The Weekly Wrap: February 1, 2026

Short intro this week because we're on a weekend away with friends. Let's get to the Wrap!

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• How to talk to kids when the news is heavy. [Now What]
• A useful recommendation for how to build your streaming services. [Things that Make Me Happy]
• How to talk to students about what's happening. [The AI School Librarians Newsletter]
• Ways to communicate about the changes to vaccine recommendations. [Your Local Epidemiologist] 

• Our intertwined human evolution. [The Daily]
• The real Cyrano may be better than the legend. [Noble Blood]
• A beautiful meditation on caring. [Atlas Obscura]
• The power of the clerical collar. [Articles of Interest]

• I bet this guy is a great professor. [aarondinin]
• House of Dynamite was advertised heavily in the DC area.  I love Kathryn Bigelow directed films and this one is stacked with a great cast. The plot is a high velocity ride the entire time. This story centers around competent people reacting as you'd hope they would. People who like closure may not like this one... [Netflix]
• Josh O'Connor carries Wake Up Dead Man. After The Crown, I thought I wouldn't be able to see him as anything but Prince Charles. I was so wrong. He is suburb in this. The entire cast is great but I've come to expect that with the Knives Out series.  As with the previous ones, this one keeps you guessing until the end but nothing feels out of left field. [Netflix]
• Only a decade and a half behind the zeitgeist, we finally started Breaking Bad. It's as good as everyone said it was. I'm just surprised by the lack of meth cooking. I thought it would be more about the drug trade. At least in the first two season it's more character studies. [Netflix]

• One of my snow day plans was to make soft pretzels with the kiddo. It was a complete failure, The dough didn't rise and it was too sticky. We managed to salvage the dough into dense pretzel bites. The texture was off but at least the flavor was good. [Tasty]
• A streak of cold days calls for a slow cooker meal. I put together chicken tikka masala meatballs. The  meatball mixture was sticky so I went outside the ingredient list to add some breadcrumbs to tighten things up. I also added frozen peas to the mix at the same time I added the heavy cream. This one is good. I liked it with both rice and pita. [PureWow]
• I call victory. I made mu shu chicken and told the kiddo they were Asian tacos. She was skeptical but did eat everything. The texture and flavor of the recipe are a touch one note. I added peanuts for crunch and sriracha for spice. [Weelicious]