September 15, 2023

Being stuck at an airport doesn’t have to be bad. Nashville, for example, has more than one airport restaurant with live music at all hours of the day (and night). Last year we spent a few hours waiting for a delayed flight at Ole Red.

Photo of a small restaurant stage, with a man playing acoustic guitar and singing, surrounded by diners.

September 14, 2023

The Statue of Liberty is made of copper, which long ago oxidized into a green patina: the perfect protection against the harsh salty airs of the Hudson/Upper New York Bay. So of course there is a campaign to remove that protection and make it shiny again.

Photo of the Statue of Liberty

The campaign to end mandatory maintenance of certification is, as of yesterday, at 20,000 signatures. This is just shy of 10% of the people affected; what are the other 90+ percent thinking? Still, it was enough to make the professional societies pay attention.

September 13, 2023

From the National Aquarium in Baltimore, a non-fluorescent jellyfish. Its glow comes from background lighting conspiring with iPhone 15’s propensity to illuminate.

The Pacific sea nettle (Chrysaora fuscescens), if Google's image search is to be believed

Photo of a glowing jellyfish inside a dark blue aquarium.

September 12, 2023

The NIH Clinical Center used to commission artwork for some of their lectures. Here is one for “Phobias and Panic Disorder” from 1985.

Photo of a framed cartoon drawing showing  a human profile with an overlayed brain covered in pale pink and red circles connected by green dots.

📺 Season 2 of The Afterparty was uneven, with a couple of cinematic marvels wedged between a wimpy start and an oddly rushed last episode which seems to have been chopped off at the last minute from the penultimate. The Wes Anderson and Alfred Hitchcock homages in particular were worth bearing the first 60 minutes of Aniq awkwardness.

Phrase of the day: digital dandruff. Thank you, Charlie Warzel.

September 11, 2023

From the Department of You Can’t Make This Up: the face of D.C. pedestrian safety was hurt in a hit-and-run. And not just a little bit:

Stephen Grasty was placed in a neck brace and taken to George Washington University Hospital, where doctors treated him for a long list of injuries, including a broken leg, foot and vertebra. His C6 vertebra was “hanging on a hair,” Shelly Grasty said.

D.C. could be one of the most pedestrian and bicycle-friendly cities in America (just look at these lanes!), but you just can’t get away from out-of-town drivers. (ᔥAxios)

In retrospect, that friend worried about an eagle flying away with his toddler as prey wasn’t completely bonkers.

From the early humans exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History.

Photo of a museum exhibit about eagle attacks on early humans.

I am reluctant to recommend long podcasts, but Joe Walker’s 3+ hour interview with Richard Rhodes, the octogenarian author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, was so engrossing that I didn’t even realize it was that long until posting this very message. Between discussing the Manhattan project, nuclear energy, AI, and a sprinkling of geopolitics past and present, the conversation just flew by.