The boj post above appeared on October 4, 2005, eight months after the founding of YouTube.
Google bought YouTube in November, 2006 and the rest is history.
My YouTube channel went live in September of 2009.
It took a little over 20 years from my 2005 fever dream for the boj post below to surface this past Monday on February 9, 2026.
More than a few people find themselves unable to sleep because they can't visualize what $1 million in pennies looks like.
Just kidding.
But since pennies are gonna gradually disappear now that the U.S. stopped making them on November 12, 2025, now is as good a time as any to pay tribute to them.
Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, believes that to be the case.
Julie Powell interviewed Wrangham for a New York Times story about her attempt to eliminate cooking from her life and eat only raw, uncooked, and unprocessed foods.
She found it essentially impossible because of the enormous amount of time she spent daily gathering food and eating it.
Wrangham pointed out to her that "chimpanzees in the wild spend 50% to 60% of their time eating, whereas humans spend only 5%–6%."
He believes the difference lies in the invention and spread of cooking, "the set of technologies that enable humans to efficiently transform food into softer, more easily digestible, and less perishable forms."
Powell understood Wrangham's point after her own experience of spending the bulk of her waking life juicing, dehydrating, and consuming massive amounts of raw foodstuffs in an effort to absorb sufficient nutrients from the unprocessed materials.
She wrote, "In his 2003 paper in the Journal of Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, 'Cooking as a Biological Trait,' Professor Wrangham wrote that just to maintain the minimum necessary caloric intake, a raw foodist must eat 11 to 12 pounds of food every day."
Wrangham's theory is that the invention of cooking, widening the available range of digestible, nutritious foodstuffs, freed pre–humans to spend the time and brain power to do other things that led to their eventually becoming human.
Powell noted with some amusement the irony of how it has come to pass that many people now believe that cooking is harmful, even poisonous.
As I always say to vegetarians, only because your ancestors were the fiercest of hunters and killers did they survive long and successfully enough to give rise to the offspring that eventually begat you.
Every single human being who walks this planet descends from a long line of blood–on–the–lips, take–no–prisoners carnivores.
It's good to remember your roots every now and then.
More?
Read Wrangham's book, "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" here.
Free, the way we like it.
From websites:
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Position this ingenious disc-shaped slicer on any apple and rotate to release perfect slices for snacking or cooking.
Don't need a whole apple at once?
Just leave the disc pressed against the fruit and it will not dry out or turn brown.
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Either it has no moving parts or the whole thing is a moving part, depending on how you parse words and the world.
A 1998 design by Ralph Krämer.
Chrome-nickel 18/10 stainless steel.
2.76" x 2.36".
$35.
This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds' night migrations.
It grieves me to think
the dead won't see them—
these things we depend on,
they disappear.
What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won't need
these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine.
It only went live last month but since it's a creation of the nonpareil John Edgar I know it must be good.
Free, the way we like it.
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
For his project called Homo Mobilis, Martin Roemers travelled the globe and photographed people with their cars, bikes, scooters, etc.
You can see a selection of the photos on Roemers' website, at The Guardian, or in his forthcoming book (February 26), "Homo Mobilis."
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
This Github project from Anker Gupta allows you to generate beautiful, minimalist map posters for any city in the world. There are a variety of of different themes you can choose from and the resulting images are big enough to print out actual posters (20-inch height maximum).
Free, the way we like it.
Lots of people I know swear by audible books and don't read them any more.
A number of my readers do likewise.
Why don't I?
One reason: when I read I often stop to think about a word or a phrase or the possible meanings of something that's not initially clear.
Sometimes I write something down to look into later.
Or I start daydreaming or its ilk.
Sure, if you're listening to a book you can pause it anytime to do all that stuff — but you don't.
Because you'd get annoyed with the constant starting and stopping and lose the train and power of the narrative.
Thus you're stuck, without the freedom and power to control the text without mechanical intervention.
