To decide, you need to understand ‘micromorts’
My favorite word I learned during the pandemic was “micromort.” I discovered the micromort from a piece in the New York Times by David C. Roberts, which explained that a micromort is measurement used by scientists (and insurance companies) to calculate risk. A micromort, Roberts writes, is equivalent to a one-in-a-million chance of dying. Every behavior, whether it’s jumping out of a plane (seven micromorts) or giving birth (210 micromorts), has a value that can be attached to it. (Much of Roberts’ research can be found in the entertaining book, The Norm Chronicles.)
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Internet Nostalgia
Way back, way back, there you go, there you go
Welcome to part six of our Internet Nostalgia series, which looks back at phenomena that captured the imagination and attention of the Internet for a fleeting moment and then vanished as everyone moved on to something else. This series looks back at those olden times, and what they told us about the Internet, and ourselves. If you have a suggested topic, email me at williamfleitch@yahoo.com. Last week, we looked at The Dancing Baby. This week: Peanut Butter Jelly Time.
Date: 2000–02.
The Story: This is going to sound insane to you, but when I first came across Peanut Butter Jelly…
The best finish I’ve ever seen
I’ve been writing all day, every day, for about 25 years now, so it turns out that a lot of topics that come up in the news, I’ve written about before. So we commence an occasional series — to be prescribed solely as directed — called From the Archives, which republishes old Will Leitch writings when they are relevant to the news of the day. With the first NCAA Tournament in two years commencing, I thought I’d republish my writeup of the end of the legendary Villanova-North Carolina game of April 2016, which remains the greatest ending I’ve ever seen.
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Get your social calendars ready
That picture up there, it’s not just further evidence that there is no such thing as a flattering vaccine selfie. It’s a photo of me, your humble author, getting his first shot of the Moderna vaccine on Monday evening. (Your author also feels obliged to point out that the hoop behind his left ear is from the mask and is not an earring, despite what you may have heard on social media.) …
One year later, an army of remote workers are still making rookie mistakes that lead to burnout
On March 18, 2005, I cleaned out my desk at Registered Rep. magazine, the financial publication I was (I can admit it now) a rather terrible business reporter for, and left a job I’d held for two years. I didn’t leave on bad terms. I liked all my co-workers and there were no sour feelings, but I also didn’t have another job set up. I just knew I wasn’t a very good business reporter, my boss agreed with me, and thus we went our separate ways. I turned in my key card, filled out some paperwork with HR, and hit…
Internet Nostalgia
The world’s first meme, when memes needed much more than the Internet
Welcome to part five of our Internet Nostalgia series, which looks back at phenomena that captured the imagination and attention of the Internet for a fleeting moment and then vanished as everyone moved on to something else. This series looks back at those olden times, and what they told us about the Internet, and ourselves. If you have a suggested topic, email me at williamfleitch@yahoo.com. Last week, we looked at The Harlem Shake. This week: The dancing baby.
Date: Fall 1996.
The Story: If you work in the world of computer animation, you surely know a program called “Autodesk 3ds…
Not everything turned out as bad as we feared
So we have reached the one-year anniversary of March 11, 2020, the unofficial “start” of the pandemic in the United States. There were cases and outbreaks and deaths before March 11, but that day — the day of then-President Trump’s sniffly, error-filled speech, the halting of the NBA season and Tom Hanks’ and Rita Wilson’s positive tests — was when everything changed. That day was when you knew we were going to be in this for a while.
And here we are, one year later, and we have been through so much. There has been so much pain, so much…
The point is to get shots in our arms, not to fight with each other
On Tuesday morning, the New York Times’ Katie Thomas wrote about a site called Dr. B. Dr. B is the sort of site that’s doing what the internet was intended to do back before it became nothing but cat videos and white nationalist memes. It brings people together to provide information in an efficient, helpful way that would be impossible otherwise.
Dr. B is the creation of Cyrus Massoumi, an entrepreneur who had heard about doses of vaccines being wasted because of missed appointments and medical providers being forced to destroy them rather than give them to someone who wants…
Internet Nostalgia
It was insane, and still kind of is
In part four of our new series on the Internet’s olden times, we look at the world of online “comedy.” This is the next installment of our weekly Internet Nostalgia series, which looks back at stories that captured the imagination and attention of the internet for a fleeting moment and then vanished as everyone moved on to something else. The world of the internet moves so quickly that things that happened five years ago might as well be black-and-white newsreel footage at this point. This series looks back at those phenomena and what they told us about the internet, and…
Don’t worry, it will be your turn soon
Social media has been an accelerant to the demise of so many once-foundational aspects of our collective culture, from democracy to journalism to basic human decency, but I have to say, as a 45-year-old human in the month of March in the year of 2021, it has been an absolute blast lately. It won’t stay this way for long; it might not be like this next week. But I can’t stop scrolling right now.
The reason? Vaccine FOMO. After a year of pain and isolation and stress and loss, there is clear reason to believe dawn is coming, that it’s…
