marcicat | Entries tagged with links

Someone on tumblr linked this article, which is a Very Fun Read, and my apologies that I don't have the tumblr username to acknowledge.

The article is way better without ads, so I highly recommend doing the reader view thing:

It’s One of the Weirdest Mistakes in Movie History. I Spent Months Investigating How It All Went Wrong., by Forrest Wickman

To summarize: The bird in this scene does not live where it’s supposed to, look like it’s supposed to, or sound like it’s supposed to. To put this in terms of mammals, it’s as if a two-toed sloth climbed up to Bill Murray’s window, howled like some unknown species of canine, and Cameron Diaz identified the howl as a sea otter, saying that sea otters live in only one place on Earth: Carmel, California.

I'm Not Your Hero - The Murderbot Diaries Animatic, by mar

starandrea showed me this yesterday, and I LOVE IT!

How to like everything more, by Sasha Chapin

Saw this linked on a tumblr post, and checked it out -- my first, second, and third thoughts were mainly along the lines of DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, because that is generally my first, second, adn third thought in most scenarios.

But then the day after I read it, I started thinking about it again. And I wanted to read it again. So here it is!

Tooth: repaired!

Audiobook: provided more than adequate distraction!

Dentist office employees: super friendly, but absolutely ZERO idea of what non-dentist-office people know about teeth!

MY TWO FAVORITE EXAMPLES FROM YESTERDAY:

*Early in the visit, one of the employees was attempting to clarify which tooth had lost the filling. Them: "Is it the number 30?" Me: "...???" I DON'T KNOW MY TEETH BY NUMBERS, OKAY? (We both had a laugh about this afterwards; the employee confirmed it had indeed been a very long Monday at the office.)

*On the opposite end of the spectrum, the person who injected the anesthetic shots took great care to explain that I "might experience some soreness or tightness in my jaw," and that's "totally normal." I nodded along, but I was definitely thinking 'yes, I've been to the dentist before. I've been to THIS dentist before. I've literally had THIS TOOTH filled before. JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO. I'm ABSOLUTELY aware of the jaw soreness issue.'

I'm genuinely not sure which one was more funny, but they were both great. And a perfect time to recall the xkcd 'Average Familiarity' comic!

Visdeurbel (fish doorbell)

The World’s First Fish Doorbell in Utrecht, The Netherlands

In the heart of the city lies the beautiful Weerdsluis, a manually operated lock. When the lock gates are closed, fish are forced to wait, wasting valuable time and energy – making them easy prey for birds and predatory fish.

To help the fish, an underwater camera is installed at the lock. If fish appear on screen, you can press the doorbell! This alerts the lock keeper, who will open the lock when many fish are waiting.

(Okay, full disclosure, I have yet to see any fish, and the live video doesn't always seem to work for me, but I think this idea is so cool! Also I really enjoyed the weekly journal videos.)

LOVE the synchronicity that brought this gem to my tumblr dash the very same day I saw the John Oliver clip giving it a shoutout!

In case there's anyone who hasn't rocked out to this yet, you're one of today's lucky 10,000!

Hostile Government Take Over (EDM Remix), by AGiftFromTodd & Vinny Marchi

Sometimes I go over to tumblr for a lil' distraction while I'm meandering through my morning routine, expecting a smattering of cute animal pictures and whatever random ad tumblr's decided to blast at me.

And sometimes instead I find a beautiful reflection on art: Permanence is not purpose, by luulapants

The vast majority of books written before the modern day are lost media. Countless artists poured their hearts into stories that were read by few and lasted only as long as the paper they were printed on. Most of the art ever made has been destroyed or thrown away. Most of the music ever written will never be heard again. The expectation of permanence in art is very new, and even now, there are millions of works of art that will never be recorded or posted or shared. Millions more that will never even be completed.

Creation, with few exceptions, is a mandala. A vulnerable song performed for dear friends by a campfire, but the singer soon forgets how it went. A poem shared in a coffee house that rattles the audiences' bones but will never be heard again. A sketch of a lover on hotel stationary that the maid will throw away tomorrow. Our current reality exists by the influence of art that no one remembers.

Permanence is not purpose.

And then I thought 'oh, I'll just keep scrolling a bit to find something to contrast with this for my post,' and what should I come across instead but THE EPIC OF FRODERICK, an absolutely fantastic video from take-a-dip-in-the-deadpool chronicling their journey from 'lemme build a lil' house for that cute frog' to 'I've somehow created a nature preserve.' SO GOOD.

Downside: it's facebook
Upside: the National Parks Service posts are truly enjoyable

Mammoth Cave National Park, August 23, 2024 (National Parks Service)

(copied in full for anyone wishing not to visit fb)

Come experience what has disappointed millions of people for over 225 years!

Mammoth Cave National Park recently rated as one of the “most disappointing U.S. tourist attractions”! While we think the world’s longest cave system and over 4,000 years of human history is AMAZING, others find that the cave is “very dark” and there is “nothing cool” here to see.

