A very nice video about The Broccoli Tree…
Category: Culture
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My Hair is Itchy, or the 29 Stages of a Twitterstorm
It’s long, but you have to read it all. It’s hilarious down to the tiniest details. From BuzzFeed, The 29 Stages Of A Twitterstorm in 2018.
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Culture Can Be the Antidote To Selfishness
I read Seth Godin’s blog pretty much every day. Today’s hit home with me:
The witnesses and the participants
Every history student knows about the tragedy of the commons. When farmers shared grazing land, no one had an incentive to avoid overgrazing, and without individual incentives, the commons degraded until it was useless.
We talk about this as if it’s an inevitable law, a glitch in the system that prevents communities from gaining the benefits of shared resources.
Of course, that’s not true.
Culture permits us to share all sorts of things without having them turn into tragedies. People are capable of standing up to the short-term profit motive, we’re not powerless. We can organize and codify and protect.
It requires us to say, “please don’t,” even more than, “not me.” Culture can be the antidote to selfishness.
In fact, it’s the only thing that is.
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A Really Good Movie
We don’t get to the movies a lot. Busy/Kids/etc. pick your excuse. We obviously skew towards family movies. When we saw Despicable Me 3 there was a preview for Coco that looked good and we put it in our “ought to see” list.
My wife and I took the day after Christmas off, and a movie was on the agenda. Pitch Perfect 3 and The Greatest Showman are also on the family’s list, but Coco came out at Thanksgiving and probably won’t be around long, so that was our choice. I also happened to check the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Name a movie out today with 90% or higher in both the Rotten Tomatoes reviewers score and audience score. There is exactly one. Coco has a crazy 97/96 rating.
And we saw why. My wife cried, the audience applauded at the end. It’s just good.
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Google Year in Search
It’s funny how a company like Google can be tone deaf in many areas, but every year they nail the year in search video…
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Yelling Upstairs
Seth Godin has a short smart blog post every single day. That by itself is impressive. Despite living in a single floor apartment, today’s post hit home with me:
When you’re cooking breakfast and the school bus is coming in just a few minutes, it’s tempting (and apparently efficient) to yell up the stairs. If a recalcitrant teenager is hesitating before heading off to school (I know, sometimes it happens), go ahead and yell.
Good luck with that.
The alternative is to turn off the stove and walk up the stairs. Catch your breath, then have a quiet conversation.
Not efficient, but effective.
This is an almost universal metaphor. We keep finding ways to rationalize various versions of yelling upstairs instead of doing the difficult work of engaging instead.
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Fidget This
In zero gravity, courtesy of NASA…
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Your Teacher Smokes
I like this one from SMBC…
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Atlantic Antic 2017
I’ve blogged about this so many times, please refer to prior year posts. The kiddos are getting older so we actually got to sit down at one place to enjoy food and drinks. It was hot this year, but overall a very nice antic. Food roundup for me:
- alcupurrias (Spanish church)
- corn (who knows, it’s everywhere)
- empenanda (second pass by the Spanish church, seriously good)
- oysters (from French Louie – they said they had 3,000 oysters and ran out)
- fries (same place, really good)
- bratwurst (random German stand)
- pizza (Brado, my local joint)
- gumbo (The Gumbo Bros)
What makes this the best street fair in NYC is that on top of the generic street fair food (not that there’s any wrong with the sausage and peppers truck), the local joints are providing the food, drinks and music. Crazy good fun. I need to burp…
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 