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​Friday Inspiration 423​

I have a quick favor to ask: If you have two minutes, would you help me out and take this 9-question anonymous survey about this newsletter? I’ve never collected any information about anyone who reads this (I’m trying to be polite), but that also means I have no real way of knowing who is reading it. So I created a quick survey, sort of “what do you like/dislike about the newsletter” and a few demographic questions, and some optional space for additional comments. It’s totally anonymous. Thanks!
Survey link: https://forms.gle/NvCshWKEL3Fb2hAY8​

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This is a super-interesting video summary of how Paris is battling centuries of not-so-great urban design to try to make the Seine clean enough to host Olympic swimming events in summer 2024 (!). (video)

I would love to say something witty in recommending this brief story on Threads, but I am afraid I can’t top what a person said in one of the replies, which is “I haven’t heard a worthwhile insane co-worker story in a while. Thank you for this savory bit of absurd chaos”

I don’t know if I’d consider myself a Luddite, but I definitely have started to understand in the past five years that the more time I spend away from my phone/laptop/ipad, the happier I tend to be. And I wouldn’t say I’m resisting AI as much as I am sort of ignoring it right now. But this illustrated article about the history of humans resisting automated technology was really illuminating (thanks, Gary, for sending it to me).

I wrote and illustrated a piece for Outside Run this week, detailing five things I’ve learned about ultrarunningsince I sort of backed my way into it in 2015. Now that I’m looking at the story online, I am realizing none of those five things are “how to run faster” or “how to guarantee you won’t have to make an emergency bathroom stop.”

A few years ago, Hilary gifted me The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, a collection of fiction with an incredibly detailed introduction by Haruki Murakami. One of the stories that has stuck with me was “Hiroshima, City of Doom,” an excerpt from Yoko Ota’s novel City of Corpses—a young woman’s description of waking up in the house she shared with her mother, sisters, and baby niece after the atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, and their struggle to evacuate, wandering on foot through a city of flattened buildings among their neighbors, who are injured, burned, dying, and confused as to what had actually happened. I saw Oppenheimer in the theater this summer, and was not surprised to see it win a bunch of Oscars, but I kept thinking of the Yoko Ota story. And then this week I saw this animated short, which is a tough watch (hence the “Mature” rating), but tells the true story Akiko Takakura, of one of the last remaining survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

I’ve been following David Shrigley on Instagram for years now, and have sent his images as messages to many friends who I think would understand and love his sense of humor and aesthetic. If this piece on Art Dogs is your intro to him, I think it’s as good as any. And not to spoil anything, but one of my favorite images here is probably the one captioned “‘Leisure Centre,’ by David Shrigley, from his final degree show for his masters in Glasgow. The show got panned by professors.” (thanks, Anna)

If you a) feel lucky and b) would like to join an all-women's trail running camp in the Alps in June, you can register here in about 15 seconds (entries close at midnight EST on March 17th). Actually, scratch that, you can register even if you don’t feel lucky. Because then you might "get lucky" and win the trip.

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