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It’s writing like this that keeps the McSweeney’s app installed on my iPhone. This is a hilarious article. It’s even tempting me to switch my web site to Comic Sans for a week or so in honor of this brilliant writing.

The YLNT guys are brilliant. And so are their fans. Hilarious videos.

Read the whole article. It is absolutely true. When you relieve yourself of all consumer debt, you can live a very happy and wealthy life. Don’t let wants become needs.

This is pure awesome.

The web site, Gravity and Levity, has a great article on the Gompertz law and the odds of surviving through your next year of life. At age 32, I’m looking at just over a 1 in 1500 chance of making it through the year. Exponential decay is sharp, but an exponential within an exponential is so sharp that I can say with 99.999999% certainty that no human will ever live to the age of 130. (Ignoring, of course, the upward shift in the lifetime distribution that will result from future medical advances) ...

According to alphaDictionary: “[H]ere are the 100 most beautiful words in English. How do we know we have the most beautiful? They were chosen by Dr. Goodword (Robert Beard), who has been making dictionaries, creating word lists, and writing poetry for 40 years. For five years he wrote the Word of the Day at yourDictionary.com and since 2004 he has been writing the series, So, What’s the Good Word? here at alphaDictionary. Below is a select list of his favorite poetical words that he used in his poetry—or wishes he had.” ...

(via rossracine.com) Ross Racine designs these amazing subdivisions by hand in Photoshop. The one above looks rather like spaghetti, but I may have driven through one like it once. It took me hours to find my way back out. “Drawn freehand directly on a computer and printed on a high-end inkjet printer, my works do not contain photographs nor scanned material.” There are some really interesting and imaginative designs, if not all entirely functional. Of course, I’ve flown over a good amount of subdivisions that are anything but sensical, so he’s not far off on some of them. ...

The dialect, thought to originate from medieval gipsies, was used by all manner of villains in Shakespeare’s England, becoming known as thieves’ cant or rogues’ cant. But it was thought to have become obsolete until its unexpected revival, believed to have been led by criminal members of the travelling community. The Ministry of Justice is so worried about the use of the code that it has issued a security alert to governors at jails in England and Wales. ...

Being very good at what you do makes you just that: very good. Being very good and being nice: that makes you great. The article is targeted at programmers (or even system administrators), but I think the moral of the story can apply to many different fields. If you are an expert, it can be draining and frustrating when someone else just doesn’t get what you are trying to communicate or when a journeyman makes a novice mistake. ...

I take it you already know, Of tough and bough and cough and dough. Others may stumble, but not you, On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through. Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps. Beware of heard, a dreadful word, That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead — For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’! Watch out for meat and great and threat, ...