Another Thanksgiving weekend has past, which for our family meant seeing how many meals the Thanksgiving leftovers would last, how many board games could be played, and who wanted to put what ornament on the Christmas tree. But it was also Thanksgiving weekend on an even year, which means it was time to start prepping for my biennial Favorite Films sort. I’m a lifelong movie buff and have watched literally thousands of movies. Not all of them…
For a lot of folks, this holiday season is the first one in a while where there are more gatherings, both in family homes and in offices. So to prepare for that, writer Olga Khazan over at The Atlantic consulted an effort to help us all get through the small talk — and even if you don’t want to be a raconteur, it never hurts to be a better conversationalist.
Thanksgiving feasts will be on the tables of millions of Americans in less than a week, but for this Friday before said feast is completely on everyone’s mind, let’s talk about sandwiches. Social media exercises frequently make the rounds regarding where people have traveled, so I read this article by Terry Ward for CNN about some of the world’s best sandwiches, and I thought this was just as interesting a score to tally… and far…
In case you didn’t think I’d be interested in how the federal government may or may not be getting into regulating outer space, you might not have realized I already have a tag on this website for space law. Of course I’m interested! And that’s where Rebecca Heilweil’s article about the FCC getting into space regulation comes in. I mean, I get the FCC being interested in regulation of communications satellites and the like. But…
Earlier this Fall, there was a flurry of posts, thought pieces, and assorted hand-wringing about “Quiet Quitting,” which sounded weird until I learned far too many people have been using the phrase to describe people doing their jobs, just not going above and beyond. To reference The Princess Bride, I don’t think “quitting” means what they think it means. In fact, I rather side with the people pushing back at hand-wringing over people doing what…
So, for the past few years, there’s been a particular cartoon that’s made the rounds on social media which friends invariably send to me. I mean, besides being an avid reader, several members of my family are or have been librarians and are all in favor of libraries. And, let’s be honest, in this scenario, I would totally do this: some of my Viking brethren forget to pillage before they burn. Sure you may have…
For my work, I’m often focused on continuous improvement — and the silver lining of broken processes means there’s always room for improvement. On the one hand have you ever met those people for whom 99.9999% just isn’t close enough to 100%? Can more optimization be too much of a good thing? Derek Thompson over at The Atlantic feels that might be the case, starting, with that most American of statistics obsession: baseball. If you…
I was almost going to let Halloween go by without an appropriately thematic post, and then an old classmate shares something he’s narrated — and sharing is scaring!
What with the casting I’m working on for our show, Quorum, I’ve been thinking about actual secret societies, and how secret they actually are. Enter Jackie Mansky writing for Smithsonian magazine. Per the article, actual secret societies are often centered around good causes (certainly as far as the members are concerned). Not only that, but these days, they’re aren’t not too secret. Indeed, their existence is often in plain sight even if their purposes might…
Firmly in the “getting around to it” folder is this NPR article about changes with Google’s tools to take personal information out of searches from earlier this year. More later this week. Right now, I’m in the midst of a sizeable casting for Jabberwocky Audio.