Adam Mastroianni’s Experimental History newsletter has enabled paid subscriptions today, and if there is one science-oriented Substack worth paying for, it’s Adam’s. I’m sold.
🍿 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is on the regular re-watch list. Think what you will of Tim Burton’s style — and I don’t think it fits this particular story — the movie works almost as well as the book in being a didactic tool for toddlers and pre-teens.
It is hard to watch an animation like this (a plot of England’s population versus GDP from 1270 onwards) without a sense of awe, followed by slight discomfort for what could come next.
Old (1999), but still good. Even when I first wrote this, and even older now.
When I was a house officer and installing one of the first right-heart catheters, the machine that showed intrapulmonic arterial pressures was enormous and was equipped with strain gauges rather than computer chips. Making it work was difficult. After the line was in, the attending, the nurse, and I tried desperately to adjust the machine to show the pulmonary arterial pressure waves. We could not get them. The line on the screen remained flat. We manipulated toggle switches and strain gauges for about 15 minutes. Nothing. Finally, I glanced at the patient: He was dead.
The story after that is even better.
Things that the Arc browser does well:
The one thing keeping me from using it full-time:
Posting yearly reading lists has become risky as of late, but that won’t stop me. As with last year’s this is more of a guide than a mandate: I may — but probably won’t — read all of them. Odds are, my favorite book of the year won’t even be one on the list.
The downside of living in a city others come to visit is that it never feels like a good time to be a tourist. Yes, D.C. is lovely just walking around — flaneuring, if you will — but all those buildings around the National Mall are still worth visiting.
Which is to say, our tickets for a tour of the Capitol are booked. It was now or never, since this year will probably be our last in Washington proper.
I have seen many people sharing links to Maciej Cegłowski’s (excellent!) case against colonizing Mars.
Of course, Werner Herzog said it first, and more succinctly. Good luck with that, indeed.
Waking up at 6am on January 1st to assemble the kids' new toy — a “Farm-to-table” play kitchen which I heartily recommend Some major assembly required, but with the Bilt app it ended up taking significantly less than the 2 hours quoted on the box. — I realized that how we celebrated New Year’s Day was probably how some (most?) celebrated Christmas. But isn’t it better to start the New Year with gifts and good cheer rather than promises to yourself that you know you won’t keep?
In any case, this holiday laziness is why the list of lists below didn’t come out on the last day of 2022, as it was intended.
🍿 Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical was a lovely reminder of Tim Minchin’s work which I had, years and years ago, followed more closely but 3 children and one cat later have almost forgotten. Also, someone please give Emma Thompson an award for best acting under prosthetics.