My Mostly Magnificent Miscellany 005

What I Learned About

The NY Times Daily podcast had an interesting feature about metal rights on the bottom of the ocean in international waters. If there’s a way for somebody to make a $hitload of money, they’ll do it … no matter the way in which they have to.

What I Found Funny

The @CatsOfYore Twitter account that documents photos and artwork of cats. Some of the better tweets depicting historical artwork shows that cats have been little assholes for hundreds if not thousands of years.

What Made Me Smile

This story about the owner of Patagonia (the outdoor company, not the region in South America) giving away his company to a non-profit trust. He wants the profits of the $3 billion dollar company, estimated at about $100 million per year, to go to fight climate change. Genuinely heart-warming.

What Website I Used

Noises.online provides a slew of background noise options. I have a squeaky fan in the venting system above my office that can drive me bonkers from time-to-time (yes I’ve put in a ticket requesting to fix it). Usually I’ll just keep music playing, but recently have had a lot of people drop by my office; I have to fumble to switch to the streaming music window and pause the music. So I found this little gem and can have some nice distracting background noise playing that isn’t in the way when I want to talk to somebody in the office.

What I Watched

I watched the first episode of the most expensive TV show ever created, The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power on Amazon. I’ve heard there’s been quite a controversy over the show because Amazon wasn’t able to obtain the rights to “The Silmarillion” by JRR Tolkien (author of Lord of the Rings). The Silmarillion is essentially the “origin story” of the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) “universe”. Since Amazon wasn’t able to obtain those rights, they had to write their own backstory for a lot of things which angered a lot of LOTR purists.

I read The Hobbit ages ago, but haven’t read any of the LOTR books (yet). I quite enjoyed the Peter Jackson movies set in that world. All I can say is that I enjoyed the first episode of the Rings of Power quite a bit. Obviously I need to watch more because it’s going to build. But it was entertaining and looked amazing. So yeah, I’ll watch more of it.

What I’m Listening To

Listening to SiriusXM on the way to work the other day, this song popped up on “90s on 9” and I hadn’t heard from Hootie in a while.