I think way too much about how the hell we figured out what was edible and how to make certain things that we take for granted now. For instance, cheese requires a very specific enzyme from a stomach of ruminant animals -- what the hell was going on to make that happen? Who was running around sampling mushrooms and berries and figuring out the good ones and how many people died? Who found a long-forgotten flour and water mixture and decided to bake something with it and call it 'sourdough'?
Anyway, now I'm just curious about Daniel Burnham sins against American architecture.
I'm reminded of a great tweet from a couple years ago:
"can't stop thinking about people that first ate mushrooms they found and just had to go through trial and error of like, this one tastes like beef, this one killed Brian immediately and this one makes you see God for a week"
also I have a sub-fascination with amateur mushroom foragers asking the internet "is this safe to eat?" I dunno are you willing to literally put your life in the hands of people on a message board
The advice I remember getting in scouts re: mushrooms was "Unless you're as sure as seeing an apple and go 'that's an apple', don't eat it. You need to be *that sure*"
I am not that sure on any mushroom, nor do I like the taste anyway so I never bothered to learn.
I used to work landscaping at Lakeview cemetery, and I "got" to sweep/mop around the caskets in Garfield's tomb.
Relatedly, if you ever find yourself with a couple hours to kill in Cleveland, Garfield's tomb has great views of the lake and the skyline from the observation deck, and there's a gorgeous chapel that's all Tiffany glass. Easily a top three cemetery tourist attraction in the US. (Although now that I think about it, DC, New Orleans, and maybe a few other places might have it beat)
Airplanes. I understand the physics, but also, things that big shouldn't just be up in the air like that and I still stare at them like a kid when I see one in the air.
And usually when I'm cooking I wonder who thought to process whatever I'm using to get it in it's usable form. Like ground up wheat for flour. How'd someone think to do that? And what were the failures along the way? Those have to be interesting.
This chart covers many of my standbys, though I would also have to add Water Features, Trains In General, How To Fix Chicago Transit, The Nervous System, Secret Passages, The Defunct And Paved Over But Still Extant Streetcar Tunnels Under The Chicago River, Boating, and Recipes
*Kinda hard not to think about it with regularity when you live in Chicago
A) I've always wanted a house with secret passages. Should I ever find myself in the position of being an eccentric millionaire, I will commission one.
B) In my brain, "secret passages" also covers secret tunnels, rooms, and doors. The sealed and abandoned streetcar tunnels under the Chicago River AND the Cincinnati subway fall into this category, even though they're not secret, per se.
C) Also covered in this category: the alleged unfinished Chicago Pedway tunnel connected to the postmodern skyscraper at 311 S Wacker, the locked-off cow path going through 100 W. Monroe, and the unfinished Block 37 transit Superstation.
I used to live in Salem, MA and it was established history that some wealthy ship owners or importers had underground tunnels built from the harbor to their basements so that they could avoid Customs and there are rumors to this date that some houses still have at least the terminus points in their (likely soggy) basements.
I could probably do a full sports history mega-event grid, ranging from:
Top Left: Munich '72
Top Right: The death of Nodar Kumaritashvili
Bottom Left: Elizabeth Swaney (the rich american woman who couldn't ski but figured out how to game the system to represent Hungary in ski halfpipe despite the whole not being able to ski thing)
Bottom Right: The 1904 Marathon
The 2015 Africa Cup of Nations generally is one of the higher frequency events.
Good catch, those should be switched (the one where people were drinking strychnine to try and win and is also the first integrated event in olympic history is definitely more informative). Will try and make the full thing up today
Highways: The numeration of them (why are there two I-84’s?) the bypasses that were never made, and why don’t they go to a particular location (why does I95 terminate in Houlton Maine and not go all the way upta Madawaska?)
I think alot about highways, but specifically I think alot about fonts on the highway and state highway markers. Highway Gothic is perfect font and some states don't use it or kern it wrong and I'm always so confused (or use Series F which looks wrong).
And some states on their highway markers use the outline of the state but (!!!) don't respect the size of the state. I was born in SC and I can't even imagine this (we put that state shape on nearly as many things as the state flag) but, some states use the outline of the state and to fit the numbers inside they state outline they make the state outline wider instead of the numbers smaller (how dare) and I would like to talk to people from many states who have made these terrible decisions (Alabama, Georgia, Arizona, Missouri, Arkansas... I would like a word)
And while we are talking about state things, why are so many state/city flags so bad....
This is a safe space for that. Ohio, SC, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, Washington DC. That's it, I think that's the whole list of good state flags. I'm not willing to say Ohio is better than SC, but it is a great flag
As much as New Hampshire is a barren wasteland with liquor stores on I95, their state route markers are iconic with the (deceased) Old Man In The Mountain profile
They've mostly removed it in rebuilding but one of my favorite highway spots is what used to be the northern terminus of I-39 at US-20 just south of Rockford; you can see where the groundwork for the (unbuilt) expressway north through the middle of Rockford was laid.
