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​Friday Inspiration 457​

This film takes its time letting this guy Beneke de Wet drop some bits of wisdom, but it’s worth the wait (video)(thanks, Nate)

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​I’m pretty sure I shared an article a couple years ago about the special secret mud that gets rubbed on every ball used in a Major League Baseball game, but this is kind of a summary of that same story with a new twist: University of Pennsylvania researchers conducted a study to figure out that yes, the mud has unique properties that can’t be artificially replicated to achieve the effect of making baseballs grip better. So it seems like the job of 67-year-old Jim Bintliff, the retired printing press operator who literally shovels the sacred mud from his grandfather’s old fishing hole into 5-gallon buckets, is safe for the time being.

I don’t know why this “day in the life” profile of a [very Instagram-famous] New York pizzeria owner feels so good to me—like it sort of makes his day feel very routine and calm, which I’m sure it’s not (it’s a restaurant!)—but I definitely read his morning routine of getting a bagel, a cup of coffee, and smoking two cigarettes while getting himself mentally ready for the day for 45 minutes, and I thought, “Man, that sounds pretty nice.” (gift link)​

Last week, Tony Hawk shared a 45-year-old photo of an anonymous 10-year-old girl skateboarding in the rain, and of course people decided to figure out who she was and let her know that she was kind of famous now. The whole story is pretty fun. (via Kottke)

There’s a whole series of these “How to Get Fired From a Gig” videos on drummer Ethan Harb’s instagram, but this one, which is 15 seconds of a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” is my favorite. I’ve watched it at least 10 times now, and every time I laugh harder.

If you’ve had the kind of week where you would feel comforted by a video of Hot Wheels cars going down an abandoned waterslide, this should do the trick.

After four years of living in a place far from a good Ethiopian restaurant, I have finally taken it upon myself to learn to cook Ethiopian food myself. This week I made injera for the first time (literally the first time I’ve baked bread, ever), another dish, and this misir wot recipe, which I think is fantastic and not at all hard to make. (This is the second time I’ve made it, and last time, we had a lot leftover, and some brioche buns, so I fried some halloumi, warmed up the leftover misir wot, and made these sort of sloppy joe/maid rite sandwiches which, while probably offensive to multiple cultures, were pretty damn tasty.)

Also, if you missed it last week, I put up a new YouTube video called "I Just Like Standing On Summits":

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