April 5, 2024
Native fish spotted swimming across desert highway after flooding rains
Native fish spotted swimming across remote desert highway after flooding rains. An Alice Springs photographer thought moving objects on a flooded outback highway were frogs, until he captured a spectacular video of fish crossing the road. [more inside]
What is a secret?
In the fall of 2004, Frank came up with an idea for a project. After he finished delivering documents for the day, he’d drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards—three thousand in total. At metro stops, he’d approach strangers. “Hi,” he’d say. “I’m Frank. And I collect secrets.” Some people shrugged him off, or told him they didn’t have any secrets. Surely, Frank thought, those people had the best ones. Others were amused, or intrigued. They took cards and, following instructions he’d left next to the address, decorated them, wrote down secrets they’d never told anyone before, and mailed them back to Frank. All the secrets were anonymous. Initially, Frank received about one hundred postcards back. They told stories of infidelity, longing, abuse. Some were erotic. Some were funny. He displayed them at a local art exhibition and included an anonymous secret of his own. After the exhibition ended, though, the postcards kept coming. By 2024, Frank would have more than a million.Dark Matter: For twenty years, PostSecret has broadcast suburban America’s hidden truths—and revealed the limits of limitless disclosure. [more inside]
"High school isn't a very important place."
For the 50th anniversary of Stephen King's debut novel Carrie (original review), the New York Times Book Review offers: an appreciation by Margaret Atwood; an essay by Amanda Jayatissa; a collection of reflections from various luminaries; a King reading guide; and a podcast with Grady Hendrix and Damon Lindelof about King's works and influence (NYT gift links throughout).
Not 2S3XY
After an announcement at the Tesla January earnings call introducing the Model 2 as an upcoming mass market priced model (that would require workers to sleep at the factory), reports are that the new model is being cancelled in light of increasing competition in the Chinese EV market. [more inside]
Freak Earthquake Shakes the East Coast
4.8 Shaker Strikes Whitehouse Station, NJ. Tri-State residents were surprised this morning by a rare earthquake. Although earthquakes are rare in the North East, they are not unheard of. The Ramapo Fault may be the culprit here. [more inside]
When quaint becomes cult
Jared Shurin on Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, a "heart-warming/breaking portrayal of lost-and-found geeks captured the zeitgeist of a new [tech] subculture," from casual coding to its Silicon Valley extremes:
Looking back. . . we can see the first seeds of a spin-off culture, one that is not only aware of its incompatibility with the rest of society, but also revels in it. . . thirty years on, it now feels a lot less quaint, and a lot more frightening.
We Need To Talk About Trader Joe's
"According to these sources, Trader Joe’s commonly solicits product samples and even asks for potential recipe adjustments—a revealing and time-consuming exercise for bootstrapped founders—before inexplicably abandoning the negotiations and releasing its own private-label versions of similar products at lower prices." How Trader Joe's engages in shady tactics to copy products from independent, minority-owned brands.
Restoring an ugly hill into an ecosystem
They pooled their money to buy an ugly hill. Twenty years later, they're calling it paradise. A group of friends, dismayed about climate change, bought the most degraded piece of farmland they could find. Not to live on, or to make money from, but to transform into the bushland it once was. [more inside]
Well, I for one, really really wanna go
I used to want to be a part of the media party circuit so bad. As a young person aspiring to be a writer, I would zoom into certain Instagram Stories of interest, wondering how everyone there got to go. Now, as a person attending them, I am pissed off! I was lied to. Bamboozled. Swindled. Hoodwinked
I feared that being near all of this would mean the end of my career
“This was a catch-and-kill,” I told Alpert. “What’s a catch-and-kill?” he asked.
I went on to explain the tabloid practice of buying stories to bury them. Alpert already had the outline of the story, I learned, and I filled him in on more: how Howard had flown out to Los Angeles that summer to buy McDougal’s story for $150,000, with the direction from Pecker to kill it to protect Trump. I stressed to him the importance of the term “catch and kill” and told him that if The Journal included it, it would give me some breathing room. I went back to my office and closed the door. My heart was racing, and I was sweating. from What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise by Lachlan Cartwright [NY Times; ungated] [CW: Trumpland]
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