2023
“Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true: the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.” daringfireball.net/linked/20…
Thunderation! The Speaker Demands Bean Soup (1904) On July 27, 1904, Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon went to the Capitol dining room looking forward to his usual bowl of bean soup, “and is met with an unfortunate surprise.” Cannon raised a fuss (because I guess there was nothing more important going on in 1904). Bean soup has been on the menu every day since—except for one.
On the “This Day in Esoteric Political History” podcast, which points out that it’s bonkers to want a hot bowl of soup for lunch in Washington D.C. in July before air conditioning was invented.
You’ll never guess what Twitter did with the guy who had the @X handle (spoiler: you will guess) daringfireball.net/linked/20…
The FBI is once again violating legal restrictions on spying on American citizens, querying communications with a state senator and US senator. The queries are a violation of FISA Section 702, which provides limited permission for the FBI to tap American communications overseas. The FBI has shown its disregard for the law. Moreover, “we live in a globalized world where U.S. persons regularly communicate with people in other countries,” making Section 702 excessively broad even as written, writes Matthew Guariglia at eff.org. www.eff.org/deeplinks…
Red Hat’s recent decision to restrict the source code for its enterprise Linux build has led open-source projects big and small to come up with creative strategies to continue to serve their users. www.vice.com/en/articl…
It’s uncomfortable when you’re at the supermarket and you hear a song that you once thought was edgy and dangerous. This is not a problem if you’re into death metal or Yoko Ono.
A brief history of making out. Turns out “romantic, sexual, steamy” kissing isn’t instinctual behavior; it’s a learned cultural practice. A lot of societies don’t do it, most primates don’t do it, and people only started relatively recently, a few thousand years ago. On the Decoder Ring podcast, hosted by Willa Paskin and produced by Paskin and Katie Shepherd. slate.com/podcasts/…
This podcast pairs nicely with this week’s episode of Savage Lovecast, where host Dan Savage talks about primate masturbation with evolutionary biologist Dr. Matilda Brindle. savage.love/lovecast/…
Ghost Church: The delightful Jamie Loftus looks at the American spiritualism movement, including its history, and she visits the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp in Florida. Loftus is funny, wise and takes a friendly but skeptical view. www.iheart.com/podcast/1…
Loftus previously did podcasts about joining Mensa for a year and the comic strip Cathy.
Her podcast about Nabokov’s “Lolita” discusses how nearly 70 years of critics and filmmakers completely miss the point of the novel by portraying Humbert Humbert as a victim of a seductress. He’s not the victim—he’s a pedophile who destroys a little girl’s life. www.avclub.com/jamie-lof…