• CNN explains why Kit Kat's coolest flavors aren't sold in the US. Since the product's distributed by different companies -‌- in the US, Kit Kat is sold by Hershey. In the rest of the world, Nestlé's in charge.
  
  
• A pair of videos concerning lost skyscrapers, from It's History: the Singer in NYC and the Richfield, in LA.
  
  
• "What a day - what a lovely day!" 'Mad Max Fury Road' - Into the dust storm.

• The Glitch Gallery features accidental art generated with computer graphics.
  
  
• Seeburg 1000 has streaming and 30-second samples of Easy Listening, from the music library of the Seeburg jukebox company.
  
  
• Not just in Russia -‌- last year, a Putin Critic Fell to His Death in Washington. We Still Don't Know Why.

• Will Bunch tells it like it is: Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America.
  
  
• In Wired, The World Is Going Blind. Taiwan Offers a Warning, and a Cure. Fascinating: they've apparently discovered why kids get myopia, and it's not because they're too close to the screen -‌- instead, just not getting enough natural light.

• CNN has more on 'coning' in San Francisco: Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars. Has links to the many deadly robo-taxi traffic violations. Not Without A Fight is the motto of the City's Safe Street Rebel which organizes anti-car protests like the cones.
  
  
• The Atomic Cafe was released in 1982. Here's another of the genre, from the same year, a short, narrated by Martin Sheen, with some Brian Eno for soundtrack music: Growing Up in the Shadow of the Bomb.

• Nuclear-Weapons Expert breaks down eight nuclear bombs in movies and TV, Indiana Jones receiving way too much attention.
  
  
• Asking For Love was a dreamy backwards video from 1973, filmed in Reykjavík. A young person just did it again with her own song, Waiting.
  
  
• I thought they were for the handicapped, but apparently there's another, DIY kind, fighting words in some New York neighborhoods: NYC homeowners easily get away with illegal curb cuts.

• This Present and Correct weblog's probably an addition to my 'blogroll. Just lookit these scans, of old Japanese lottery tickets and matchbox labels. Over 300 pages of the latter, compiled by somebody at Waseda University.
  
  
• At Moss and Fog, the Long, Sweet History of Ice Cream. The burning of Maui took out Kimo's, a favorite restaurant I've only been to twice, and never had their Hula Pie. Some recipes for this pie require, instead of macadamia nut ice cream, just those nuts mixed into coffee ice cream, which I've been scanning the local freezer cases for, in vain; even though I once heard coffee was the #4 favorite US ice cream flavor.
  
  
• And at OK Doomer, Here's Why They Want You Back in the Office So Bad.

• What was that music? From a Trance Mix of a CD I got somewhere around the turn of the century. Ah, here it is -‌- the artist was Exis, "Floating Over Calcutta," from 1997.

• Twitter thread from Derak Guy: Suit jacket, Sport coat, Blazer -‌- what's the difference? And what about the blazer replacer of a Chore coat?
  
  
• Excellent compilation, wish the samples were longer, lots of new sounds to me in Rock and Roll Before the 1950s.
  
  
• Eater goes to Branson, MO: Dinner Theater and Loathing in Baptist Vegas. Never been although my parents went a few times. Apparently, the Ukrainian Yakov Smirnoff is still performing there. Had never heard of Dolly Parton's Stampede before.
  
  
• CNN on International Desserts: 50 famous desserts around the world, many new and interesting dishes. The trendy French Kouign Amann gets an entry, as does the Hong Kong dim sum Po Tat (although that one is labeled incorrectly, the bland, default Dan Tat (egg tart) should always be skipped, insist on actually-delicious Portuguese Tarts (Pastel de nata), or Po Tat (as shown).
  
  
• Japan's new Spacia X train is like travelling in a luxury aircraft with hexagonal windows.