If you would like to experience the disappointment of Mammoth Cave, visit our website and choose from one of our many activities that will leave you unfulfilled! You can be disappointed by a “dry hole with very few stalagmites and stalactites” or discover nothing “other than trees” on over 80+ miles of hiking, biking, horseback riding, and water trails. (Fair warning – there are bugs in the outdoors, cellular phone service is spotty, and there are stairs on some of our cave tours.)

A world of regret awaits you at Mammoth Cave!

Make your cave tour reservations and find all the information you need to plan your very own “not enjoyable” visit to Mammoth Cave National Park at: https://ow.ly/8ifx50T59Eo

#JustAnotherCavePark

For reasons I don't entirely remember, I receive a daily email from the New York Times (it's called "The Morning"). It's generally a roundup of headlines, and since I'm not subscribed to the NYT, I can't actually read any of them, but that's fine. There's also a puzzle at the end which is A+ great.

More importantly, on Saturdays the email includes the full text of whatever op-ed article got selected -- generally something calm and Saturday-worthy, like 'making a summer playlist' or 'why I love daylight savings time,' that sort of thing. (LOL when I went to link the author's page on NYT [Melissa Kirsch] I realized that apparently they are always the Saturday writer. WELL THAT EXPLAINS SOME THINGS!)

And THIS week (September 7, 2024), the article was about tennis. Or more accurately, tennis fandom. (I was much more interested when I realized it was more the second than the first.) It's a conversation that comes up again and again in fandom -- how much are you a fan of the thing itself, and how much are you a fan of the community that builds up around it. It was also about the joy of enjoying things -- not uncritically, but enthusiastically nonetheless.

I can't actually link to the article itself, but this is the concluding paragraph, and I thought it was worth remembering.

If we define ourselves by who and what we love, and I think we should, then it’s valuable to love as many things as we can, to accumulate enthusiasms and lean into them, to hold onto passions when we discover them and not let them fall away. This way, our identities become rich, multidimensional, expansive. Sometimes it feels like there’s more to dislike than to like, more to disdain than to embrace. My longing for tennis feels like an opportunity, a reason to open my arms wider, to take more of the world in. I’m going to seize it.
-Melissa Kirsch, "Love All"

The story starts as many craft stories do, with 'so there was a Really Good Sale on this yarn.' (In this case, Lion Brand Wool-Ease WOW.) And I thought to myself 'what are you going to make with that yarn???' And I told myself 'baskets, of course!'

And I do love making baskets, so I believed myself. And then the yarn arrived, and it's great, and I thought 'but you know what I REALLY want is... another blanket!'

And the yarn is SO THICK, which is great for baskets, but I wasn't really vibing with it as a blanket-weight yarn, and I thought 'well, it IS four strands of yarn twisted together, right? sooooooo theoretically they could be untwisted!'

I started this in a haphazard sort of 'maybe this will be a meditative repetitive sort of task' way, and quickly decided it might be, but it would also take forever and I was absolutely going to get frustrated and bored faster than I was going to reach inner peace. But I thought surely the internet has a better strategy!

I wound up on this reddit thread, where the advice largely consisted of 'don't.' Reddit user littlelizardfeet posted a youtube link with the comment, "This is the best method I’ve seen for unplying," and I genuinely wondered if I was about to be rickrolled when I clicked through.

NO I WAS NOT! I WAS ABOUT TO BE AMAZED!

How to Split Yarn: DIY, by chezlin

Can confirm that this method works! I did one skein last night (luckily the skeins are only 66 yards long). First I split the four strands into two sets of two using the 'skein in bag' untwisting strategy, and I found that each of the double strands had also untwisted enough that they could be further separated just rolling them from one dowel to another. Then I could hand wind directly from the second dowel into a ball of yarn. Time consuming, but nowhere near as time consuming as my 'wing it and hope for the best' plan. And it's a great wrist and forearm workout!

(DISCLAIMER: I have not actually tried to crochet anything with those yarn balls yet, lol. The individual strands seem strong enough to me, and they're still thick enough that I'm probably going to use a size 9 hook. We'll see what happens next on this YARN ADVENTURE!)

lannamichaels wrote up a fantastic overview of process improvement projects. I enjoyed every bit of it!

(I especially liked the part about moving things around in a store, because 1) I genuinely loved shelf rearranging when I worked in a retail store, and 2) I quickly learned that customers will ALWAYS complain that you've moved things. Even when you have not moved them. Even when they are in a stationary refrigerator that CANNOT be moved. Ah, the memories.)

Also I was reminded of the excellent xkcd comic about when a metric becomes a target, which is always worth another look.

Crochet Basics: The Magic Knot, vid by Bella Coco

I've already learned this knot and forgotten it several times, so here's a link so I'll at least have it around when I need it again!

(PS: The comments taught me this is also called a fisherman's knot or a sliding knot, like what's used with leather cords for necklaces. I felt like I had a galaxy brain moment reading that. Magic is real. What is happening.)

I was one of yesterday's lucky 10,000 when I got to learn about the Beaufort Wind Scale!

