# phenomenon — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 3 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover phenomenon. Page: Feed: --- ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/19/anthony-bourdain-in-direct-from.html) _2026-08-19 · Mitch's Blog_ Anthony Bourdain in 2005: Direct from cassette . "Two hours turned into a highly personal conversation, recorded on a cassette that sat untouched for twenty years. This week, that tape gets its first public airing, and we discuss Tony’s preferred sucker-punch etiquette, his loyalty to cigarettes and the Chateau Marmont, ayahuasca in Peru, and the talk show he dreamed up with Christopher Walken in… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/19/you-cant-predict-fire-but.html) _2026-08-19 · Mitch's Blog_ "You can’t predict fire. But you can trade on it." California senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff want financial regulators to restrict people from using prediction markets to bet on how wildfires will spread, citing concerns that bettors could resort to arson to secure outcomes. ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/19/the-rest-is-history-looks.html) _2026-08-19 · Mitch's Blog_ The Rest is History looks at the Irish Troubles . There are strong parallels to Israel and the Palestinians. The violence in Northern Ireland eventually ended, which is a cause for cautious hope in Israel/Palestine. ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/18/i-admired-anthony-bourdain-i.html) _2026-08-19 · Mitch's Blog_ I admired Anthony Bourdain. I consumed his interviews and read as many articles by him as I could find. I found "Kitchen Confidential" among the most inspiring books I've read. When he killed himself, I came to think of his public persona as a lie, and stopped watching, listening to or reading him. But now I think the public Bourdain was a character he created, played and tried to live, and I… ## [Why Some People Thrive on Four Hours of Sleep](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/18/why-some-people-thrive-on.html) _2026-08-19 · Mitch's Blog_ "Short sleepers, who make up less than one per cent of the population, spend significantly less time snoozing without any apparent health consequences." By Shayla Love at The New Yorker. I envy these people — I need 8-9 hours. I get less than that most days, often as little as five, and that's no fun. Short sleepers are often lonesome, awake at night when there's nobody around. Is that true for… ## [I don't hate X/Twitter, but I don't see anything pulling me to it either](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/18/i-dont-hate-xtwitter-but.html) _2026-08-18 · Mitch's Blog_ Sure, I oppose Musk — but that's not what keeps me off X. I don't see Zuck as being vastly superior to Musk. Paraphrasing Walter Sobchak from "The Big Lebowski" — Musk is a Nazi but Zuck is a nihilist who is happy to work with Nazis if there is profit in it. And yet I'm active on Facebook and I regularly check Threads. My primary reason for staying off X is that I haven't heard any reason for me… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/17/watched-lanterns-se-pilot-ill.html) _2026-08-18 · Mitch's Blog_ Watched: Lanterns S1E1, Pilot 📺 I’ll stay with it, see where it goes. "Brand New Key" is stuck in my head. ## [Heather Cox Richardson: A brief history of the Yukon Gold Rush, with parallels to the present day](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/17/heather-cox-richardson-a-brief.html) _2026-08-18 · Mitch's Blog_ Harrison’s administration had been “beyond question the best business administration the country has ever seen,” one businessmen’s club declared, and losing that administration would be a calamity, especially since, according to Republicans, Democrats were socialists and anarchists who wanted to destroy America. The Chicago Tribune told readers that a lower tariff would destroy industries and… ## [A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/17/a-philosophers-oneword-theory-to.html) _2026-08-18 · Mitch's Blog_ Derek Thompson interviews Agnes Callard, the University of Chicago professor, about her new theory called "the uni-context." : A context is a set of circumstances that tell you how you should act. For most of human history, contexts were local and multiple. If you wanted to know how you should act, you would look around. Am I in a field? Am I inside my home? Am I in the church? Am I in a bar? You… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/17/gps-has-also-led-us.html) _2026-08-18 · Mitch's Blog_ G.P.S. has also led us to outsource existential skills: locating yourself in space, parsing out your surroundings, staying calm when you don’t know where you are. Do we lose something when we no longer get lost? — Shayla Love at The New Yorker I use GPS to get to places within ten miles of my house that I have been to dozens of times. ## [Prime Noise-Cancelling Picks (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/nFP1SRFSqA9n) _2026-08-18 · **Sponsored**_ Browse Prime-eligible, 4-star-and-up noise-cancelling earbuds with fast shipping and deals ## [Is Ocasio-Cortez Ready for the Glass Cliff?](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/17/is-ocasiocortez-ready-for-the.html) _2026-08-18 · Mitch's Blog_ "Oh, she's running," writes Tressie McMillan Cottom at The New York Times . ⁠"Americans love to turn to women when the house is burning down. Social scientists call it the glass cliff - the phenomenon in which women are recruited to lead failing companies.