'Pipe Rock Theory' is my new Roman Empire
Here's the best things I found on in the internet this week!
What’s up everybody,
Hope everyone’s weeks are off to a great start. It seems like everyone I know is incredibly busy right now with a million different things — is that just our default mode now? Is it something about this time of year?
There’s so much good content published on the internet every day…and so much more crap. Who has the time to sort through it all! Thankfully you have my “conversation starters,” a round-up of the best, most interesting and most entertaining content on the internet in the past week.
Use these as your time-saver for great stuff, then used that extra time to go out there in the real world and chat about it with others! Good luck.
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!
Our Long Read of the Week covers everyone’s favorite buzzword of the moment: Microplastics. You’ve probably heard you have a spoon’s or credit card’s worth of plastic in your brain. So what is it doing to us? And what do we do in response? This New York Mag feature makes the case for a new public health crisis.
Shoutout to reader Garrett C., who has inspired me to start a new semi-recurring segment in this Tuesday newsletter celebrating the best quote of the week, called, “Say What!” For example, this week:
Say What! The assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office said this after adding a former Olympian to its Most Wanted list: “[Ryan] Wedding went from shredding powder on the slopes at the Olympics to distributing powder cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and in his native Canada.”
Signs of the apocalypse — a Cheeto in the shape of a Pokemon sold at auction for $87,840.
When I first started this Tuesday edition of the newsletter I was posting a lot of climate change content, because it was so urgent and universal. Here’s the first definitive sign of hope from the other side: the ozone layer is healing thanks to our collective climate protection efforts, and there’s a chance the “hole” in the ozone layer over Antarctica might be fully restored within our lifetimes. Amazing.
Headlines that require no context: Suspect in Florida jewelry theft swallows $770K worth of Tiffany earrings just before arrest, police say.
Kara Swisher is probably the foremost chronicler of Silicon Valley ever, and her piece in The Atlantic about how the tech titans seized power over the country is terrifying and unbelievably insightful. In so many ways these handful of cronies control our everyday lives right now. It’s best to learn about them.
Ok this recommendation isn’t going to be for everyone. In fact, most of the people who click this link are going to be completely lost. But among me and my friends — who love the absurd, super-out-there comedy of people like Tim Robinson, Tim Heidecker and in this case Connor O’Malley — this Pipe Rock Theory video is our new obsession, and perhaps the funniest five-minute sketch we’ve seen in years.
Thanks for reading and sharing! Got an exciting one coming on Friday talking about Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17!!