Tag: History

Full Metal Jacket Trivia – Joker’s Full Name

Although never spoken in the film, Private Joker’s real name is J.T. Davis (as seen on the back of his PT sweats). He was named after Specialist James T. Davis, the first U.S. casualty of the Vietnam War. He was killed in action on December 22, 1961.

This American Life – Fan Data and Insights

I was first introduced to This American Life about a decade ago, right after the podcast, then a relatively novel media format, got sensationalized by the true crime show Serial. Only later did I find out about the shared DNA between the two shows. Life comes full circle.

Over the past thirty years, since Ira Glass started This American Life, the show has grown from a personal passion project (formerly called Your Radio Playhouse) discussing the everyday lives of ordinary Americans into one that touches millions of listeners, covering major events across the globe and making a real impact on the people its team cares about.

As the show approaches its 900th episode, every one of which I’ve listened to at least once and many more than that, I decided to dissect it and find the recipe for what makes it such a fascinating show to me and millions of others: what it talks about week over week, who has been telling these stories, what makes them so immersive to listen to, and all the real-life impact it has made. Let’s go.

https://milesmeters.com/pieces/this-american-life/

I used 3 weeks to gather data, analyze, and build a site dissecting ~900 episodes of This American Life over 30 years. As a die-hard fan of the show, some insights are as expected (e.g., themes, contributors), but some are genuinely surprising (e.g., songs & artists).

https://www.reddit.com/r/ThisAmericanLife/comments/1wk1scu/900_episodes_over_30_years_data_insights_of_this/

70 Up – Final Installment of Up Film Series

In 1964, Canadian director Paul Almond filmed a group of 14 British schoolchildren aged seven years-old for a documentary called “Seven Up!” examining the lives of kids across class divides. Seven years later, the children were filmed again, this time by British director Michael Apted, for “14 Up.” Apted went on to revisit them every seven years, charting their progress, resulting in a further seven films, each equally spaced seven years apart. The result has become one of the most remarkable and original longitudinal documentary series in the world.

Apted, who died in 2019, did not live to see the final two-part instalment, “70 Up,” the first of which airs Tuesday evening in the U.K. on ITV (a U.S. broadcast hasn’t yet been finalized). The baton was handed to “Amy” director Asif Kapadia, who documents 12 of the surviving septuagenarians as they reflect on their lives (two of the original cohort, Lynn Johnson and Nick Hitchon, died during the course of the series).

https://variety.com/2026/tv/global/70-up-definitive-longitudinal-documentary-1236854131/

SEE ALSO:
https://edhawkes.com/2021/01/10/michael-apted-interview-fresh-air/
https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/1whmgwr/70_up_review_a_deeply_moving_conclusion_for_the/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)

The Rest is History – NYTIMES article on

Part of the delight of the podcast is in their mischievous, but fundamentally good-natured observations about life — its absurdities, contradictions and continuities. For Mr. Holland, the show is popular because it reveals the strange ways of our predecessors while illuminating the common threads that bind us.

“Without having consciously set out to do this,” he said, “I think it is a celebration of the inherent fascination of the past, as the best way to understand how infinite the ways are of being human.”

How ‘The Rest Is History’ Podcast Conquered the World
When two British historians, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, began the show, neither anticipated it would become the top history podcast in the English-speaking world.

Old Days of Internet – Some Remembrances

People who used the internet before 1999, what do you remember?
by
u/Revolutionary_Data86 in
AskReddit

ferminriii
Everything was new. Whatever new website you found, it was the first time you looked at it. There was no YouTube so people were just launching websites to be funny and post jokes and tell stories. You learned about things from your friends. I remember I was on some kind of email list that got emailed picture of the day. It ended up becoming a lot of what was recycled on FARK.com

Richard_Sauce
This is important thing. Like, yeah, dial tones and AOL, lol.

But the important thing was the expansiveness, the sense of discovery, the DIY/self-made nature of everything. Finding and building communities. The internet used to be made and controlled by people before it became a main street of corporately own websites. Nothing but digital chain restaurants now.

And lest you think I’m some rose tinted/everything was better back in the day type…..lots of things were worse then. Discovery was way harder, took effort. You might find a community, forum, site, whatever, only for it to die immediately. The internet was harder to navigate, harder to maintain, less stable, and oh yeah, no streaming video.

Still miss it. If I could hit a button to revert to back then, I would. Even with the trade offs.

Clear_Economics7010
No barriers to entry. Some wacko in a basement would have a website that looked more professional than a university. You would end up reading something only to realize halfway through it was the manifesto of a insane person not an actual PhD.

starkeffect
Having to learn HTML since there was no website-creation software yet.

