The Ars Nihil Interesting Things Roundup #4 (July/August 2023)

In this extra-large edition of the "Interesting Things Roundup": Over 200 articles, almost 30 videos, and a whole lot of podcasts and music covering (but not at all limited to) decluttering, bees, bad fight scenes, dumbass billionaires, swashbuckling bisexual opera stars, the 80s ninja craze, misrepresented druids, essential cooking skills, John Milton, "One Piece", Pee-wee Herman (RIP), running, outsider art, Pantone colors, jerks, Steve Albini, 90s video games, Canada of the Future, note-taking tips, Juggalos, unique urban design issues, breakfast foods, too many Willy Wonkas, the Denver Airport mysteries, and so so so much more...

The last two months were hectic for me, primarily due to moving into a new house (1st one bought, not rented) and going on a fun trip to two cities I'd never been to before. That said, I've not forgotten about this blog or doing an interesting things round-up. Once everything starts to settle, this will return to a monthly or bi-weekly schedule again.

With that, here are the usual reminders:

• While much of what’s shown here was published during this period, there’s also a good number of old things. Everything linked is based on the fact I read/watched/listened to it during the past half-month.

• These links are posted mostly without comment but if I have anything to note about it, there’ll be an end note referenced. Otherwise, all opinions found in these links are strictly those of their creators and definitely not my own.

• Most of these links should be (mostly) safe-for-work but always use your best judgement.

"The Bay of Marseille, Seen from L’Estaque" (c.1885) by Paul Cezanne

Articles, Listicles, and Other Reads

• "The Secret To Living A Happier, More Fulfilling Life" by Virginia Pelley (Fatherly)

• "The Untold Story of the Boldest Supply-Chain Hack Ever" by Kim Zetter (WIRED)

• "What Happens When You Kill Your King" by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker)

• "How I Learned French in 12 Months" by Wesley Runnels (Medium)

• "AI Is a Lot of Work" by Richard Parry (The Verge)

• "Cone of Silence: The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars of the 1980s" by Jake Rossen (Mental Floss)

• "Being Alive Is Bad for Your Health" by Amanda Mull (The Atlantic)

• "The Hidden Cost of Gasoline" by Kate Yoder (Grist)

• "When Vertigo Melted My Brain" by Katie Vine (Texas Monthly)

• "Cat-astrophe" by Carrie Arnold (Noema)

• "Rebuilding Ukraine Is an Act of Resistance" by Peter Guest (WIRED)

• "Why Good Politics Makes for Bad Art" by Alice Gribbin (Tablet)

• "how to write on the internet (& keep doing it)" by Niko McCarty (Codon)

• "How to Smoke Brisket on a Weber Grill" by Daniel Vaughn (Texas Monthly)

• "The Ugly Truth Behind “We Buy Ugly Houses”" by Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan, and Mollie Simon (ProPublica)

• "The A to Z of Artificial Intelligence" by Billy Perigo (Time)

• "What to Do If Your House is Overflowing with Books" by Emily Grosvenor (Literary Hub)

• "‘People are like, Wow!’: the man trying to make condoms sexy" by Sophie Elmhirst (The Guardian)

• "The Night 17 Million Precious Military Records Went Up in Smoke" by Megan Greenwell (WIRED)

• "Bird Populations Are in Meltdown" by Chris Baraniuk (WIRED UK)

• "‘Am I Cringey? Yes. Do I Care? Absolutely Not’" by Taylor Lorenz (Rolling Stone)

• "Don’t worry about feeling sad: on the benefits of a blue period" by Dinsa Sachan (Aeon)

• "Moral grandstanding: there’s a lot of it about, all of it bad" by Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke (Aeon)

• "The real urban jungle: how ancient societies reimagined what cities could be" by Patrick Roberts (The Guardian)

• "The magical thinking of guys who love logic" by Aisling McCrea (The Outline)

• "How to Actually Forgive Yourself" by Patia Braithwaite and Samantha Vincenty (SELF)

