The most disgusting story you'll hear all day
A 140-tonne blob of fat and other horrible things is blocking a sewer in East London:What has been named the Whitechapel fatberg is a rock-solid agglomeration of fat, disposable wipes, diapers, condoms...
View ArticleWelcome (and overdue) feature in Chrome
The January release of Google Chrome will prevent videos from auto-playing:Starting in Chrome 64, which is currently earmarked for a January 2018 release, auto-play will only be allowed when the video...
View ArticleUnder vacuum
So, this might be happening at my house next weekend:The "sous vide" part of sous vide cooking refers to the vacuum-sealed bags that are often called for when you're using the technique. (The French...
View ArticlePirates may be to blame for the U.S. not being Metric
The Système International d'unités, also known as the Metric System, is the most widely-used system of measuring things in the known universe. Of the 7.57 billion people in the world, somewhere around...
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Before the storms
Two photos from Caribbean islands that will probably never look this way again.Sandy Ground, St. Martin, February 2009:Playa Negra, Vieques, Puerto Rico, November 2016:I hope they can rebuild quickly.
View ArticleIlliberalism on campuses
Via Andrew Sullivan's essay today in New York, Brookings released a poll this week that shows disturbing trends among college students' attitudes about free speech:[A]mong many current college students...
View ArticleOn assholes and disagreements
Two articles crossed my laptop today. First, from New York, Stanford professor Robert Sutton makes an argument that "we are living in Peak Asshole:"Sutton doesn’t want to be, you know, an asshole:...
View ArticleWhat does Tinder know about you?
Via Bruce Schneier, a British reporter requested her data dossier from Tinder. As with so many other things in life, she was shocked, but not surprised:The dating app has 800 pages of information on...
View ArticleNew project meetings
Yesterday and today I've been in meetings all day starting a new project at work. Unusually for my career, the project is not only a matter of public record, but the work will be in the public domain....
View ArticleCould have been worse
An Air France A380 carrying 520 passengers lost an engine over the Atlantic this weekend:“Flight 066 landed without further damage at the Goose Bay military airport in Canada and all of the 520 people...
View ArticleVieques post-Maria
The New York Times talked to people on the American island of Vieques and has this report on the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria two weeks ago:The 9,000 people living on this island eight miles...
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Letter to SXM
Pilot Patrick Smith writes an ode to Maho Beach, Sint Maarten, which remains closed after being partially destroyed by Hurricane Irma three weeks ago:St. Maarten — or St. Martin — is part French and...
View ArticleStrangest office building I've ever been in
Imagine the largest office building (in land area) you've ever been in, add a small shopping mall, four food courts, and the security that demonstrates exactly how silly and ineffectual airport...
View ArticleLinks to read on the plane
I'm about to fly to San Antonio for another round of researching how the military tracks recruits from the time they get to the processing center to the time they leave for boot camp (officially...
View ArticleFirehose
I've learned more in the last week about the U.S. armed forces and how they enroll new members than I can recount. (I mean that in several senses.) Our team were at the San Antonio MEPS before 6am and...
View ArticleLunchtime links
Too much to read today, especially during an hours-long download from our trips over the past two weeks. So I'll come back to these:The CIA recently fired Lulu, a black Lab, because she didn't want to...
View ArticleRainy Monday lunchtime links
A succession of cold fronts has started traversing the Chicago area, so after an absolutely gorgeous Saturday we're now in the second day of cold, wet, gray weather. In other words, autumn in...
View ArticleShould I be sad, alarmed, or both?
The Annenberg Public Policy Center has released a poll of Americans showing widespread and extensive misunderstandings about our Constitution:Nearly half of those surveyed (48 percent) say that freedom...
View ArticleThis is what corruption looks like
Trump's friends have started looting Puerto Rico:For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico’s crippled electrical grid, the territory’s state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company...
View ArticleThree years of stepping
Just a quick note. I've had a Fitbit for three years as of today, and so far, I've logged 14.4 million steps. My mean over 1,097 days is 13,170 steps per day, though my median is 12,616, reflecting the...
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