Wednesday, January 7, 2026

“In this vale / Of toil / and sin / Your head goes bald / But not your chin. ...Burma-Shave.”

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  Andrew Gelman defines objects of the class “Foghorn Leghorn” as parodies that are well remembered while the people and things they were m...
Tuesday, January 6, 2026

Welcome to Pottersville

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One last holiday post.  David Goldman writing for CNN :  A soaking wet George Bailey and Clarence, warming up by the fire in t...
Monday, January 5, 2026

Things the NYT thinks are less news-worthy than Kimberly Guilfoyle's party schedule

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I realize that this was a slow news day and it may have seemed a good time to run some lighter stories like the Guilfoyle piece and some fai...
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Friday, January 2, 2026

Everyone complains about the traffic. In LA, the guerrilla artists do something about it.

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This is a fascinating and very LA story. As a bit of background, the 110 is quite possibly the worst stretch of freeway in Los Angeles. As ...
Thursday, January 1, 2026

New Year's Day greetings from Winsor McCay

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 1909  
Wednesday, December 31, 2025

New Year's Eve greetings from Winsor McCay

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1905      
Tuesday, December 30, 2025

How Christmas goose and Christmas turkey switched places. The economics and agriculture behind changing holiday traditions.

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How Christmas goose and Christmas turkey switched places: the economics and agriculture behind changing holiday traditions. Keeping with th...
Monday, December 29, 2025

It's basically the story of the mechanical Turk but with a really dystopian final act

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Everyone here probably already knows the basics, but just to review: Elon Musk is the world’s richest man, and he has been using his tremend...
Friday, December 26, 2025

Dystopia Watch -- Surveillance State Edition

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I’ve been meaning to post more of Benn Jordan’s videos and to talk more about the exceptionally good work being done by 404 Media. This is a...
Thursday, December 25, 2025

Little Nemo Meets Lieutenant Kijé

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Just over ten years ago, I was playing around with the very cool open-source video editor, Kdenlive and put together this video. The softwa...
Wednesday, December 24, 2025

Christmas Eve greetings from XKCD

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 Maybe we should state all holidays as Eve powers  
Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Christmas Eve Eve with the California Raisins — more on commerce and Christmas.

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[We’ll be getting back to serious topics and horrible people next week. For now, I’m thinking more pleasant thoughts.] A personal favorite h...
Monday, December 22, 2025

Fun little online poll from the people at Tech Won’t Save Us.

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Though I do see some room for improvement.  While I don’t want to idealize Jobs or Gates—they both have plenty to answer for—I have to admit...
Friday, December 19, 2025

The most famous reindeer -- more on Christmas and commerce

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When I was writing the post on demographics and Christmas songs, I did some background reading and found myself going down the rabbit hole o...
Thursday, December 18, 2025

FT: "OpenAI is a money pit with a website on top."

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Here's the headline and opening from the Financial Times :  "OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lo...