436. Backpack Full of Stones

Links

• TLC - "Waterfalls"
  Alex was four.
• No Such Thing as a Fish
  QI researchers' podcast; Merlin's been listening for years
• No Such Thing As Debreadtion — No Such Thing As A Fish — Overcast
  The episode Merlin mentioned
• Ken Burns' Jazz
  Episode 9 "The Adventure."
• TLC - "Unpretty"
  Merlin's favorite TLC song.
• Dead Drop
  Spycraft term for passing info without meeting
• Ken Burns' Baseball
  Source of the Lincoln "tiredest" quote
• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
  New Game of Thrones spinoff
• Why Are Icelandic Horses Not Called Ponies? (Iceland Mag)
  Pony-sized but Iceland said it's a horse
• Ship of Theseus (Khan Academy video)
  The philosophical paradox behind "Thesean Horse"
• Saint John Coltrane Church (KQED)
  Yes, there's literally a church for this album
• John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (1965)
  The album that inspired the church
• "Is he quare?"
  Comedy repetition reference
• Harry Enfield
  British comedian; "Is he queer?" sketch
• Paul Whitehouse
  The other half of the old men in the club
• I Spy books (Walter Wick Studio)
  Merlin's analogy for how Claude Code sees things
• "40, 45 Years" - Stewart Lee
  The callback king
• Claude Code (Anthropic)
  The AI tool Merlin won't shut up about
• Rik Mayall: Lord of Misrule
  2014 BBC tribute documentary; narrated by Simon Callow
• The Young Ones (IMDb)
  What you most likely know Rik Mayall from
• The Young Ones - "Bambi" / University Challenge (YouTube)
  Fry, Laurie, Thompson vs. the lads
• Nell (1994)
  Merlin's first memory of Liam Neeson as a lead
• Nell (1994) Trailer
  "Can't abide a canna peas," is a line Merlin feels like he remembers Jodie Foster's Nell saying
• Scotiabank Saddledome: Building Design
  Say it soft, and it's almost like praying.
• Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing
  Bob and Paul's fishing show
• Game of Thrones - "Fire and Blood" (Fandom)
  Season 1 finale; Daenerys and the dragon eggs
• Lucy Liu on the "Dragon Lady" Stereotype (NextShark)
  "I could have been wearing a tuxedo and a blond wig"
• The Slop Hash
  Merlin's project to get you excited about making something cool.
• "I never said she stole my money" has 7 different meanings
  Stress a different word, get a different sentence.
• The Butterfield Diet Plan (YouTube)
  "The results have been increbidle"
• The Night Left Eye Burned Down Andre Rison's Mansion (Investigation Discovery)
  It started with sneakers in a fiberglass bathtub
• Memento Mori
  "Remember you will die"
• Anterograde Amnesia
  The condition from Memento — can't form new memories
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
  García Márquez's masterpiece
• Kieran's very good post
  "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father was discovered and taken by ICE."
• Hammer
  A tool so durable it works across time
• Cottaging: History of the Term (Idiom Origins)
  How they got John Gielgud, Wilfrid Brambell, and poor Brian Epstein.
• Brian Epstein (Beatles Bible)
  Beatles manager; arrested 1957, blackmailed for years, died a month before decriminalization
• Clarke's Three Laws
  "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
• Ducking Stool
  Chair on a stick for dunking witches and scolds
• Roget's Thesaurus (Project Gutenberg)
  Category 1: Existence
• 12 Facts About Taking of Pelham 123 (Mental Floss)
  They fictionalized the dead man's switch to foil copycats
• The 36-Hour Day (Johns Hopkins Press)
  Read it before someone you love has dementia

Some folks I love and admire do come off sounding a little like the same people who loudly hated Little Richard and disco music.

Honestly, sometimes it's legit difficult to notice when we've gotten more emotionally invested than we'd realized in seeming right.

And that shit is a LOT to decide to carry forever.

🐘