I hear Taylor Swift‘s boyfriend is participating in something today.
We watched “Mr. Holmes,” a 2015 movie featuring Ian McKellen as 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes.
It’s 1947, and Holmes is long retired to a country house, where he tends his bees and his failing memory. He’s struggling to remember a case 35 years earlier that set the course of the final decades of his life.
Sad Clown Paradox: Why You Should Check In On Your Funny Friends
Humor has long been used as a tool against stress and uncertainty, perhaps best captured in The Wipers Times: a satirical newspaper that went to print in the decimated city of Ypres, Belgium, during World War I. So named because most of the soldiers reading it couldn’t pronounce Ypres (they said why-pers instead of ee-pruh), the trench newspaper included sporting notes in which gas attacks were reported as a horse race, regular serials (one of the earliest: a detective series “Herlock Shomes”) and a Things We Want To Know section, including “whether the pop’lar Poplar tree’s as pop’lar as it used to be?”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, humans across the globe took to their windows, bathrooms, and balconies to showcase a similarly resilient sense of humor in the face of life-threatening disease, all while grappling with the stress and isolation of lockdown. And later, amidst the devastation unfolding in Ukraine, hackers found the time to make Russian charging stations display the message: “Putin is a dickhead”.
Today’s shitposts: When the insurance company wants a diagram of the accident
Do you read books on your phone?
Seems like smart glasses wouldn’t be usable by people who wear glasses only part of the time.
Today’s memes: Talk dirty to me
How do you survive fame? Podcaster P.J. Vogt talks with his friend, the actor and writer Molly Ringwald, “formerly the most famous teenager in America.” She starred in movies including “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink.”
Ringwald has a head on her shoulders and didn’t let fame get into it. And she got out of the country and moved to Paris, where she wasn’t famous.
She says the only thing she misses about being famous is getting tables at restaurants.
The Freakonomics podcast is doing a series of episodes on the physicist Richard Feynman. The first episode is terrific, and I’m looking forward to listening to the rest.
Feynman liked to figure things out from first principles. He didn’t accept received wisdom. This led him to extraordinary breakthroughs in physics and a rich and unusual life. He followed his own path, in science and in life.
But Feynman was a super-genius. You and I are not super-geniuses. If you and I try to apply this principle broadly, that leads to Qanon, anti-vax and other bad outcomes.
Sometimes you have to listen to what the experts say.
However, here in the 21st Century, with institutions breaking down and displaying incompetence, it’s difficult to figure out which self-proclaimed experts to listen to.
NYTimes: Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis?
Researchers are investigating whether a solar shield in space that blocks some sunlight could help mitigate climate change.
Are they really calling it a “space parasol?” It should be pink with yellow daisies all over, and tassels at the edges.