I-84 going through West Hartford has a giant stack interchange that was built for an anticipated northern bypass route around Hartford (I291). After environmental concerns the route was scrapped but the bridges remained. (They now have a partial use where route State Route 9 terminates but you can see the existing rights of way in satellite images and where the ramps would have gone)
I am irrationally proud of how many of these I knew.
My favorite weird topic that is constantly on my mind are the Glacial Lake Missoula Floods; about 13,000-15,000 years ago, a giant ice dam formed as the ice sheet was melting and receding and created a massive lake about half the size of Lake Michigan. The lake would periodically burst through the ice dam and as it drained to the Pacific, it carved out the scablands that make up the Palouse and tore through the Columbia River, helping to form the Gorge (which is one of the most beautiful places in the country) and left giant boulders and geological fingerprints across the Northwest; I grew up in a house that was at the bottom of what was essentially a sandbar formed by the floods, only it's about 150 feet high. Geology rocks. (/rimshot)
I spend a lot of time thinking about weather, natural disasters, and infrastructure. Some highlights:
The Krakatoa Eruption - If this happened 100 miles away from you right now, it would blow out your eardrums and shatter your windows.
The El Reno Oklahoma Tornado - 2.6 miles wide. Large enough to cover some small towns completely and black out the sky if you were close to it.
A lack of trains in Chattanooga - There's literally a song about trains being in Chattanooga and yet there are currently 0 passenger train routes in Chattanooga (provided you don't count the scenic train that's basically a loop).
Megatsunamis - Tsunamis are usually caused by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but if a large enough object were to displace enough water, it could lead to monster waves that move up to 500mph. Currently the best-observed megatsunami to have happened was in Lituya Bay Alaska, where a large piece of sheer cliff face was dislodged during an earthquake and fell into the narrow bay, creating a maximum wave height of 1719 feet.
North American Weather in general - Something about North America, and very specifically the United States, makes it home to much of the worst weather in the world. Tornadoes happen all over the place but the US reports more F4 and F5 tornadoes than anywhere else, and more tornadoes on the whole than anywhere else. We also get super gnarly Derechos, downbursts, hurricanes, nor'easters and other strange weather.
I have a friend who is a font of trivia and stats about a blizzard that hit the East Coast in 1993 when we were kids. It dropped about 30 inches in one day on our town, and the measureable snowfall went all the way from Maine to Florida.
I'd add to the list opening credits: for TV or movies. We used to have more of these and sure some of them were highly annoying but so many were great. When I was a kid I had a whole mix tape (and later a CD) of just theme songs from tv shows and another one from movies. Not just songs with words, but the other day the theme from e.r. was in my head all day it was so great and at various points in bopping my head along I'd always picture Anthony Edwards leaning back in his chair and Eric La Salle's fist pump.
And then there are opening credits that are just perfect. The opening credits of the 60s To Kill a Mockingbird is a perfect overture: it weaves in all the main themes of the movie and while scrolling over toys that basically tell the whole story of the movie. In perfect time with each other too - a ball rolls across the screen to the tune of an echo of what plays when the kids are goofing and run up to Boo's house for the first time.
Okay, maybe I just think about the opening credits of To Kill A Mockingbird alot.
CHiPs and Simon and Simon were not great shows, but they had great opening credits, although I think the overall winner for LA based shows credit sequences is the Rockford files.
I know it’s a touch heretical here, but I’m not really a cocktail guy. There is, however, a very tasty cocktail called the Boston 1919 that I have enjoyed.
Do I have an informal list of Roman ruins to visit? Perhaps. But recently I’ve been stuck on things like “could I fly around the world on 747s still?”* and “what would be a jolly Mitteleuropa train-based holiday?”**
* I think I’d cheat a little on this: Korean Air from JFK to Seoul, train to Busan, ferry to Fukuoka, train to Tokyo, Lufthansa to Frankfurt and then back to JFK.
** Munich - Innsbruck - Budapest - Kosice - Bratislava - Vienna or possibly Berlin - Prague - Bratislava - Kosice - Budapest - Vienna - Innsbruck - Munich
I've done Prague-Vienna a few times on overnight coach (stupid visa process)
I'd like to do it in the daytime and actually see the countryside. Then a river cruise down the Danube calling on Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade, then hop off and travel up to Bucharest
Munich 1972 is part of mine which is enveloped within the Mossad. Which is also enveloped within terrorism in general. It’s definitely one where I have slight concerns about my google search history and library book history.
Euro train guys (almost always guys anyway) get really fired up about sleeper trains, and i get it in principal, but I'm a little suspicious of how much they're really showering on those trips. Maybe if I were looping back along a route I'd seen already because I wanted to get a morning train / afternoon flight or something similar.
This is the kind of bespoke weirdness I expect from my subscription.
Also, I'm thinking about ancient Egypt and the ancient Minoans. Specifically how it's the same amount of time from us to Cleopatra, as it is from Cleopatra to them. (more or less)
The Minoans are so interesting! I've had 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline on my TBR pile for a while, maybe this comment section is the motivation I need to get distracted and start reading it
I think way too much about how the hell we figured out what was edible and how to make certain things that we take for granted now. For instance, cheese requires a very specific enzyme from a stomach of ruminant animals -- what the hell was going on to make that happen? Who was running around sampling mushrooms and berries and figuring out the good ones and how many people died? Who found a long-forgotten flour and water mixture and decided to bake something with it and call it 'sourdough'?
