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​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 trained their dog to throw out the first pitch at a game? That’s right, zero. Ohtani’s dog Decoy is the first dog to ever throw a first pitch at a Major League Baseball game.​

​This is a couple years old but just popped up on Instagram again, and it’s pretty funny when you start putting together some of the combinations—as many commenters pointed out, “dirt-hat” is really underutilized. (thanks, Hilary)

Kilian Jornet climbed all 82 of the 4000-meter peaks of the Alps in 19 days, an astounding feat that’s been reported by many outlets. But only this article also shares the harrowing account of his car almost getting towed from the parking lot where he’d left it near his home in Norway, and how he dealt with that in the middle of a climb.

I’ve been friends with Blister Review founder Jonathan Ellsworth since 2014, and every time we catch up, I’m impressed with the ideas he comes up with, not just as a person who works in media, but as someone who continues to build community and provide things that are useful to that community. He told me about Blister + Injury Insurance some time in 2023, and I thought, “Damn, that is a good idea”—it’s a yearly membership that insures you if you get injured in while doing outdoor sports (like hiking, skiing, backcountry skiing, mountain biking, trail running, but also bike commuting, and more), covering evacuation costs, health insurance deductibles and co-pays, and more. It’s of course more detailed than I can cover in a short blurb in this newsletter, but if you’re curious, you can read more here.

[Semi-related: Jonathan started a movie podcast, and I joined him last week to make my case that Rocky is the greatest running movie of all time]

I just discovered the Found Paper subreddit, and this is one of the better recent posts in it, but admittedly, there are a lot of good ones. Gently used, pre-owned seagulls!​

This is a super-cool thing I didn’t know existed until I read about it on Kottke.org last week: a digital archive of photos of all the Appalachian Trail thru-hikers who stopped at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters on their way through Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, since 1979.

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