Ten Things, 2022-52
Here are ten things.
- Happy new year, y'all! So normally, I'd publish my Kleon-esque list of 100 things that made my year in 2022, but you know what? 2022 was kind of a shitty year for your boy. I don't much feel like combing through the wreckage at the moment. I will say, though, that the weekly ten things in a way market-corrects the annual top 100. But because I love reading it, I will link to Austin Kleon's top 100; I said it once and I'll say it again, without Austin, there's basically no Ahead on Differential.
- Last January, in lieu of a resolution, I decided that the operating theme of my 2022 would be “habit.” Now I was doing pretty well until all the death and illness happened, and I don't want to recycle a theme, so I'm going to declare that 2023 will be my Year of Consistency, i.e. being better about keeping the habits I tentatively formed in 2022.
- Steph and I started watching Jeopardy! on a whim just in time to be charmed by a soft-spoken below-the-line TV guy from Toronto named Ray “The Sway” Lalonde.
- Overcast is my podcatcher of choice, but the barebones desktop version available on the app's website is sneakily useful for when listening to podcasts on my phone is inconvenient (i.e. when I'm at work doing audio-based tasks on my workstation). Last year, developer Marco Arment decided to discontinue the desktop version of Overcast, until he changed his mind when he realized just how popular this particular usage of his app was.
- AoD Hall of Famer Jon Bois interviewed in the god damn Times.
- 2022 cinematic catch-up update: the face-melting historical action extravaganza RRR, Jordan Peele's oddball thriller Nope, and Steven Spielberg's beautiful, affecting family drama The Fabelmans.
- In the spirit of plugging people I've been ripping off for years: here are Jason Kottke's 36 things.
- YouTube Digest: Linus Boman on Papyrus, Red Letter Media on the secondary VHS market, and Patrick Willems on Ambulance.
- So this is a weird one: this past week I had a flash bulb memory of a gag-a-day newspaper-style webcomic I read in high school called Phil Likes Tacos, a about a dude who works in a taco place and his goofball bestie. Because nothing on the internet truly dies, I looked it up again, hoping to find some lingering trace of it. Not only did I find it, but writer/illustrator Andrew Bilitz is still making Phil Likes Tacos, which I find heartening in the way these kinds of small miracles to be. From the man himself: “Phil Likes Tacos is a webcomic I started way back on May 22nd 2002 and I continue to do to this day for whatever reason. Oh wait, it’s because it’s fun and interesting and there’s always something on my mind.” When it comes right down to it, anything worth doing, especially if you do it for a long time, has to be fun for you. Shout out to you, Andy.
- A poem from Wikipedia Haiku:
She worked at bowling alleys, peeled potatoes and even made cigars