Month: November 2022

1. Ever heard of La Push? Me neither. It is a small village on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula. The name “La Push” is from the French La Bouche which means “the mouth” of the Quillayute River and has the westernmost zip code in the United States, 98350.

Photo by Max Bender on Unsplash

2. A map of the universe is insane yet beautiful. The map/graph/chart at the end of the page, which shows you where you are and how many billions (with a “b”) of years you are looking back at of various galaxies in order to see because of the speed of light. And I totally realize I’m probably not explaining that correctly, but I understand it in my brain. The smallness of me is a great reminder.

3. You might think that this is some sort of gag gift, but it is not. I bought the Goshi last year for myself. It is a nylon Japanese shower towel. It replaces your wash cloth that loofa or plastic thing that you’re using. I’ve used this for a year and it’s great. I don’t really ever worry about replacing it because it dries quickly. Doesn’t ever stink because it dries very quickly. And the way that you’re able to scrub your skin is pretty great, better than anything I’ve ever used. It was $15 and I’ve gotten way more than $15 from this purchase because I use it every day and the absolutely ridiculous idea of you explaining what it is to the person you gift it to will be great.

4. By the end of the century, Africa will have 40% of the world’s population and this article focuses on the part of Western Africa from Adidjan, Ivory Coast, to Lagos, Nigeria.

“I have worked in China and in India, and that is where most of the attention on cities has been until fairly recently, but Africa is unquestionably the continent that will drive the future of urbanisation. And it is that strip along the coast of west Africa where the biggest changes are coming,” said Daniel Hoornweg, a scholar of urbanisation at Ontario Tech University. “If it can develop efficiently, the region will become more than the sum of its parts – and the parts themselves are quite big. But if it develops badly, a tremendous amount of economic potential will be lost, and in the worst of cases, all hell could break loose.”

I’m writing about this because I tend to think about Africa more than most, but I think a lot of people tend to not think about Africa much at all.

5. Van Neistat is the less famous of the Neistat brothers, but he may be more interesting. This video about the resentment and gratitude diagram with new and experienced artists, featuring Tom Sachs. I don’t really know who Tom Sachs is, but I’ve heard his name before as an artist and he’s a living breathing artist that does art things. Tom Sachs has his own Nike shoe. I can’t say that I fully understand artists or why they create what they create, but I am glad that they do. Also, the point of the video, the diagram is on point. I’m not an artist, but when I do have to make something or figure something out, I definitely get the gratitude when I finish whatever it is that I’m doing and I can look back on the work and overcoming the wall.

1. Ever heard of Ningaloo? Me neither, but it looks badass. Just go read this Wikipedia entry. The name “Ningaloo” means “promontory” or “deepwater” (love that it is all one word because why not) or “high land jutting into the sea”.

Photo by Ben Carless on Unsplash

2. I’m finally back. Sort of. I finally am free for the weekend, although my weekends have been free for a while, but with football and writing and everything else, I just haven’t had any time to write. I have time today, so I’m pretty happy about that. I’m actually writing this on Friday night, I’m running with someone tomorrow morning who is training for a marathon and I told him I’d join him for 20 miles.

And I did a lot of running while I was away. I did run another ultramarathon and I’m quite proud of that. I didn’t run fast, but I also didn’t feel completely beat after I finished, I actually felt pretty good. I ate well, didn’t get sick, walked the uphills and ran everything else. I was within the 12 minute mile mark and did an extra mile over and above the course to get a buff. Yes, for a buff.

I was also really lucky to have 3 of my law school friends crew the race, which was great, but getting to see and talk to them was really the highlight of my weekend. So happy to see them and we made it clear that we’d do this more and sooner than later.

Done. Shout-out to my crew. pic.twitter.com/KhQwnwwTQA

— Seth Jungman (@SethJungman) October 15, 2022

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3. I’ve consumed so much content, I’m not even sure where I should start.

I’m first of all absolutely enthralled with the idea that there are trout all over the world. You can find them in Europe, Americas, New Zealand and Australia and would guess that they are in Africa too, but regardless, that’s really far range of place to have a type of fish. Add into the idea that they are searching for the Apache Trout makes this all more interesting, which apparently can only be found in the White Mountains of New Mexico.

There is no such thing as a bad video that Beau Miles makes.

The little river right under my nose was sick. I was inspired to see other bad rivers. Ancient catchments with a modern story to tell. Paths of least resistance that have changed rapidly at the hand of humans. Backwaters and drains, for example, places that few of us see as super interesting. Oh, feel the burn on the thighs. Oh, yeah. I’m convinced such places are fascinating to most, but given they often stink and they’re wet and hard to reach, it’s easier to go places that smell nice and have good parking. That is some slippery stuff. I was going to say slippery shit, but it probably is slippery shit.

4. This is probably going to seem very much off-topic, but here we go. I used to always buy shaving gel. And after years of my sink getting clogged because of  extra gel that you invariable get, because you almost always get too much, I’ve officially switched to shaving cream. I think the can of shaving cream cost $1.34 and I think I’d be able to give this to one of my kids because a can of shaving cream tends to last a really long time. In terms of utility, yeah, the shaving cream works just as good as the shaving gel. The other solution is to have a beard, but that’s not me. I tried last December, or a couple of Decembers ago, and that’s just not me.

5. Tommy Rivers Puzey was the guy that taught me to run. He doesn’t know me at all, but I know him from iFit, which is the training system for NordicTrack. On a whim, I took off on one of his virtual runs through Greece and I never looked back because he taught me how to train. Rivs got cancer (I’ve never liked that term “getting cancer”.) and is now figuring out life after that. I wrote about Puzey previously, his out-of-body experience as he was in a coma and as near-to-death as someone can be. Those quotes about heaven and hell are interesting to say the least, hell is the love you do not give, and the urgency of treating people no matter who or where they are with kindness.

Rivs recently ran the New York City Marathon and I have definitely settled into the idea that accomplishing something is about the journey and finishing something really hard is very meaningful.

“It’s this odd combination of prioritizing it because I feel like my life depends on it for my future well-being, but then also realizing that life is actually happening right now right in front of me,” Puzey says. “Often as endurance athletes, myself included when I was more serious about the competitive aspect of it, we defer any sense of happiness or satisfaction because we somehow think it is going to keep us from achieving our ultimate goal. We spend years or sometimes even decades trying to accomplish that and everything short of that is a failure. And then when we do actually reach it, it feels good for like 15 minutes. This is more meaningful than that.”