• "Can the Left Make Peace With a National Flag?" by Helen Lewis (The Atlantic)

• "What Egyptian hip-hop says about the country a decade after the military coup" by Jonathan Guyer and Yasmine El Rashidi (Vox)

• "17 Common Kitchen Mistakes People Make All The Time" by Gabby Romero (Delish)

• "The Tyranny of the Tale" by Parul Sehgal (The New Yorker)

• "21 Mistakes To Avoid When Shopping At Whole Foods" by Deirdre Mundorf (The Daily Meal)

• "A Romp Through History’s Most Successful Third-Party Presidential Candidates" by Addicen Bauer and Molly Olmstead (Slate)

• "Forget Bob Woodward. These Are the Political Books You Actually Want to Read" (POLITICO)

• "Is It Possible to Be Both Moderate and Anti-Woke?" by Emma Green (The New Yorker)

• "The Man Who Broke Bowling" by Eric Wills (GQ)

• "11 things to never do when hosting or attending a wedding" by Kay Wicker (The Grio)

• "Inside Vienna’s old-world coffee houses" by Sam Kemp (Far Out)

• "Measure Twice, Cut Once: Applying the Ethos of the Craftsman to Our Everyday Lives" by Brett & Kate McKay (The Art of Manliness)

• "The beginner’s guide to running" by Allie Volpe (Vox)

• "If You Literally Never Cook, Start Here" by Meghan McCarron (Eater)

• "How to be a good-enough home cook" by Allie Volpe (Vox)

• "25 Gardening Tips Every Gardener Should Know" by Viveka Neveln (Better Homes & Gardens)

• "I Started A Nudist Magazine. I Didn't Expect How Badly I'd Be Treated Because Of It." by Phillip Miner (Huff Post)

• "The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time" (Pitchfork)

• "The War on “Woke” Companies Feels Like It Came Out of Nowhere. But It’s Got a History." by Lawrence B. Glickman (Slate)

• "How to Break the Bro Code" by Alex Manley (The Walrus)

• "From Spontaneous Order to Ordered Spontaneity" by Jonathan Rauch (National Affairs)

• "The false binary of problematic drinking" by Laura McKowen (Love Story)

• "The Rise of Dissociation Music" by Jayson Greene (Pitchfork)

• "Boudica the Warrior Queen" by Caitlin C. Gillespie (Aeon)

• "The Age of the Crisis of Work" by Erik Baker (Harper's Magazine)

• "How People Learn to Become Resilient" by Maria Konnikova (The New Yorker)

• "When Henry VIII and Francis I Spent $19 Million on an 18-Day Party" by Meilan Solly (Smithsonian Magazine)

• "Bread, landlords, chaotic goats: the bizarre world of gaming simulators" by Alim Kheraj (Dazed)

• "50 of the Greatest Summer Novels of All Time" (Literary Hub)

• "The Writers Who Went Undercover to Show America Its Ugly Side" by Samuel G. Freedman (The Atlantic)

• "Masters of Their Own Realities" by Arielle Gordon (The Ringer)

• "We Know “NoFap” Is Misleading Men About Masturbation. It Might Be More Dangerous Than That." by Will McCurdy (Slate)

• "In Defense of Independent Opinion Journalism" by Jonathan Chait (New York Magazine)

• "Why Do People Keep Throwing This Bald Doll at Celebrities?" by Nathaniel Janowitz (VICE)

• "A Feminist Style" by Caitlín Doherty (New Left Review)

• "The Food Writer Who Wants to Free the Recipe" by Adam Federman (The New Republic)

• "How to Be Happy - 21 Habits for a Happier Life, According to Experts" by Shannen Zitz (Prevention)

• "Will the Culture War Ever End?" by Fred Pinto (Guerrilla Wisdom)

• "How Jeffrey Katzenberg Nearly Sabotaged the Disney Renaissance" by Drew Taylor (Collider)

