John Cox

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Good Housekeeping

Nutrition Experts Share the Surprising Health Benefits of Dates

A Good Housekeeping rundown of why dates earn their "superfruit" billing, drawing on a Johns Hopkins physician and a dietitian. It argues that despite their high sugar and calorie counts (about 266 calories and 64g sugar per four Medjools), dates have a low glycemic index thanks to fiber, and they supply polyphenol antioxidants that may support heart and bone health, though their calcium, magnesium and phosphorus are too low to count as "good sources" (copper is). The practical takeaways are a serving of two or three Medjools a day and a list of ways to use them, such as stuffed with nut butter, in oatmeal, salads, energy bites, smoothies, or blended with cacao for brownie bites.

Permalink foodnutritionhealthhealthy eating

Men's Health UK

The Kettlebell Windmill Tests 3 Key Areas of Strength for Men Over 40 – Here's How to Master It

Coach Cameron Martin argues the kettlebell windmill is a deceptively simple diagnostic: by testing whether your hips can hinge and rotate, your core can stabilise a load, and your shoulder can stay strong overhead, it exposes the weaknesses behind the low back, hip and shoulder complaints men voice most. The piece walks through the technique (press the bell overhead, keep your eyes on it, hinge back with a flat back, slide the free hand toward the opposite foot, then drive the hips forward to stand) and explains how struggles at specific points point to limited hip mobility or shoulder control. It also offers a kneeling variation and advice to start light and add load gradually, and ends with a promotion for a Men's Health app training plan.

Permalink fitnessexercise

Family Handyman

What’s Downshifting? The Trend That’s Helping Homeowners Do More With Less

Downshifting is presented as a way for homeowners to cut spending, clutter, and upkeep without necessarily moving, which is what separates it from downsizing. It draws on David Holmgren's definition of a conscious shift toward less consumption, complexity, and status seeking, and suggests starting small: clearing storage-filled spaces, borrowing tools, repairing instead of replacing, growing some vegetables, or trimming utility bills. The piece also tempers the savings pitch, noting that a smaller home doesn't automatically mean smaller bills, and that tradeoffs like family space, longer commutes, and the time DIY work takes can offset the benefits.

Permalink minimalismlifestylehomebudget

Claude

Building agents: When to fold subagents into your main agent loop | Claude by Anthropic

Anthropic's Applied AI team argues that many enterprise agents built as orchestrators with router, planner, and domain subagents work better, and often cheaper and faster, when folded into a single agent loop that uses skills and tool search for progressive disclosure. They blame multi-agent sprawl on org-chart-shaped design (Conway's law): lossy handoffs, "Frankenprompt" system prompts, overly local evals, and added latency (one customer saw roughly 2x faster runtime with a single loop). Subagents still make sense for context bloat, parallel work with disposable context, or tool-selection and instruction conflicts. The piece lays out a staged migration. Build a small end-to-end eval first, then keep subagents as tools as a baseline, then fold them in one at a time as skills plus MCP tools, checking which tasks flip rather than just the overall score. A small central team owns the system prompt and quality, while other teams own skills and tools. It closes by pitching a migration kit of Claude API skills (build-eval, prompt-audit, hillclimb, cost-optimize) that guides this process, with a demo on a mock system.

Permalink aisoftware

The MoCo Show

Three Maryland Delis Named Among the Best in America - The MoCo Show

Cheapism's customer-based ranking of the "27 Best Delis Across America" includes three Maryland spots: Attman's Delicatessen (Baltimore and Park Potomac), Chick & Ruth's Delly in Annapolis, and Parkway Deli in Silver Spring. Attman's, founded in 1915 and still family-run, was praised for its sprawling menu and combo sandwiches. Chick & Ruth's is known for house-baked bread, sandwiches named after local politicians, and a "Colossal" Reuben-and-milkshake eating challenge. Parkway, open since 1963 and run by the founder's grandsons, was noted for oversized sandwiches and its Food Network exposure, and it still keeps its original menu, when corned beef cost $1.15.

Permalink foodrestaurantssandwiches

Scientific American

This implant burns up excess blood sugar with electricity | Scientific American

A wireless, USB-stick-sized implant called ECHO uses a gold-and-platinum catalyst on a graphite wafer to oxidize glucose in the blood into gluconate, removing sugar chemically instead of delivering any drug. In obese diabetic mice it brought blood glucose under control within an hour and held it there for six weeks, also lowering triglycerides and body weight. It ran for two weeks in a closed loop with a smartphone and a commercial glucose monitor, and it showed no scarring or inflammation, unlike cell-based implants. Its striking selectivity for glucose over similar sugars is unexplained ("a lucky strike"), and outside experts say that scaling from mouse to human blood volume and proving long-term safety remain the big open steps.

