Tag: interesting

What’s good on a Friday in March, 2025

Muji fountain pen

Here’s a list of random good things I thought worth sharing this fine Friday:

This Muji fountain pen shown above is one of my favourite writing instruments. But don’t take my word for it, read this: Mini-Review: Muji Fountain Pen – The Well-Appointed Desk. If you can’t find the Muji version of the pen, this pen is also good: Platinum Preppy. (You can order one here.)

This is a really good use of AI: it helps turn waste wood into usable lumber.

I posted this on Bluesky and people loved it: you can go here and listen to different forests!

This piece on the friendship of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien is wonderful.

Do you want to watch some feel good movies this weekend? Then click on that link.

Speaking of movies, it turns out that people love going into the Criterion Closet. It’s a good vehicle.

This is a good story: “Vienna”, a 50-year-old Billy Joel B-side, is now one of his most streamed songs. (Click here for the story.) I was a fan of the song ever since I heard it half a century ago. Glad so many young people love it still.

Also a good thing: finding out that there is a causal effect of video gaming on mental well-being, according to this study done in Japan 2020–2022.

Finally, I love the furniture of Phillip Keefe (seen below). Is it functional? Is it art? I know for one thing: it’s cool and it’s well made. Very good, if not excellent.

Here’s 10 fun things to check out on a Monday

I get it: it’s Monday and you are busy. Fine. But if you need a break for any reason, then check out these 10 cool /  fun /interesting / useful links:

  1. Need gifts for the holidays? Of course you do. The Wirecutter has a list of the best gifts under $25. Nice.
  2. Not to be outdone, the web site Design Milk also has a list of the best modern gifts under 25 bucks as well. Time to go shopping.
  3. I still use RSS, thanks to the Feedly app. If you do too and are on the lookout for more good feeds, then check out thhe rss feed from the CBC . Long live RSS.
  4. As someone who was a fan of the Whole Earth review, I was happy to see it is all now online. You can check out the whole earth index here.
  5. Want to see Spotify top numbers? Click there and you can.
  6. Eras — not centuries, but eras — from now there will be two Africas. As you read this a major fault line is opening up there and a new ocean is forming in Africa along a 35 mile crack that opened up in ethiopia in 2005. Fascinating.
  7. This is fun. You can use this site to build your own customized pencils.
  8. I thought this story in the Paris Review was great: the sofa.
  9. This is fun: whimsical.club.
  10. Finally, I liked these 10 rules of being human from kottke.org.

Ok get back at it. Happy Monday!

What are Spite Houses?


I love this piece on a rather odd thing: The Spite House, an Architectural Phenomenon Built on Rage and Revenge.

Spite houses can be houses or buildings or any structure built not so much to be lived it as they are the express a very negative emotion. Once you know about them, you will be surprised you know more of them than you thought.

I don’t think I’ve ever been that spiteful that I would go through the trouble of spending all the time and money to get back at someone. But that’s not true of everyone, if you read that article.