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worth reading: december 12, 2025-february 2, 2026
happy feels-like-january-33rd! some of these links are from early December, which feels about 10,000 years ago. ❤️🔥 to the twin cities and springfield.
games, puzzles, and trivia:
games, puzzles, and trivia:
- Normie.club
- Words.zip
-
Sandwich Alignment Game
- rotatingsandwiches.com strikes again!
- Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection
-
LearnedLeague
- did not know this league existed before last week but it's fascinating. fellow trivia sickos, hit that "random questions" button and prepare to get pummeled
drinking water:
- “My Sparkling and Surreal Experience As a Water-Tasting Judge” by Adrian Ma
- “Scientists Thought Parkinson’s Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water” by David Ferry (unpaywalled)
animals:
-
StreetCatWiki
- simply one of the best things of all time.
- some of my favorite guys: Stupid Idiot, Mrs. Geometry Dash, Ms. Lag, and Brown Tabby That Hates The Poor
- “Bird feeders have caused a dramatic evolution of California hummingbirds” by Rachel Nuwer
- “What A Week Of Freedom Can Do For A Lab Mouse” by Sabrina Imbler
design and art:
- Bluesky thread on typography in the Soviet Union by @spavel.bsky.social
- Web Design Museum
- ASM Agar Art Contest: 2025 Winners
-
“The Best Book Covers of the Last Decade” by Emily Temple
- mildly disturbed at the realization that “last decade” now starts in 2016
- Archivo Grafica Italiana
science stuff:
- “The Death of the Scientist” by Sara Imari Walker
- “Built to spill: The life of a crash test dummy” by Camila Domonoske
- “How many holes does the human body have?” by Kit Yates
heartwarming things:
- tastebuds_nyc @ TikTok
- “How Will the Miracle Happen Today?” by Kevin Kelly
rhetorical question headlines in the New York Times:
-
“Why Does A.I. Write Like…That?” by Sam Kriss
- this reads kind of like a crazy throwback to 2019 but I particularly liked the phrases “A Gun Is Out There” and “New and Ugly Injuries to the Brain”
-
“Have Some Spare Time? Why Not Build a Medieval War Machine?” by Dwight Garner
- do you ever read a book review that makes you immediately want to read the book
-
“Can the American Oboe Sing Again?” by Jesse Green
- PHENOMENAL. can't recommend this enough. some of my favorite bits:
- the author's bio: “Jesse Green was 8 when he was handed his first oboe. Ten years later it was mercifully taken away from him.”
- the comment that reads: “Pretty sure the bassoon is the most complicated and difficult instrument. Typical non-fact-checked piece sponsored by Big Oboe.”
- the reference to http://oboes.us/, which I immediately beelined to (bonus link)! now THIS is a Web Site!!!
- PHENOMENAL. can't recommend this enough. some of my favorite bits:
profiles of fascinating people:
-
“The Quad God Performs Another Miracle” by Kathryn Xu
- watch the video embedded in this one! i saw this guy hit a backflip in person last year and it put my jaw on the floor. happy Winter Olympics everybody! can't wait for him to become a megastar
- “14,445 and Counting” by Christa Hillstrom
- “If a Tree Falls” by Rosa Lyster
- “Queen of Hearts” by Nina St. Pierre
and everything else:
- “How Gamefaqs changed RPG consumption - an history of RPG walkthroughs, from clue books and hearsay to the digital age” by Magnvs
- “Two Nights Playing With Fire At Patrick Mahomes And Travis Kelce’s Steakhouse” by Liz Cook
- “Where Do the Children Play?” by Eli Stark-Elster
- “The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference” by Abhishaike Mahajan
- “ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering” by Alex Harri