Good morning. Here are your daily ducks.
An unofficial list of the most influential science fiction works ever. The science fiction that strongly influenced real life spaceflight pioneers. By Eric Adelson at the Washington Post.
“I’m a man who appreciates it when food dares you to eat it.”
I am quite enjoying the AwkwardSD newsletter, from fellow San Diegan Ryan Bradford, who shares a review of a spaghetti dinner from By The Bucket, a chain of restaurants that serves spaghetti by the bucket.
My 11-year-old nephew declares it’s “not bad!” and I agree. I’ve spent more money on grosser things in my life…. Overall, we’re vaguely satisfied with the food and lowkey happy that it didn’t kill us.
Ducks love the rain. They can keep it.
Saahil Desai at The Atlantic:
A pizza box has one job—keeping a pie warm and crispy during its trip from the shop to your house—and it can’t really do it. The fancier the pizza, the worse the results: A slab of overbaked Domino’s will probably be at least semi-close to whatever its version of perfect is by the time it reaches your door, but a pizza with fresh mozzarella cooked at upwards of 900 degrees? Forget it. Sliding a $40 pie into a pizza box is the packaging equivalent of parking a Lamborghini in a wooden shed before a hurricane.
This charming 1949 article from The Atlantic introduces pizza to middle America.
Joseph Bernstein at The New York Times:
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Every Friday night from September to May, at an off-campus nightclub in this thriving college town, a group of die-hard music fans gathers to dance to some of the most devoted live bands in southeast Michigan. There are women in skintight red dresses, long-haired men sucking down bottles of beer and couples flirting in the alcove outside the bathrooms.
In fact, just one thing distinguishes the crowd from nearly any other rock ’n’ roll show in a small city in America: Almost everyone is over 65.
OK, two things: The show always starts at 6:30 p.m. and ends at 9 p.m., in time to get to bed at a reasonable hour.
Minnie and I did a 4+ mile walk in heavy, chilly rain yesterday. She seems fully recovered.
Ars Technica: I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan
… the most horrible thing about being locked up is that you are being dehumanized on a daily basis. They practically stamp a number on you. In order to navigate the experience, you have to normalize the dehumanization. You have to buy into it in order to survive. That is the most horrible thing about being locked up. You’re never the same person again. Once you internalize it, you project it outward. If you are being dehumanized, that’s how you treat other people. That, to me, is the essence of incarceration: having to buy into the dehumanization.
— Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau at Esquire
If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember that it made a peculiar sound. But despite becoming so familiar, it remained a mystery for most of us. What do these sounds mean?
9 years ago today
Sunday, January 15, 2023
High temperature was 91 degrees. I was in talks for a job at Light Reading. I was in the midst of a long and extraordinarily difficult process of trying to get Minnie housebroken. I attached her leash to my belt and kept her with me at all times when we were home. Notes from 2023: Even here in San Diego, a high of 91 is noteworthy. Here in 2023, we’re in the middle of days of chilly weather and heavy rain.
Political labeling considered harmful
Friday, January 13, 2023
Journalist Mike Masnick at Techdirt avoids naming politicians' party affiliation unless it’s essential to the story, because, he says, everybody then starts arguing on the basis of team rather than issues. Maybe it makes sense for all of us to do the same in political discussions: avoid labels like Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, progressive, MAGA, lefist, and so on. It’s just a lot of tribalism and name-calling. Clearly, you often have to use labels.
A brief history of the phrase “leaving everything on the field.”
Microsoft is offering unlimited time off for US staff.
Not always a great deal for employees, who might feel precarious about taking time off, and also don’t get paid for unused time off if they get laid off, fired, or leave of their own volition.
An indigenous tech group asked the Apache Foundation to change its name.
Brian Behlendorf, a co-creator of the popular web server, said in 2020 that he chose the name out of a romantic image of the Apache tribe having fought nobly against a conquering aggressor. The problem, says Natives in Tech is that there isn’t just one Apache tribe, there are eight. And they’re not extinct—they’re still around.
Notably, a stereotypical “pure, reverent, and simple” depiction (i.e., a “noble savage”) “distances Indigenous people from modern technology, the very thing the [Apache] foundation represents,” Natives in Tech writes.
Gentleman logs every slice of New York pizza he’s eaten since 2014, including photos on an Instagram account.
New York pizza is the best pizza.
We just started watching this show “Jellystone” with Kevin Costner and we’re still waiting for Yogi Bear to put in an appearance. Maybe in a later season?