Intro / Preface / Extra Words
Odds are good that you are spending many of your waking hours semi-horizontal, scrolling on a device in a languid manner while you wait for the world to go back to normal. We would like to offer you some reading that hopefully makes you happy, or teaches you something new, or is at the very least better than your drunk uncle's latest Facebook rant.
Onward!
Truvia Crime
Was Jeanne Calment the Oldest Person Who Ever Lived—or a Fraud?
I was so intrigued by this lady who may or may not have lived a lie for 120 years that I added it to our link queue twice at different times. I’ll share it with you just this once though. -Brian
TravelMASity
Here's a bunch of travel-related links. Since you probably haven't left your house/apartment/van in awhile, let these fuel your fantasies of a day in the not-so-distant future when you can explore again.
First, let's start with some opinionated travel advice for flying.
The Pilot Behind @myhotelcarpet Spills His Travel Tips
The Completely Correct Guide to Getting Off a Plane
Now, let's go somewhere.
There's No Place Like Home - My parents sent this column to me over a year ago, and I've been subscribed to the email newsletter version since. This one is about Mississippi. - Calvin
Life in Norilsk - "Welcome to one of the most isolated cities on Earth. A photo essay by Elena Chernyshova."
Not the end of The World: the return of Dubai's ultimate folly - "Underwater bedrooms, ‘Lohan Island’ and snow all year round – a decade after it was scuppered by the financial crash, the fantasy archipelago of 300 artificial ‘countries’ is back in business. Has anybody learned anything?"
And now, some listicles.
Real Estate Agent Posts 25 Of The Worst Home Design Finds By Her Fellow Agents
You Fancy, Huh
The Madness of the Lockheed CL-1201 | SpaceBattles Forums
A proposed actual flying aircraft carrier that would make the Shield hovercraft things seem like toy drones. I like the optimism / deranged-ness of the 1960’s. What if we had a plane with its own nuclear reactor? That could carry multiple 747s inside it? -Brian
Sports (Disc Golf)
Is Disc Golf a Team Sport? A Look at Our Current Disc Golf Team Culture
For some reason they’ve closed the parks in Birmingham so I haven’t been able to play in a bit. I’m mystified by this... as long as you’re social distancing what is the obsession with not letting people use the parks or go outside and walk or run or just sit in the sunshine. I worry that finding ways to shame other people is becoming the new religion of the western world. -Brian
I love technology (and science)
Guess My Word
Fun and a little frustrating. A good game to play when you need to jump start your brain. Thanks Matt W for reminding me this exists. And yeah it's not science but I didn't know where to put it, OK? - Calvin
Further Reading
The Jungle Prince of Delhi
A nice long read about a royal hermit family tucked away in a secret patch of jungle right in the middle of one of the densest cities in the world. Where did they come from and are they legit? -Brian
Can You Say...Hero?
This is the article that inspired the Mr. Rogers movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood with Tom Hanks. I managed to avoid crying, but barely. - Calvin
JarJar Links
STAR WARS: ALWAYS
Dang Brian how did you find this?! I think I'll describe this as: "Check out the ultimate Star Wars fan trailer!" Too much? - Calvin
Outro
A philosophical question: once all of Earth was addicted to some flavor of the most insidious and addictive invention of mankind throughout our sordid history, that dopamine soaked obsessive-compulsive mainlining of outrage and artificiality that is the infinite scroll (be it insta or FB or reddit or snap or TikTok or ....) was it inevitable we would have a crisis that banished 7B people to their houses to spend all their time infinitely scrolling? Correlation and causation etc etc
Maybe we should send this out more often while everyone is social distancing. What do you think? Would you like to have more issues with less links, or should we continue our established cadence of sending this with like thirty links at random? What we're asking is: How bored are you, really?