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​Friday Inspiration 485​
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Today is the last day to sign up for this session of my How To Tell One Story online writing workshop! As of my writing this on Wednesday evening, there were still a couple spots available. We’ll open registrations again in August, but this is it until then. If you’re curious about writing, or want to write and just need a framework and some “kind and encouraging lessons” (as a past student put it), you can read more about the course and/or sign up at this link: semi-rad.com/courses​

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Speaking of creativity and storytelling, I ended up really liking what this video had to say about “original ideas”—not that we shouldn’t chase original ideas (as the title says), but that your specific perspective and effort is what makes something unique, so you might as well try. (video)

Maybe you weren’t staring out the window this morning thinking, “You know what I could use today? A really beautiful poem about onions.” Or: Maybe that’s why you read this newsletter: the off chance you’ll encounter a really beautiful poem about onions.

Trust me: Take 60 seconds, or 90 seconds (OK, maybe more like three to four minutes) and scroll through the photos created by the winners of the Milky Way Photographer of the Year Awards (via Kottke.org).

This is not a new piece from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration, but I recently wrote about feeling lucky to have not had many major injuries in the almost 10 years I’ve been running ultramarathons, so it was interesting to go through Damian Hall’s bullet points in Ultra training: Is it possible to stay injury free? and see if I could find any similarities to my own training. Especially since he wrote it when he was 45, didn’t start running until his mid-30s, is a dad of two kids, and is really fast. (reminder that the above link gives you 15% off your first purchase at PFH)

I have a copy of cartoonist Jason Chatfield’s new book, You’re Not A Real Dog Owner Until... on my desk right now, and sure, I’d advise you to buy a copy for yourself, but I think a better piece of advice might be to buy it for someone on your holiday shopping list and just hang onto it until the holidays rolls around, at which point you will be feeling quite a bit more pressure to find a gift for a person who loves their dog(s) but also loves laughing their ass off.

I have read a lot of essays about AI in the past few months, and no one has made sense of it better than (no surprise) Oliver Burkeman, in this piece about "navigating by aliveness." A snippet: “I have two things to say about that, the first of which is that I don’t believe it: that aliveness is so central to meaningful human experience that there’ll always be a market for those who can cultivate it, embed it in what they create, foster it in institutions and organisations, and bring people together to experience it.”

I thought the headline on this BBC story about “people stuck using ancient Windows computers” was intriguing, and it was interesting discovering how much important stuff in our world relies on super-old systems, but the real gem for me was about three-quarters of the way through story, in which I learned that Washington State University-Vancouver has an Electronic Literature Lab, which sounds amazing: “Founded and directed by Dr. Dene Grigar, the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) contains over 80 vintage Macintosh & PC computers, dating back from 1977, vintage software, peripherals, and a library of over 300 works of electronic literature and other media." As in, there's no way to view the art pieces except on the computers preserved at the ELL.

I don’t think you need a reason to have holiday lights up all year, but this one is particularly, inarguably, heartwarmingly (is that a word?) valid.

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