• "The Path to Self-Actualization Is Paved With Grifters and Psychics" by Arturo Vidich (Electric Literature)

• "Where be your jibes now?" by Patricia Lockwood (London Review of Books)

• "Casual Sex: Everyone Is Doing It" by Maria Konnikova (The New Yorker)

• "The Life, Death—And Afterlife—of Literary Fiction" by Will Blythe (Esquire)

• "12 Coffee Myths You Can Stop Believing" by Julia Collins (Tasting Table)

• "Mushroom diplomacy: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sets off culinary craze in China" by Maggie Hiufu Wong (CNN)

• "They lost their kids to Fortnite" by Luc Rinaldi (Maclean's)

• "The Crisis Over American Manhood Is Really Code for Something Else" by Virginia Heffernan (POLITICO)

• "Masts like a forest" by Ian M. Miller (Aeon)

• "How to do everything" by David R. MacIver (Overthinking Everything)

• "How to (Ethically) Get Rid of Your Unwanted Stuff" by Jaime Stathis (WIRED)

• "Hot Sargassum Summer" by Russell Jacobs (Slate)

• "Wacowabunga! Why California Surfers Are Descending on Central Texas" by Ben Rowen (Texas Monthly)

• "Everyone in America is Totally Insane" by John Ganz (Unpopular Front)

• "The Most Audacious Soap Opera in History" by Elon Green (Mental Floss)

• "New Glut City" by Andrew Rice (Curbed)

• "The $1 billion gamble to ensure AI doesn’t destroy humanity" by Dylan Matthews (Vox)

• "Unnatural Gifts" by Becca Rothfeld (The Point)

• "17 Ways to Think Like a Creative Genius" by Mario M. Parisé (Insurgent.ca)

• "How the most iconic album art of the 70s was made on a shoestring budget" by Zoe Whitfield (Huck Magazine)

• "Miracles not magic" by Martha Rampton (Aeon)

• "The 50 Best Mysteries of All Time" by Gabino Iglesias (Esquire)

• "20 Things to Do Today to Change Your Life" by Barefoot Minimalists (Nosidebar)

• "‘Doom’ Guy John Romero Is the Literal Opposite of His Brutal Creation" by Nick Schager (The Daily Beast)

• "The little search engine that couldn’t" by David Pierce (The Verge)

• "The Greatest Scam Ever Written" by Rachel Browne (The Walrus)

• "The Emancipation of Sensibility" by Jesse McCarthy (The Point)

• "Are You Plagued by the Feeling That Everyone Used to Be Nicer?" by Hanna Rosin (The Atlantic)

• "Stop phubbing! The 10 rules of smartphone etiquette – from the bathroom to your bed" by Paula Cocozza (The Guardian)

• "Negative Criticism" by Sean Tatol (The Point)

• "The Czech Socialist Literature That Influenced Milan Kundera" by Ondřej Slačálek (Jacobin)

• "Weird, Rare, and Everywhere" by Arno Kopecky (Hakai)

• "‘This Is a Really Big Deal’: How College Towns Are Decimating the GOP" by Charles Mahtesian and Madi Alexander (POLITICO)

• "The Bad Patient | Fake Illnesses, Illness Fakers, and the Problem of Medical Testimony" by B.D. McClay (The Drift)

• "Lost Illusions: The Untold Story of the Hit Show’s Poisonous Culture" by Maureen Ryan (Vanity Fair)

• "How Dreamcast Killed Sega's Hardware Reign" by Samuel Horti (IGN)

• "Paul Reubens’s Preposterous Grace" by Bruce Handy (The New Yorker)

• "When Emo Conquered the Mainstream" by Peter C. Baker (The New Yorker)

• "The Most Misunderstood Concept in Psychology" by Olga Khazan (The Atlantic)

• "‘Everything you’ve been told is a lie!’ Inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline" by James Ball (The Guardian)

• "The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church" by Jake Meador (The Atlantic)

• "‘If I left, I’d have to go without a word’: how I escaped China’s mass arrests" by Tahir Hamut Izgil (The Guardian)