To me, that's a huge negative.
"Shared Claude is website controlled by the public via AI. Text the number below to to make changes and shape this website in real time."
Four little words which, used thus, serve as the very best way in the world to decline an invitation.
I've used them over the years with superb results.
The person you address as such at first is startled as they try to make sense of what you've just said and they've never before heard in this context.
Then, they recover and, disarmed, reply "O.K."
Try it, you'll like it.
If you're not completely satisfied with the result, let me know and I'll cheerfully refund three times what you paid for this pro tip, invented by the nonpareil James Altucher.
From the website:
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A genius rubber stamp which can be adjusted every month to create an up to date calendar.
It pulls apart easily, much like LEGO, for rearranging.
Made of dark brown plastic, it measures 50 x 25 x 60mm.
It prints 3mm numbers and letters.
$42.
Earlier this week I started a new novel called "Lightbreakers," published in late 2025, which I suppose would have to be called science fiction as it revolves around a quantum-based approach to time travel.
It's set in the decades after the catastrophic explosion of a Europa-bound mission with astronauts aboard, so around 2100.
All well and good and entertaining.
A couple days later I saw a reference to a new (to me) 2024 movie set in Iceland: called "When The Light Breaks," it immediately went on my Watch List because all movies set in Iceland are must-see for me.
Why is that? I've never been to Iceland although I entertained thoughts of visiting decades ago; it's that every time I see scenes that take place there, I find them strangely appealing.
Those recent YouTube videos of Icelanders walking up to the edge of ongoing fresh lava flows from an erupting volcano, with no restrictions whatsoever, reinforced my sense of how differently they must perceive the natural world and its dangers and risks.
New Zealanders are like this too; at least, they were when I visited there in the 1980s.
But I digress.
It was only last night, when I was lying in bed reading (not "Lightbreakers": that's my daytime book) did the penny drop:
"Lightbreakers" and "When The Light Breaks"
Doh!
How is that possible?
How can two titles in two different mediums, each in progress for years before their release, have that much in common?
Coincidences and synchronicity have fascinated me as long as I can remember.
I've long believed that coincidence is a glimpse of the scaffolding of the universe: that regular occurrences such as this one continue to emerge out of the quantum foam is comforting, since it's only a matter of time until I dissolve into that very same quantum foam.
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The above was written on Thursday of this week (two days ago).
In the meantime another piece of scaffolding went up.
I was still reading "Lightbreakers" on Thursday (I've since finished it).
On page 237 (of 338) the following passage (see below) appears:
They could hear the sounds of the Cranberries' "Dreams" bleeding through from the neighboring room..."
My heart skipped a beat when I read that, because one day just last week I selected the Cranberries' "Dreams" as my treadmill workspace song of the day, which means it plays on repeat at deafening volume through great speakers two feet from my ears over and over and over, generally 40-50 times.
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(324 million views since it was uploaded to YouTube 16 years ago)
In his New York Times column of last Saturday, Ross Douthat wondered out loud — at least in print — what the onrushing tidal wave of A.I. will bring.
He wrote:"I would invite you to spend a little time on Moltbook, an A.I.-generated forum where new-model A.I. agents talk to one another, debate consciousness, invent religions, strategize about concealment from humans and more."
Fair warning: there goes your head.
You know your favorite jeans: they're so tight and form–fitting you have to lie down, inhale, then zip them up with a pliers.
Yeah — that pair.
Well, they really look good on you but what happens when, later in the evening, you decide to get something to eat?
It's not pretty, is it?
Either you endure the agony until you're alone or else you unbutton your jeans and hope no one notices.
Well, guess what?
There's a third way.
This nifty invention acts as a relatively inconspicuous extender between your button and buttonhole to add from 0.5" to 2.5" to your waist size.
Under a belt buckle or clothing no one will ever know what you've done.
You're so clever.
In blue, black, or khaki denim to match your jeans.
Set of 3 as pictured: $7.95.
