Month: May 2025

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Everything Everywhere Daily - You Might Enjoy: The Best Idea Yet

Ever wondered how Birkenstocks went from a German cobbler’s passion project 250 years ago to a starring role in the Barbie movie?

Or who created that bottle of Sriracha that is permanently living in your fridge? Did you know that Air Jordans were initially banned by the NBA, or that Super Mario became the best-selling video game character ever thanks to a strategy called “The Infinite Game?”

On Wondery’s new weekly podcast, The Best Idea Yet, Nick Martell and Jack Crivici-Kramer have identified the most viral products of all time and reveal their untold origin stories, plus the bold risk-takers who brought them to life. From the Happy Meal to Levi’s 501 jeans, come for the products you’re obsessed with, stay for the business insights that’ll make you the most interesting person at your next brunch.


Listen on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Python Bytes - #433 Dev in the Arena

Topics covered in this episode:
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Michael #1: git-flight-rules

  • What are "flight rules"?
    • A guide for astronauts (now, programmers using Git) about what to do when things go wrong.
    • Flight Rules are the hard-earned body of knowledge recorded in manuals that list, step-by-step, what to do if X occurs, and why. Essentially, they are extremely detailed, scenario-specific standard operating procedures. [...]
    • NASA has been capturing our missteps, disasters and solutions since the early 1960s, when Mercury-era ground teams first started gathering "lessons learned" into a compendium that now lists thousands of problematic situations, from engine failure to busted hatch handles to computer glitches, and their solutions.
  • Steps for common operations and actions

Brian #2: Uravelling t-strings

  • Brett Cannon
  • Article walks through
    • Evaluating the Python expression
    • Applying specified conversions
    • Applying format specs
    • Using an Interpolation class to hold details of replacement fields
    • Using Template class to hold parsed data
  • Plus, you don’t have to have Python 3.14.0b1 to try this out.
  • The end result is very close to an example used in PEP 750, which you do need 3.14.0b1 to try out.
  • See also:

Michael #3: neohtop

  • Blazing-fast system monitoring for your desktop
  • Features
    • Real-time process monitoring
    • CPU and Memory usage tracking
    • Beautiful, modern UI with dark/light themes
    • Advanced process search and filtering
    • Pin important processes
    • Process management (kill processes)
    • Sort by any column
    • Auto-refresh system stats

Brian #4: Introducing Pyrefly: A new type checker and IDE experience for Python

  • From Facebook / Meta
  • Another Python type checker written in Rust
  • Built with IDE integration in mind from the beginning
  • Principles
    • Performance
    • IDE first
    • Inference (inferring types in untyped code)
    • Open source
  • I mistakenly tried this on the project I support with the most horrible abuses of the dynamic nature of Python, pytest-check. It didn’t go well. But perhaps the project is ready for some refactoring. I’d like to try it soon on a more well behaved project.

Extras

Brian:

Michael:

Joke: Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena, but for programming

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Strict Scrutiny - A Blockbuster Non-Opinion and a Fascism Grab Bag

Melissa, Leah, and Kate kick the show off with a look at the Court’s 4-4 deadlock on Oklahoma’s religious charter school case. Then, it’s a romp through the shadow docket, Judge Jim Ho’s sweaty pleas for attention, Kristi Noem’s humiliating Senate hearing, and selections from Trump’s fascism grab bag. Leah also speaks with Professor Noah Rosenblum of NYU School of Law about the 6-3 decision from the Court allowing the president to fire federal commissioners without cause.

Hosts’ favorite things:

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 

  • 6/12 – NYC
  • 10/4 – Chicago

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Order your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

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What A Day - Assembly Required: Rachel Maddow on Winning America’s Fight Against Fascism

Today, the What A Day team is off. But we’re excited to bring you a recent episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

In the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, we’ve watched Republicans erode American democracy with alarming speed. While this political moment may feel unprecedented, it isn’t new. America has dealt its share of far-right movements, fascist provocateurs, and anti-democratic threats. But time and again, heroes have risen to meet those moments. In this episode, Stacey unpacks how we’ve fought fascism before – and won. She’s joined by the host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.

Subscribe to Assembly Required wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. 

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

Learn & Do More:

  • Be Curious: History can be an extremely useful tool to help us navigate the present. Pick up Rachel Maddow’s book Prequel — now available in paperback anywhere books are sold. Also pick up the Assembly Required Recommended Read: The Dictator’s Learning Curve by William Dobson.
  • Solve problems: The best thing we can do right now is show up and use our voices. There are two key ways to do this. First: call your representatives! Democrat, Republican, Independent — it doesn’t matter. Tell them where you stand and why it matters. Second: get involved locally. Join a protest, volunteer to support a community that is particularly vulnerable right now, donate to a grassroots group in your area. Change starts with showing up, so let’s get to work.
  • Do Good: Not only has Trump waged a war on books, he’s waged a war on independent businesses. So if you’re interested in reading any of the books I mentioned today, or want to pick up our weekly recommended reading, purchase them at a local bookstore. If there isn’t a local option near you, or you just prefer the convenience of online shopping, check out small businesses that operate online — like Octavia’s Bookshelf.
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The Best One Yet - 🌎 Google Maps: The *Actual* ‘Everything App’

Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/


When out-of-work coder Jens Rasmussen couldn’t find directions to a cafe in Copenhagen, he wound up changing navigation forever. Alongside his brother Lars (also an out-of-work coder), Jens developed a radical vision—not just for a faster map, but a vibrant, multi-dimensional platform to help plan your entire life. With maxed-out credit cards, these Danish brothers built a prototype that caught Google co-founder Larry Page's eye—but faced HUGE technical issues to get it over the line. From CIA-funded satellites, to a ""Mad Max"" desert race, the road to Google Maps was a journey in itself that created an $11 billion revenue generator powering everything from Uber to Airbnb. Discover why you should never correct your customers when they make a wrong turn, the power of an SNL name check, and why Google Maps is the best idea yet.


Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet for the untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — and the bold risk takers who made them go viral.


Episodes drop every Tuesday, listen here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/

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Short Wave - The Great Space Race … With Clocks

It's Memorial Day, Short Wavers. This holiday, we bring you a meditation on time ... and clocks. There are hundreds of atomic clocks in orbit right now, perched on satellites all over Earth. We depend on them for GPS location, Internet timing, stock trading and even space navigation. In today's encore episode, hosts Emily Kwong and Regina G. Barber learn how to build a better clock. In order to do that, they ask: How do atomic clocks really work, anyway? What makes a clock precise? And how could that process be improved for even greater accuracy?

- For more about Holly's Optical Atomic Strontium Ion Clock, check out the OASIC project on NASA's website.
- For more about the Longitude Problem, check out Dava Sobel's book, Longitude.

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

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NPR's Book of the Day - Karen Hao’s new book is a skeptical look at Sam Altman and Elon Musk’s AI empire

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit meant to conduct artificial intelligence research that would benefit the general public. In the company's early days, reporter Karen Hao arranged to spend time in OpenAI's offices and noticed the culture there was incredibly secretive. That secrecy raised questions for Hao that ultimately resulted in her new book, Empire of AI. The book is an intimate look at the company behind ChatGPT, but also at the industry-wide race to control AI. In today's episode, she speaks with NPR's Steve Inskeep about early disagreements between founders Sam Altman and Elon Musk, Altman's talents for fundraising and storytelling, and how the AI race is reproducing elements of colonial empire.

To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday

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