• "Should I change job?" by James Stanier (The Engineering Manager)

• "Don’t check the clock! 15 ways to get back to sleep when you wake at 3am" by Emine Saner (The Guardian)

• "11 unexplainable animal mysteries" by Brian Resnick (Vox)

• "Who was Duns Scotus?" by Thomas M. Ward (Aeon)

• "Travelling Tales" by Marina Warner (Public Domain Review)

• "The weirdly common, very expensive travel scam you should avoid" by Emily Stewart (Vox)

• "11 Lesser-Known Fairy Tales" by Tasia Bass (Mental Floss)

• "How to relax your own rules" by Danielle Doucette (Psyche)

• "An A-Z Guide to Decluttering" (Nosidebar)

• "A Student and a Teacher Try to Untangle Why Group Work Is, Well, Terrible" by Nadia Tamez-Robledo (EdSurge)

• "Why Everyone Feels Like They’re Faking It" by Leslie Jamison (The New Yorker)

• "America’s Bee Problem Is an Us Problem" by Lex Pryor (The Ringer)

• "100 Writing Tips Pulled From the Greatest Writers in History" by Mario M. Parisé (Insurgent.ca)

• "How to Fit into the Publishing World" by Annahid Dashtgard (The Walrus)

• "Why Read John Milton?" by Ed Simon (The Millions)

• "How to get more comfortable with death" by Rachel Menzies (Psyche)

• "What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing" by Laura Hartenberger (Noema)

• "151 Actually-Interesting Questions to Get to Know Someone" by Erika Owen (Teen Vogue)

• "The Two Weirdest Years in Music" by Dave Holmes (Esquire)

• "How to Find the Hidden Files on Your Phone or Computer" by David Nield (WIRED)

• "The Most Important Scientific Problems Have Yet to Be Solved" by Santiago Ramon (MIT Press Reader)

• "How Bronze Age Pervert Charmed the Far Right" by Graeme Wood (The Atlantic)

• "The new crisis of masculinity" by Sean Illing and Christine Emba (Vox)

• "The Cloud Is a Prison. Can the Local-First Software Movement Set Us Free" by Gregory Barber (WIRED)

• "The Struggle Is Awesome" by Jill Waldbieser (Runner's World)

• "My Son, Superhero In Training" by Rachel Friedman (Romper)

• "The Books That Made Your Favorite Writers Want to Write" by Emily Temple (Literary Hub)

• "How an Amateur Diver Became a True-Crime Sensation" by Rachel Monroe (The New Yorker)

• "An Oral History of the '90s Comic Book Boom... and Crash" by Rosie Knight (IGN)

• "Mount Fear Diary" by Joshua Hunt (The Believer)

• "The Humanities Are Worth Fighting For" by Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado (Los Angeles Review of Books)

• "‘I didn’t trust him. But I was curious about him’: how I made friends with my scammer" by Michelle Brasier (The Guardian)

• "The Good Enough Momfluencer" by Sophie Lewis (The Baffler)

• "A reading guide for grownups who don’t read" by Constance Grady (Vox)

• "The future of cities, according to the experts" by Rani Molla (Vox)

• "‘It happens again and again’: why Americans are obsessed with secret societies" by David Smith (The Guardian)

• "Are You the Same Person You Used to Be?" by Joshua Rothman (The New Yorker)

• "A Field Guide to the Many Forms of Ethical Non-Monogamy" by Mark Hay (Inside Hook)

• "Tell Me Why It Hurts" by Danielle Carr (New York Magazine)

• "Privacy for everyday people" by Rakkhi Joy (Cyber rants)

• "The Closest Calls: How America Nearly Forged a Different Path in 1916" by Jeff Greenfield (POLITICO)

• "Boy Problems" by Eamon Whalen (Mother Jones)

• "‘A really precarious time’: regional US theatres face a mounting crisis" by David Smith (The Guardian)

