Saturday News Chum Stew: A Holiday Mix

It’s Saturday, and that means its time for some news chum stew to tide you over until the jolly fat guy in a red suit appears:

• Becoming God. For those of you on Windows, this is a really neat tip: How to Create God Mode. No, this isn’t the equivalent of root access; rather, it is a tip that allows you to collect all Windows customization settings in a single folder. Of course, if Windows hides this, who knows what else it is hiding.
• Pissing It Out. All you people that drink artificially sweetened garbage… you’re ruining our water supplies. It turns out that our sewage treatment plants don’t filter everything out, and all those artificial sweetners (as well as other meds) are ending up in the oceans. Of course, that junk is then eaten by some fishes, who are eaten by some fishes, and swallowed by a whale… who grew so old, he decomposed…. but that’s another song.
• Rebranding. Growing up, my daughter used to shop at Torrid. It turns out that Torrid is rebranding itself, moving away from stylish larger clothing to address “the professional world”.
• Holiday Tradition. What is your holiday tradition? Ours is a movie and chinese food. Alas, the LA Times list doesn’t include a single chinese restaurant. Others do something else: such as not celebrating on Christmas at all, but on the night before, with tamales. What’s interesting here is more how the discussion turned into how the LA Times presented the issue — in particular, the headline chosen. My favorite part, however, was this line: “Wrapping paper flew everywhere, like the flesh off a capybara that had fallen in a piranha-infested river.”
• Interesting Articles. Buzzfeed posted a list of their favorite long-form articles of the year. Some of these I found particularly fascinating, such as #5, about how when people become overly sensitive to noise, enough to drive them to suicide.  Another was #10 on the business of freezing people as soon as they die. #13 was on the rise and success of glutimate and umami, otherwise known as MSG. #20, on how a woman was drugged by a stranger was also an interesting read. There was also the strippers guide to wildcatting towns, or the story of Mexico’s monkey woman.

Hopefully, these links make a suitable present to you.

 

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

(Click Here to Comment)