Dan Jones

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the documentary about Fred Rogers, is out tomorrow in select cities.¹ Tim Grierson interviewed director Morgan Neville about the film for MEL magazine and Neville revealed this incredible story about how Rogers used to go back and edit some of his shows so they’d play better for children as times changed.

There’s one detail that I really liked that’s not in the film, which is he felt like the shows should be evergreen. As he often said, the outside world of the child changes, but the inside of the child never changes. So he thought his shows should play the same to two-year-olds now or 20 years ago. But as the years would go on, he would find things that had happened in old episodes that didn’t feel current, where maybe he used a pronoun “he” instead of “they” — or he met a woman and presumed that she was a housewife. So he would put on the same clothes and go back and shoot inserts and fix old episodes so that they felt as current as possible, so that he could stand by them 100 percent. I’ve never heard of that happening — it’s kind of amazing.

Amazing. As someone who regularly goes back into my archive to append updates to old entries, I love this anecdote so much.

1. I’m really trying to channel Mister Rogers right now because I won’t be able to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor? for a few weeks because it’s not playing anywhere near where I live and my schedule won’t allow for a roadtrip. I am frustrated and a little angry about this, Mister Rogers. What should I do?↩

Santa’s data collection has always been compliant with GDPR, so he has no need to change his ways. The nature of his data collection is more transparent than most companies, and he is open to updating his records if you contact one of his representatives.

The legitimate business purpose of his data collection is to create a list of those who are naughty and nice this year:

He’s making a list And checking it twice;

Gonna find out Who’s naughty and nice

Santa Claus is coming to town

Santa is Christian priest (bishop as far as I remember). He is covered by exemption:

The new Regulation will maintain the existing exemption which allows churches and other bodies with a ‘religious… aim’ to process sensitive data:

• ‘in the course of its legitimate activities…’;
• ‘…with appropriate safeguards’;
• ‘…on condition that the processing relates solely to the members or to former members of the body or to persons who have regular contact with it in connection with its purposes’; and
• on condition that ‘the data are not disclosed outside that body without the consent of the data subject’.

In December 1951, British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote a piece for the NY Times Magazine titled The Best Answer to Fanaticism — Liberalism with a subhead that says “Its calm search for truth, viewed as dangerous in many places, remains the hope of humanity.” At the end of the article, he offers a list of ten commandments for living in the spirit of liberalism:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2. Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3. Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

9. Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Over the past few years, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to keep an open mind about many issues, particularly on those related to politics. Remaining curious and generous about new & different ideas, especially in public, is perhaps more challenging than it was in Russell’s time. We are bombarded on all sides by propaganda, conspiracy theories, and broadly discredited theories from the past pushed upon us by entertainment news outlets and social media algorithms — we’re under a constant denial-of-service attack on our ability to think and reason.

We can’t reasonably be expected to give serious consideration to ideas like “the Holocaust didn’t happen”, “the Earth is flat”, “the Newtown massacre was faked”, “let’s try slavery again”, “vaccines cause autism”, and “anthropogenic climate change is a myth” — the evidence just doesn’t support any of it — but playing constant defense against all this crap makes it difficult to have good & important discussions with those we might disagree with about things like education, the role of national borders in a extremely mobile world, how to address our changing climate, systemic racism & discrimination, gun violence, healthcare, and dozens of other important issues. Perhaps with Russell’s guidelines in mind, we can make some progress on that front.

For these two videos, FunWithGuru collected scenes from movies & TV that can trigger ASMR. He featured movies like Phantom Thread (rustling cloth) and Amelie (whispering) as well as well as calmer moments from more unlikely fare like Inglourious Basterds, Edward Scissorhands, and The Office. The clips show ASMR staples like calm talking, people quietly performing tasks, whispering, hair brushing, pouring water, and rustling paper.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for Motherboard:

But iOS 12’s killer feature might be something that’s been rumored for a while and wasn’t discussed at Apple’s event. It’s called USB Restricted Mode, and Apple has been including it in some of the iOS beta releases since iOS 11.3.

The feature essentially forces users to unlock the iPhone with the passcode when connecting it to a USB accessory everytime the phone has not been unlocked for one hour. That includes the iPhone unlocking devices that companies such as Cellebrite or GrayShift make, which police departments all over the world use to hack into seized iPhones.

I love this feature. So clever.

Captain Picard Facepalm Bust

“I Am A Recently Divorced And Laid-Off Middle-Aged Man With A Lot Of Health Problems, And Everything I Say Is Incredibly Depressing. Ask Questions At Me” is one of the bleakest, funniest, most existentially absurd things I have ever read.

It’s structured like a Reddit AMA, so you have to read through the comments to get to the good bits, and the accumulative effect is bigger than any one punchline. A sample:

I got fired from my Pepsi job because one of my coworkers stuck a sign on my back that said “PROUD MURDERER OF JONBENET RAMSEY,” and the regional supervisor who was visiting that day took it at face value. I did not discover the sign until the following week, when I wore the same shirt again to a custody hearing and the judge cited it as justification for denying me visitation rights. Unfortunately, the sign on my back was perceived as a murder confession, and the company apparently reserves the right to withhold severance if termination comes as a result of criminal activity. So no severance for ol’ Ronald.

Sadly, the day I got fired was also the day of my 30th anniversary at Pepsi, and when my boss called me into his office I thought he was going to honor me. That was not the case.

Ronald also tries to get a dog to cheer himself up (he loses his beloved family dog in the divorce), but turns out to be allergic to it; the shelter refuses to take the dog back because “it they said ‘smelled too much like me.’” He chats up workers at the cellular phone stall so he can have human contact and reminisce about having a family plan. If this kind of black humor does anything for you, trust me, you should check this out.

As Matt Novak tweeted, “I’d just like to say that Nick Denton would be very proud if he had lived to see Kinja used like this. Clickhole is amazing. RIP Nick Denton.”

Good advice! Source of advice, little iffy!

Bob Ross Heat Changing Mug!

Texts From Superheroes

Stan Carey created a quiz for Macmillan Dictionary that “presents 10 words used as both nouns and verbs, and asks which came first. After answering, you’ll learn a little about the history of each usage.” I got to it from his post about it, where you will find more details; I got 7/10 (“Excellent. Well done!”), and would have gotten at least one more right except that (probably under the influence of the recent Slavic quiz) I assumed it was way tricksier than it turned out to be. Don’t make the same mistake; just put down what you think is right, and may you speed well!

BBC Culture recently polled authors, journalists, and other literary types from 35 different countries and asked them “to nominate up to five fictional stories they felt had shaped mindsets or influenced history”. From the responses, they compiled a list of 100 stories that shaped the world. Here’s the top 5:

5. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
3. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)

The Harry Potter series, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and Jane Eyre are also included in the top 20. Oddly, the Hebrew Bible, Christian Bible, Koran, and other religious texts are nowhere to be found on the list. A story like the four gospels of the New Testament has surely changed the world much more than all of the other titles on the list combined. (via fave5)