 30 best live albums ever – ranked!
From D.G.F., and it's fantastic: Landslide; a ghost story.
From Wally, and it's tremendous: The Kept and the Killed: Of the 270,000 photographs commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed”. Erica X Eisen examines the history behind this hole-punched archive and the unknowable void at its center. On-brand for a cat: A Cat Left Paw Prints on the Pages of This Medieval Manuscript When the Ink Was Drying 500 Years Ago. It's back: Gourmet Magazine Is Back. It’s Not Exactly Sanctioned.
The Swim
I was leaving the pool today. It was sunny on the Lower East Side. I walked through Manhattan, headed toward a bit of lunch, and I realized something.
Swimming is the greatest mental health contributor I have in my life.
I can feel terrible when I arrive at the pool, but by the time I've left, my whole mindset has changed. I'm hopeful. It's not easy to be hopeful right now as our country crumbles around us, but after I swim, I feel like there's hope.
For a few hours, anyway.
That may not sound like much, but for me, it's huge. It lifts me up before I slowly sink back down, and then it's time to swim again.
It all works, somehow.
I don't even swim that far, only half a mile or so. That's only about 25 minutes. Still, it's enough time make me feel like a different, more positive person.
Also, Eli 24.5 is in Switzerland again:
I don't care how many times you see that view. It's still amazing.
The Land of the Thin-Skinned
Scott Adams died yesterday.
If you're interested in his heel turn from relatively amiable cartoonist to a remarkably vile human being, I highly recommend listening to the two-part series from the Beyond the Bastards podcast, which goes into his life in quite some depth.
There are many things from the podcast that struck me, but what struck me most is how thin-skinned the ultra-wealthy have become in this country. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank (and literally living in a house shaped like Dilbert's head), Adams became incendiary over the slightest criticism. He even created sock puppet accounts on platforms like Reddit to argue on his behalf.
It does seem that it's the ultra-wealthy right wingers who have developed in this manner (Musk and Trump come to mind immediately) although I'm sure there are liberal examples if I looked long enough.
My question, though, is this uniquely American? Have we somehow become a nation of the most thin-skinned people on Earth? What happened to us?
Nazaré
Nazaré is the most well-known in Portugal. From the international perspective, at least.
It's not for religious reasons, though. Right outside the church, in the ocean below, break some of the largest waves in the world.
How big? RED CODE at NAZARÉ. The largest wave ever recorded there was 35 meters (115 feet).
Eli 24.5 went to see it in person with his old college roommate. No, he didn't surf.
The forecasting system said "calm," which is the lowest of five levels. Still, 10 meter waves were breaking. This is what passes for calm here--20+ foot waves.
He's sending me pictures and I'll post them when they arrive.
The Decline and Fall of Desktops
I never feel bad for Eli 24.5.
Well, except for this: never experiencing a great desktop. He's been using laptops since junior high and I don't think he'll ever have a standalone desktop.
He's missing out on one of life's great pleasures.
I was trying to answer an email from Sony today involving a request for additional earbud tips. I had to fill out a form, and I was trying to use my phone.
Phones are terrible for entering data. Quite good for retrieving, but lousy for inputting. It took me multiple minutes and when I submitted it the damn thing crashed with quite the error message from Sony.
I went home, used my desktop, and had the form filled out in 45 seconds. Submitted. Done.
Inputting data. Watching videos. Playing games. In general, just doing shit with no stuttering or delays. Desktops kick ass in every category.
Laptops? They're fine, I guess. Portable, which is convenient at times. But when you're home, absolutely nothing beats a nice desktop and good monitor.
A docking station for the laptop? Yeah, that works, too. It's not the same, though.
Someday, I hope Eli has a powerful desktop with an unreasonable amount of memory. A luxury ride.
Friday Links!
This is fascinating: The tragedy of Trần Đức Thảo: How the persecuted Vietnamese philosopher became one of the first theorists of the divide between colonised and coloniser.
This is beautifully written: 30 Years Later: Phyllis Hyman, “I Refuse to Be Lonely.” The singer’s first posthumous album deserves to be remembered as the bravest of her career.
A tremendous piece of journalism: The Two Faces of Lummie Jenkins: The people of Wilcox County, Alabama, remember the longtime sheriff as a god or a monster—it just depends on who you ask.
From Ken P., and don't worry, they had parachutes: Idaho once dropped 76 beavers from airplanes—on purpose. I'm not sure I like this development: Lego’s Smart Brick Gives the Iconic Analog Toy a New Digital Brain. I need to send this one to Eli 24.5: Isengard in Oxford: Christian Kriticos explores J. R. R. Tolkien’s long-lost satire of a motorized world. Excellent: ‘I wanted that Raiders of the Lost Ark excitement – you could die any minute’: how we made hit video game Prince of Persia. This is fantastic: The bust files: How NFL teams break young quarterbacks. Man, this makes me feel old: NYC phone ban reveals some students can't read clocks. A frenzy: Prices for an old Star Wars game have ballooned because of its role in a PS5 jailbreak. This is short but thorough: The importance of free software to science.
From Wally, a deep and excellent dive: Reign of Terroir Rich, powerful and eccentric, Roquefort is still the king of cheeses. But for how much longer? Almost eleven stories, in case you're wondering: Satellites capture a mega-storm in the North Pacific that produced giant waves up to 115 feet high that traveled nearly 15,000 miles. I've walked past it: What construction workers found gutting the Flatiron Building. Permitting for rebuilding must be a nightmare: What Happens When Your Oscars Go Up in Flames? Colleen Atwood Found Out. A nightmare in the history of war: Verdun – Death of All…
Onoda
You may have heard of Hiroo Onoda, although you may not recognize him by name.
