👓 SNAFFLE definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary

Read SNAFFLE (Cambridge English Dictionary)
snaffle meaning: 1. to take something quickly for yourself, in a way that prevents someone else from having or using it: 2. a type of bit (= a metal bar held in a horse's mouth to control it) usually with a joint in the middle. Learn more.
One of my favorite things about reading The Economist is finding edge case Britishisms that aren’t used in American English.

👓 Nobody Is Moving Our Cheese: American Surplus Reaches Record High | NPR

Read Nobody Is Moving Our Cheese: American Surplus Reaches Record High by Samantha Raphelson (NPR)

It's a stinky time for the American cheese industry.

While Americans consumed nearly 37 pounds per capita in 2017, it was not enough to reduce the country's 1.4 billion-pound cheese surplus, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The glut, which at 900,000 cubic yards is the largest in U.S. history, means that there is enough cheese sitting in cold storage to wrap around the U.S. Capitol.

The stockpile started to build several years ago, in large part because the pace of milk production began to exceed the rates of consumption, says Andrew Novakovic, professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University.

@manton, I’m not sure if anyone would have thought to ask or do such a thing, but does micro.blog provide users any feeds (RSS, JSON, etc.) of the sites the’re subscribed to for reading in a reader that isn’t necessarily micro.blog’s primary interface?

I ask because I’m curious about the ease of maintaining contacts if one wanted a different reader experience, were to leave micro.blog, or simply wanted to transfer from following 100s within micro.blog to follow them using other interfaces?

Any thoughts perhaps of providing an exportable OPML file for making functionality like this easier? Or for taking an OPML file and putting it into a feed reader that supports subscribing to OPML files?

👓 The 7 Characteristics That Can Make A Link “Bad” For SEO | Search Engine Land

Read The 7 Characteristics That Can Make A Link "Bad" For SEO (Search Engine Land)
Search Engine Land is the leading industry source for daily, must-read news and in-depth analysis about search engine technology.

👓 Optimizing for Accessibility + SEO: Formatting & Link Overlaps | Moz

Read Optimizing for Accessibility + SEO: Formatting & Link Overlaps (Moz)
Do you know the overlaps between SEO and accessibility? If you’re optimizing for search engines, you’re also affecting how people using assistive technologies experience your site. Let's examine the effects and best practices for keyword usage, text formatting, and links.

📺 Meet the Press: January 13, 2019 | S71 E7115 | NBC

Watched Meet the Press: January 13, 2019 | S71 E7115 from NBC

When will the government shutdown end? The bombshell Russia story from the New York Times: is Trump working for Russia?
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas); Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.); former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo); roundtable discussion with Cornell Belcher, Al Cardenas (American Conservative Union), Carol Lee (Wall Street Journal) and Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal)

Meet the Press: 1-13-19 When Will this end? teaser plackard

Somewhat interesting to note that the source for the web page for this episode includes the non-standardized meta data "sameAs":"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103396/". This feels reminiscent of the function of the microformats for u-syndication or rel-syndication which gives the folks at the network a trail to the copy of the data for the episode that they likely syndicated to imdb.com so that it’s findable there. Sadly, the URL link incorrectly points to a page for Dateline, so I’m not sure if their data is pointing to the right place, though it appears that the data for the episode on imdb.com is correct for this episode. It would also be nice if they were using the correct markup so that web parsers and crawlers would pick up the data properly.

👓 Zuckerberg San Francisco General’s aggressive tactics leave patients with big bills | Vox

Read A $20,243 bike crash: Zuckerberg hospital’s aggressive tactics leave patients with big bills by Sarah Kliff (Vox)
I spent a year writing about ER bills. Zuckerberg San Francisco General has the most surprising billing practices I’ve seen.

👓 F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia | New York Times

Read F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia (New York Times)
The investigation, whose fate is unclear, led counterintelligence investigators to consider an explosive question: whether the president’s actions constituted a possible threat to national security.

👓 Joshua Tree National Park’s Signature Trees Are Among Shutdown Victims | New York Times

Read Joshua Tree National Park’s Signature Trees Are Among Shutdown Victims (New York Times)
The park said that an unspecified number of its spiky-leafed trees had been destroyed by visitors during the shutdown.

📺 “Face the Nation” on January 13, 2019 | CBS

Watched "Face the Nation" on January 13, 2019 from CBS News

On this "Face the Nation" broadcast moderated by Margaret Brennan:

  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (read more)
  • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (read more)
  • Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro (read more) (full interview)
  • Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson (read more)
  • Michael Crowley, Jeffrey Goldberg, David Nakamura, Seung Min Kim (watch)

📖 Read pages 1-55 of 215 of Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

📖 Read pages 1-55 of 215 of Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Interesting to read this while thinking about policy and government and some recent works of Francis Fukuyama all amidst the backdrop of the me too movement.

Odd that in a society that still has and can value words, that no one practices religion. References to the object of a cross that apparently no one remembers anymore.

Interesting themes on the importance of art and remembering developing.

📺 "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo" Empty Nesters | Netflix

Watched "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo" Empty Nesters from Netflix
These episodes don’t really do a very good job of selling the stronger ideas in her books. They’re vaguely entertaining, but could be much more content rich, particularly with the outlines and details she’s got in her source material. The problem is compounded by the fact that the families they’re featuring aren’t really that interesting or watchable.