The Ringer proposes a top 10 list of animal movie performances. Amusing at the very least, and the top choice is, well, a choice.
Author: Patrick
-
The Rise of the Groomzilla
Perhaps because most of my friends are past the getting married stage of life, but apparently, groomzillas are a new trend.
On subreddits like r/weddingshaming, you’ll find viral posts in which users vent about or seek advice on managing the groomzillas in their lives, like the groom who demanded his groomsmen spend more than $4,000 on an elaborate, multi-day bachelor party, or the guy who insulted his bride’s appearance during the first look, commenting that her makeup and manicure didn’t look good and that her gray hairs “stood out.” Over on r/bridezilla, one post spells out all the ways a woman’s fiancé actually out zilla’d her — reviewing and approving every placecard, centerpiece, and decoration himself, in addition to requiring he and his bride learn the Charleston (and perform it) and hand-roll 75 chocolate cigars to give guests in custom bands and cigar boxes.
The rise of the groomzilla is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, when a groom’s investment manifests in controlling, aggro behavior — well, then we’ve created a monster. On the other, it feels like progress that hetero men are finally helping shoulder the labor of planning nuptials.
-
The art of William Darkdrac
William Darkdrac with some nostalgic surrealism. Google maps, 2024
-
The value of an unread library
Kevin Dickinson on the value of an unread library:
Shelves of unexplored ideas propel us to continue reading, continue learning, and never be comfortable that we know enough. They provide the foundation for a healthy and robust intellectual humility.
-
Ocean carbon removal
It feels like science fiction. Sinking carbon into the ocean to combat climate change. But that one on the key idea is to address the problem.
Researchers are looking into a wide range of approaches to removing carbon from the atmosphere. Some are straightforwardly technical, like direct air capture in giant facilities can use massive fans and specialized membranes to trap carbon dioxide. Other approaches lean on nature, like growing trees and trapping carbon in their biomass underground.
Oceans cover the majority of our planet, and in fact they already suck up roughly 30% of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions through a whole host of routes.
-
Guns, anxiety, America
Because it’s so easy to sit and watch. Let the world slip by. See the images on the screen and scream along with the words, nevermind what they mean. We were already afraid. A few years before, we had watched the Satanic Panic sweep the nation, along with a fear of Dungeons & Dragons and serial killers, but it seemed we had not yet learned anything about fear and how it gets inside us. How the 24-hour cycle gives us no respite from the news. Turn to any channel any time of day for breaking news, and now with the internet and social media, we have instant access to stories from around the world, all the killings and kidnappings, all the bullets and bombs.
-
How to get better at anything
One idea in order to get better at anything: mimic/copy successful people.
I think this should be at least a little bit surprising, the fact that our mimicry abilities can extend to latent space like this. Some combination of largely unconscious mental processes gives us the ability to simulate the thinking of others, even though we have no direct ability to observe it. Think of how quickly you can tell, just from an unusual text message, that a friend is unhappy. Even if we have only a small sample of observations of someone whose instincts we trust deeply, we probably have enough material to ask, “Does it seem like they would do this?” Trying to explicitly reason about the basis of ethical action is complicated.
-
Poetry in our modern world
An MIT professor discovered their students meeting to create poetry. The essay explores what poetry does and how it can function in our modern world.
In work like this, musicians, writers, and engineers all share space. They collaborate in service of human life and the preservation of all we adore. They remind us that poetry has always been a technology of memory and human connection: a way to remind ourselves of who and what we are to one another. Which is something infinitely more than we can say with words, although we must try—and in that striving, be made more lovely, and alive.