NESTED! Turkey bowling, gastroliths, concrete pasta, the text man
Stunning friends! Pumped to finally send my first newsletter of 2025. Everything’s fine, there has been no reason for my absence other than laziness.
(If you don’t know what this is: you probably subscribed via the Culture Study classifieds in January! Thank you for joining me here, I hope you stay!)
Wikipedia is the best website
Turkey bowling is one of these rare sports invented in a supermarket. Who needs professional equipment when you have a frozen turkey and some bottles of soda?
Sometimes you kind of wish the rich went back to paying servants for useful things, like being a ornamental hermit for their garden.
Thanks Natalie for leading me the way to a dreamy 1797 ad: “Wanted: Ornamental hermit to occupy natural cave dwelling under waterfall for seven years. The successful candidate shall be provided with Bible, water, spectacles, camlet robe, hourglass, and food from the house. No hair, nail, or beard-trimming permitted. Sum offered: £600.”
The Batman railway station is located in Melbourne, which was itself called Batmania for a short period, after one of its founders, John Batman. (Most definitely not a superhero).
Also in Australia: the Megalong Valley is not that long.
Philatelists use stamp hinges to put down stamps in a book without damaging them.
The Japanese work environment is notoriously unhealthy, so to avoid trouble with your boss… refusing to let you quit, you can call for a resignation service to quit your job for you.
There’s a type of fish called Nosferatu because of its fangs.
Also in animal digestion: some animals who lack grinding teeth voluntarily eat small rocks (gastroliths) to help them grind food inside their gastrointestinal tracts.
Current need
Mildly interesting
Great op-ed: migration is central to our politics and our world, but nobody really understands it.
Looking at vinyl records with a microscope is not only fascinating to see the grooves, but also for the organic contamination of record surfaces that can cause noises.
I don’t really miss using X (née Twitter) especially given its current state, but I loved this reminder that there was truly a Golden Era of Twitter and that some tweets like ‘Fucking the Text Man for Texts’ will forever be important cultural moments for a generation of terminally online millennials.
TIL that alcohol doesn’t really burn off during cooking. It mostly does for e.g. wine dishes that stay in the oven for multiple hours, but not for shorter sauces or flamed desserts.
Always love to get the latest on the Chinese Internet Phrasebook (concrete pasta, anyone?)
Many English last names come from nicknames that nobody has any more. For example Watson, Watts and Watkins are all patronymics from “Wat”, the nickname for “Walter”; Dawson comes from David; the “At” of Atkins comes from “Adam”. (And it never occurred to me that Nixon is just a less-awkward respelling of “Nick’s son”!)
A fascinating and mildly terrifying deep dive into Humphrey Smith’s ownership of the strangest pub chain in Britain.
Everything is depressing
It now seems extremely plausible that Covid-19 was actually caused by a lab leak. Many experts thought this at the time, but lied or minimised the truth to divert from conspiracy theorists (which were, by and large, skewing the truth for untrue agendas anyway).
I, too, will fucking piledrive you if you mention AI again, however don’t let that stop me from sharing things I read about it in the last few months:
The fundamental unresolved question behind LLMs: is it okay?
A story about someone who made a ChatGPT boyfriend and fell in love with it. (There’s a plot twist that I did not expect to already happen in 2025)
MODERN-DAY ORACLES or BULLSHIT MACHINES? is a great micro-course covering the fundamental issues and skills required to navigate a post-AI world.
If you’re so smart, why can’t you die? is a solid essay (from a pro-AI perspective) about the many meanings of the word ‘intelligence’ in artificial intelligence.
Microsoft (who are funnelling billions into generative AI) is saying that generative AI tools like Copilot or ChatGPT are affecting critical thinking at work and other skills.
The Columbia Journalism Review has done a systematic test of whether popular chatbots can correctly cite their sources when asked about news events, and in over 60% of cases they were making up the source but did so with ✨ “alarming confidence” ✨.
Uninsurable Futures is a good essay about the aftermath of climate catastrophe events like the Los Angeles fires: how will we possibly have the means to continue rebuilding things at this scale?
People overestimate their understanding of human behaviour and are overly confident in their ability to change it, OR: how to get 7th graders to smoke because of anti-drug campaign.
Good to look at
The Public Domain Image Archive curates thousands of beautiful pictures who have entered the public domain, organised by style, theme or artists.
A great, shareable guide to identify dishonest charts! I’ve learned a thing or two — it’s not just about insane axes.
How to like everything more is a joyous little guide on how to be more appreciative of stuff!
Unrelated, but talking of joy, found a new evergreen TikTok.
A lovely interactive article to explore the movement of the moon. (I’ve shared this blog a few times before because it’s amazing; I missed the previous one on airfoil to makes planes move).
ooh.directory is an old-fashioned directory of blogs! The mood in 2025 is less algorithmic feed, more Yahoo homepage.
How to make big decisions? A decision analyst tries to explain crudely with a flowchart how to make life choices.
Bracket City is a fun concept for a puzzle word game!
Work! Design! Tech!
A great essay about standardised workplace software which wonders if we become shaped by the tools we use, rather than the other way around (and how to regain more agency in our work).
I’ve learned to become a product manager in 30 seconds thanks to this incredible website.
Tangentially related: how to professionally say, a translation guide between what you sometimes mean and what you should say to maintain good relationships.
How to improve your work-from-home lighting situation to reduce eye strain 👀
Some 150+ tips and tricks for macOS (and iOS!). I’m a keyboard power user and I still learned a few things!
A great explanation of cognitive load in the context of reading code, and how to use that knowledge to write better code or documentation.
See also: rules for writing software tutorials. (and Teach, Don’t Tell)
Stay cute,
Victor