In No Particular Order

Jeopardy! is by far my favourite game show. It’s got a fun gimmick, clever clues, a fast pace, and iconic music and sound design. It’s overflowing with wit and charm, and I like it a lot.

I like how a silly 19th-century English schoolyard trend gave us “soccer” as a cute short form of “association football”. And I like how the word is so catchy that this adorable Victorian slang managed to become a semi-official name for the sport.

One of those rare, wonderful songs where, the first time I heard it, I felt compelled to just sit there and listen in awe. It’s a perfect country song and his voice is perfectly suited to it.

Maybe I’m a little biased because it’s the only video game (series) I’m good at. Or maybe it’s the only game I’m good at because it’s so addictive that I’ve got thousands of hours of practice in over the years. Either way, instead of writing about how much I like Tetris, I’m gonna go play … Read more

Wouldn’t it be amazing if everything that goes wrong with our bodies could be treated by just putting a bit of glass in front of it?

It’s a constructed language for a fictional race of alien warriors, designed to seem as alien as possible to as many people as possible while still being usable by human actors. It manages the trick pretty well, yet if you’re more dedicated than I am, you can actually learn and use it on your own. … Read more

They’re not my favourite team, but that classic football-boat is the best damn logo in sports.

Those little twisty puzzles are brilliant. The basic design also allows for tons of variations in shape, size and complexity, which range from deceptively simple to deceptively complicated. They can also serve as decent fidget toys. And, pro tip: solving them is a surprisingly easy way to convince people around you that you’re smarter than … Read more

It’s cool how observing solar eclipses has led to so many scientific insights. It’s cool that our understanding of the universe, flawed as it may be, lets us predict eclipse paths so precisely and so far in advance. And it’s just primally cool when you get to watch (THROUGH APPROVED EYEWEAR) the moon blocking out … Read more

… when I’m watching a judged sport, and the athlete does something that looks extremely impressive to me, but then the commentator says “Oh noooo…” Remember, Olympians: even when you fuck up, you’re probably still accomplishing something that seems impossibly cool to us civilians.