The Great Lakes of North America’s midsection—Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario—together span nearly 100,000 square miles, with a combined coastline just shy of 10,000 miles. They hold more than a fifth of Earth’s unfrozen fresh water, straddle an international border, and help move more than $15 billion dollars worth of cargo each year.

~ Gemma Tarlach from, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/great-lakes-inland-seas

This article didn’t strike me as particularly interesting. But after I was about half–way through reading it, it became clear it was in fact interesting. It’s worth the read. It’s worth read just to find out was a “meteotsunami” is. It’s worth read to learn about that time the water in Lake Michigan sloshed to one side and then sloshed back creating a tsunami that swept into Chic– wait, wat?!

Bravery

You should be brave enough to use your own intellect, in life and in your education.

~ Immanuel Kant

I’m backing away slowly

Inside this box is a thing of beauty—and absurdity. It’s a one-of-a-kind puzzle created just for me by one of the greatest puzzle makers in the world. It is, almost surely, the hardest puzzle ever to exist. But before I open the box, let me tell you how the puzzle came to be, and why I think it’s not a trivial pursuit.

~ A. J. Jacobs from, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/04/puzzle-will-outlast-world/629651/

There was a time… who am I kidding? The time is now. Must. Resist. The urge. To buy…

Harmony and understanding

People are wise beings; they possess the ability to live according to the dictates of their intellect, and sooner or later, they will evolve from a state of violence to a state of complete harmony and understanding. And every act of violence makes this time more distant from today.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Wellness

Modern wellness, at its core, is a self-sustaining doom loop of precautionary, aspirational consumption: Buy to be better to buy more to be better still. Which is why, despite Raphael’s arguments, I don’t fully buy that wellness has taken on the role of religion. Instead, in classically entrepreneurial American fashion, it’s become extra unpaid work—the very thing we don’t need more of and truly don’t have time for.

~ Sophie Gilbert from, https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/goop-wellness-culture-self-care-parenting/671699/

I’d never really thought of it as “exhausting” until I read this article. Now I’m thinking that what I’ve been rebelling against, in the last year or three, is my self–imposed, continuous–improvement mindset of wellness. What I really want to do, is nothing; literally nothing in the sense of just lay in a hammock for—I dunno—a week, maybe much much longer. I’d thought, again in the last year or three, that I’d insulated myself from the outside effects Gilbert describes so clearly, but now I’m not so sure. I’m definitely way down the downward–slope side of spending money on “wellness.” But I’m definitely aware that I spend a lot of time thinking about, arranging, tweaking, planning, assessing… around wellness. Food for thought, indeed.

Truth

Look for the truth; it wants to be found.

~ Blaise Pascal

Photography from Seattle

For several years I’ve been attending the Art of Retreat events in North America. Originally they were held in New York City, but the latest three were held outside of Seattle. I’ve been recording conversations for Art of Retreat’s own podcast over the years. If you’re interested in what goes on behind the scenes, I tried to unpack some of it over on a topic in the Podcaster Community, Field Recordings at Art of Retreat 2022.

I have a habit of trying to capture interesting photos from airplane windows. Often it’s solar or weather phenomenon, but on this trip out to Seattle I was surprised to see these forest fires. Fortunately, they weren’t very close to where the event was held, but “fire fog” was thing during much of the time I spent in Seattle and all of the time at the event.