The second best* non-fiction book I've read so far this year

It's "Atlas of the Roman Empire" by David Potter.

As soon as I read the rave review in the Wall Street Journal last month I took a flutter on it.

OMG, to someone like me who's been fascinated by the Roman Empire since I was first exposed to it in Miss Shaw's Latin 1 at Washington High School, which consisted of reading Julius Caesar's magnificent "The Gallic Wars" in their original Latin, this book is pure heaven.

Unlike Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," all six fat volumes of which I read 10-15 years ago after shying away from its immenseness for decades (full disclosure: I loved the first four volumes but it was a real trudge through the last two [you can too, right here!]), the current treatment is a lavishly illustrated 305-page oversized tome which is beautifully written and organized such that I can't wait for each day's session with it.

*The best one was David Pogue's "50 Years of Apple" — fanboi heaven.

13 Hour Clock — For those who never seem to have enough time

From websites:

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13 Hour Clock

This clock will appeal to those who never have enough time in a day!

Humorous wall clock brings a different spin to the dial markings we're used to, with creative time-telling that "adds" an extra hour: Lucky 13!

Quartz clock with blue plastic housing has a built-in hanger and uses 1 AA battery (not included).

10" (not 13"!) Ø.

$9.99.

CountryDraw

Res ipsa loquitur.

Eilish Rothney shares her office with a giant wasp nest

From the Guardian:

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‘I Feel Motherly Towards Them’: The Nature Reserve Manager Sharing Her Office With A Wasp Nest

Eilish Rothney’s first instinct was to get rid of the wasps entering her converted shipping container in Norfolk. Now she enjoys their constant hum.

“They just built the nest inside my door,” she says. “My first thought was: ‘Oh no, I have to get rid of that now.’ But then I realised: ‘Wait, why? Why do I have to do that?’”

Two months on, Rothney is in a co-working arrangement with the nest, which is now more than a metre tall and swallows an entire bookshelf of ring binders. It has papered the inside of her office in what she calls “lovely layers of colours”, with thousands of chewed wood pulp cells stacked like the world’s strangest filing system.

Rather than evict her new colleagues, Rothney adapted. She opened the window to give the wasps a clear flight path. “I just stroll past like I’m a browsing cow, calmly going about my day,” she says. “The wasps were fine with me being there. The longer I was there, the more I felt relaxed being alongside them.”

The queen lays eggs continuously, while worker wasps forage and bring food back to feed the larvae. That, in turn, exudes a sugary liquid that the adult workers drink. Rothney describes a low purring sound rising off the nest, which she believes comes from thousands of wings beating to keep the colony cool. “It’s almost like the colony in itself is a living organism,” she says.

She says she isn’t worried about being stung – “it wouldn’t be a whole lot worse than mosquito bites” – and her advice for anyone less enthusiastic than her is: “Insects learn that certain individuals won’t harm them. Just keep calm, they will sense that and won’t feel threatened.”

Rothney traces her convictions about wildlife back to an ecology field trip at university, and to what she describes as “a kind of poetry and beauty in understanding the intricate relationships between everything”. She says she has become increasingly frustrated by how easily the label “pest” becomes a green light for extermination. “It’s fair enough if people don’t like wasps,” she says, “but we need to move away from things just being killed out of convenience. We cause a lot of damage with that approach.”

She is quick to defend the wasps which interfere with picnics every August, too. By late summer, the larvae stop producing their sugary secretion, leaving the adult workers suddenly cut off from their main food source, she says. “The poor things are starving. It’s not a battle between them and me. They’re desperate. Let’s provide them with that sugar and maybe draw them away from someone’s real ale in the evening.

“All I want is for people to be more tolerant of wasps, and of nature generally. I’m proud to be working where I am, and it’s our 100th anniversary this year – so maybe the wasps are celebrating too!”

As the weather turns this autumn, Rothney says, the queen will stop laying, the males and worker wasps will die off, and next year’s queens will leave to hibernate alone. By winter, the nest will be empty.

“It’ll be sad when they leave. I do feel motherly towards them,” she says. “It’ll be odd when they’re gone, because even the noise itself is amazing.”

And when the nest is empty? “I’m going to try to take it apart very carefully when they leave so I can see what it looks like inside.”

Until then, the shelves belong to the wasps.

Good Enough

Plumbers will tell you never use Drāno.

Furniture makers and antique dealers will tell you not to use Pledge.

Optometrists advise against over-the-counter reading glasses.

Some people insist on brand name drugs that cost 10x that of generics.

Professional window cleaners scoff at Windex.

Apple's cables (above left) cost three times more than the Amazon-certified house brand.

Sometimes good enough is just that.

Next slide please.

