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?
***************
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.
Wrote Kottke: "A huge collection of graphic design archives and resources, like The People's Graphic Design Archive, Book Cover Archive, and Letterform Archive. This is great!"
I love this thing and if I were still in academic anesthesia I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
What fun to pull this puppy out of your white coat pocket and point to all your important data with the little hand.
When someone asks a dumb question — or even a smart one — you use the scratching function on your head or back or wherever seems most appropriate.
Or you simply point it at the offender and say, "Talk to the hand."
Ha.
6.5" long extending to 20".
Stainless steel.
Cheap at twice the price: 2 for $5.99.
Give the other one to a friend and make their day.
They don't mention it on the website but you could also eat with it.
Note: do this before rather than after using it for its titular purpose.
It's a pointer... it's a back scratcher... it's a fork... it's... Superman!
Wrote Kottke: "The gang at Present & Correct found a cache of pre-World War II tourist maps of Japan while rummaging around in Tokyo's Jinbōchō used book district.
They photographed them for a new self-published book called 'Paper Trails.'"
They're all here.
Pictured above, page 1 of 13.
Jennifer Williams wrote an entertaining story for the Wall Street Journal about how few people are privy to the actual formula for WD-40.
"The handwritten formula is kept in a lockbox at an undisclosed Bank of America location in San Diego. It's only left a bank vault three times in the past 30 years."
"The notebook in the vault — which holds not only the 40th attempt at a formula, resulting in the product's name, but also the 39 failed attempts to get it right — is the only version that has the full makeup of the original formula, which accounted for nearly 80% of WD-40's revenue as of August 2025."
More WD-40 FunFacts here.
WD stands for "Water displacement."
Longtime/constant readers will know that after a mostly happy run of 21+ years, Typepad closed up shop on September 30, 2025.
All those posts — over 40,000 of them — gone ... like tears in the rain.
But I digress.
The many thousands of boj posts simply vanished, like a Philip K. Dick simulacrum.
As I think about it, maybe they were a PKD simulacrum....
Anyhoo, once I got the word from Typepad last September 1, I wasted no time directing my Crack Research Team©®™ to find boj a nice new home.
They investigated many potential blog hosts, none of which were simple enough for me, a card-carrying Technodolt©®™, to use.
The least bad of them all was/is Blogger, Google's ancient, free blog hosting platform.
And so that's where I publish, 3x daily/, 7 days/week, 365 days/year, just like before.
As before, I believe I'm the only blogger still doing that.
Life on Blogger isn't easy: it's really janky in that stuff when published looks way different from the previews:
• Typeface size and font seem to morph randomly
• Posting images and videos takes many more steps
• Image sizes vary wildly and must fit into predetermined templates
• Inaccurate spacing requires many revisions by me to get even a minimally readable result
I could go on.
Long story short: It takes anywhere from 3-10 preview revisions to get a finished post, which means each post takes 3-10 times as long to create as in the old Typepad days — and the resulting posts and blog look nowhere near as good as they did back then.
Sic transit gloria
Here's a particularly timely video, what with ERs around the country being swamped by people with skull fractures and broken hips incurred after falling on the recent snow-turned-into-rock-hard-ice.
You can find these superb lifesaving ice spikes — which strap on over your shoes — on Amazon, priced from around $38 and up depending on how rugged you need them to be.
The ones I'm using in the video up top are here: I bought them at least 10 years ago and they're fantastic.
Note: mine are Gen 1; there are many more recent variations.
Finally.
Get on the Wait List here for the February 16 release.
These will go fast only to appear on Vestiare Collective and The RealReal at 10x the original $149.99 price.
Above, what came in a minute after I joined the Wait List.
[via Taylor Troesh, who only joined my Crack Research Team©®™last year but has already eclipsed the performance of 99% of that Mötley Crüe.]
Robert Littell's superb 1981 espionage novel was finally made into a film (excellent by the way) last year.
It only took 44 years.
I read the book the year it came out, and at least twice since: it's that good.
I just happened on the 2025 movie — starring Rami Malek and Rachel Brosnahan — recently.
FunFact: Littell turned 91 earlier this month.
You could look it up.
From The Verge:
..........................................
Seletti, an Italian design brand known for everything from furniture to tableware, has debuted an unusual tribute to an icon of design: the Bic Cristal pen.
To celebrate its 75th anniversary, Seletti has supersized the pen and replaced its ink cartridge with a long LED-filled tube to illuminate your living room, office, or that closet where they keep all the stationery at work.
The Bic Lamp, as it’s simply called, was introduced at the 2026 Maison & Object show in Paris – think CES, but for interior designers.
Seletti says it was created at a 12:1 scale, which makes it just shy of six feet long given the Bic Cristal pen typically measures around 5.8 inches with its cap.
Aside from its larger dimensions and the LED tube producing up 2,400 lumens of light, the Bic Lamp is a near identical clone, in red, black, or blue color options.
You can hang it from a ceiling as a pendant lamp, but Mario Paroli also designed the Bic Lamp to mount to a wall or stand alone as a floor lamp.
It will launch in the US later this year where it's expected to cost $350.