• "11 Tips for Anyone Who Doesn’t Know How to Relax" by Anna Borges (SELF)

• "Great American Novelist" by Laura Miller (Slate)

• "33 of the biggest failed products from the world's biggest companies" by Ben Gilbert and Lakshmi Varanasi (Business Insider)

• "The Antiliberal Revolution" by Charles King (Foreign Affairs)

• "The Claremont Institute: The Anti-Democracy Think Tank" by Katherine Stewart (The New Republic)

• "How to Decide Trifles Quickly" by Brett & Kate McKay (The Art of Manliness)

• "The Age of the Essay" and "How to Write Usefully" by Paul Graham

• “Why the climate movement doesn’t talk about polar bears anymore” by Kate Yoder (Grist)

• “The Jerk Aficionados” by Alan Siegel (The Ringer)

• “No More Writers as Protagonists” by Chris M. Arnone (Book Riot)

• “The Media Still Doesn’t Get Biden Voters” by Nicholas Grossman (The Bulwark)

• “The Kids Online Safety Act isn’t all right, critics say” by Ashley Belanger (Ars Technica)

• “Inside the “Toxic” World of Selling Supplements and Skincare on Social Media” by Amanda Garrity (Good Housekeeping)

• “My Generation” by Justin E. H. Smith (Harper's Magazine)

• “The evolution of Steve Albini: ‘If the dumbest person is on your side, you’re on the wrong side’” by Jeremy Gordon (The Guardian)

• “The new “science of reading” movement, explained” by Rachel M. Cohen (Vox)

• “Legendary Author John McPhee on Procrastination, Dread, and His Endless Final Project” by Nathan Taylor Pemberton (GQ)

• “The 25 Best PS1 Games Of All Time” (IGN)

• “What Happens to All the Stuff We Return?” by David Owen (The New Yorker)

• “Orange Is the New Yolk” by Marian Bull (Eater)

• “Canada in the Year 2060” by Anne Shibata Casselman (Maclean’s)

• “Big Rigs and Back Roads: Inside the World of Overlanding” by Sean Thor Conroe (GQ)

• “Who’s Afraid of Lorne Michaels?” by Seth Simons (Longreads)

• “‘All these bulletproof songs, one after another’: remembering Tom Waits’s extraordinary mid-career trilogy” by Tim Adams (The Guardian)

• "Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville" by Emily Nussbaum (The New Yorker)

• “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” by Werner Herzog (The New Yorker)

• “Persecution in the Name of the Lord” by Deborah Jian Lee (Esquire)

• “What the Ruling Class Fears” by Nick McDonell (The Atlantic)

• “The World Is Going Blind. Taiwan Offers a Warning, and a Cure” by Amit Katwala (WIRED)

• “44 Cooking Basics You Should Probably Know By Now” by Maitland Quitmeyer (BuzzFeed)

• ““Going shopping” is dead” by Whizy Kim (Vox)

• “The Best Soundtrack Albums, Ranked” by Steven Hyden (UPROXX)

• "How the Authors of the Bible Spun Triumph from Defeat" by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker)

• "Doing Something Once Vs. Doing It Every Day" by Ivaylo Durmonski

• "How I Take Notes" by Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker)

• "Flipping Out: Revisiting the 1990s Swing Revival" by Kenneth Partridge (Mental Floss)

• "My Generation Was The Scapegoat For America’s Failures — And So Is Yours" by Danielle Belton (Huff Post)

• "The Inheritance Case That Could Unravel an Art Dynasty" by Rachel Corbett (The New York Times)

• "The Heartrending Tale of Kitt the Police Dog and His Human Partner" by Dave Wedge (Boston Magazine)

• "‘Oddly satisfying’: what’s behind our drive to collect useless items?" by Amelia Tait (The Guardian)

• "Juggalo family values" by Micco Caporale (Chicago Reader)

• "The Problem of Nature Writing" by Jonathan Franzen (The New Yorker)

• "On the Bad Binary of “Good” and “Bad” Literature" by Josh Cook (Literary Hub)

