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This is an old McSweeney’s story, but I believe still resonant for 100% of people who have ever saved a document on a hard drive.
This story on Reddit is not very long, but I find it hilarious (except the part where the person actually gets written up, but I'm sure it's been long enough now that they laugh about it). Here’s the beginning of the story: “I worked for CompUSA in 1999. The uniform matched Chilis at the time (khakis and a red polo). As the Chilis was directly across from our store many of us ate there at lunch.”
Storrs Ski Hill is not huge (only one lift), but a big donation making all lift tickets free for 2024-2025 is pretty awesome. (Via Kottke.org)
I’m a sucker for a “Best _______ of 2024” list, but I love this idea from Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell way more: She made a post listing her 10 “Most Underrated Cartoons of 2024” (sub-headline, “What no one liked, but I did”). Also, “Buncha Old Shit” is fantastic.
I loved David Epstein’s book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, and pieces from his Range Widely newsletter keep popping up in my feed, including this one, in which he convinces me to take a vacation from news. Look, if Tolstoy could take two months off from the news in the early 1900s, I could do it for a week in 2024, right? Seems like that's close to the equivalent, given the speed/volume of news nowadays compared to Tolstoy's day, anyway.
When I was putting together the materials for my online writing course this fall, I really sweated trying to find the perfect tweet-length “story,” to illustrate that stories can be almost any length. I think the example I included in Lesson 2 is still one of my favorites, but every week, I seem to find another one that would have worked too, like this one (which also could have worked for the dialogue section/Lesson 7!)
Speaking of my online writing course: If you’re planning to buy it as a gift for someone and you’d like it “delivered” on December 25th, please order by 7:00 p.m. MST on December 24th as I’m entering everything manually this year. (Alternately, if you have procrastinated up until this point and need a gift that will DEFINITELY arrive on time, the course 100% meets that requirement!) The 20 percent discount expires Dec. 25th—for gifts or if you're buying it for yourself.
Also, this post seemed to resonate with folks on Instagram this week so I’m including it here too:
I gotta say, I was not that interested in the idea of having a kid, but I also drastically underestimated the emotional value of having a 3-foot-tall roommate whose favorite thing in the world right now is excavators even though he can’t quite say “excavator” yet and it comes out “eckagaber,” and taking a walk down the block with said roommate to see a real-live eckagaber an hour after changing out of his eckagaber pajamas, and gently explaining that the eckagaber guy probably can’t invite him in for a ride-along because of liability reasons, but isn’t it cool anyway
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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.
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Friday Inspiration 490 IMPORTANT FINAL REMINDER: If you or someone you know/love would enjoy this water bottle because you/they struggle to stay hydrated (or just enjoy the chart on the bottle), we’re in the final days of the pre-order campaign. After June 30, you will no longer be able to purchase these bottles (even during the holiday shopping season, when you remember that you need to get a gift for your friend Jeff, who probably would have loved one of these). Here’s the link (you can...
Friday Inspiration 489 I haven’t listened to a Moth story in a long time, but I somehow found out The Moth had a YouTube channel, and this was the first story I watched. This guy isn’t famous or anything, but I love this story, and his mom sounds like a real one. File under: Suprisingly Emotional Stories About Baseball. (video) It’s a good question: Is it possible to buy a Bob Ross painting? I mean, it should be easy, shouldn’t it? But no, in fact it is not easy, and it is possible, and...