⁠⁠" I first read this as Cottom saying the United States is failing, and I said to myself, no, not even close. We're certainly declining but we… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/17/im-frustrated-by-the-way.html) _2026-08-17 · Mitch's Blog_ I'm frustrated by the way the fediverse seems to be floundering because I prefer it to Bluesky as technology. And yet Bluesky is more and more where the interesting people are. Which is not to say there are no interesting people on Masto — but they are fewer. ## [🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.16.2026](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/16/mitchellaneous.html) _2026-08-17 · Mitch's Blog_ You’re not? Who knew? at the Western Hills Inn in Euless, Texas - 1960 reddit.com/r/TheWayW… Earle Bergey: Journey for Seven - Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1950 reddit.com/r/RetroFu… Edmund Emshwiller - The Last Spaceship - 1955 reddit.com/r/RetroFu… Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny. Del Rey 1979. Cover art by Darrell K Sweet. A favorite cover on a favorite novel by a favorite writer.… ## [The Moral Unseriousness of Centrist & Conservative Pundits](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/16/the-moral-unseriousness-of-centrist.html) _2026-08-16 · Mitch's Blog_ kottke.org : Jamelle Bouie “chastises American political & cultural pundits for their lack of moral seriousness w/r/t their focus on ‘wokeness’ instead of the real harms being done by the authoritarian Trump regime.” MAGA is building concentration camps, purging Blacks from high levels of the military, taking billions of dollars in bribes, murdering protesters, protecting… ## [Ursula K. Le Guin: A rant about 'technology'](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/16/ursula-k-le-guin-a.html) _2026-08-16 · Mitch's Blog_ Le Guin : “We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called ‘technology’ at all…. One way to illustrate that most technologies are, in fact, pretty ‘hi,’ is to ask yourself of any manmade object, Do I know how to… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/15/corporate-power-approaches-escape-velocity.html) _2026-08-16 · Mitch's Blog_ Corporate Power Approaches Escape Velocity . Hamilton Nolan: A failed Tesla strike in Sweden is a flashing warning light. ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/14/an-example-of-this-phenomenon.html) _2026-08-15 · Mitch's Blog_ An example of this phenomenon, showing it’s not limited to young people: I recently re-read “Fer de Lance,” the first Nero Wolfe detective novel, published in 1934. Two of the characters are wealthy heirs, young men, who have become infatuated with flying. One has a private airfield, owns his own plane and employs a full-time mechanic, the other is studying flying with the first… ## [🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.14.2026](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/14/mitchellaneous.html) _2026-08-14 · Mitch's Blog_ ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/14/zoomers-dont-know-what-usenet.html) _2026-08-14 · Mitch's Blog_ Zoomers don’t know what Usenet is. Allegra Rosenberg has a good explanation, and she continues with a meditation on misconceptions that Generation Z have about life in the 90s and 2000s. This misunderstanding is not unique to GenZ; I think it’s a phenomenon of being in one’s 20s. I remember reading Dickens (possibly “David Copperfield”) and coming across a casual… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/14/an-yearold-san-diego-man.html) _2026-08-14 · Mitch's Blog_ An 18-year-old San Diego man pledd guilty to kicking a sea lion on a viral video. Sea lions are generally unthreatening but they are wild animals and will attack if stressed or threatened. They can get up to 200-800 pounds and have sharp teeth. I watched the video of that kid; he was cruelly picking on an animal that did him no harm. He’s lucky that a criminal sentence is the only penalty he… ## [Persona-led AI publishing (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/2LLnWVmwZtpj) _2026-08-14 · **Sponsored**_ Generate drafts, schedule subdomain publishing, and keep human review where needed. ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/13/the-social-ritual-that-made.html) _2026-08-13 · Mitch's Blog_ “The Social Ritual That Made Me a Better Man: Long live guys' night." “… the couple of evenings a month that I shared with Steve and the others became for me a safe and premeditated truancy from domestic commitments. The ceremony amounted to a pressure valve. Once released, it sent us home tired and inebriated but also kinder, happier, and more giving.” By Thomas Chatterton… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/13/sailors-in-the-uss-lincoln.html) _2026-08-13 · Mitch's Blog_ Sailors in the USS Lincoln and their families are suffering low morale and mental illness due to long deployment. Multiple sailors have tried to go overboard. ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/13/mark-zuckerberg-doesnt-understand-how.html) _2026-08-13 · Mitch's Blog_ Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand how to live . “An AI future of sleek, streamlined, and totally empty relationships.” Elizabeth Lopatto shreds Zuck’s AI manifesto. “Look, I am coming to believe we need a better quality of AI booster…. Is the point of life merely to stockpile accomplishments? If that is what Silicon Valley believes, no wonder all the billionaires seem so… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/13/why-you-cant-find-a.html) _2026-08-13 · Mitch's Blog_ Why you can’t find a primary care doctor . Prevention isn’t a priority in US healthcare. The profit is in damage control. Why should healthcare providers invest in primary care physicians to help you lose weight, eat healthy and get fit when there is so much money to be made in prescription meds and heart surgery? ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/13/on-ai-coding-and-its.html) _2026-08-13 · Mitch's Blog_ On AI Coding and Its Discontents . Cal Newport says the honeymoon phase of AI coding is over. Early advocates of using AI to write code are scaling back their ambitions. Turns out AI-generated code is often buggy, hard to fix and hard to maintain. Coders are still using AI in their work, but in controlled and limited ways. “AI is not a magic ‘infinity machine’ that can solve all… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/13/for-many-americans-it-is.html) _2026-08-13 · Mitch's Blog_ Bobby Brainworms comes to San Diego to make homelessness remediation as successful as the war in Iran and fixing the reflecting pool. ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/12/anthropic-will-watermark-text-and.html) _2026-08-12 · Mitch's Blog_ Anthropic will watermark text and other file types to identify AI-generated content. I’m intrigued by how that would work in text — seems impossible. ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/12/i-loved-the-movie-up.html) _2026-08-12 · Mitch's Blog_ I loved the movie “Up In the Air,” starring George Clooney and Anna Kendrick as contractors who break the bad news to employees during corporate layoffs. I saw it the night I was laid off from a job. It was, I think, my second time being laid off, not my first. The first time you’re laid off it’s traumatic. After that — the second, and subsequent occasions — you’re… ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/11/blueskys-active-user-base-is.html) _2026-08-12 · Mitch's Blog_ Bluesky’s active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app . X is shrinking too but Threads is growing. ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/11/its-amazing-what-you-can.html) _2026-08-11 · Mitch's Blog_ “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” — Harry S Truman ## [Earn crypto for idle GPUs (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/bnVVKMxfzKBa) _2026-08-11 · **Sponsored**_ Run one CLI, host Qwen/Llama/Mistral, and earn BTC, ETH, SOL, or USDC ## [🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.11.2026](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/11/mitchellaneous.html) _2026-08-11 · Mitch's Blog_ ## [🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.9.2026](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/09/mitchellaneous.html) _2026-08-09 · Mitch's Blog_ Breaking out the dino undies? She must be really special. ## [Democratic Socialists and anti-Semitism](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/08/democratic-socialists-and-antisemitism.html) _2026-08-08 · Mitch's Blog_ I spent a few minutes on the Democratic Socialists of America website, paying particular attention to their platform. Much of it is aspirational and utopian and entirely agreeable. This is the world we’d like to see in 25, 50 or 100 years, not necessarily tomorrow. However their singling out of Israel of all the nations of the world for criticism sets off a bright, blinking red light for me.