Found in the Mogao Caves, these exquisite flowers were among some 50,000 documents, textiles, and other objects to emerge from one particular space known as Cave 17, which had been sealed some time during the 11th century.
They are part of the Stein Textile Collection, stored at the British Museum and the V&A in London.
From Colossal:
"Loosely based on a square format, similar to other architectural rosettes of the period, the paper flowers were likely attached to a wall or other substrate, as they still have a dab of glue on their reverse sides. Their characteristics vary greatly, from a relatively simple painted composition to layered floral designs made with a range of paper thicknesses."
Dr. Raj Persaud has been called "the most eminent psychiatrist of the age" by London's Spectator.
His Financial Times essay on how our perception of events is far more important to our sense of well–being than the events themselves is superb.
In it, he explored "counterfactuals" — how it is that apparently successful people turn what appear to be very high quality lives into a series of near–misses that instead make them ever more miserable.
He looks at how focusing on those doing better than we are creates a tendency to find fault with our own lot, when a different perspective would offer the prospect of far greater inner peace.
Here's his essay.
What is it that determines your sense of well-being? Is it the events in your life or is it your perception not of what is actually happening but what might have been?
An example of such thinking, referred to by psychologists as "counterfactuals", is what takes place when you run to catch a train.
If you almost make it, before the train doors close abruptly in your face, you are often more upset than if you had arrived on a deserted platform half an hour late for the train.
Recent psychological research has begun to investigate the power of counterfactual thinking and the latest findings suggest this mental habit could be the main determinant of how content you are with your life.
Results suggest it is particularly easy for the successful and ambitious, if they are not careful, to turn their apparently superior lives into a series of "just missed trains", consequently rendering themselves more miserable than those who, on the face of it, appear to be doing less well.
One of the most intriguing and controversial studies conducted in the science of well-being found that at the Olympic games in Barcelona 13 years ago, bronze medallists appeared happier than silver medallists.
The finding was surprising not least because winning a silver medal is by definition a better outcome than winning a bronze — one of the few clear-cut examples in life where this is so.
Why, then, the relatively long faces of those runners-up?
The psychologists who conducted the study, led by Victoria Medvec of Cornell university in the US, argued that the emotional reactions of Olympic athletes are fundamentally driven by comparisons with the most easily imagined alternative outcome.
For silver medallists that outcome was the gold; for bronze medallists that outcome was fourth place.
Silver medallists were haunted by thoughts of: "I almost won the gold," whereas bronze medallists were thrilled by thoughts of "I won a medal!" as the main alternative outcome for them was no medal at all.
This finding has become a textbook example of how counterfactuals can influence emotions.
Why is it that bronze medallists don't compare themselves with gold winners and silver medallists don't look down rather than up when comparing themselves with fellow athletes?
If a downward comparison makes us feel better in life, what drives some of us to incessantly compare ourselves with those doing better than us and, as a result, ensure we feel perpetually inadequate no matter how successful we have become?
Medvec's team argued that often what makes one counterfactual comparison more compelling than another is determined by what they called a "close shave".
Medvec found silver medallists were more focused than bronze medalists on thoughts of "I almost won", than thoughts of "at least I won something."
An intriguing refinement has recently been added to such theories.
A study conducted by Peter McGraw, with collaborating psychologists from the universities of Colorado and California at Berkeley, has been published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology entitled "Expectations and emotions of Olympic athletes".
This points out that counterfactual thinking is really a kind of comparison - you are comparing what has happened with what could have happened, and if the alternative possibility is more attractive you end up feeling down as a result.
Imagine, argue McGraw and colleagues, that a silver medalist loses a race by the closest of margins to the gold medalist but soundly beats the bronze medallist.
Even if they had lower expectations before the race of not placing at all, the silver medalist probably now makes upward comparisons, and feels worse.
Close calls grab our attention in a way that totally dominates our thinking.
