JJ

happy feels-like-january-33rd! some of these links are from early December, which feels about 10,000 years ago. ❤️‍🔥 to the twin cities and springfield.  games, puzzles, and trivia:  • Normie.club  • Words.zip  • Sandwich Alignment Game  • rotatingsandwiches.com strikes again! • Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection  • LearnedLeague  • did not know this league existed before last week but it's fascinating. fellow trivia sickos, hit that "random questions" button and prepare to get pummeled  drinking water:  • “My Sparkling and Surreal Experience As a Water-Tasting Judge” by Adrian Ma   • “Scientists Thought Parkinson’s Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water” by David Ferry  (unpaywalled) animals:  • StreetCatWiki  • simply one of the best things of all time.  • some of my favorite guys: Stupid Idiot, Mrs. Geometry Dash, Ms. Lag, and Brown Tabby That Hates The Poor  • “Bird feeders have caused a dramatic evolution of California hummingbirds” by Rachel Nuwer  • “What A Week Of Freedom Can Do For A Lab Mouse” by Sabrina Imbler  design and art:  • Bluesky thread on typography in the Soviet Union by @spavel.bsky.social  • Web Design Museum  • ASM Agar Art Contest: 2025 Winners  • “The Best Book Covers of the Last Decade” by Emily Temple  • mildly disturbed at the realization that “last decade” now starts in 2016 • Archivo Grafica Italiana  science stuff: • “The Death of the Scientist” by Sara Imari Walker  • “Built to spill: The life of a crash test dummy” by Camila Domonoske  • “How many holes does the human body have?” by Kit Yates  heartwarming things:  • tastebuds_nyc @ TikTok  • “How Will the Miracle Happen Today?” by Kevin Kelly  rhetorical question headlines in the New York Times:  • “Why Does A.I. Write Like…That?” by Sam Kriss  • this reads kind of like a crazy throwback to 2019 but I particularly liked the phrases “A Gun Is Out There” and “New and Ugly Injuries to the Brain”  • “Have Some Spare Time? Why Not Build a Medieval War Machine?” by Dwight Garner  • do you ever read a book review that makes you immediately want to read the book  • “Can the American Oboe Sing Again?” by Jesse Green  • PHENOMENAL. can't recommend this enough. some of my favorite bits:  • the author's bio: “Jesse Green was 8 when he was handed his first oboe. Ten years later it was mercifully taken away from him.”  • the comment that reads: “Pretty sure the bassoon is the most complicated and difficult instrument. Typical non-fact-checked piece sponsored by Big Oboe.”  • the reference to http://oboes.us/, which I immediately beelined to (bonus link)! now THIS is a Web Site!!!  profiles of fascinating people:  • “The Quad God Performs Another Miracle” by Kathryn Xu  • watch the video embedded in this one! i saw this guy hit a backflip in person last year and it put my jaw on the floor. happy Winter Olympics everybody! can't wait for him to become a megastar  • “14,445 and Counting” by Christa Hillstrom  • “If a Tree Falls” by Rosa Lyster  • “Queen of Hearts” by Nina St. Pierre  and everything else:  • “How Gamefaqs changed RPG consumption - an history of RPG walkthroughs, from clue books and hearsay to the digital age” by Magnvs  • “Two Nights Playing With Fire At Patrick Mahomes And Travis Kelce’s Steakhouse” by Liz Cook  • “Where Do the Children Play?” by Eli Stark-Elster  • “The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference” by Abhishaike Mahajan  • “ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering” by Alex Harri