Active couch potatoes, unbuttoned jeans, and rethinking our relationship to fat
Here's the best things I found on the internet this week!
What’s up fellow internet explorers,
It’s strange to say, but after having to work over the weekend and putting in a long week, it actually legitimately gets me fired to up find so much cool stuff out there on the internet. Before I started putting together and publishing my weekly “conversation starters,” I may have scrolled right past these stories, videos and other content that makes me think, laugh and reflect. Now I have to stop and consume them.
I also get to share them with you all. I hope you find time to check them out for yourselves, and that it has the same effect.
And if you find anything I don’t mention here, send it my way!
What’s the coolest story or thing you found on the internet this week? Reply to this email and shoot me a link. Would love to hear from you.
Shoutout to reader Richard who passed along the website HalfBakery.com, an internet home for half-baked ideas. The topics on there are as wonderfully strange as you might expect, like frisbee-shaped mail packaging or a monster truck ambulance.
Emmy-nominated actress Betty Gilpin is secretly like one of my favorite writers on the planet. She wrote an essay a few years back in the Hollywood Reporter that blew me away. Now she’s written a book of pseudo-feminist personal essays, and if the excerpt in THR is any indication, they’re going to be hilarious and poignant and powerful. I can’t wait to read it.
Here’s a health investigation I can get behind. BBC Science Focus says it’s time to rethink our relationship to fat. Despite the light-hearted topic, this is actually a somewhat dense but super interesting look at the science behind fat cells and how they impact our bodies.
Meanwhile, these people have nothing better to do than learn how to play the beeps of a laundry machine like it’s a musical instrument in increasingly complex songs.
Anyone who has ever seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has wondered: would it be physically possible to do all the things Ferris and the gang pull off in a single day? Well this Washington Post journalist found out once and for all, in what has to be one of the greatest journalism writing assignments of all time.
Eli Manning showed up at Penn State football walk-on tryouts in a full disguise. The result is really funny but in a Manning brothers sort of way, which is to say cheesy as hell. Also…Eli is 6-foot-5, not sure he’s fooling anyone.
If you exercise every day, but spend the rest of the day sitting at your computer and then sitting watching TV, you’re what new research would call an “active couch potato.” As this Washington Post story outlines, you may still be at risk for a bunch of health issues. The takeaway — stay moving throughout the day!
A list of the 100 best pizzerias in the world. I can attest to the Los Angeles entry at No. 37, Pizzana, it’s amazing.
You heard it here first, newsletter readers, several weeks ago. But GQ did more of a deep dive on the growing number of men are undergoing a radical and expensive surgery to grow anywhere from three to six inches. Just a wild, wild phenomenon.
The latest Gen Z fashion trend? Unbuttoned jeans. Seriously. The New York Times fashion team investigates.
A San Francisco car thief messed with the wrong owner — an investigative journalist. She tracked her stolen vehicle using GPS on her stroller in the back seat. While she didn’t revert to vigilantism, others have when police don’t agree to help out.
Thanks for reading and sharing! There are a handful of movies I want to watch this week, and as of time of writing I haven’t had time to see any of them! Ah! By the time I talk to you Monday I will, though. See you then.