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​Friday Inspiration 474​
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I love Nathan Zed’s YouTube videos, which are kind of short editorials about his ideas, and I especially love this one, about how trying hard is becoming cool again (I hope he’s right) (video)

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I certainly don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but if you ever get tired/sick of scrolling through whatever kinds of videos your preferred social media is feeding you, may I suggest finding a subreddit you like and scrolling through that instead? For example, the Things Cut In Half P*rn subreddit, which is nothing but cutaways of structures, boats, cars, electronics, and other things, such as the King’s Cross tube station in London.

I have long loved McSweeney’s Reviews of New Food, although I’m not sure the food is always actually something “new,” and there’s a lot of liberty taken with the concept of a “review,” which is probably why I enjoy them so much. This one is from last fall, but it’s a good one: Richie Zaborowske reviews the Costco Readywise Emergency Food Bucket​

I finished the Motatapu 52K in New Zealand last Saturday, and despite making a few mistakes, I ended up feeling pretty good crossing the finish line and not tripping over the toddler I grabbed out of the crowd to run the final 150 feet or so (OK, it was my toddler, Jay, who Hilary handed over the barricade, but he runs pretty erratically, and my legs were tired, so still an achievement). I fueled mostly with the Precision Fuel & Hydration PF90 gels, which I’m kind of surprised to say I’m a big fan of, despite never really liking gels much in the past. They taste good (honestly pretty neutral, so kind of hard to get sick of), and they’re big—360 calories—so instead of dealing with three gel wrappers to take in 300 calories, I’m only dealing with one big gel wrapper for 360 calories, which is really the biggest selling point. If you’d like to try them, this link will give you 15% off your first Precision Fuel & Hydration order.​

I’ve read all of Austin Kleon’s books about creativity (the most famous of which is Steal Like An Artist), and I subscribe to his newsletter because of posts like this old one that he linked to a couple weeks ago, about studying something you love in depth. It reminds me of the story of Cole Cuchna, the composer who was tired of interacting with art for a few seconds at a time (i.e. liking Instagram posts), so he decided to devote a huge chunk of time to studying Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly album in depth, and creating 22 podcast episodes.

Maybe it’s the time I grew up, in which computers were just starting to be a part of our lives (5 1/4” floppy disks!) and were very exciting, but I love this kind of stuff: Love Hulten’s retrofuturistic sculptures use retro video game consoles, computer parts, and other electronic equipment to create a wonderful aesthetic.

I kind of feel like the past couple years have been “late stage” social media usage for me—spending less and less time on some platforms, deleting accounts on others, feeling like I deserve an award for pulling my phone out of my pocket to check tomorrow’s weather forecast and ONLY checking tomorrow’s weather forecast before putting it back in my pocket. I think I have a small amount of guilt anytime I mindlessly scroll through Instagram videos of NBA highlights, knowing that I’m just doing it because it’s literally the easiest thing I can do with my attention at that moment. But I hadn’t thought of all these apps we use as hijacking our flow states, until I read this piece by Ted Gioia. One line from it: “This is where I remind you that there are pathways to the flow state that don’t go through Silicon Valley.”

I don’t know how I stumbled on Mike Monteiro’s (non-Substack) newsletter, in which he answers one question every issue. But this one, answering the question, “How do you decide which donut to get?” begins thusly:
“First off, congratulations on your donut. Donuts are fucking amazing and everyone should have a donut. Some of you might be thinking about donuts and attaching the word “deserve” to it. Fuck that. Deserve has nothing to do with donuts. You want a donut. You should have a donut.”

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