1) What happens when bookstore employees get bored. This is delightful.
2) The literal translation of every country name in the world.
3) Book Towns: small towns filled with bookstores.
4) Why is English such a weird language?
5) Peanut butter and mayo sandwiches were a thing in the ’60s so we tried it.
6) Telltale Games: creative endeavors in a corporate environment.
7) Beautiful murals from the last remaining Prohibition-era speakeasy in Seattle.
1) Longest-standing video game record declared ‘impossible,’ thrown out after 35 years (update)
2) “She wrote it but…” Revisiting Joanna Russ 35 Years Later.
3) All 288 reported concussions of the 2017 NFL season in one video clip.
4) Single Mothers Are Not The Problem.
5) Why We Love Tyrants, according to psychoanalysts
6) What’s the longest train route in the world? Video.
7) Criminals impersonate authors on Amazon to launder their money.
1) Things restaurant workers wish you knew about being a patron in a restaurant.
2) The Beautiful Science of Cream Hitting Coffee.
3) The 50 Best Good/Bad Movies.
4) The New Republic on JRR Tolkien, circa 1956.
5)
making horror movie sound effects is a true art in itself. pic.twitter.com/RU7c1zKl2t
— Physics Fun (@PhysicsVideo) January 22, 2018
6) Police give out thumb drives infected with malware as cybersecurity prizes.
7)
1. Interesting etymology of holiday terms. Video.
1a. The classic holiday story “The Little Match Girl” which I’d never read.
2. Feeding the Poop Log: A Catalan Christmas Tradition.
3. The Tiny Desk Holiday Special.
3a. More Music: Christmas carols performed by goats.
4. Nine Holiday-themed D&D enemies to throw at your players.
4a. Holiday beers.
5. Are poinsettias really poisonous, and other Christmas questions, answered by Science.
6. I judge adaptations of A Christmas Carol by the way they depict the ghosts, and this right here is the perennial winner:
7. Last (and you knew this was coming), if you need a last-minute gift, ebooks like my new Twenty Palaces novella, The Twisted Path, are cheap and easy to deliver.
1) Why you should crack an egg in your coffee grounds.
2) “Why these all white paintings are in museums and why mine aren’t”
4) Five Tips for Preventing Sexual Harassment We Apparently Need
5) An expanded list of Netflix genres, with links: “Dramas starring Virginia Madsen,” “Gritty Biographical Music and Concert Documentaries,” “Successful Korean Revenge Movies”
6) “Optimization is a form of calcification”: Cory Doctorow on a decade and a half of life-hacking.
7) Every Batman: the Animated Series Villain Ranked from Worst to Best.
1.
— Xtreme trash, (@hippieswordfish) August 23, 2017
2. How to control Alexa and Google Home through commands that are inaudible to the human ear.
3. A domino run in kaleidoscope: Beautiful. Video.
4. A Quick Beginner’s Guide to Drawing.
5.
This photographer turned kids with illnesses and disabilities into the superheroes from @justiceleaguewb. pic.twitter.com/z5bf5iJ3TM
— INSIDER (@thisisinsider) September 6, 2017
6. Roald Dahl’s publisher threatened to drop him for being a jerk.
7. Why is it so hard to judge a screenplay from the movie that’s made from it?
1) Twenty-five terrible book recommendations.
2) What not to do in a disaster.
3) The rare-book thief who looted college libraries in the 1980’s.
5) Man kayaks through grounded cargo ship off the coast of Romania. Video. This would be a terrifying horror film set.
6) “What did you think of my screenplay?” a Clickhole quiz
1) Innovative ancient weapons. It’s weird to discover at this late age that the “hand on a stick” from HAWK THE SLAYER was a real thing.
2) Which font should I use on my Kindle?
3) Joseph Heller’s extensive hand-written outline for Catch-22.
4) The Black Person’s Guide to Game of Thrones.
5) A leading happiness researcher says we’re giving our kids bad advice about how to succeed in life.
6) Improve your bowling game by noting the hidden oil patterns on the lanes. Video.
1. Cracked makes an honest ad about the ways casual games are like crack for our brains. Video.
2. Chatbots built by Facebook engineers to negotiate with each other begin to develop their own non-human language. Time to re-watch Person of Interest.
3. Having power causes a degradation of certain mental functions.
4. M.C. Esher: Adventures in Perception: a 20 minute Dutch documentary about the way he created his work. Video.
6. How to build a bicycle with car tires for wheels.
7. The same song played on a $100 bass, a $700 bass, and a $10,000 bass. Which sounds best? Video.
1) Author Robert Jackson Bennet on raising kids who don’t give a shit about your nerd pop culture.
2) Scientists have eliminated HIV in mice using CRISPR.
3) An episode of 80’s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon with voiceover to make it seem like a real D&D session. Video.
4) A bucket of water with a camera in the bottom captures thirsty desert animals. Video.
5) My Family’s Slave. This is heartbreaking and awful.
6) How to remove unwanted shows from your Netflix algorithms. Maybe your ex cruelly favorited an Adam Sandler movie before dumping you. Maybe you didn’t think to create a separate account for yourself after a few drinks. Maybe you just have regrets.
7) Four people who were buried alive and how they got out. Spoiler: “knocking” plays a big role.