If you haven’t been on hold with some business or another so far this year, don’t worry: it’ll happen. And when it happens, you might ask yourself, “Why is hold music the way it is?” Alexia Kontolemos has you covered with an informative article for Mental Floss. My main improvement would be the elimination of ads, but I know that won’t happen. And if you want to know more about the grandfather of background music,…
So let’s say you just finished binge-watching season three of The Bear in the span of a few days and, with not much food in the house, you just want to get a beef sweet and hot ‘n’ wet and talk about it. But maybe you don’t. In fact, maybe you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. In which case I have two actions for you, should you choose to accept them. 1)…
I’m one of the many folks who dig maps of all sorts, so this interactive map of native peoples in the Americas and Australia is very cool. I wish there could be additional historical and other layers, but don’t be surprised if you don’t spend some time checking out your neck of the woods, places you’ve lived, and places you’ve always wanted to visit.
In case you forgot, today’s the day you can binge all 20 episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy, season 2. I, for one, am ready for the cockamamie plans.
I’m no stranger to warning people about the 17-year cicada, including on this blog, but alas, I never have done a video as wonderfully engaging as this one. If you are in one of the areas of the United States who has had (or is having) a surplus of cicadas, here’s something to be thankful for: they’re not this big. Probably.
Here’s a bit of alternate history I learned just last week: before the current site for what is now Dulles Airport, planners were looking to put a new Washington-area airport in Burke, Virginia. Granted, if the Burke residents hadn’t mounted a resistance, we likely would have gotten a new airport in the area before John Foster Dulles was deemed an appropriate man to lend his name to an international aerodrome… and certainly before Carol Burnett…
Astronaut, ambassador, and businessman William Anders has died at the age of 90. He lived a full life that’s interesting to learn about on its own, but the reason I’m taking a moment is because he took the iconic photo “Earthrise.” That’s the photo you see above and longer-term readers of this blog may remember as the header image for the whole site from 2015 until just last year. When I transitioned to the new…
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Internet for the past few weeks. No, not in the “What has the Internet ever done for us?” kind of way. More in the “Do I like the current cut of the Internet’s jib?” kind of way. I mean, the whole AI obsession has not abated since I mused about it last year. So this video struck me when I came across it earlier this week. This led…
While not necessarily my favorite aspect of stagecraft at the moment of assignment, some of my fondest memories of being a stage technician involve props. There is often an inherent playfulness and ingenuity in a prop solution that is amplified by the fact that actors get to handle them… and that joy is seen on stage. The fact that prop solutions often require ingenuity may explain my apprehension (at the assignment) and subsequent elation (assuming…