Welcome to the 48th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 47 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I’m putting together my year-end post and want some reader feedback on your years. Here’s a quick survey on 2020.
I don’t consider myself to be much of a “tabs” person. I don’t open a bunch of different links during the day and leave them all lingering until my browser window features nothing but a number of icons for websites that I don’t recognize. At most, I might open a couple windows and leave them minimized on the taskbar and get around to them whenever I can. For me, the mark of a good day is when there is a single Chrome window minimized with my Google Drive and work to-do list as the only two tabs open in it.
Other people are not the same, obviously, and while it is tiresome to debate the different methods of work efficiency, I do appreciate the little glimpse into how people get things done. But for me, the fewer tabs, the better.
That’s a little different on mobile, though. I recently made the discovery on my iPhone that when you open more than 100 Chrome tabs, the button to navigate between them switches from the number to a “:)” emoticon. I do not appreciate this development.
But it prompted me to go back and scroll through all my tabs instead of doing my work yesterday afternoon while I was waiting to go on the radio in New Orleans. Here are some noteworthy tabs:
The first tab is from “Eat This, Not That!” and it is an article titled “The Ultimate Guide to the Best Gluten-Free Fast Food Menu Items”
A Google search for “back that thang up”
Lyrics for “Now I’m In It” by HAIM
A Google search for “penn basketball”
The New York Times homepage
Goldie falafel
A Google search for “tom herman pee chart”
A Google search for “1/2 oz to tbsp”
A Google search for “david newhan”
The 2012 Maryland football schedule
A site that listed every song in “Normal People” by episode
A Google search for “alison roman net worth”
Content Nausea No. 30 [a good one]
A dead link to an apartment listing in Brooklyn
A dead link to a page about Jeri Ryan on Variety.com
A story about this:
Lyrics for “Hit” by Guided by Voices
A Google search for “lorde tennis court lyrics”
Multiple tabs for Kuggis storage boxes at Ikea
Content Nausea No. 30 [again?]
The NBA schedule on ESPN.com
Vice’s Astro Guide
According to the police report, Caner-Medley "took his shirt off and threatened to assault [the man]. ... He was intoxicated and made a statement: 'I'm from Maryland and nobody can beat me.' "
Yoga with Adriene’s November calendar
The college football schedule on ESPN.com
A Google image search for “sam darnold mono”
A Google search for “first day of fall 2020”
The Wikipedia entry for the 2001 NASCAR Winston Cup Series
The MLB schedule on ESPN.com
The PDF of the September 2008 issue of “The Patriot”
The Wikipedia entry for F. Scott Fitzgerald
The MLB schedule on ESPN.com [again?]
The NFL schedule on ESPN.com
The college football scoreboard on ESPN.com
Warby Parker dot com
The college football schedule on ESPN.com [again?]
The college football scoreboard on ESPN.com [again?]
The Wikipedia entry for Steve Kornacki
The Wikipedia entry for Hornung v. Commissioner
“Yes, You Can Choose The Background Color In Your Insta Story — Here’s How”
The college basketball schedule on ESPN.com
The college football schedule on ESPN.com [again??]
Jalen Reagor’s spider chart from the NFL combine
Yoga with Adriene’s December calendar
Wapinitia’s snowdaze EP on Bandcamp
The Cosmic RX chart thing people have been posting
That’s a lot of tabs, and I guess I kind of traced the past year-plus through it. Some of those links, like the SSENSE piece on Snoopy, are from early in the pandemic. The sports schedules are from late summer and into the fall. You can ballpark it.
Perhaps I will treat my Chrome app like I treat my Pocket queue and clean it out at the beginning of the new year. Maybe I will not. There are lots of necessary links that I ned to have immediate access to. But maybe it’s worth tearing it all down and building it back up again. Whenever I open Chrome to get the upcoming schedule for the NFL or college football or college basketball or the NBA, I’m greeted by the smirking “:)” and I do not enjoy it.