… ## [🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.8.2026](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/08/mitchellaneous.html) _2026-08-08 · Mitch's Blog_ ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/07/i-updated-the-template-for.html) _2026-08-08 · Mitch's Blog_ I updated the template for my newsletter to set the maximum width for the body to 600 pixels, so the newsletter doesn’t stretch alllllllll the way across a widescreen. I had Claude do the code and it appeared to get it right in one shot, which is too good to be true. If you’re reading this in the newsletter and the formatting is funny, please let me know. And if the newsletter is so… ## [🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.6.2026](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/06/mitchellaneous.html) _2026-08-07 · Mitch's Blog_ Shared privately by a friend, who says, “A valid and rational response. Smart kid. Looks into the abyss and averts his eyes.” ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/06/this-is-cool-the-cast.html) _2026-08-06 · Mitch's Blog_ This is cool: The cast of “The Pitt” will do a live table reading of the first broadcast episode of “Star Trek” to celebrate the show’s 60th anniversary and benefit the Writers' Guild Foundation. Noah Wylie will play Kirk, and other cast participating include Katherine LaNasa, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Shabana Azeez and Ayesha Harris ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/06/we-missed-the-san-diego.html) _2026-08-06 · Mitch's Blog_ We missed the San Diego Carnivorous Plant Society Sale and Show. It was last weekend. Darnit! In other news: San Diego has a carnivorous plant society. Is it a society of carnivorous plants? ## [🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.5.2026](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/05/mitchellaneous.html) _2026-08-05 · Mitch's Blog_ ## [(untitled)](https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/05/if-theres-a-movie-based.html) _2026-08-05 · Mitch's Blog_ If there’s a movie based on a book, and you plan to both see the movie and read the book, what order should you do it in? I think most readers would say you should read the book first, but a friend makes a compelling, brief argument for seeing the movie first: the book will have so much more to it than the movie. You watch the movie to get the broad strokes and read the book the appreciate… ## [The Roughness Of The Sea Causes It To Glitter](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/the-roughness-of-the-sea-causes-it) _2026-07-28 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ Choppy waters reflect light from tiny, mirror-like fragments. So does asphalt after a rain. ## [Your Personal Rainbow Is Following You](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/your-personal-rainbow-is-following) _2026-06-28 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ If you can't wait for it to appear, activate it by spraying water into sunlight ## [That Glowing House Time Of Year](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/that-glowing-house-time-of-year) _2026-05-29 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ How the changing position of the setting sun creates a spectacle ## [The Blue Mirror of a Sunlit Swimming Pool](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/the-blue-mirror-of-a-sunlit-swimming) _2026-04-30 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ Six enchanting things to look for while sitting by the water ## [The Best Moonrise Of The Month](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/the-best-moonrise-of-the-month) _2026-03-31 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ Watch the full moon on the night before most people think to look ## [The Power of Lighting Candles at Every Meal, Even a Snack](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/the-power-of-lighting-candles-at) _2026-03-02 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ Inviting an Elemental Force to the Table ## [The Colorful Chaos of Iridescent Clouds](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/the-colorful-chaos-of-iridescent) _2026-01-31 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ Tangled Colors Hide in the Brightness of the Sun ## [A Tribute To The Moiré Effect](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/a-tribute-to-the-moire-effect) _2026-01-02 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ A powerful phenomenon to love and hate ## [How To See Black Snow](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/how-to-see-black-snow) _2025-12-03 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ An appreciation of overcast skies ## [The Optical Phenomenon Lover's Guide to Choosing an Airplane Seat](https://emilywick.substack.com/p/the-optical-phenomena-lovers-guide) _2025-11-04 · Emily Wick · Have You Seen This Phenomenon?_ What to look for from the sunny side and the shady side of the plane