From Wikipedia:
Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo; IPA: [o̞no̞da̠ çiɾo̞ː]) 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was a Japanese soldier who served as a second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. One of the last Japanese holdouts, Onoda continued fighting for nearly 29 years after the war's end in 1945, carrying out guerrilla warfare on Lubang Island in the Philippines until 1974.
Oh, right. That guy.
His story is a tale of honor, or false honor, or murder, or stupidity, depending on who you believe. Most likely, it's all of them. Rashomon in real life.
I've always been fascinated by the psychology behind someone who would fight a war for decades after it ended, ignoring every bit of evidence indicating he could go home. There aren't any deep dives into his life available in English, though, so it's always been one of those bits of my information in my attic.
What I never, ever expected was that someone would make a board game about him.
This review is a brilliant look at the game: On Banditry. Here's the final paragraph:
In the end, that’s where I sit with Onoda, in tension with myself and this artifact on my table. Pako Gradaille has fallen for the myth, but only in part, and his reservations have translated into intriguing tensions within the game, raising questions about duty, shouganai, masculinity, and the permeable boundaries between banditry and war. In Onoda, you play as a bandit who thinks he’s the hero, and thinks it so hard that artists keep stepping over the corpses he left in his wake. It’s a fascinating and tragic portrayal.
If you want to read a fantastic piece of game writing, read the whole review.
Moral ambiguity in games is something we need, and it encapsulates Onoda's life as well.
This Doesn't Feel Like the Future (which isn't the title anymore)
The book is 90% done now.
It's been much smoother than I expected, overall. Less flailing this time.
I could use a handful of readers who are motivated to read and provide feedback. Let me know if you're interested.
Oh, and I'd share the new title with you, but I'm not sure it's sticking. It makes much more sense in the context of the book's themes, though.
Waiting on the Ferry
The ferry terminal has a white canopy roof that shimmers like a movie screen.
I was waiting this morning and noticed a slew of seagulls sitting on the canopy. I was curious as to whether they'd stay there when a ferry pulled in.
The ferry arrived and I was too far forward to see the gulls. When I looked up, though, I could see their feet, black against the white canopy. I couldn't see anything else, just their feet, and I watched them pad around in what looked like an art film.
It was strange and entirely beautiful.
Damn It
One of my New Year's resolution was to be less ashamed of my country.
I'm off to a rough start.
A Tongue-Forward Little Lord Fauntleroy
Just a casual conversation around here.
Friday Links!
Happy New Year, everyone!
Continuing to amaze over five centuries later: Leonardo’s wood charring method predates Japanese practice.
Many of these are particularly fine: The Best Sentences of 2025.
These people have always had a strange, grifty vibe about them: ‘They didn’t de-extinct anything’: can Colossal’s genetically engineered animals ever be the real thing?
From D.G.F., and it's thoughtful: Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life. This is both bleak and very important to read: Trump’s Immigration Nightmare: It Is Happening Here.
From Wally, and I forgot to post it last week: When Christmas is a little too bright ... look to Krampus. No, ten times: Steam, stodge – and so much suet: I made 10 endangered British puddings. Are any actually worth saving? Here's one of the best annual articles: Public Domain Day 2026. A retrospective of 1940s artist Hannes Bok, whose images are both interesting and wildly eccentric: Hannes Bok. This is both beautiful and tragic: Why I Keep Returning to Middle-Earth.
My Favorite Games of 2025
These are three games that have given me so much pleasure over the last year.
3. NCAA Football (PS5, Series X/S)
I was playing in the quarterfinals of the national championship. My All-American running back wasn't playing in the game because he was hurt. My second-string back was hurt in the second quarter. Late in the fourth quarter, my third-string running back was so exhausted he had to come out of the game. 1:23 left, behind by four, on Alabama's seven yard line, my redshirt running back has to come into the game for the first carry in his college career.
He broke two tackles and scored.
Alabama came all the way back down the field (I let the CPU control all aspects of defense and watch from the broadcast view). I was helpless as they marched down the field. With ten seconds left, a running back caught a pass in the end zone, but my cornerback hit him so hard he dropped the ball.
Five seconds left.
The quarterback scrambles, buying time. A receiver breaks loose in the end zone. I'm cooked. I see it happening.
He overthrows the receiver. Game over.
This game generates so many unforgettable stories. It has flaws, but none of them are major. What it uniquely does is capture the atmosphere and gameplay of college football far better anyone else ever has.
2. Promise Mascot Agency (PC, Switch, PS, Xbox)
What a joyful game. Wacky and incredibly funny, with excellent gameplay to boot. Every time I finished a session, I felt happy. It would have been #1 in almost any other year than this one.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
What a ridiculously brilliant game. It was incredible in every way. A staggering achievement, and one of the best games I've ever played. It was also the closest I've ever seen to a perfect game.
I used to drink an embarrassing amount of Dublin Dr. Pepper (cane sugar) at the local P. Terry's in Austin while I was working on Gridiron Solitaire and waiting for Eli to get out of school. That version of Dr. Pepper was litigated out of existence over a decade ago, and I still think about it. Often. Clair Obscur, for me, is the gaming equivalent.