In an effort to answer the question 'is the wind going to be strong enough that I should take down the bird feeder?' I tried to get my phone weather app to give me more information about the wind forecast. It told me that while the sustained winds were going to top out at 'Strong Breeze,' the gusts could be way up in the 'Strong Gale' category. (The NOAA link calls it 'severe gale;' I guess my phone thinks 'strong' is a simpler word.)

My favorite thing about the Beaufort Scale is that it has FIVE categories of breeze: light breeze, gentle breeze, moderate breeze, fresh breeze, and strong breeze. I think that's delightful.

I started using the Delightful app a while ago. (Okay, I checked: December 18, 2021) At first I was doing the 'three things you're grateful for today' thing, because I've read a lot about how gratitude is good for you.

But I love checking things off my to-do list, which means I usually want to do the 'three good things' in the app early in the day -- waiting till the evening isn't great for me. So I switched to 'three things I'm looking forward to today,' which I love, and which feels much more action-oriented.

After a couple years, though, it's been feeling a little repetitive. I'm looking forward to seeing the sun, to taking a walk outdoors, to eating good food and drinking good coffee, to hugging my family and patting my cat. All those things are still true! But I was wondering about ways to mix it up a little.

Then I read this 2023 CNN article (Share the 17 syllables a day that changed your lives, by Tess Taylor), which turned out to be a reference to a 2022 article by the same author (How 17 syllables a day can change your life).

Did I miss the 2022 article entirely? Did I see the headline and skip it deliberately? Did I read it and then forget about it? I have no idea, but I read it this year and it spoke to me. So I'm trying it! Three lines, three things? A natural fit! Anyway, we'll see how it goes. But I feel invigorated for another year of looking forward to the same good things, this time in haiku form!

“If you have a creative practice,” he says, “you have this force within you, a way of meeting your life wherever it is.”
(-quote from Luke Rodehorst, in Tess Taylor's article 'How 17 syllables a day can change your life')

Break time breakthroughs are real! Yesterday I was scrolling the tumblr, as one does, and came across this great art by Richie Guzman. (It's a bear at the edge of a body of water, seeing Ursa Major reflected in the water's surface. If the tumblr link gives any issues, there's a website link too.)

Anyway, I really liked the picture, and I was like 'oh, that feeling -- that's the feeling I want for my nanowrimo title!' So now I've got some ideas whirling around, and I'm excited!

In the spirit of neighborhood Halloween, I've been particularly delighted by the inflatable witch-hat-wearing, jack-o-lantern carving dinosaur. (looks a lot like this one on ye olde amazone)

Because my first instinct is to ask 'what do dinosaurs have to do with Halloween?' and 'is that dinosaur a witch?' But the dinosaur looks SO CUTE and SO HAPPY to be wearing its little hat and holding its little pumpkin, and you know what, sure! Dinosaurs are Halloween now.

And THEN I went poking around the internet to find a link to share the delight with a visual aid, and apparently there are a LOT of Halloween dinosaurs! It's a whole thing! Along with -- wow, just so many other things I did not consider to be part of the Halloween pantheon. Now I really want to see one of these inflatable skeleton unicorn with bonus purple main and tail show up in town.

excerpt from poem "Let July Be July" by Morgan Harper Nichols

-excerpt from tumblr, "Let July be July" by Morgan Harper Nichols

-full text if you scroll down past the essay

(But only in the United States, and only until June 30) All ten eps of Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 1 are currently available to watch in full on youtube:

Body swaps! Social commentary! The Gorn! It's Star Trek, Strange New Worlds!

This article title made me laugh:

Cats understand their names and are probably just choosing to ignore you, a study suggests, by Allen Kim (CNN)

(The article is from 2019 and the content isn't anything too groundbreaking, but clearly someone who loves cats was involved with the presentation on the website, because there's an accompanying video about the Lanai Cat Sanctuary in Hawaii -- which is completely unrelated to the study -- titled "How to visit (and pet!) 600 cats." I hope they got to go to the sanctuary in person!)

One thing I'm hoping to do more of in 2023 is yoga -- work offers zoom classes intermittently, and I always feel a benefit from participating, even when it's a 'get interrupted every ten minutes' or a 'spend some extra time in child's pose' kind of class.

And I thought to myself, SURELY the internet can assist in this quest. And lo! An article from December 7th, 2022, about online yoga options!

The Best Online Yoga Classes & Virtual Yoga Streaming Platforms

I will sheepishly admit I haven't actually checked any of these out yet, but the tab is open! I am participating energetically, if not physically.

Profile

marciratingsystem

June 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Syndicate

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Base style: Practicality by timeasmymeasure
Theme: Citrusy by krja

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jun. 7th, 2025 01:16 pm

The Marci Rating System

Entries tagged with links

the pygmy nuthatch article

I LOVE IT

heck yeah

dentist achieved

the fish doorbell

"if you're saying wait a minute"

that sure was a journey

caturday!

"accumulate enthusiasms"

yarn adventure!

workaday links: process improvement!

vid rec Friday

lucky 10,000!

year in review: 2024 plans

it's always a good time for a break

my eyes have been opened

take heart

Star Trek, but free!

it's caturday, yay!

not a fic rec Friday