Friday Inspiration 461

what the algorithm is hiding, the joy of watching the flight tracker, saying thank you

Dec 06, 2024

Are you finding yourself less and less excited about what "The Algorithm" assumes you will like, because it seems like you're just getting served more and more of the same stuff? Me too. This short video, “The Algorithm Has Been Hiding Something From You,” feels right on. (video)

This is the last Friday I’ll be including links to the stuff in my online shop at the bottom of this email, since—sorry for the all-caps here—but in order to receive orders by December 25th in the U.S. you HAVE TO ORDER BY DECEMBER 8th (which is Sunday). There’s also a short vertical video of a tour of the DFTBA warehouse here in Missoula, where the T-shirts are printed and the mugs are made. AND: I would like to point out that the Ultra-Something running caps by PATH Projects (pictured below) are 40 PERCENT OFF.

I wrote a piece about saying “thank you” for Blister’s Open Mic feature, and look, I know you’re supposed to say “you’re welcome” in response to someone saying “thank you,” but hear me out: Sometimes, ahem, often, “thank you” is the appropriate response to “thank you.” [see chart in article]

I started following Kenzi Enright on Threads because she posted photos of the typed-up and printed “agenda” her dad made every week before he got together to have beers with his friends in Brookfield, Wisconsin, which are just fun and, look, I really don’t like the word “wholesome,” I’m not sure why, but they are. There’s just something about people still getting together with their friends in person regularly nowadays, and putting a little bit of effort into it beforehand, which is not something you see a lot of men doing. So of course they were featured on NBC News last week, and they did not disappoint.

If you have zero relationship to the MGMT song “Kids,” this might not be interesting, but if you do, perhaps you will be one of the hundreds of thousands of people who are appreciating this recording of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser performing it at what feels like a very small event at Wesleyan University in 2003. At the risk of harping too much on this song, I also really love this cover version that's not at all famous, and is just a guy performing on the street in Dublin—maybe I'm sentimental?

This is both an ode to the joy of watching the flight tracker on the in-flight entertainment screen AND actual journalism about the watching of said flight trackers: "Delta recently said that the in-flight map is the single most watched content option on its seat-back entertainment systems"(!!!)

I remember when (I think early 2010s) a guy was going to try to photograph every single town in Iowa, on a Tumblr called Forgotten Iowa, and how admirable I thought that was. I don’t think he ever finished the project (there are 900+ towns in Iowa), but every time I see someone doing something similar I get kind of excited because it’s just interesting documenting architecture and human history, even if it isn’t fancy or glamorous (or especially if it isn’t fancy or glamorous?). Anyway I read about this Substack on Kottke.org and got sucked in for many minutes yesterday: Rob Stephenson is trying to photograph every neighborhood in New York, an effort that "isn’t meant to be a complete or even accurate representation of a place, just my reaction to it."

Maybe you don’t have any familiarity with Kringle, the Americanized version of the Dutch pastry popularized in Racine, Wisconsin—or maybe you, unlike me, knew it was available in Trader Joe’s every holiday season? Either way, this is some fantastic writing about food and identity, and I am going to put the best chunk of writing in the whole article right here and kind of spoil it for you:
“And that’s the beautiful thing about food. The reason it outlasts every other form of nostalgia is because it’s endlessly replicable and inherently personal. Buildings shutter, clothing wears out. But the feeling of taking a first bite of a comfort food can be re-created wherever and whenever. And the memories associated with it are perpetually additive.”

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LAST GIFT GUIDE OF THE YEAR:

A quick tour of the DFTBA warehouse (and t-shirt printing!):