• "Even Conspiracy Theorists Are Alarmed by What They’ve Seen" by Annie Kelly (The New York Times)

• "Existential Comfort Without God" by Tania Lombrozo (Nautilus)

• "Paula Scher’s 10 rules for play" (Figma)

• "Tired, grumpy, self-medicating with KitKats and coffee? Here’s how the experts handle sleep deprivation" by Ellie Violet Bramley (The Guardian)

• "Monica: A Guided Tour Through Daniel Clowes's Mind and Library" by Françoise Mouly and Daniel Clowes(The New Yorker)

• "The Blurb Problem Keeps Getting Worse" by Helen Lewis (The Atlantic)

• "Six Types of Wealth" by Jack Raines (Young Money)

• "On Good Authority" by R.E. Hawley (The Point)

• "Foucault foresaw our identity crisis" by Matt Feeny (UnHerd)

• "How to Treat Right-Wing Violence in the U.S." by Benjamin Wallace-Wells (The New Yorker)

• "The Man from Fifth Avenue" by Josh Levin (Slate)

• "The case for opsimaths. Maybe late bloomers aren't so late" by Henry Oliver (The Common Reader)

• "How Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Andreessen—Four Billionaire Techno-Oligarchs—Are Creating an Alternate, Autocratic Reality" by Jonathan Taplin (Vanity Fair)

• "The secret life of Druids" by Miranda Aldhouse-Green (Aeon)

• "The Unraveling of SST Records" by Jim Ruland (The New Republic)

• "How to Choose What Advice to Take" by Brett & Kate Mckay (The Art of Manliness)

• "How to make school life a little less difficult for kids" by Allie Volpe (Vox)

• "The end of cool small cars" (Blackbird Spyplane)

"If your power depends on lying to the people, that doesn’t make you noble. It just leaves you with a choice: Accept that you are a fraud, or embrace the lie." - Katherine Stewart

Videos

"One of history's most dangerous myths" (TED Ed)

"Are You a Cynic or Just a Jerk?" (Wisecrack)

"ART IS NOT FOR SALE" (The Cinema Cartography)

"Bad Fight Scenes from Hong Kong" (Accented Cinema)

"How one company owns color" (Phil Edwards)

"The Evolution of Pee-wee Herman" (Retro Ruckus)

"Why is Postmodernism Architecture so Bizarre?" (ARTiculations)

"America's Forgotten Socialist History" (Second Thought)

"How Nuns Became a Cinematic Obsession" (Little White Lies)

"The Densest City on Earth" (Neo)

"How to enter flow state" (TED Ed)

"Why Do We Like Spicy Food?" (GingerPale)

"The Scandalous Life of France's Bisexual Opera Icon" (Puppet History/Watcher)

"Bruegel: Birth of a New Genre" (Nerdwriter)

"Reasons Why American Breakfasts are the Way They Are" (Weird Food History)

"Why Amsterdam is Building a New Red Light District" (Hoog)

"It's Becoming Very Clear That Birds Are Not Normal" (PBS Eons)

"Keith Haring: When Capitalist Consumerism Fails an Artist" (lines in motion)

"The History of D&D Hasbro Refused to Learn From" (Extra Credits)

"The Ninja Boom of the 80's/90's! How it Happened and Why We LOVE the Lie!" (Gaijin Goombah)

"Elon Musk Is an Idiot (and so are Zuck and SBF)" (Adam Conover)

"How Iñaki Godoy Became Luffy of 'One Piece'" (Teen Vogue)

"Why Do We Keep Adapting the Same Stories" (Nerdstalgic)

"How Neoliberalism Became Culture" (Wisecrack)

"music taste is like attraction lol" (owiebrainhurts)

"How to Create Flavor with Fire" (Techniquely with Lan Lam/America's Test Kitchen)

"The World of One Piece is BROKEN!" (The Film Theorists)

"Why Silicon Valley is here" (Vox)

Playlists