This Ukrainian dog has detected over 200 explosives and counting
These are the best things I found on the internet this week!
What’s up newsletter family,
I’m back with my weekly list of “conversation starters,” supplying you this week with everything from baby names to the world’s largest hopscotch course. After a couple weeks of super serious longform, it seems like this week’s list of the best content on the internet is kicking its shoes off and having a bit of fun. I hope you enjoy!
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.
I’ve been saying this for years, people called me crazy, and now New York Magazine’s The Cut finally wrote a story about it: EVERY social media app is a dating app, not just the obvious ones like Tinder, Hinge or Bumble. People are finding each other, and in some cases dating each other, entirely online these days, in every nook and cranny of the internet from Letterboxd (my kind of people) to Discord to a Rick Owens fan page.
As I like to say, “you can’t script sports.” The overhead camera from Saturday’s Kentucky Derby shows the biggest underdog in the entire field somehow streak from 12th place to first in the final straightaway, one of the greatest moments in horse racing history. Can you imagine betting on Rich Strike at 80 to 1?
Talk about the ultimate thrift store find. For $34.99, a Goodwill shopper in Texas bought what turned out to be an authentic 1st century Roman sculpture. She’s legally unable to sell it, the New York Times reports, and must return it to the German state of Bavaria, but that hasn’t stopped her from naming it, “Dennis Reynolds,” a detail that will be incredibly funny for anyone who watches “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” (**This item was submitted by Will K.! Thanks Will!**)
What if superheroes…failed? This hilarious, and very gory, CGI edit of various Spider-Man clips shows what would happen if instead of saving the day, our superheroes went splat. Literally.
Ukraine’s hero of the week is Patron, a tiny little dog who has sniffed out more than 200 Russian explosives and counting. Here’s some footage of him at work. With respect to whatever dog you might have, Patron (Ukranian for “ammo”) has a strong claim on being the goodest boy on the planet.
A fun thought experiment to kick around with friends. Do you think you could complete a 4-mile hopscotch course? Georgia Tech has designed the world’s longest hopscotch course at 4.2 miles through their campus, but in order to get Guinness Book considerations, someone must hop the whole thing.
The top 10 baby names of 2021 were just released. No. 1 for boys? Liam. No. 1 for girls? Olivia. Even more interesting, the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson has a theory that “first names are basically an entire theory of cultural change writ small.” Allow him to explain.
Oh you thought NBA referees had no personality? (…me too.) After a funny video surfaced of two mic’d up refs asking “who is Jack Harlow” when the rapper sat courtside, the refs responded by making a Harlow tribute rap music video.
Season ticket holder alert: Always read The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis. His retrospective on the 2006 book :07 Seconds or Less makes me incredibly jealous of the generation of sports journalists who enjoyed real access to the subjects they covered.
I don’t know all that much about finance and economics, but I gotta admit, Trevor Noah’s monologue about the “scammy-ness” of the U.S. debt equity system utilized by billionaires like Elon Musk makes a whole lotta sense to me.
Thanks for reading and sharing! I won’t lie to you, it’s a rough week for new movies. So I’ve got some really good streamers on tap that I will recommend in Friday’s newsletter, talk to you then!