This oral history of ‘Step Brothers’ is a fun read. I would pay to watch the 4-hour unedited version of this film.

A really great article by Tonya Malinowski and a soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion.

“Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds … to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation. Your vision is not limited by what your eye can see, but what your mind can imagine. If you accept these past accomplishments as commonplace, then think of the new horizons that you can explore. … Make your life count, and the world will be a better place because you tried.” – Ellison Onizuka

Beautiful.

In many ways, the media presents the Russia scandal mostly as a political threat to Trump, not as a serious threat to the nation. And many Americans, thanks to Trump and his allies, view it as a charade. All this shows how easy it is for disinformation and demagoguery to distort reality. That is a tragedy for the United States. For Trump—and Putin—that is victory.

Our history is defined by the youthful push to make America more just, more compassionate, more equal under the law. This generation—of Parkland, of Dreamers, of Black Lives Matter—embraces that duty. If they make their elders uncomfortable, that’s how it should be. Our kids now show us what we’ve told them America is all about, even if we haven’t always believed it ourselves: that our future isn’t written for us, but by us.

Lots of great lines from comedy movie pop culture.

From Julie Beck’s article on why we forget most of the books we read:

In the internet age, recall memory—the ability to spontaneously call information up in your mind—has become less necessary. It’s still good for bar trivia, or remembering your to-do list, but largely, Horvath says, what’s called recognition memory is more important. “So long as you know where that information is at and how to access it, then you don’t really need to recall it,” he says.

Research has shown that the internet functions as a sort of externalized memory. “When people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself,” as one study puts it.

Feilks Banel and his Pacific Northwest history articles are a treasure. I’m sometimes a skeptic of stories of the strange and unknown, but this had me captivated all the way through.

Pixar has the better catalog of films, but my winner is The Lion King.

Decision fatigue is real. Decision fatigue is the mental exhaustion and reduced willpower that comes from making many, many micro-calls every day. My modern American lifestyle, with its endless variety of choices, from a hundred kinds of yogurt at the grocery store to the more than 4,000 movies available on Netflix, breeds decision fatigue. But it is my kids that really fry my brain.

I typically don’t make excuses for myself and thought I could point the finger to decision fatigue, but after chewing on this for some time, I believe the reason I’m so cranky in the evenings is because of adulting fatigue. It’s decision and parenting fatigue coupled with the responsibilities and expectations of being a good, functioning member of society with other members who are selfish and don’t want to help advance human civilization.

The latest episode of Slate’s ‘Working’ podcast featured author Neil Gaimann and he shared some insight on his writing and creative process. Gaiman is one of my favorite authors and while listening to him 1.) speak is a delight in itself and 2.) share some insight into his creative process, one of the things that Neil shared that resonated with me was that Viking swords originated in Afghanistan. That struck me as odd–I had no clue that the Viking trade routes extended that far east. This lead to a deep dive on the known history of Viking trade routes, Viking Slave Trade, Norse Mythology, Mythological Swords from Norse Mythology, Norse Colonies in North America, to name a few.

Kinda related and great, the history of the Minnesota Vikings uniform.