- Bluesky CEO: imagine a ‘world without Caesars’ – LOLLLLL. I kept seeing photos of that woman on my social feeds but couldn’t figure out why. I knew her shirt looked familiar. That’s bloody genius.
- Ask Michael Stipe – Somehow I missed this when it was posted many years ago. I like that he consistently rejects people’s attempts to make his work deeper than he intended it to be, but still allows everyone’s interpretations to stand as valid. Incidentally, I’m still annoyed that there were two R.E.M. questions in Pop Culture Jeopardy, and none of the teams got them correct. They were not an obscure band, people!
- The Capybara Cafe – TIL there’s a cafe in Florida where you can interact with capybaras. And also, you have to cover up your knees because they think they are potatoes. 🥔
Category: Random Links
Links that I’m reading/watching/listening to/thinking about
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Links that amused me today
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Random Links
- A Guest Blog from Judy Morris on a Four-Year Quilting Project – I recently resubscribed to Martha’s blog, and I’m loving it. This quilt is stunning, and I can’t believe the epic amount of work that went into it.
- A game called “It is as if you were on your phone” – Ha! I love random stuff like this. Rodd had a couple issues playing it on his Pixel phone, but it worked fine on iOS. (Link courtesy of Kottke.)
- And this video, that made us laugh and laugh this morning. Never let it be said that Germans don’t have a sense of humour! 😂🇩🇪
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Random links
Links the Snook and I have sent each other lately:
- The secret history behind that infamous “Jesus Is My Friend” song – ZAP!
- Buried for Nearly 2,000 Years, a Monumental Dionysian Fresco Sees the Light of Day in Pompeii
- Oscars 2025: Why are we so mesmerised by Succession, The Apprentice star Jeremy Strong’s red carpet outfits?
- Rick Steves – Update on my Medical Travels: I’m Cancer Free!
- The Average Adult Has Enough Rom-Com Knowledge To Recognize 8 Of These Dishes, But How Many On-Screen Dishes Do You Know? – I only missed two! 💅 I haven’t seen all the movies, but I knew who was in them and was able to make educated guesses.
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Aziraphale
Michael Sheen writes off £1m of debt for 900 people. Maybe he really is an angel? 👼
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The Stubborn Persistence of Snake Handling Churches
TIL that there are still churches – primarily in Appalachia – where they handle venomous snakes and drink strychnine to show their faith. 😳 I’d like to act shocked, but given that part of my family comes from Kentucky, I’ll just note that it explains a lot.
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Non-Cooperation Brick
A knitting pattern for when you really feel the urge to throw something against the wall, like when the supposed leader of the free world sides with dictators and fascists and insults a brave man fighting for his people’s freedom. 🤬 Oh, and it’s free. Bonus.
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Board roles
I recently changed my LinkedIn profile to say that I’m Open to Board Roles, and a few recruiters picked up on that #opentowork photo frame immediately. No, I’m not looking to go back to work! Still very happily retired. 😄 I am specifically only interested in board roles, and there’s no way to flag that without also putting up that photo frame.
Being on a board is something I’ve been thinking about for several years, after a mentor raised it as a potential career path for me. There’s a real lack of tech industry experience and tech skills on my boards, and women are also woefully underrepresented. I have considered doing the AICD course, but yowza! it’s expensive to do just in the hopes of getting a paid board role someday. I had coffee with a friend recently who’s on several boards, and she advised that the course isn’t needed right away if I start by aiming for non-profit, volunteer roles. And right now, my focus is very much on doing whatever I can to make the world a better place.
If you have no idea what being on a board actually entails – because I certainly didn’t! – Anil Dash has a great article about it.
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Licensed fanfic
I discovered recently that the Roald Dahl Story Company has officially started commissioning new books “inspired by” Dahl’s characters. I guess there are only so many ways you can repackage the few books he wrote, and the next logical step is to start churning out official fanfic. It’s just another of their decisions in recent years that I find a bit disappointing…
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Bara bada bastu
As big fans of Finns, Swedes, and sauna in general, how could we not love this? They even wear the sauna hats! (Now Rodd is sad and second-guessing our decision not to put a sauna in the garden.)
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Oranges 🍊
“Being told we cannot draw is the first step to telling people that no, they are not as competent as they believe themselves to be. Once you can convince a human being they cannot draw, you can convince them of mostly anything.
Someone is benefitting from making you believe you are incompetent and it is not you.”
This piece – “How to draw an orange” – from Mike Monteiro’s Good News really, really resonated with me, and not just because I’ve literally got a painting of oranges on my wall. I know that I’m my own worst critic, and I know that it’s held me back from doing things in the past. Someone reached out to me with an opportunity recently, and I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that they think I’m qualified for it. I’m a grown-ass, competent woman, and I can do this.