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I loved this collection of photos of the writing spaces of authors who have made the 2025 Booker Prize longlist because (in my opinion) not a single one of them would be featured on anyone’s Pinterest page or Dwell Magazine or whatever. One of them is a couch, one of them is a bench, no one has more than one monitor, one has a view of the next-door neighbor’s shingled roof—I mean, they’re all so humble. (via Kottke)
I don’t think I’m as much of a slow lane enthusiast as the author of this New York Times Letter of Recommendation, but I love this piece because of the evolution of the author’s approach to driving because I had the same revelation about speeding a few years ago—if you're trying to make up time, it's really hard to make the math work in most cases, no matter how fast you drive. [GIFT LINK]
I saw a video of an Instagram influencer giving his bus driver a Rolex yesterday, which is a nice thing to do, but I couldn’t help thinking how much cooler it would have been if the guy had just given the bus driver the watch in private instead of making it into a piece of content. Maybe that’s what I like so much about this story about Ludacris ordering spring rolls at a restaurant—it genuinely happened, and makes you think Ludacris probably just acts like this all the time.
My friend Ben Polley wrote this piece on who lives and who dies after getting lost in the backcountry, and there’s a bunch of fascinating stuff in it, including this bit from the chief of county search and rescue here in Missoula: "there are two main categories of outdoor emergencies: those that involve meeting a schedule and those that involve pleasing another person."
I read my friend Ed Roberson’s Good News from the American West newsletter every Wednesday, and I have never done this before, but I’m just going to copy and paste what he wrote about this story about a first ascent of a big rock climb along the Salmon River: “Here’s a cool story about a “wild and crazy” first ascent in Idaho—one that required hiking 22 miles, swimming 3.5 miles of whitewater, ascending an unclimbed wall, then floating back to civilization in a boat full of friends.”
I am not usually interested in videos with titles like “Shocking police brutality in Ireland,” but this was posted on the ContagiousLaughter subreddt, so I figured I could chance watching all 30 seconds of it, and I’ll tell you, it delivers, and does not need a trigger warning. (I mean, I guess it is technically a "dirty joke," as far as that goes.)
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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.
Stop What You're Doing And Watch This Birdwatching Documentary Right Now Life comes at you fast: On Monday, I was not at all interested in birdwatching. On Tuesday, I was obsessed with it for two straight hours. I am probably not the first person to tell you that you should, as soon as you can spare one hour and 59 minutes, watch the film Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching. Someone sent me a link to it on August 29th, 10 days after it went live on YouTube (thanks, Jason), followed...
Friday Inspiration 503 I spent a good chunk of the beginning of my book Ultra-Something talking about the movie Rocky, so of course when this CinemaStix video about it popped up in my YouTube feed, I of course watched it, and of course was not disappointed (although I did already know the bit of trivia about the skating rink scene). (video) I am a big believer that you don’t necessarily have to go to film school to make films, and that you don’t have to go to art school to make art, and that...
Friday Inspiration 502 I watch way too many of these NBA highlight collection videos, and I know not everyone likes basketball, but I love this one for a couple reasons: a) The conceit of the video, “Dunks but the dunker gets increasingly more unlikely,” is actually backed up with each person’s statistic of “dunks per season,” and b) many of these clips show the reactions from the team’s bench, from the teammates who are often baffled and elated that their teammate threw one down (video)...