Some content I wrote this week
It’s time of the year for the grass again.
Jalen Hurts’ teammates discuss what they have seen from the new Eagles starting quarterback this week.
Jalen Hurts flawlessly deploying a phone metaphor that lends itself to an easy headline.
What Carson Wentz needs to do while benched.
Repurposed an interview I did in April for a story in December because it’s relevant again!
Some content I listened to this week
It’s another dark Friday night inside, so I’m listening to Barrie’s 2019 album, Happy To Be Here. It was one of my favorite flying albums, back when traveling was a thing.
The 122k20 playlist is kind of coming together:
Pillowland by Jam City has been good (ty, Matt, for the rec):
I like this Chastity Belt song a lot, too:
The new Taylor Swift album is underwhelming. “ivy” and “long story short” and maybe “marjorie” might be my favorites, but on the whole, folklore was better and more interesting than evermore. folklore has been nice to revisit in weather that is more suitable for it. but evermore is just kind of sprawling and boring. But you didn’t need me to tell you that an track list featuring both The National and Bon Iver would turn out that way…
Some content I read this week
There was some more Newsletter Discourse on the internet this week, and this roundtable from Discontents was an interesting breakdown of Substack, where you are reading this right now. Otherwise, an erstwhile tech writer was more or less complaining about getting too many emails to read because they signed up for too many email newsletters, so they wanted a separate place to read all of their email newsletters that was not in their email inbox. People continue to fascinate me.
Speaking of newsletters, I finally signed up for Griefbacon, and I enjoyed the first installment I received in my email inbox, where I read it.
From Hazlitt, “The Year in Gossip” was good:
I suppose what I’m saying is I feel uncomfortable positioning myself as any kind of moral arbiter in these situations because I know I live in a glass house. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t, although maybe a lot of people who are in denial about the fact that they do. Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but if you live in one too I can promise you I won’t throw any stones in your direction; I have my own glass house to think of, after all.
History is smelly.
A look at one of those famous Twitter doctors.
The downfall of a cool pastor.
Study Hall on messy advice columns.
Perhaps because it has given us such graphic insight into the thoughts of actual idiots, a surprising amount of social media behavior involves people straining to differentiate themselves from imaginary idiots — idiots whose existence is suggested by no more than a passing video clip or screen shot. It’s not much to go on, but it is more than enough for the lucky few who spend all day on Twitter. It was only a matter of time before someone started stoking this misanthropy on purpose, providing fodder for those who seek validation from this ongoing game of individuation. In fact, this overwrought dynamic seems to be an unavoidable consequence of platform-based discourse, in which the stakes reach unsustainably high levels even — or especially — when the subject is inane. Just imagine what terrible things could transpire if people started using the internet to discuss politics.
Discourse Blog on the Obama book.
The New Republic on the precarious positions of restaurants (still).
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
A new Aldi opened close to me earlier this month. It’s on the ground floor of a blandly ugly new apartment building. It is right next to a historic hotel that has been turned into apartments. The juxtaposition is pretty gross. But there’s now a decent grocery store within walking distance. That’s a win. I guess what I am saying is that I am becoming an Aldi guy now.
I am incredibly unexcited for this.
A great angle of one of the more insane football catches I’ve seen:
This thread of clips from “The Garbage Picking Field Goal Kicking Philadelphia Phenomenon” is wild, especially the cameo by Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie. There was a move about how Tony Danza was good at picking up garbage and kicking a thing on the truck, so he became an NFL kicker. That is wild.
I attempted to check this movie out from the Bel Air Branch of the Harford County Public Library at some point in elementary school, and I had to get parental permission to get it.
Thank you for reading the 48th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon. Please do the survey.
New York City observation
Is it a swan song wildly ahead of itself?
But you never listened to the music did ya?
Talk so loud you don’t hear other people’s problems
Trying not to look, you’re not the person to solve them
“Waste it all on booze”, we all need something to revolve on
Something that you can’t afford
—D.G.