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​Friday Inspiration 472​
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You may not be a pizza history nerd to the degree that you’ll watch this entire 24-minute video, but I am, and I would just like to point out that around the 4-minute mark, we are introduced to Peter Regas, who is just a regular guy/financial trader whose “passion job” is researching the history of different pizza restaurants around the U.S., which I think is just inspiring. Also, if you believe the first pizzeria in the U.S. was Lombardo’s in New York (I sure did), Peter has some news for you. (video)

I knew Paddington 2 was universally (and maybe unexpectedly?) loved, but I didn’t know that it had a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating until an independent film critic published his negative review of the movie in 2021 (it had previously only been published on BBC Radio, which hadn’t been logged on Rotten Tomatoes). And that he got death threats for the review (which I think Paddington would have frowned upon?). Anyway, the New York Times has an interesting piece about the history of the film and its legacy, including that film critic's story. (GIFT LINK)

I saw this via Kottke.org last week: Gina Trapani made a map of her life where each week is a little box, with big events noted (first concert, first computer, X-Files pilot airs, etc.). It is so cool, and thankfully it would take a bit of coding to recreate it, otherwise I’d be tempted to spend 25 hours making my own (whew).

I haven’t eaten at a McDonald’s in years, but have fond memories from my childhood, and I don’t know if it’s nostalgia making me want to buy this 420-page, $50 coffee table book, McAtlas, by James Beard Award-winning photographer and writer Gary He, or what (maybe I have a coffee table book problem). Or if I admire the quest to visit McDonald's franchises all around the world. Or if it’s just a really cool-looking book. But this is a fun, brief interview the author did with Rolando Pujol (who also appears in the pizza YouTube video above).

I have been trying to put my finger on why algorithms just don’t work that well to introduce me to new music/books/videos/shows/whatever, and I think lots of people are having the same feeling. This Atlantic piece about the new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, dives into a bit of it, but also captures what I think many of us have been feeling: "Like so many other products influenced by machine learning, Spotify’s playlists can’t generate something new—say, a wholly fresh and unheard sound—for its users. They instead offer the flash of recognition, rather than the mind-scrambling revelation that comes only when you hear something you’d never expected." [GIFT LINK]

I’m about a week out from my 52K trail race in New Zealand on March 1, and although my “training” has been less than optimal (illness, snow, blah blah blah, it’s never been optimal anyway), I am experimenting with some gut training on my long days. My version of it, as a very abbreviated overview of this gut training article by newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration, is: Try to take down double the calories I traditionally/naively have in the past, which means powering down a 360-calorie PF90 gel in two big gulps, one gulp every 30 minutes. I’m happy to report that it’s going just fine.

If you start reading this McSweeney’s piece, “It’s A Snow Day, Welcome To Hell,” about kids staying home from school and how parents should manage it, I would encourage you to read it all the way through. I mean, it’s satire, but, you know, there’s quite a bit of truth in there.

I discovered two things in this Eater article about cooking with mayonnaise (even if you hate mayonnaise): the trick of using mayonnaise to make grilled cheese (“a diner trick that goes back decades”) and other foods, and that people have formed community around their hatred of mayonnaise (the Worldwide I Hate Mayonnaise Club, HoldThatMayo.com, etc.).

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