🤖 Ambient Hum Introduction — KAA

I have Khaled’s first book in print and this was an instant buy for me. Really neat to get all the background on Moon Racket, which feels very similar to my history with my grub character (albeit mine is nowhere as polished or fleshed out).

🚋 A more realistic trolley problem — @instachaaz

This is basically what goes through my head every single day.

🏟️ Ohtani joining Dodgers on 10-year, $700M deal — ESPN

Wow. Good for him. He is basically two players, so if you look at it that way, it’s $35/yr for each of em.

⚽️ Salah joins elite list with 150th Premier League goal — PL

Moooo Salah! Incredible stuff and it doesn’t hurt that it coincides with Liverpool moving into the top spot in the table.

💽 Heady Metal by Divorce — foofaraw

Final newsletter of the season/year is an issue of Willful Listening reviewing a great folky rock EP. We’ll be back on Jan 8th with our regular Monday media guide.

🐂 Are the Bulls better without Zach LaVine? Looking into Chicago’s improved record and how it impacts trade rumors — Sporting News

LaVine is obviously talented, but I he doesn’t fit here and I think is a big reason for the lack of growth from others.

🤣 Non-alcoholic White Claw: New 0% Alcohol beverage comes in 4 flavors — USA Today

How innovative…

👹 Texas Supreme Court Temporarily Halts Court-Approved Abortion — NY Times

Pardon my French, but these people are fucking monsters.

📓 iA Writer in Paper — iA

Beautiful. The whole time I was reading this I was thinking “I’m so glad I didn’t buy a new notebook for 2024 yet” only to get to the end and see it won’t go on sale for pre-order until next year… I want it now!

🧩 Puzzmo, my favorite new website of 2023, has already been acquired — Birchtree

Matt is being overly optimistic, imo. It’ll start that way, but inevitably, in two years time Gage and Co. will leave, the standalone product will be shuttered, and then Hearst will cut their puzzle budget.

🤖 A Google AI has discovered 2.2m materials unknown to science — The Economist

They chose 58 of the predicted compounds and were able to synthesise 41 of them in a little over two weeks.

The firm has made public a subset of what they think should be the 381,000 most stable structures.

Can’t say I full understand it, but I’m completely fascinated by it.

🎼 Take Me Home, Country Roads — Lana Del Rey

I like Lana, but I’ve come to the conclusion I only ever need to listen to her music once. It’s like a movie you think is great, but know you’ll never want to watch again.

🐛 The Grub Journal

Whelp, I did it. I started another newsletter where I plan to send a quick grub sketch (roughly) everyday with a couple sentences about how it ties to my day. Not expecting many people to sign-up, but you can see yesterday and today’s Grubs in the archive.

🛰️ The Outer 1 — foofaraw

First issue of the webcomic I’m working on with Garrett Elton went out this morning in the newsletter. It’s been a blast putting this together. Would love it if you checked it out.

🤘 Furiosa — Trailer

Don’t think I can wait until May… Anya Taylor-Joy was obviously great casting, but I’m surprised how much I enjoy Hemsworth as Immortan Joe in the little we actually see of him.

📓 Creative People and their Notebooks — Noted

💬 Jean-Michel Basquiat:

I cross out words so you will see them more: the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.

Wow… I love that.

🏈 Aaron Rodgers Now Puttering Around Practice Fields Trying To Shock People — Defector

At this point, I wish he’d just go away… (unrelated to my feelings as a Bears fan)

🌧️ Fighting Seasonal Depression — Skoobz

Put an album on, go for a walk, or cook. I also endorse writing your feelings out, like I’m doing now. Whether it’s a blog or a journal, it’s all good.

I was hoping being in Napa would solve this for me, but after a few sour days it caught up with me a bit still.

We’re all in these winter months together.

👖 Should clothes never go on sale? — Blackbird Spyplane

This was a really great examination of discounting, especially as my inbox got inundated with ridiculous e-mail subjects: “LAST CHANCE”, “60% off”, and so on.

👥 P&B: Robin Rendle — Manuel Moreale

This was my favorite edition of People & Blogs so far. Really great to get more insight into Robin’s thoughts around his terrific site.

🥪 “If Moonrise Kingdom had a sandwich shop”; People People rebrands Seattle eatery — It’s Nice That

I’m personally not a fan of Layers (fine sandwiches, but overpriced, even for Seattle), but I dig the rebrand.

📱 Ex-Apple employees new startup wants to bring AI to the desktop — The Verge

Unclear exactly what this will look like, but given it’s coming from the founders of the Workflow app, I bet it’ll be hard to ignore.

🎸 Best Emo Songs of All Time — Variety

It’s not a perfect list, but it’s pretty solid.