Permalink technologyhealthscience

slate.com

Why Soylent Green Got 2022 So Wrong

A critic of science-and-society storytelling revisits Soylent Green on the 50th anniversary of its titular "future" year and argues the film's heavy-handed, dogmatic dystopianism actually undercuts its own message about overpopulation, corporate greed, and environmental collapse. He contrasts it unfavorably with Harry Harrison's more nuanced source novel Make Room! Make Room!, contending that preachy apocalyptic certainty tends to entrench existing beliefs rather than change minds, and champions ambiguous, conversation-opening sci-fi (Children of Men, Ex Machina) as a better model for grappling with real present-day crises like climate change and AI.

Permalink technologyenvironmentfilm1970s

letteringjs.com

Lettering.js - A jQuery plugin for radical web typography.

This is the landing page for Lettering.js, a jQuery plugin built to fill a gap in CSS, which doesn't let you control web type down to the individual letter. It pitches the tool for kerning, editorial-style layouts, and keeping typographic code manageable, backed by tongue-in-cheek blurbs from Dan Rubin, Paul Irish, and Frank Chimero. It also points to a gallery of sites using the plugin and invites submissions.

Permalink designjquery

NYT Cooking

Pumpkin Crumb Cake Recipe

This is a recipe page for a pumpkin streusel cake: a brown-sugar, pumpkin-spice batter topped with crumbly streusel and an optional milk glaze, with a homemade spice blend included. What sets it apart is the reader comments below the recipe, which debate doneness (one cook swaps the toothpick test for an instant thermometer, pulling the cake at 205°F), suggest adjusting the pumpkin and oil for more flavor, and note how it behaves in a 9x13 pan.

Permalink recipescookingdessertsbaking

The Drive

People Are Discovering What It Takes To Keep Hot Wheels Prices Around $1 Across Decades

This Drive piece by Adam Ismail argues that a viral claim that Hot Wheels undercarriage detail mirrors civilizational decline is a manipulated, AI-generated hoax built on a small grain of truth. Ismail concedes that cheap mainline cars have lost undercarriage detail and moved to plastic floors, but he shows that bodies and proportions have improved, and that the toy has held its price remarkably well against inflation. The article is useful as a concrete, collector-level rebuttal to a broader nostalgia-driven narrative.

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Eater

The ‘Tavern-Style’ Pizza Takeover | Eater

This Eater piece traces the spread of Midwestern tavern-style pizza, the thin, cracker-crisp, party-cut pie from Chicago, St. Louis, and Milwaukee, as it moves into restaurants across the country. It argues that the style's appeal lies less in the pizza itself than in the convivial, lived-in tavern atmosphere it evokes, using examples like Proof in Portland, Ops in New York, and Bar Next Door in Los Angeles to show how operators are reinterpreting a regional nostalgia for a wider audience.

Permalink foodrestaurants

Vanity Fair

How Jill Biden Concealed the President’s Rapid Deterioration | Vanity Fair

Excerpted from Azadeh Moaveni's book on the East Wing, this piece argues that Jill Biden's First Ladyship was narrow and Joe-centric, shaped by her longtime aide Anthony Bernal's control over her office and by a fear of public exposure, which led her to step back from Afghan women's advocacy and military family events. It closes with the June 2024 debate and her role in the campaign's failure to address Joe Biden's visible decline, framing her as a figure who was both central and opaque.

Permalink politics

kk.org

Belushi / Timeline: A Visual History of Our World – Cool Tools

This issue's first entry reviews Belushi: On a Mission from God, a graphic novel biography by Alberto Schiavone and Matteo Manera, arguing that the book deliberately sidesteps the "why" of John Belushi's drug use in favor of his distinctive absurd-yet-comforting comedy and his meteoric rise. The second entry is Mark Frauenfelder's and Lora Poser-Brown's companion piece on Timeline: A Visual History of Our World, a children's picture-spread history by Peter Goes praised for its minimalist, two-accent color palettes, curving text, and surprising historical tidbits such as Mont Blanc's old name, "Mon Maudit." Together they form a short roundup of books that the reviewers think are best experienced in print.

Permalink historycomicsbooks