My dislike of Facebook and Instagram is probably obviously. I haven’t been on either service in years, but someone on Metafilter shared this one-page site created by Jon Oliver’s team and I thought it was worth sharing: How to Make Yourself Less Valuable to Meta, which tells you the steps you should take to best protect your data when using those services.

Foto is a relatively new app for iPhone and Android that works similar to how Instagram worked before it got plagued with ads, commercialism, and other things that complicated its simplicity. Some differences:

• Foto claims it will always be ad-free
• Foto does not crop your photos or force an aspect-ratio on you
• No video
• Not owned by a billionaire
• Publishes a Roadmap of upcoming features
• Has free and paid-tiers

Kevin Kelly's got some great travel tips:

If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance. They fulfill their filial duty and you will get easy entry into a local’s home, and a very high chance to taste some home cooking. Mother, driver, and you leave happy. This trick rarely fails.

I've done this with housekeepers in Cuba and the Dominican and got some great meals and conversation. Offer a local restaurant price and get a terrific home cooked meal.

If you detect slightly more people moving in one direction over another, follow them. If you keep following this “gradient” of human movement, you will eventually land on something interesting—a market, a parade, a birthday party, an outdoor dance, a festival. 

It doesn't have to groups. I also follow interesting-looking people and have ended up at great restaurants, and once, in Spain, watched a religious parade that I would have otherwise completely missed.

Lots more on KK's site: 50 Years of Travel Tips.

Ugh, this is depressing. BBC Eye Investigations found an "Indian pharmaceutical company is manufacturing unlicensed, highly addictive opioids and exporting them illegally to West Africa where they are driving a major public health crisis in countries including Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote D'Ivoire."

Full article: BBC Undercover Filming Exposes Indian Pharma Firm Fuelling Opioid Crisis contains footage of the exec talking about his ideal target market of teenagers, saying that it's very unhealthy for them but they just want to get high and this is the way business is done today.

The first four pictures are from DiDonato's Home series. The last two are from the Elsewhere series.

Everything visible at BookeDiDonato.com.

Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris has been made into two films, one by Andrai Tarkovsky and the other by Stephen Soderbergh. Honestly, I cannot stand either one (though the Cliff Martinez score for the Soderbergh film is delightful).

The novel has been published in numerous languages in dozes of editions. The Hype & Hyper site has cataloged a ton of them. Wonderful to see how one title can inspire so many different interpretations.

‘A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema’ is an exhibition showing at Milan’s Fondazione Prada’s Osservatorio from January 30th to September 8, 2025.

ArtNet’s got a great article on the exhibit: From ‘Raging Bull’ to ‘Un Chien Andalou’—A New Show Traces Cinema’s Greatest Storyboards.

Via Metafilter

Ana Cuba takes great pictures.

More on Cuba's site.

Mikkel Eye is an Architectural Designer who posts pictures of trees to his site, Meye.dk.

Mikkel explains: "All the trees are available as high quality PNG’s with transparent background. The trees are free to use for anyone who wants to add plantings to their visualizations, sections, and diagrams within the fields of landscape architecture, architecture, or urban planning. However, your project should be in focus. The trees of Meye are not to be used as free standing pictures or for advertisements."

You can filter by Species and Season. Niche-y, but for those in need: great resource well done.

The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change offers links to chapters on Paleontological Research Institution's Digital Encyclopedia of Earth Science and Here on Earth: Regional Guides.