#677—

What's making me happy 2017-12-17

By Nat Welch

Hello from Portland, Oregon! It's time for another #happy post, this time fueled by an upscale restaurant/coffee bar/hotel combo.

Lets start with a little data visualization.

I am glad 2017 is almost over, but that being said I'm realizing if I don't think about everything happening to the world, the year was pretty good. I'm going to start working on my year in review this week, and hopefully get it out before New Years.

(I need a haircut.)

Also, @mel_cantrell and @docmollo have been trying to get me to become addicted to Dog Twitter over the past few years, and I think I am now fully addicted. As a sign, this post will have two pups embedded to solve your doggo needs.

BTW, the story of the above pup brings tears to my eyes. Such a good pup.

Watch How To Butcher a Whole Tuna was neat. I love Tuna, and didn't know much about how it's turned from the big fish into what ends up on the plate.

I enjoyed Polygon's review Star Wars: The Last Jedi review: yes, it’s really that good. It has no spoilers, and was just enough of a review to get me excited.

I didn't know this was a thing, but was cool: Keanu Reeves' Latest Adventure: Making Motorcycles

I turn 30 semi-soon, and Does Life End at 35? was something I needed to read. I have had a similar belief for a long time, and something that pointed out how absurd that is was helpful.

I don't think I really took UFO conspiracy theorists seriously until I read The long, strange history of John Podesta's space alien obsession. It gave a bit of credibility to it all, that someone so deep in US politics would believe that we have been visited by aliens. Yesterday, NYT dropped The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program, which also gives more credence to the whole thing. I still think it's nonsense, and that it's probably someone's rogue experiment, or we're being spied on by Russia or China or whatever, but still, always fun to think about.

Also in the conspiracy realm is Reply All 112: The Prophet. It's not so much a conspiracy as a deeply disturbing story of a political organization using the internet to subvert Mexican politics and ruin a woman's life.

That story is fascinating but deeply dark. So, on the other end, @craigmod's On Margins continues with a fascinating interview: Kevin Kelly, Photographing and Backpacking Asia in the 1970s. This made me want to just get on a plane and explore the world.

Transitioning from the written word to music: I really like @Pitchfork's writeups of older albums. They tend to give me nostalgia and I often learn a lot about albums I really love. Their review of the self-titled Rage Against the Machine this weekend was a timely piece, well written, interesting, and in the context of 2017, a great reminder that some things don't really change.

in B Flat is a beautiful collaborative music project.

The song Breakers on KEXP Song of the Day from Nearby is so good.

I'm enjoying Story Pirates, it's for kids but it was refreshing to listen to the simplicity and wonder of Barry and The Big Climbing Tree.

I enjoy Broad City, I don't watch it religiously, but I've watched most of this season. The BTS after the finale revealed the origin behind "Leanne", and I'm in love.

I'll just leave this here: Watch Black Thought’s 10-Minute Funk Flex Freestyle

Also Benjamin F'ing Franklin.

Unrelated to music, Disney can finally make Patton Oswalt's Star Wars/X-Men/Avengers crossover dreams a reality.

Lots of economics stuff this week:

2017: The Year in Volcanic Activity is beautiful photography.

Lots of stuff from the tech world:

I need to figure out how many of these posts I've linked to something I've learned because of @jessfraz. This week, in her post Personal Infrastructure, she mentions coreos/clair which does vulnerability analysis for containers. I want to play with this so much. Also, Jess's post makes me want to share more about the personal infra I run. So look forward to that.

It was neat to see Homebrew analytics of macOS versions.

Microsoft seems to have come up with the Google Docs of code.

16 Designer and Developer Conference Talks From 2017.

It's official, ADSL works over wet string.

I'm starting to play with OSQuery for work, so I was reading Introducing osquery, which is interesting.

Why Consistency Matters When Building Reliable Systems

My love of @mikeydickerson is strong, and following him on Facebook has been an enjoyable stream of reasoned views of the chaos in politics. His Deregulated popoff on net neutrality is one such rant that he published for the wider world.

A revamped SEO Starter Guide - because all we're doing is optimizing content for Google.

I discovered a bunch of my friends didn't know about DMARC, so here is an article from @postmark on DMARC: Monitor & secure your email delivery

@davejosephsen's two-part epic "BackCountry Wifi" is amazing:

Care and Feeding of Burnout is great.

In startup news: We messed up. We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change. Also despite how controversial YC has become, I really like that they made a common application for working at their funded companies: YC Work at a Startup

Origin story is a walkthrough on misconceptions on the origins of the internet.

I went to Localhost: David Nolen and it was great. I hope he does the talk in a place that's recorded.

Phishers Are Upping Their Game. So Should You.

MetaFilter has an article on @b0rk's amazing work: Let's be Wizards!. Lots of great programming zines.

I hope you have a great week!

/Nat

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