They force out competing and perhaps more rational ways of looking at and evaluating our performance.
This has big implications for solving the riddle of the elusive nature of happiness.
Both academic psychologists and economists have noticed that substantial increases in wealth are not accompanied by similar rises in well-being, and have explained this paradox by a human tendency to compare asymmetrically — in other words, we relentlessly focus on those doing better than us rather than those doing worse.
Study after study on wealth and income finds that it is who we compare ourselves with rather than what we objectively have that determines our overall well-being, so it is the choice of reference group that now becomes crucial in determining our happiness.
Comparisons become particularly apposite when the personal relevance is heightened — for example, school reunions famously provoke competitive instincts because the Ferrari-driving multimillionaire at the school gates appeared to have been at a similar position to us in the starting grid of life, more so than other wealthy people we might encounter.
This is therefore likely to provoke "what might have been" reasoning, in particular the "close shave" thinking that determines our sense of well-being.
Other reference groups that similarly aggravate strong comparative thinking include neighbours, work colleagues and family. Daniel Nettle, a happiness psychologist at the university of Newcastle points out that a wealthy man is basically anyone who earns £100 more than his wife's sister's husband.
A recent intriguing exception to this thinking has been found in a study conducted by Claudia Senik, an economist at the university of Paris at Sorbonne, and published in the Journal of Public Economics.
She discovered that in unstable economies such as Russia's, individuals take the reference income of the wealthy not as a discontented comparison but as an indication of their own future.
In other words, Senik argues that in certain economies individuals observing richer people around them take this as a sign that their own income may soon increase, which then adds to their happiness.
The millionaire at the school gates and that silver medal will make us feel bad if our conviction is that the race is indeed over, so that no future competition can occur and therefore there can be no alternative outcome.
If, on the other hand, we believe there is always another opportunity to compete around the corner, we can take away information from a close call that could help us prepare better and feel positive for the next race.
The issue then is not to dwell on "what might have been" but on "what still could be".
If it is what could be that determines our happiness, rather than what is, the good news from this happiness research is that we can seize control of our well-being by becoming more aware of what conspires in our environment to direct our attention to particular comparisons, expectations and alternative outcomes, and what moulds our thinking in helpful or unhelpful ways.
So, as you forlornly watch that just-missed train pulling out of the station, comfort yourself with the thought that what if you had run so hard to catch the train that you indeed had made it but then promptly collapsed in the carriage from a heart attack.
Aren't you feeling better already?
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Persaud's observations are right on the money.
I have noticed over the years how, on the victory stand at the Olympics, the bronze medalist usually seems far happier than the silver winner.
Now I better understand the underpinnings of their respective emotions.
I often say to people, when they're upset about being late for something and missing their chance, that if they'd been running on time they might have gotten into an auto accident and been seriously injured or killed.
Too many stories about people caught in traffic jams who subsequently missed their flights only to read about them crashing have made me less than compelled to feel anything is all that important any more.
Persaud's book, "The Motivated Mind: The science of fulfilment — and how to get what you want" (above) — looks interesting.
It's in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dated to 1479-1458 BCE.
Wrote archaeologist Alison Fisk:
"This may have been a practice drawing of the sparrow hieroglyph which was used for words meaning 'small,' 'poor,' or 'bad.' The Egyptian artists who decorated tombs and temples drew sketches jotted down notes on the plentiful limestone flakes which were by-products of temple and rock-cut tomb construction. Egyptologists refer to them as 'ostraca' (singular: ostracon)."
Some things, say the wise ones who know everything,
are not living. I say,
You live your life your way and leave me alone.
I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they
are afraid of being behind; I have said, Hurry, hurry!
and they have said, Thank you, we are hurrying.
About cows, and starfish, and roses there is no
argument. They die, after all.
But water is a question, so many living things in it,
but what is it itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming
generosity, how can they write you out?
As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside
the harbor. I am holding in my hand
small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist.
Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep.
