|
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.
--
Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.
Friday Inspiration 550 NOTE: A couple months ago, we made refrigerator magnets of my “Did You Have A Good Adventure?” chart, and sold out of them in a few hours. We just made another batch of 100, and also printed 100 posters (8.5” x 11”), and if you’d like to grab one before they’re gone, here’s a link to check them out. — I can’t believe I just discovered that Randall Munroe of XKCD fame has been making these “What If?” videos for two years now, but this one, “What if you dropped a bowling...
Is This Not Circular Logic? I ran 300 laps on the indoor track at the gym in our neighborhood, each one one-tenth of a mile, clockwise. This was a couple Fridays ago, when the air quality index was 110, which is technically “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” according to the EPA. At least I think it was 300 laps. It was probably more, because I ran until my watch hit 30.06 miles, and the gym says the track is 0.1 mile per lap, but my watch often recorded something a little short of 0.1 mile per...
Friday Inspiration 549 Stan Lee tells the totally under-assuming/unlikely story of how he came up with the idea of Spider-Man, all the while coming off as the most humble, chill guy in the world (video) I thought this was going to be one of those “look how badly humans behave on airplanes” videos, which I guess it kind of is at the beginning, but how this musician ended up using it had me laughing and clapping at the end. PATH Projects is sponsoring this week’s newsletter, and I’ve been...