• Vintage Everyday discovered a cache of old photos of Expo 67. For more about this fair don't miss Jeffrey Stanton's old school site; his focus is Venice Beach but there's all kinds of good stuff in there, like Multi-screen Cinema at Expo 67. And for some video therefrom, and context, see Peter Jennings' 'Fabulous Sixties' documentary for 1967.
  
  
• At the Saturday Evening Post, How Americans Became Intolerant of Body Odor. The Smithsonian magazine explained ten years previous, in How Advertisers Convinced Americans They Smelled Bad.
  
  
• Someone at Bored Panda compiled a set of photos of Beautiful Abandoned Religious Places in Europe. Many roofless churches.

• Thomas Edison's great invention, illegal as of today: What you need to know about the incandescent light bulb ban. There's a long list of exemptions. Not sure about #2 & #10, why would black light and plant lights even be made in incandescent now, so inefficient compared to their fluorescent (and now LED) counterparts. Some interesting other types in that list -‌- what about #6, Left-hand thread lamps. Must be an application requiring such, somewhere?
  
  
• AI-generated photo of a wooden, floating Citroën DS.

• "Oppenheimer": The Vulture provides a Who's Who: A Guide to 36 Scientists, Soldiers, and Reds. Collider ranks its Ten Historical Figures, by Accuracy; and there's a perceptive review of the film by Zachariah Webb at The Baffler.
  
  
• The first leg of the Honolulu light rail system opened last month.
  
  
• CNN Travel reports on the Surat Diamond Bourse, in India: the world's new largest office building. After 80 years, the Pentagon loses that title.

• More caverns in the Smithsonian, How the Kentucky Cave Wars Reshaped the State's Tourism Industry. Wikipedia's Mammoth Cave page has a section on the Cave Wars.
  
  
• At Eater, This Story Stinks -‌- Food is sublime in part because of its transience. Funny, then, that we so rarely talk about where it goes.

• Someone attached their camera to the front of a train to create Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride. I've seen a lot of locomotive engineer POV video but there's something hypnotic about these tunnels, like the 'Forbidden Planet' visual.
  
  
• Welcome to The Pilot's Hidden Airport, Unexpected Pleasures at a Terminal Near You. Note that Terminal B at Denver also has quiet upstairs seating.
  
  
• The Japanese Fruit Sando. Seen 'em but never actually had one, and now, I want one of these sandwiches.
  
  
• 'Fahrenheit 451' Modern Trailer -‌- only issue, not completely Bernard Herrmann, but okay since modern previews are so often released with something stock instead of the actual soundtrack music, as that's not added until the very end of production, after the advertising has already begun.

• At LitHub, Let the Kids Get Weird: The Adult Problem With Children's Books -‌- problem being, the adults have the money, so their kids get the books they want 'em to read -‌- all this 'Grandma's Garden' stuff. People keep buying The Giving Tree, despite the fact that children hate the book. (I thought it was just me.) Also, pipes. I see the Very Old Man is smoking one on the first page of Millions Of Cats, which I just scored at a Little Free Library.
  
  
• Fascinating, hopeful video: The Next 200 Years of Space Colonization.

• At Longreads, the Depths to Which We Go -‌- Making sense of absence in the ever-dissolving karst of Missouri. Loved visiting caves when I was a kid; have maybe even been to this one.
  
  
• Has your bathroom ever gone pink? I'd never encountered this bacterial bloom before. At the Spruce, Get Rid of It, and at Bob Vila, Solved! How to Get Rid of Pink Mold in the Shower for Good.
  
  
• The Autopian reports, there are cheap EV conversion kits for classic VW beetles on Alibaba now, for $4k, batteries not included.

• Slate: Those Few Decades When Americans Really, Really Loved the Swastika.
  
  
• Vimeo video: Takrar. About, at This Is Colossal: Art and Architecture Dance to a Percussive Beat in a Stop-Motion Tour of Istanbul.

