Links: Blogrolling 2022

It's been awhile since I updated the old blogroll, so here are some additions:

Pistol-Training.com, a website founded by the late, great Todd Louis Green, is back thanks to the efforts of one of Todd's close friends and training partners, retired federal agent and SWAT officer SLG. As SLG describes it, the site will remain "a blog for like-minded people to learn and discuss various firearms-related topics," with a focus on pistols but also some coverage of other aspects of the firearms world.

Polygon was founded in 2012 by editors from video game sites Joystiq, Kotaku and The Escapist, with a focus on longform articles and the developers behind the games. Some of the site's takes are unnecessarily contrarian (like its lower-than-average score for The Last of Us, one of the PS3's best titles), but overall this is a good place to keep up with video game news.

Honorable Mention

The Ringer - One of my favorite sports websites back in the day was Bill Simmons's Grantland. The Ringer is sort of like Grantland 2.0: mostly trenchant commentary on mainstream sports, mixed in with frequent diversions into movies, TV, video games, and other aspects of pop culture and current events. Occasionally, those topics intersect, like when the site ran an exposé that brought down Mike Richards, putative host of Jeopardy! after the death of Alex Trebek. It's not quite a "gaming blog," so it doesn't belong on the blogroll, but it's well worth reading.

TV: Cobra Kai

There's a fine line between farce and stupidity, and it's toed especially well by the streaming series Cobra Kai (now on Netflix after two years as a YouTube Red exclusive):

Cobra Kai is a sequel to the Karate Kid movies (except for the Jackie Chan reboot).  The antagonist of the first film, a down-on-his-luck Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), opens a karate dojo and sparks the ire of series hero Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio).  The premise sounds absolutely terrible on paper, but the series works better than it has any right to, as it's zealously faithful to the original material while allowing its charismatic young cast of 20-somethings-playing-high-schoolers to shine.

When characters say things like "Half the kids in school know karate now" or "If you would have told me a year ago that our family's safety depended on winning a karate tournament, I would have thought you were joking," they do it with a straight face, giving the show just enough seriousness for dramatic stakes.  All of that leads up to lengthy, ridiculous karate rumbles, where the entire cast slugs it out with nary a teacher, police officer, or adult intervening:

Sports: 21

I've blogged about Rafael Nadal's epics in the Australian open for years now, and I even had the chance to see him play live in one of Andy Roddick's last great wins, but what I saw today was special even by those standards.  Nadal won a record 21st major title, breaking a tie with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic:

It's a well-deserved, historic championship run from Rafa that thankfully overshadows the mess that started this year's Australian Open, where Djokovic was deported, undeported, and then deported again for not being vaccinated. Novak's loss is Rafa's gain, and with the French Open just a few months away, there's every chance for the Mallorcan master to add to his Grand Slam tally.

Books: New Year's Resolution Double Feature

2021 really flew by, didn't it? It was the year most of us emerged from the pandemic, hopefully with some healthier routines. Here are two books that might inspire you to take care of yourself in the "new normal":

The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg

This book looks into the mechanisms underlying everything from relatively simple routines (brushing your teeth) to tragic addictions (gambling and drugs). Journalist Charles Duhigg posits that what we do is not really driven by notions like motivation, drive, and willpower, but by habits - behavioral loops consisting of cues, routines, and rewards.  The book's claim is that if you can change parts of the habit loop, you can change your habits, and changing your habits becomes tantamount to changing yourself. I'm not sure how much of that is right, but it couldn't hurt to try it for a New Year's resolution.

Exercised, by Daniel E. Lieberman

I took up running in a big way in 2021, and Exercised, a book by Harvard biology professor Daniel Lieberman, explains both why humans evolved to benefit from everyday physical exercise...and why so many of us in the modern world hate to do it. Lieberman punctures various myths (you need 8 hours of sleep every night, it's normal to be less active as we age) from the perspective of evolutionary biology and anthropology, including studies of the few remaining hunter-gather cultures. The upshot? To paraphrase The Shawshank Redemption, get busy moving or get busy dying.