Featured Links - November 11, 2025

 Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Model of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Shipwreck Museum in Michigan

A Ghost Fleet of Tankers Is Keeping Russia’s War Machine Afloat. The West Can’t Stop It. "How Putin outsmarted the oil sanctions."

Still Haunted by the Edmund Fitzgerald. "50th Anniversary Tribute". Seems appropriate that we are getting our first winter storm on Sunday. 

 Google Docs Gets Smarter. "Audio narration, AI help, and 40 new templates." Many of the new features require an AI-enabled plan, but there are some, like document tabs, that could be quite useful for longer documents.

The Florentine Diamond Resurfaces After 100 Years in Hiding. "A legendary jewel of the Hapsburg dynasty — not seen since 1919 and thought lost, stolen or recut — has actually been safe in a Canadian bank for decades." This is quite a story. 

‘Frankenstein’: How Close Is Guillermo del Toro’s Film to the Original Novel? A Mary Shelley Expert Answers Our Burning Questions. "So, just how well does del Toro’s version stack up against Mary Shelley’s original novel? We asked Julie Carlson, an English professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an expert on the British Romantic period and the Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelley family, for her thoughts." I enjoyed the movie, though I did find it hard to watch in places (many very dark scenes). 

Find cancer clinical trials in Canada. "Helping people living with cancer and healthcare professionals navigate cancer trial options." It's good that Canadians have an alternative to looking in the US for information. 

New laser treatment could stop blindness before it starts. "A new laser treatment may halt dry macular degeneration by using controlled warmth to trigger the eye’s self-repair mechanisms." Of course, it will be years before this becomes widespread, assuming it works. 

I’m never going back to Microsoft Word after mastering this open-source self-hosted tool. "Enter HedgeDoc, the open-source web-based collaborative markdown editor that has changed my writing setup. By running it on my server, I achieved true data independence that Word could never offer." Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have jumped on this, but at this point in my life, I just can't be bothered.