• Reports from the streets, two different cities, and topics. First, from Rome, Can Modern-Day Italians Understand Latin? Conclusion: they can, but they don't like to. Second, from San Francisco, where Self-Driving Cars are Wearing the Cone of Shame. The other thing about driverless cars is that they are always five years away. I know you want them, but like the hoverboards, flying cars and artificial intelligience, even if you name it that, doesn't really exist; not now, maybe never.
  
  
• Climbing the Wealth Ladder at Of Dollars and Data.
  
  
• Rebecca Makkai is an unhappy extro. Read her complaint in the Washington Post: Covid flipped the introvert-extrovert script. And I hate it. She doesn't like how people seem to be hiding in their rooms, more, now. Don't let her read The Machine Stops.
  (archive link)

• At Vintage Everyday, Double Decker Bus Racing in England, 1982.
  
  
• 'Girl Dinner' on TikTok - ‌- more about WhitePeopleFood. Even the incredulous NPR is on the story: This is not a joke: Chinese people are eating -‌- and mocking - ‌- WhitePeopleFood. More about 'Girl Dinner' at CNN.

• Three Wikipedia pages: Anchorite, Flagellant, Stylite -‌- can a Christian be Too Devout?
  
  
• A pre-Covid article at the BBC wonders, What exactly is a crusty? Brit-speak for dreadlocked 90s white kids, apparently; especially those living this hippyish traveller lifestyle. In my own sub-culture, "crusties" are tradesmen: specifically, construction workers (also known as "hard-hats" in the late 60s).

• Merril Markoe on the nonsense of Women Who Write While Lying on their Stomachs.
  
  
• Noam Andrews in Public Domain Review, The Polyhedral Perspective, on the divine nature of Geometry.
  
  
• Mental Floss addresses the difference between BBQ and 'grilling'. Relevant quote from an old Bored Panda post, #5 in What America Gets Right: I'm Canadian and we'll barbecue year round but they call that grilling, I'm talking American barbecue. F*ck me up with that brisket you've been smoking all week Uncle Sam. Hell yes.

There probably was a time in history where most people were thinking, "This is old and therefore good," and they carried the day. Now I think that we live in a time where everyone says, "This is new and therefore better." I don't believe that the people who say that are right all the time, but it is very difficult to criticize them and suggest that maybe something that is new is not better.

VF: Or it's like, better for whom?

Yes. Because we also live in an era in which there are a lot of people who have financial incentives to convince us that something is better because it's new.

• Remember his slogan, realized through years of bitter struggle: New Is Worse!
  -‌- Larry Josephson (1939-2022)
  
  
• Related: Ted Chiang's recent New Yorker article, Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey?

  The fact that the word 'Luddite' is now used as an insult, a way of calling someone irrational and ignorant, is a result of a smear campaign by the forces of capital.

  (archive link)
  
  
• Tor ranks Every Ted Chiang Story Ever Published. There's only eighteen, so far. I'm going to have to watch "Arrival."

• 85 floors high in a New York supertall, there's nothing but net at this open-air basketball court. This is in the new Brooklyn skyscraper; the sides are open but it's not quite roof-top.
  
  
• Also at CNN, 'Everybody loves Americans': Why US tourists are a hot commodity. Especially when they are from New York or LA, everybody is kind of putting them on a pedestal.
  
  
• In Vox, How Frog and Toad became queer anti-capitalist cottagecore icons.

• Disney has laid off the last of National Geographic's staff writers. The famous bright-yellow-bordered print publication will no longer be sold on newsstands in the United States starting next year. Since the magazine still has a couple million subscribers, seems it'll still be available, just not from these "news stands" of yore.
  (archive link)
• Unknown to me until today, so just now getting to know Donnie McKethan, Sinatra's ambassador on DC radio, who just passed away at 86. (His deep, articulate voice and genre remind me of listening to Royal Stokes, on WGTB.) Had I stayed put, I would've been a regular listener to this Sunday afternoon 'American Songbook' program. Note that his last two shows can still be streamed on the 'PFW site.

• The Who's Tommy Underature; Keith Moon at his best in this ten-minute instrumental.
  
