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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 don’t know if this is inspiring, but it’s really interesting if you are a little bit of a geography nerd: Mount Rainier’s highest point isn’t the highest point anymore, according to new GPS evidence.
I follow the Photoshop Request subreddit, and it seems to be mostly people earnestly asking for help: Please remove this person from the background of the last photo we have of my dad, so we can use it at his funeral, Please edit this photo of me so I can use it for a LinkedIn profile photo, stuff like that. But every once in a while, someone asks for something like this, and I really appreciate the title for this particular one: Please put my son in a terribly dangerous situation
The Pudding put together a web page of every one of the 59,705 outdoor basketball court in the United States, and I’m not saying you’re going to spend an hour on this, but if you spend a few minutes on it, you can at least marvel a little bit at how big of a deal it is.
I’m sure every parent has warned a child about sticking things up their nose, and I don’t know if this is a worst-case scenario or a best-case scenario, but here’s the headline: “LEGO piece found in 32-year-old’s nose after decades”
I love Seth Werkheiser’s whole approach to telling us we can make art instead of making stuff for social media, but this newest story on his Social Media Escape Club Substack really hits home—it’s about his dad, and his dad’s music, and a neighbor who maybe wouldn’t have called himself a “fan,” but … anyway, it’s worth your time.
We are almost 75 percent through 2024, and it reminds me that I should mention this: If you’re on Strava and you like to go uphill, I created a club called 100 Grand. I made it in 2023 to give people a fun incentive that wasn’t based on how fast you can go or how many miles you cover—basically, if you climb 100,000 vertical feet this year, I’ll send you a sticker at the end of 2024 (and if you climb 300,000 vertical feet, you get 3 stickers, and so on). There’s no sponsor or anything, I just thought it would be fun. Anyway, we all have about three months left to clock some more vert.
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Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.
Friday Inspiration 508 May your inner physics nerd (and chemistry nerd, too) keep you sucked into watching this entire video from 1987, which just keeps going and going, even though at times it looks like the chain reaction is millimeters away from being upset, and maybe that’s why it’s so compelling. (video) (thanks, Eric) A hundred years from now, when historians are looking back at the communication styles we developed in the first couple decades of social media, I really hope they are...
When You Can Walk Anywhere You Want I don't often re-publish stories I've written, but I remembered this one this past week when I was tagging along on a rock climbing trip in the desert with my mom and her friends. I think this essay, back when I wrote it in 2013, was a sort of expression of gratitude through a story about my grandma (my mom's mom), who was in the last 14 months of her life at the time I published it. I hope it still resonates. -- I flew to Iowa to visit my grandmother in...
Friday Inspiration 507 “Who’s gonna watch a senior citizen grandmother do jigsaw puzzles on a platform where people are competing playing Warzone?” Apparently a lot of people. (video) This math about budgeting at the bookstore of course makes no sense but is exactly what most of us do when we want something, and that is why it is an example of a well-written joke. I finally subscribed to Blackbird Spyplane yesterday after Hilary sent me this piece about creativity and AI and making birthday...