I bring this up in so many conversations about the idea of “adventure,” and I’m excited that it’s finally becoming a series of short videos: Several years ago, Alastair Humphreys and Tom Kevill-Davies decided to try to go to London restaurants from around the world, from A to Z—Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cambodia, and so on. This is the first in the series. (video)
I signed up for the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day email a few weeks ago and I have zero regrets, especially when it’s a short, clever poem like this one: For Allen Ginsberg
I don’t know exactly how to describe this except that if you’re into music at all you might find yourself losing several minutes to an hour clicking around this site, which, if I understand it correctly, is basically a map of all the genres of music Spotify has used. I mean, like southern rock, OK, jazz trombone, yep, but keep going, Australian rockabilly, Saskatchewan indie, Kashmiri hip hop, “whale song,” “fan chant,” on and on and on. And if you click on a genre, it will play a sample of a song from that genre, and if you click on the arrows next to the genre, it will take you to a page with a bunch of artists from that genre, and you can click around and listen to samples of their music. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this before my friend Anna (thank you!) sent it to me a couple weeks ago.
Back in 2008, when I first started working at a nonprofit with my now longtime-friend Mitsu, we were chatting in the office about something, and I had the audacity to suggest to him that maybe he should think about drinking some water sometime during the workday. He deadpanned, “There’s water in coffee.” I laughed, and have thought of that often, because everyone knows that coffee is a diuretic. OR: DO WE KNOW THAT? A more informed, very quick article from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration, medically reviewed by an actual doctor: Does coffee ACTUALLY dehydrate you and harm performance? (<–PS this link gives you 15% off your first purchase of PFH stuff, as always)
This is a Substack post about paper (and really, using paper and writing utensils to think), from a writer I’ve never read before encountering this piece, and it just made my week. Because, I don’t know, I love paper too? And wish I used it more than I use my laptop and iPad. The author writes in the intro, “Also, the world needs way more mundane blogging,” but I don’t think this is mundane, and it also reminds me of the best advice I give myself when I’m stuck trying to come up with something to write about: Go smaller. Stop trying to solve the world’s problems and just write about something small.
I occasionally check out the Letters of Note Substack, and this letter from Christopher Walken isn’t super-earth-shattering, but I’m pretty sure anyone who is familiar with him will say “oh yeah, that’s definitely Christopher Walken” after reading a few sentences. Also: Of course he types in all caps?
I only know what/who Ivan the Terra Bus is because Hilary worked at McMurdo Station in Antarctica one year before we met, but whether or not you’re familiar, this is a great piece about the retirement of a very unique 30-year-old vehicle designed to be driven on snow and ice (with a 160-FOOT turning radius!) in very cold temperatures.
If you haven’t heard of Taco Bell Quarterly (pretty sure I’ve mentioned it in this newsletter before?), please allow me to introduce you to it, a quarterly literary magazine that officially has nothing to do with the corporate entity Taco Bell. This poem is titled “Poem in the Shape the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands,” and I think it’s genius.
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