Non-negotiables & 4 lessons from Mr. Rogers

📖 Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring. A fascinating, wonderfully well-written read about my favorite place on the Internet.

👎 Pessimists Archive jogs our collective memory about hysteria, technophobia and moral panic. We were freaking out about phones in 1870. We said women looked at themselves in mirrors too much in 1885. We thought cars were destroying the world in 1896.

🏠 Narooma House is a sanctuary. 10/10 would find peace here.

📸 The NYT lists the 25 most influential magazine covers of all time. The covers themselves are great, but I loved reading the context behind them and stories of creating them.

2️⃣ Keke Palmer on her two non-negotiables with creative projects. “You have to finish everything you said you gonna do. Following through is important, even if it’s not at the level you expect or if things are wrong or it’s hard to get to the finish line. Nobody gets it right on the first try.” Also: “You can’t do nothing alone! You need to get a team with you, at all times.”

Now that’s an architectural folly

🏛️ A love letter to architectural follies. “In the 18th and 19th centuries, follies were popular landscape design features at French and English gardens and estates—particularly those owned by wealthy eccentrics or those with ‘sir’ in front of their names. (Often, there was overlap.)”

✍️ 12 Booker Prize ’25 nominees share their writing spots. Just a few: Notebook on a cemetery bench; MacBook covered with sticky notes by a window looking out over rooftops; iMac against a backdrop of leatherbound volumes.

💧 They made bone glue—oysters taught them how. It’s biodegradable, lowers infection risks and can “set firmly inside the body’s moist, blood-rich environment”. Gross but cool.

🏕️ The strange and curious tale of the last true hermit. Christopher Thomas Knight had no address, no vehicle, did not file a tax return, did not receive mail. He lived completely alone for twenty-seven years, until 1:30AM on April 4, 2013. A deeply human story well worth the read.

🌈 Reading Rainbow to return. The internet’s most enthusiastic librarian, Mychal Threets, filling LeVar Burton’s shoes. Excellent news!