'Tron: Legacy' (Recording Sessions) — Daft Punk

Wrote Kottke: "This appears to be a fan-assembled album of the recording sessions for "Tron: Legacy" by Daft Punk and Joseph Trapanese."

I loved the first "Tron," which I saw in an old-timey movie theater in Los Angeles the month it was released in 1982.

Last year's "Tron: Ares" not so much, though I had high hopes for it on Vision Pro but alas, it was a letdown — kind of "meh."

On the other hand, there's a good chance that the lesser thrill of the last installment was due to the fact that I'm no longer as easily thrilled.

Helpful Hints from joeeze: How can you tell if a nut is rancid?

Are you sure?

Aristotle Onassis once remarked, "The secret of success in business is knowing something no one else knows."

Nowadays that's called insider trading.

But I digress.

Robert L. Wolke, longtime food columnist extraordinaire, addressed the topic of rancid nuts in his Washington Post Food section "Food 101" column.

Long story short: You can't tell by smell: you have to taste.

FunFact: The speed with which nuts turn rancid is in direct proportion to the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acid they contain.

Fastest to slowest to turn rancid, in order:

1) English walnuts

2) Pecans

3) Brazil nuts

4) Peanuts

5) Almonds and pistachios

6) Cashews and hazelnuts

Here's the column.

Cracking the Code

Q. I like to eat pistachio nuts, and I prepare dishes with walnuts and almonds throughout the year. In the holiday season I also use pecans and hazelnuts. How should nuts be stored? Why do they become rancid? When shopping for nuts, either in a store or from a catalogue, what are signs that they are rancid?

A. Before I get to your question, I must address the nomenclatural nonsense that pervades the world of nuts.

First of all, botanists have their definition of a nut and gastronomes have theirs. To a botanist, a nut is a whole, hard-surfaced fruit containing a seed. To a gastronome, the seed alone may be called a nut. Peanuts are neither; they're legumes. But before I drive you nuts, let's just agree that anything you think is a nut is a nut.

Second, a filbert is a hazelnut is a filbert. They come from two very closely related trees, and you have to be an expert to tell their nuts apart.

Now about rancidity and storage.

The oils in most nuts are chiefly the more healthful, unsaturated kind. But unsaturated fats turn rancid more readily than saturated ones, because the (double) bonds in their molecules are easily broken by oxidation. The resulting molecular fragments, short-chain fatty acids, are likely to taste and smell bad.

Roughly, the more polyunsaturated fatty acids a nut contains, the faster it can turn rancid. On that basis, we can expect the most common nuts to line up this way, in order of fastest to slowest: English walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, peanuts, almonds and pistachios, and cashews and hazelnuts.

Most nuts are harvested in the fall, so they're still fresh for our holiday party bowls or all those pecan pies. But containing as much oil as they do (40 percent to more than 70 percent), they eventually will turn rancid.

Unshelled nuts, protected by nature's armor, will keep for a year or even two, especially if refrigerated. Squirrels are able to successfully store acorns over the winter because the cold slows the two chemical reactions responsible for rancidity: oxidation and hydrolysis, which are caused by air and moisture, respectively. So if your nuts were fresh to begin with — that is, bought from a reputable, high-volume supplier — their shells might keep them fresh until next Christmas if the nuts are stored in a cool place. (Cashews, by the way, are never sold in their shells, which contain corrosive and poisonous resins.)

Shelled nuts, especially those that have been chopped or roasted, are more prone to rancidity. Secured in an airtight container, they can be stored for four or five months in the refrigerator and for up to a year in the freezer.

How can you tell if a nut is rancid? In the store, sneak a sample if possible. Smell is not reliable; taste is the best test. If it tastes sour or rank, shop somewhere else. When buying from a catalogue, you just have to trust your supplier.

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Now gimme that last cashew — and don't tell me you just ate it.

Fire Blanket

Especially handy when you first try your fire extinguisher only to find it expired years ago and is now a bright red doorstop.

Long story short: I'm getting one of these blankets.

You can too! 

Cheap at twice the $9.95 price.

Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?

Who wants to join my "Talk on the Run" club?

The one thing I've hated about running ever since I took it up is the boredom.

I can deal with the heat and the sweat and fatigue just fine but the main reason I skip days and have trouble getting going pretty much every day is that it's so darn darn boring.

I listen to the same playlist of songs I've been listening to for decades over and over and over again.

No matter how loud I crank up the volume it doesn't eclipse the boredom.

I noticed from the beginning that when I have someone to run and chat with it's an entirely different thing: the time whizzes by without me noticing it and it's quite enjoyable.

Alas, I've rarely had a running buddy and now that I live in Podunkville and go at random times, it's pretty much unlikely I'll ever have one.

