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​Friday Inspiration 499​
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I kind of think this idea—having kids dream up fairytale characters and then having those characters professionally designed—should happen more often? (video)

We are hopefully getting toward the end of fire season here soon-ish in the western U.S., but I thought it might be useful to share the app I use to track wildfires around Missoula during the summer and early fall. I’m sure many people have heard of it, but Watch Duty is a free app (which you can support for $25/year or even more if you want Pro features) and it is so far my favorite app for seeing fire info as soon as it’s available.

I got stung by a bee three times a couple weekends ago, which led to me doing some research on newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration’s website (seems unrelated, but stay with me): I was thinking back to the last time I got stung by a bee, the first day of a backpacking trip in the Sierras in August 2008, and I remembered that I also had woken up with a splitting headache that morning. I was concerned about altitude sickness, so I’d bought a gallon jug of water to drink on the long drive to the trailhead from the Bay Area, and as I maybe suspected but hadn’t confirmed, that was not the correct strategy. I read this piece, How to START hydrated and why that's so important, and now realize I probably drank myself into some mild hyponatremia. I was fine, but I would have rather not had the headache, if I’d known better. Anyway, within the PFH article are guidelines for pre-hydrating (with proper amounts of sodium, thanks to research, including some NASA research), and if you shop at the PFH site through that link, you will get 25% off your first order.

This is so cool—this photographer used Google Street View to locate 250+ signs hand painted around Detroit by Ron Miller of Ron Signs, who has been doing it since 1978, still doesn’t have a website or email address, and works entirely by word of mouth around the city. (Here’s a page on Andrew’s website for better viewing, and here's the post he put on his Instagram)

I have not eaten many Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supremes, but I do kind of love how it’s influenced chefs at non-fast-food restaurants to create their own version of the dish. As Eater writer Khushbu Shah puts it: “Trends tend to trickle down from fine dining to fast food ... the Crunchwrap Supreme is one of the few, rare examples where a trend traveled the other way, working its way, over the past 20 years, to the menus of beloved independent restaurants.”

​I don’t know how these bumper stickers about Tacoma ended up in my feed, but I particularly love the “TACOMA: Come for the rain, stay because your car got stolen” one, as well as some of the more r-rated ones.

I am not trying openly hate on AI (although I am a little weary of hearing about it so much for the past couple years), but as an avid em dash user, I did take it kind of personally when I found out people were saying that usage of em dashes was a sure sign something was written by AI. I have no authority to say that’s bullshit, but I have to say this essay by Brian Phillips warmed my little em dash-loving heart: Stop AI-Shaming Our Precious, Kindly Em Dashes—Please​

There’s a really great bit about the carnival vs. the circus in this piece Marty Brodsky wrote about going to the county fair, and I’d just excerpt it here but I think you'll be way happier if you just read the whole piece instead. Also, semi-related, since Marty talks about the demolition derby at the beginning of the piece: My friend Nick’s uncle won two different demolition derbies in northwest Iowa back in the day with the same car. Consider that for a minute—not that the car actually survived one demolition derby and was still drivable afterward, but that he WON both of them.

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