I don’t knit, but this is the best thing I’ve seen on a screen this week, hands-down. (video)
I’m not sure why this article came out in 2024, but it was news to me, and even more shockingly, to my dad, who loves Slap Shot, that the movie is actually based on real-life minor league hockey players who did outlandish things such as, you know, get in fistfights with fans.
As a non-genius myself, I loved this meditation on Genius vs. Expertise, especially this part: “Expertise is something different from genius. Expertise is achieved through diligence applied over time. Genius is born. Expertise is raised, I suppose.”
I think I saw something about this Strava Chipotle challenge when it started, but forgot about it. It was one of those things I kind of shrugged off without maybe considering how far human beings would go to get free burritos, and I was impressed with the results, which were kind of like, “Wow, I can’t believe someone would dedicate basically a month of their lives to running a single segment just for free burritos, but actually, I kind of can,” but then I read this piece about how the contest went down in LA, and then I thought “HUMAN BEINGS ARE GENIUSES AND ALSO NICE TO EACH OTHER SOMETIMES.” (via Mario Fraioli’s The Morning Shakeout newsletter, which you should subscribe to if you like running)
There’s a lot of great stuff in this piece about how to enjoy art, but one of the best bits was this quote from cartoonist Lynda Barry: “That’s what the arts do. In the course of human life we have a million phantom-limb pains — losing a parent when you’re little, being in a war, even something as dumb as having a mean teacher — and seeing it somehow reflected, whether it’s in our own work or listening to a song, is a way to deal with it.” (via Kottke. org)
A lot of the stuff I find from this newsletter comes from Substack’s Browse page—I subscribe to a bunch of Substack newsletters, but I don’t want this Friday Inspiration newsletter to get too predictable, so I am always kind of exploring. And voila, this week, the Browse page delivered this wonderful, colorful design piece about, ahem, mustard. Which is maybe very exciting for at least one other person who reads this? If not, that’s OK. I loved it. (Not totally unrelated: Aaron Draplin makes these fantastic yellow mustard hats.)
Anyone who has ever worked a job anywhere that includes coworkers and the sharing of written information can probably relate to this McSweeney’s piece: My Comments Are in the Google Doc Linked in the Dropbox I Sent in the Slack
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