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Semi-Rad

Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.

thumbnail from Hiking to Saxer Lucke in Switzerland
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Friday Inspiration 453

Friday Inspiration 453 I have been following Kraig Adams’ YouTube channel for a couple years now, but I don’t think I’ve ever put one of his videos in this newsletter. What I love about it is how anti-YouTube-algorithm it is—usually no talking, with very unhurried, long shots of hiking in beautiful places. Also he absolutely knows how to frame a shot. This one’s in Switzerland, and the actual hiking footage is just under 15 minutes. (video) If you’re not already following my wife, Hilary, on...

thumbnail from This Race Was A Struggle | PaddyO Sucks At

Friday Inspiration 452 I was really happy to see this episode of “PaddyO Sucks At” come out, especially given the ending, and was a little bummed that it would only exist behind the paywall at OutsideOnline, but then they randomly put it on YouTube for free, so everyone can watch it. (I do make a small cameo in it) (video) This is from 2015,but as a fan of old sports photos, I was definitely interested in why they all (at least the indoor ones of basketball and boxing) had a bluish haze, and...

The bike lock, to me, is pursuing peace in hopes of not having to pursue justice. If I take away the possibility of my bike getting stolen, maybe I won’t have to spend any time, energy, or emotion trying to track down a thief (and my bike). [FLOW CHART: P

The Peace > Justice Bike Lock -- If you enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting my work.

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Friday Inspiration 451 This video is probably not for everyone, but if you like Oreos, it will be very ... informative. (video) I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon, and by the time you read it, the Chicago White Sox may have broken the record for most games ever lost in a Major League Baseball season. I’ve been a little interested in this for a few weeks now, not out of schadenfreude, but because people are writing about “losing” in really thoughtful ways, like in this piece. (gift link) I...

thumbnail from Got it Done! Issaquah Alps 100

Friday Inspiration 450 My friend Mark made this video, and I love everything about it: A regular guy runs his own 100-mile ultramarathon in his backyard mountain range (his third attempt at it, BTW), films the whole thing, and gets them both done, with fast food, hallucinations, and a brief section in Crocs. (video) Organizational psychologist Adam Grant seems to be everywhere the past few years—most recently, inside my head with this tough love about “research” actually sometimes sometimes...

thumbnail from The Rut 50K In 4 Minutes

The Rut 50K In 4 Minutes I was standing in the dark in the starting corral at the base of Big Sky Resort this past Sunday morning, with my friend Mitsu and the rest of the 100-plus people in Wave 4 of The Rut 50K, thinking, “How am I going to remember this race in a few years?” Then everybody started running, and so did I, and I forgot to start my watch for the first 300 feet or so. Around the 1.5-mile mark, I decided I’d try to shoot one 10-second video every mile for the rest of the race,...

thumbnail from we make 10 million pizza boxes a week0

Friday Inspiration 449 This is kind of a rapid-fire of short video stories about pizza, and maybe you won’t watch all of them (the whole video is a bit over 8 minutes), but if you watch the first one, you will have seen, maybe for the first time, the World Pizza Games pizza acrobatics competition, a sport I just found out existed yesterday. (video) I don’t often eat ice cream at McDonald’s, but I love that someone made a website (in 2020!) that tells you which McDonald’s ice cream machines...

thumbnail from 3 ways to defend your mind against social media distortions

Friday Inspiration 448 As much as we all at know, deep in our hearts, that social media isn’t real life, it’s interesting to hear some experts talk about how we can keep it from distorting our perspective (also, there’s an ad in this video from about 00:50 until 2:10, if you’d like to skip it)(video) Sure, Shohei Ohtani is impressive as a baseball player because he’s able to succeed at a high level as both a pitcher and a hitter (and base-stealer), but how many other MLB players have ever...

Illustration: Here Be Dragons

I Stopped To Read Some Signs And Let Me Tell You I have run and bicycled a certain one-mile section of the paved riverfront multi-use path in my hometown probably at least 200 or 300 times. A handful of times, I have thought to myself, “I should really stop and read some of these historical plaques along the trail.” I believed there to be two or three of them, and in four years, I never made the minuscule effort to pull off the trail even once for the 60 to 90 seconds required to read them. A...

thumbnail from How I Became A Cruiser Bike Guy

Friday Inspiration 447 I don’t usually put my own videos in this space, but I decided to make my “How I Became A Cruiser Bike Guy” essay into a video, and it seems to be resonating with a few people on YouTube, so I thought I’d share it here. (video) Pretty interesting piece about the “top thinkers” of 1974 trying to predict what the world would be like in 50 years, and what they got right and what they got wrong. One prediction: “commuting for business purposes would go out of style. It...