FoodLionMVP
My friend and I went to a Better Than Ezra concert, and we loved their opening band so much we made an entire Geocities fan page for them. The band actually SIGNED OUR GUESTBOOK! We were maybe 14 years old? We were the coolest.

SnottyMonkey
What was rhe band? I was randomly listening to Better Than Ezra when I read this comment, true story.

FoodLionMVP
The band was called “Convoy.” They had an album called “Black Licorice” that was released around the turn of the century. I don’t know if they were ever heard from again but we definitely had that CD.

No-Author-2358
I first got online in 1993. There was no web browser – it was just typing on a green or amber screen monitor.

The Internet was like DOS. Except you could chat and interact with people all over the planet. Text only.

Happy Birthday Colorado – 150 Years Old

Colorado Day is celebrated annually on August 1st and marks the official 150th anniversary of Colorado’s statehood in 2026 (the historic sesquicentennial), featuring major statewide celebrations at the Colorado State Capitol, Denver Union Station, and History

via google


Here are a few pics in honor of Colorado day

Boulder Flatirons seen from Chautauqua Park

Washington Park, Denver

St Mary’s Lake

Crystal River, on hike to Crystal Mill

Colorado River, from rest area near Glenwood Springs. 

Walker Ranch Loop trail

Day Tripper – The Beatles

“Day Tripper” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a double A-side single with “We Can Work It Out” in December 1965. The song was written primarily by John Lennon with some contributions from Paul McCartney and was credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. Both songs were recorded during the sessions for the band’s Rubber Soul album. The single topped charts in Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway. In the United States, “Day Tripper” peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and “We Can Work It Out” held the top position.

Lennon described “Day Tripper” as a “drug song” in 1970,[10] and in a 2004 interview McCartney said it was “about acid” (LSD).[11] The song title is a play on words referring to both a tourist on a day-trip and a “trip” in the sense of a psychedelic experience.[12] Lennon recalled: “Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferryboat or something. But [the song] was kind of … ‘you’re just a weekend hippie.’ Get it?”[8][13] In Many Years from Now, McCartney says that “Day Tripper” was about sex and drugs; he describes it as “a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was … committed only in part to the idea. Whereas we saw ourselves as full-time trippers …”[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_Tripper

This Day on Slashdot – March 23

2011 Apple Removes Gay Cure App From App Store 917
2010 US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card 826
2008 Network Solutions Suspends Site of Anti-Islam Film 874
2005 When Would You Accept DRM? 1288
2004 The Unhappy World of IT Professionals 981

Re: The Unhappy World of IT Professionals

npistentis writes
“According to an article on ZDNet.com, only 1 in 7 IT professionals rate themselves as “very happy” with their chosen profession- which stands in stark contrast to one in three hairdressers, plumbers and chefs, and one in four florists. But then again, very few plumbers have to deal with users who consistently download BonziBuddy, blindly click on suspicious email attachments and use their cd trays as cupholders.”
Of course, it should be noted that by and large IT professionals earn more money then most other jobs – which I suppose is once again a warning of money != happiness.

Mass Market Paperbacks – End of

Rest in peace, mass market paperbacks.

As reported by Publishers Weekly, book distributor ReaderLink will “stop distributing mass market paperback books at the end of 2025 … the latest blow to a format that has seen its popularity decline for years.”

There are several causes of death for the mass market paperback. One is the reduced cost of designing and producing books in the now ubiquitous trade market format. The cheaper price point for a mass market book is no advantage when it isn’t also cheaper to manufacture.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/27/biblioracle-mass-market-paperbacks/

Crowd Admires Burning Building – Thomas De Quincey Quote

But perhaps the fire may be confined to public buildings. And in any case, after we have paid our tribute of regret to the affair, considered as a calamity, inevitably, and without restraint, we go on to consider it as a stage spectacle. Exclamations of—How grand! How magnificent! arise in a sort of rapture from the crowd. For instance, when Drury Lane was burned down in the first decennium of this century, the falling in of the roof was signalized by a mimic suicide of the protecting Apollo that surmounted and crested the centre of this roof. The god was stationary with his lyre, and seemed looking down upon the fiery ruins that were so rapidly approaching him. Suddenly the supporting timbers below him gave way; a convulsive heave of the billowing flames seemed for a moment to raise the statue; and then, as if on some impulse of despair, the presiding deity appeared not to fall, but to throw himself into the fiery deluge, for he went down head foremost; and in all respects, the descent had the air of a voluntary act. What followed? From every one of the bridges over the river, and from other open areas which commanded the spectacle, there arose a sustained uproar of admiration and sympathy.

On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts
Thomas De Quincey