20AUG2023

Last week I wrote about it being the "last week of summer." Apparently, someone forgot to notify the weather because it's been over 100ºF/38ºC everyday this week. Our backyard thermometer hit 110ºF/43ºC this afternoon. Fun! Hopefully this week's "cool things" below will help you all have a chill week. (See what I did there? Word play!)

• 🎱 We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks - I enjoyed sharing a poem and hearing from a few of you about your thoughts on it. So, sticking with the them this week, here's another one I've long loved. Let me know your thoughts or if you've got a favorite poem summer night poem.
• 🪐 Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack - On a recent flight, I binged several hours of Cowboy Bebop, a show I've always meant to watch but never gotten around to. For those who might not be familiar, it's a sci-fi anime about a bounty hunter and his crew wondering the galaxy, with strong influences from old noir detective movies and cowboy westerns. It's considered by many to be one of the best gateways for someone looking to explore anime. I really dug it! Very stylish art, fun and weird storylines... and amazing jazzy soundtrack. Trust me, whether you like jazz or not, it's super cool. I've been putting it on for everything from background music for work, mixing cocktails after work, and just driving around running errands.
• 🚀 Spaceships for Another Planet - Speaking of sci-fi, Jason Kottke shared this fascinating series of paintings by Karla Knight this week. I think Jason came up with the best description for the series: "imagine Hilma af Klint as the production designer for Wes Anderson's Stargate."
• 🐔 Bomb Chicken - I regret that I can't remember where exactly I found this, beyond poking around the #pixelart hashtag on Mastodon or some Discord server, but this iOS retro platformer is a total delight. $2.99 buys you a super fun, quick to pick up, platformer game with creative mechanics and challenging (but not TOO challenging) levels, killer pixel art, and no ads. Highly recommended.
• ⛏️ Vonnegut and the Archaeologist - I stumbled across this great, short (possibly apocryphal) story by Kurt Vonnegut this week and have been thinking about it a lot. It takes less time to read than it takes you to read this little email, I suggest you check it out.

Lastly, I'll leave you with something a little different this week, my very first guest submission from the one and only M. Hulot, who very kindly offered to write up and share a fun entry for this week. Neither M. Hulot nor I are "sports guys" but this sports-adjacent thing was hilarious and fascinating. Here's what he wrote:

• 🎙 The History of the Seattle Mariners - Several months back, Jill Lepore wrote about the difference between data and information for the New Yorker. She argued that our obsession with data makes it harder to glean any meaningful knowledge from the world around us. What, then, do we make of this three hour long Prezi video featuring obscure baseball stat charts ("ERA," "WAR," "OPS"??) that still makes you well up? Tracing the history of MLB’s only team to never the World Series, The History of the Seattle Mariners digs deep into percentages and totals to show that people, teams, and cities are so much more than their numbers. Looking at wins vs losses or times to reach the playoffs, the Mariners are clearly a failure. Such a cursory glance would ignore some of the unequivocally best pitching, batting, and fielding that the sport has ever seen. Such a cursory glance would ignore what it means to be a fan, a leader, and a teammate. "Dig deeper," the producers of this six part video series urge us, "and you’ll find greatness wherever you look." That... combined with arson, toilet jello, face stabbings, and the world’s best timed Nutcracker Suite makes The History of the Seattle Mariners a fascinating, hilarious, heartbreaking watch.

Thanks so much to M. Hulot (who sadly has no socials to link to) for the great write up and for sharing this fascinating series!

Have an outstanding week everyone.