I found talking on the phone while running works great except the people on the other end can't stand the sound of my tired breathing and road noise and whatnot so that's a non-starter.

I mean, I can deal with a lot of extraneous noise on the other end but I seem to be the exception to the rule.

Anyway, here's my idea for the "Talk on the Run" club: I create a website that's live, sort of like streaming live on YouTube, but instead of peeps passively watching and commenting in the sidebar, they can chat with me in real time so that it's like I have virtual running buddies on the other end no matter where they are IRL.

Interested? Bueller? Anyone?

XREAL Glasses

I took a flutter on a pair of these last month because $299 with a promise of full-screen OLED HD video sounded fantastic.

I'm a sucker for stuff like that.

Long story short: these glasses are no humbug.

They're especially useful for connecting to your computer or phone to see a bigger, sharper, brighter image.

Read more about them here and here.

Things I like: Ultra-portable; no battery required; fantastic brightness and resolution, better than my phone or computer; connect to anything with a USB-C port; lightweight and comfortable.

Thing I don't like: You have to use the 4-foot-long proprietary USC-C to USC-C cable they come with. That's annoying because it gets in the way. I bought a 6.5-foot-long cable from Apple but it doesn't work. 

Like I said, $299.

Watchlist of Sisyphus

Yesterday at this time I remarked on my abject inability to distinguish films I'd like from the far more numerous ones of no interest based just on the brief descriptions and screenshots in the endless libraries of all the streaming services.

Above and below, screenshots of my Watchlist just from Prime Video.

Why I stopped dictating to AI

A while back I when signed up for Perplexity Pro I was chuffed not only by its excellent and fast responses but also by the fact I could speak as I normally do and it would transcribe what I said and then get to work.

A few weeks ago I stopped dictating and returned to typing.

It became apparent to me that even though Perplexity rarely made a transcription error, my nature is such that I automatically checked what appeared on my screen for typos, misspellings, and their ilk.

The thing is, there's a lag of a couple seconds between speech and appearance onscreen. 

That caused me to stop thinking to check accuracy.

When I type I do that simultaneously with monitoring for errors such that there's never a pause except for thinking.

For the same reason I stopped using the excellent Wispr Flow (free, the way we like it) iPhone transcription app and went back to two-finger onscreen typing.

BTW, Perplexity's base model is free: give it a whirl and see what you think.

Wait a sec — what's that fantastic 2011 film that just came to mind?

If Blackout Curtains Aren't Enough, Go Big With a Blackout Tent

Wrote Tracy Allison in the Guardian:

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This Pop-Up Blackout Tent Looks Like The Grim Reaper's Hood But This Personal Sleep Sanctuary Is My Secret To A Better Rest

A few months ago, I was out for my friend Blaise’s going-away drinks, and towards the end of the evening, the conversation shifted to a roundtable of sleeping habits. I tried to stay out of it; what was I going to do, bring up the tent again? Before I had time to decide, Blaise enthusiastically chimed in: “Tracy sleeps in a blackout tent!”

When it comes to getting a good night’s sleep, a sensitivity to light is my Achilles’ heel. The sun could peer through the edge of a blackout curtain, work its way up under my eye mask, and instantly, I would be awake, feeling as though it weren’t just my eyes, but also my skin sensing the light in a room. In my hunt for a cocoon of darkness I came across the zDen and was intrigued by the claim that it can block out 99% of light.

The zDen became part of my nightly routine in May 2025, after a short-lived attempt at taping up silver-backed blackout photography panels to my bedroom windows, which, as a neighbor pointed out, was giving my house a very distinct “a-conspiracy-theorist-lives-here” look.

Essentially, zDen is a pop-up sleeping tent made from non-toxic fabric, large enough to fit a queen-sized pillow and cover me down to the lower part of my ribcage. From my own testing, two people can squeeze in back-to-back, albeit with little room to move. The two front flaps can be pulled to the side like curtains or kept closed with Velcro. Its three mesh windows with flap covers can let air in, and it even has pass-through openings for CPAP users.

Of course, I have to address the big question: yes, it is a bit silly-looking. I’ve seen the reactions when I bring it up in conversation. A look washes over someone’s face that says: “This is odd. Have you realized that this is odd?”

There’s no way around this, other than to strive to become unembarrassed. I don’t think of the zDen as an indoor tent so much as a light-pollution blocker, one that looks no more or less ridiculous than a red light mask, a portable sauna, a cooking neck fan, or all the other gadgets that humans have dreamed up in order to feel and be well.

