Friday, June 9, 2023
Happy Friday and a belated happy Pride from the whole Wolmania team (me).
Item 1: a link
Whenever I see a Defector story with the "this is so stupid" tag, I know it's going to be good. This piece, helpfully titled "Livvy Rizzing Up Baby Gronk, Explained", taught me a lot. For example, there's a kid who goes by Baby Gronk. And then there's a TikTok star named Livvy. And then there's a lacrosse player in Massachusetts who... you know what? Just click on the link. If you hit the paywall, I suggest that you pay for Defector.
Item 2: a list
Layers of the atmosphere, ranked
- Thermosphere (86-372 miles)
- Stratosphere (11-31 miles)
- Troposphere (0-10 miles)
- Exosphere (373-6,213 miles) (I did some math)
- Mesosphere (32-86 miles)
Item 3: a media recommendation
Lisa: Steve Jobs' sabotage and Apple's secret burial
I really enjoyed this video that The Verge put together about the inglorious end of Apple's Lisa computer project. It's a thrilling tale of tech innovation and boring business decisions. (The Lisa's starting price - $10,000 in 1983 dollars - might put Apple's new headset's $3,500 price in perspective.) Here are a couple of other good Verge pieces on the Lisa:
Bonus recommendation: I saw Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse this week and it's a worthy successor to 2018's excellent Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. These films make some impressive, creative animation choices and put pretty much all other comic book movies to shame. I look forward to next year's Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and its inevitable successors, Spider-Man: Somewhere Under the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Hitherto the Spider-Verse.
Item 4: word of the week
Crenellation
For my birthday I would like an enormous three layer Victoria sponge cake with raspberry frosting, covered in pâte à choux crenellations, each occupied by a tiny butterscotch archer with a bow and arrow made of marzipan. No candles and no "happy birthday" song, please.
Item 5: a photograph
Click here to read about the Crépissage - in which the walls of the world's largest mud-brick building are reconstructed every year - and to see photos of the whole process.
See ya!
Thanks for reading! I appreciate you. Let's do it again next week.
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