Six words, seven heros, twenty years
Hi, I’m John Tolva!
The Ampcamper
How I hauled myself, two teens, an 80 lb dog, and a whole load of crap 4000+ miles across six states in twenty days using an electric vehicle. And survived to tell the tale.
The Terror Tourist
Episode 1: The Ghosts of Colorado
A roughly monthly exploration of places in horror fiction — real or imagined, geographical or psychological — culled from The Heavy Leather Horror Show podcast and sent to your inbox. Subscribe to the podcast and/or the newsletter.
Views From The Tank
Coral and fish photos, water chemistry data, and notes on home reef-keeping. Dive in.
Marginalia
Stuff I’ve found interesting from around the web lately.
NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again.
A 600-Year-Old Blueprint for Weathering Climate Change
During the Little Ice Age, Native North Americans devised whole new economic, social, and political structures. Around the year 1300, the Huhugam great chief Siwani ruled over a mighty city near what is now Phoenix, Arizona.
UrbanistAI
UrbanistAI enables human-AI cooperation to reimagine the future of our cities. The big rethink in cities starts with harnessing the power of collective intelligence.
Heinz Is Putting Up Ketchup-Dispensers To Tempt Chicagoans With Forbidden Condiment
CHICAGO — There are some Chicago restaurants that will show you the door if you ask for ketchup. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
The fish doorbell
See a fish? Ring the bell! Welcome to the Fish Doorbell. Will you help fish pass the city boat lock?
Against Disruption: On the Bulletpointization of Books
It’s the beginning of a new year and you might have seen, floating around on social media, lists like 52 Books To Read in 2024 or 42 Books That Will Change Your Life posted by Library Mindset, an account with 4.6 million Instagram followers.
The Great Freight-Train Heists of the 21st Century
Of all the dozens of suspected thieves questioned by the detectives of the Train Burglary Task Force at the Los Angeles Police Department during the months they spent investigating the rise in theft from the city’s freight trains, one man stood out.
The ‘Chicago Rat Hole’ Is The City’s Hottest New Tourist Attraction
ROSCOE VILLAGE — Chicago is the rattiest city in the nation — and has a rat-shaped hole in the sidewalk to show for it.
To Own the Future, Read Shakespeare
many times a year, as if on a hidden schedule, some tech person, often venture-capital-adjacent, types out a thought on social media like “The only thing liberal arts majors are good for is scrubbing floors while I punch them” and hits Send.
How Big is YouTube?
How big is YouTube? I got interested in this question a few years ago, when I started writing about the “denominator problem”. A great deal of social media research focuses on finding unwanted behavior – mis/disinformation, hate speech – on platforms.