I’ve used the zDen nearly every night since I bought it. Its absence is a guarantee I’ll wake up every two hours with my neck at an ungodly angle, face smushed into a pillow and a blanket pulled over my head. Before, I had assumed I was a natural stomach and side sleeper, having never considered that my habits could be the result of unconscious attempts to shield my eyes from light. Perhaps the most unexpected benefit of sleeping in the zDen has been an easy transition into sleeping on my back and staying asleep throughout the night.

It has also been a lifesaver for traveling, where I never know how dark my accommodations will be. This past June, the zDen folded down into its included carrying case and joined me on a three-week road trip around Ireland, where daylight lasted up to 17 hours. It helped me stay asleep everywhere from a curtain-less B&B on a rocky island off the west coast to a treeless campground in the Wicklow Mountains (though the tent-within-a-tent setup was a little avant-garde).

There is one caveat: the zDen folds down into an 18in circle, but that was 3in too wide to fit in my carry-on luggage. According to Danielle Fujii, zDen’s creator, it can technically be folded further to fit, but that adds tension on its frame. Not wanting to risk any damage, I opted for the standard folding configuration and checked the bag, officially making the zDen the only thing I’ve ever justified checking a bag for.

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$109.97.

Great Movies Are Hiding in Plain Sight

I'm never not amazed at how many movies exist and continue to be made.

Hundreds, thousands every year, judging from what I see when I lazily surf Netflix and Amazon to see what's out there.

You could spend your entire life looking at their listings and occasionally stopping to find out more about those that look particularly interesting.

Using "If you liked that, you might like these" rarely turns up anything of interest.

What's so vexing is that no matter what, I simply cannot pick out the few great ones from the dross.

I see films I loved thrown in amongst far more I've never heard of, and I know there are limitless wonderful ones right there in front of me hiding in plain sight.

For example, last night I watched "Anniversary," which I'd never heard of until I happened on it while title surfing: it was terrific.

Last week I watched "FUZE," indistinguishable from other thrillers that were displayed by the score: it turned out to be riveting, with a twisty, unexpected narrative that was hugely entertaining.

Yet those two were outliers among the many others I started watching and then abandoned after 5-15 minutes because they were so dull.

This is Part 1 of 2; next month I will report on the results of my attempt to organize a systematic approach to this problem.

Drop Dead Rug

Inspired by old crime TV, British designer Alex Carpenter's Drop Dead Rug was such a hit at the London Design Festival in 2005 that he took it into production.

Mimicking the shape of "an unfortunate soul which may have come to pass right there on your living room floor with their silhouette remaining as evidence," the throw is a dark red felt with a light grey band running around the edge to depict the chalk line.

It was available at the time for £150 and quickly sold out.

No sign of one anywhere online, alas.

Helpful Hints from joeeze: What should you do with hot leftovers?

Mom always said to leave them out to cool to room temperature before putting them in the fridge.

Mom also said that reading in bad light would hurt your eyes.

Mom was wrong both times.

Maybe more — but let's not be haters: after all, look how well you turned out.

Erm... maybe it's time to move on.

Okay then, on to Anahad O'Connor's "Really?" feature in the New York Times, which addressed the very question raised in the headline up top.

The Claim: Hot Leftovers Should Cool at Room Temperature

The Facts: What to do with leftovers? One common bromide is that leftovers stored in the refrigerator must be allowed to cool first at room temperature.

The reasoning behind the claim varies. One theory is that allowing food to cool at a slower rate reduces the likelihood that it will spoil. Another suggests that hot food can somehow interfere with the circulation of cold air in the refrigerator. The notion may have originated back when food was stored in iceboxes, and thus could not be too hot when put away.

Whatever the rationale, the claim is wrong. According to the Food and Drug Administration, leftover food (particularly meat) should be refrigerated immediately after serving, and certainly within two hours of cooking.

Food bacteria can double every 30 or 40 minutes, and several outbreaks of food poisoning have been linked to meat cooked and left to cool at room temperature for too long.

Generally, the bacteria that contaminate food thrive at temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, so leftovers should always be stored in a refrigerator set at 40 degrees or below.

When the quantity of food is large, it should be separated into small containers for quicker cooling, and reheated no more than once.

The Bottom Line: It's a bad idea to let food sit at room temperature before refrigerating.

list animals until failure

"List as many animals as you can in 1 minute."

'Panama'

'Panama' entered the chart June 23, 1984 at #52, peaked August 18, 1984 at #13, and left the chart October 6, 1984 after
a 15-week chart run.

FunFact: There are 22 recorded versions featuring different lead singers.

How did the Enigma Machine work?

More here and here.

How to appear smarter than you are

When someone asks "Where's that from?" regarding something somebody just said, reply "The Bible or Shakespeare."

You'll be right 50% of the time.

Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?