  
• On the retirement of Sylvia Poggioli from NPR.

• According to local news, the Bay Area BART system is introducing anime mascots to try and attract youth riders. These include Baylee the GOAT, an influencer; and a droid named BARTY. Contrast with Changchang of the Shanghai Metro, here in a no-nonsense security poster (photo by me, click to see the whole thing).
  
  
• Enjoying Kate Benton, her graphic novel Ducks and the archives of her 'Hark! A Vagrant' comic strip.
  
  
• The de minimis rule: above what threshold do you pay Duty? New bill aims to close import tarif loophole says the threshold for this exemption was originally set for goods valued at $1 or less. However, in the 1990s, that limit was extended to $200 and then to $800 in 2016. Good grief! This is why shipping for a lot of stuff is so cheap on eBay, and now packages from China are Surging into the United States.

• The Washington Post says Chinese internet users are mocking -‌- and eating -‌- #WhitePeopleFood.
  (archive link; earlier report on this trend at BuzzFeed.)
  
  
• The Weekly Sift: Why You Can't Understand Conservative Rhetoric. Enlightening.
  
  
• Ever heard of Marincello? It was an almost-happened new city to be built at the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Renderings and more info in SF Bay Area: A visual history of what isn't there.
  
  
• A couple unrelated YouTubes: the cable car that you pedal by hand, in Slovenia; and one of my favorite songs by The Tubes, from their second record,^* presented here backing a stylish, thought-provoking montage of stills: Pimp.

* From the liner notes: Inspired by Nelson Algren's book, Walk On The Wild Side, excepting the chorus line, which Sputnik stole from a ten-year-old black kid he picked up hitchhiking. Inspired me to read Algren, as well.

• A beautiful machine at Vintage Everywhere, the 1954 Buick Wildcat concept. Love those shiny metal bolted-on tailfins with the three red stripes of a tail-light; they showed up on the production, convertible-only Buick Skylark of that same year. I took this detail photo of one of those (with brake lights on only, unfortunately) at a classic car rally in Los Altos, in 2004. Surprised to see one, they only made 836 Skylarks that year...and only one Wildcat; it lives in the Sloan Museum's Buick Gallery in Flint, Michigan.
  
  
• Two at The Walrus:Canada's Big Flex in Space concerns the Canadarm, flown on the shuttle since its second flight and a fixture on the ISS; and a longer read, Have You Been to the Library Lately?
  
  
• The Serious Eats guide to British Sweets.

• CNN Travel listicle: British food: 20 best dishes.Spotted Dick, Toad in the Hole, Bubble and Squeak -‌- it's all there.
  
  
• Ever heard of "The Kidnapper's Foil"? Ironic Sans tells the story of Melton Barker, who created the Most Remade Movie in History, again and again and again.
  
  
• Photographer Tyler Haughey's ebbtide series of Wildwood NJ in the Off Season.

• Air New Zealand reveals price of new economy class sleep pods. Only six will be available, starting next year; four hours for ~$300 extra. I've long desired something like this, from before my flying days, on the Greyhound -‌- gazing up at the overhead luggage rack in the wee hours, why can't I climb up there and travel lying flat? Since that space taken by everybody's carry-ons, still curious where exactly these six Skynest bunks will be located.
  
  
• A compilation, Silent movies did some pretty crazy things with trains.
  
  
• Twitter thread from a year ago: Nancy Sinatra posted all her album covers.
  
  
• More about Taichung Rainbow Village, Taiwan (that previous link was from 2016) -‌- the 96-year-old painter who saved a village.

• At Weird Universe, the Largest Dripping Candle Known at a Tucson restaurant, Pancho's, in 1940.
  
  
• Popular Mechanics: the most badass X-Planes ever made.
  
  
• R.Crumb, a short Michael Kurcfeld film. More from the old curmudgeon, a page of Quotable Quotes compiled at Goodreads; so negative, reminding me of this little fellow he drew to promote Weirdo.
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