Anyway, now I'm just curious about Daniel Burnham sins against American architecture.
I'm reminded of a great tweet from a couple years ago:
"can't stop thinking about people that first ate mushrooms they found and just had to go through trial and error of like, this one tastes like beef, this one killed Brian immediately and this one makes you see God for a week"
also I have a sub-fascination with amateur mushroom foragers asking the internet "is this safe to eat?" I dunno are you willing to literally put your life in the hands of people on a message board
The advice I remember getting in scouts re: mushrooms was "Unless you're as sure as seeing an apple and go 'that's an apple', don't eat it. You need to be *that sure*"
I am not that sure on any mushroom, nor do I like the taste anyway so I never bothered to learn.
I like mushrooms just fine but the risk-reward ratio on wild mushrooms is TERRIBLE
How hungry was the first person to eat an artichoke? I think about this every time I eat one.
I used to work landscaping at Lakeview cemetery, and I "got" to sweep/mop around the caskets in Garfield's tomb.
Relatedly, if you ever find yourself with a couple hours to kill in Cleveland, Garfield's tomb has great views of the lake and the skyline from the observation deck, and there's a gorgeous chapel that's all Tiffany glass. Easily a top three cemetery tourist attraction in the US. (Although now that I think about it, DC, New Orleans, and maybe a few other places might have it beat)
My great-grandpa's buried there, so let me commend you on your work
Airplanes. I understand the physics, but also, things that big shouldn't just be up in the air like that and I still stare at them like a kid when I see one in the air.
And usually when I'm cooking I wonder who thought to process whatever I'm using to get it in it's usable form. Like ground up wheat for flour. How'd someone think to do that? And what were the failures along the way? Those have to be interesting.
My lack of time spent thinking about the troubles really bit me in the ass at the flogging molly show last week.
They put on a great show
Why, just yesterday I thought about:
The Great Lakes
The Cincinnati subway
1893 World's Fair*
This chart covers many of my standbys, though I would also have to add Water Features, Trains In General, How To Fix Chicago Transit, The Nervous System, Secret Passages, The Defunct And Paved Over But Still Extant Streetcar Tunnels Under The Chicago River, Boating, and Recipes
*Kinda hard not to think about it with regularity when you live in Chicago
Let's talk more about secret passages. (Or does that defeat the point?)
No, no, we can discuss here amongst friends.
A) I've always wanted a house with secret passages. Should I ever find myself in the position of being an eccentric millionaire, I will commission one.
B) In my brain, "secret passages" also covers secret tunnels, rooms, and doors. The sealed and abandoned streetcar tunnels under the Chicago River AND the Cincinnati subway fall into this category, even though they're not secret, per se.
C) Also covered in this category: the alleged unfinished Chicago Pedway tunnel connected to the postmodern skyscraper at 311 S Wacker, the locked-off cow path going through 100 W. Monroe, and the unfinished Block 37 transit Superstation.
I used to live in Salem, MA and it was established history that some wealthy ship owners or importers had underground tunnels built from the harbor to their basements so that they could avoid Customs and there are rumors to this date that some houses still have at least the terminus points in their (likely soggy) basements.
We did not have one of these homes, sadly.
I could probably do a full sports history mega-event grid, ranging from:
Top Left: Munich '72
Top Right: The death of Nodar Kumaritashvili
Bottom Left: Elizabeth Swaney (the rich american woman who couldn't ski but figured out how to game the system to represent Hungary in ski halfpipe despite the whole not being able to ski thing)
Bottom Right: The 1904 Marathon
The 2015 Africa Cup of Nations generally is one of the higher frequency events.
I would like to see this grid. (Though, I'd put Swaney on the silly end and 1904 on the informative end)
Good catch, those should be switched (the one where people were drinking strychnine to try and win and is also the first integrated event in olympic history is definitely more informative). Will try and make the full thing up today
Highways: The numeration of them (why are there two I-84’s?) the bypasses that were never made, and why don’t they go to a particular location (why does I95 terminate in Houlton Maine and not go all the way upta Madawaska?)
It's from 2010, but I enjoyed Matt Dellinger's "Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway"
https://bookshop.org/p/books/interstate-69-matt-dellinger/16647013?ean=9781416542506
This one is very Connecticut specific but it’s an absolute rabbit hole that I lost all track of time in when I first fount it:
https://www.kurumi.com/roads/ct/index.html
I think alot about highways, but specifically I think alot about fonts on the highway and state highway markers. Highway Gothic is perfect font and some states don't use it or kern it wrong and I'm always so confused (or use Series F which looks wrong).
And some states on their highway markers use the outline of the state but (!!!) don't respect the size of the state. I was born in SC and I can't even imagine this (we put that state shape on nearly as many things as the state flag) but, some states use the outline of the state and to fit the numbers inside they state outline they make the state outline wider instead of the numbers smaller (how dare) and I would like to talk to people from many states who have made these terrible decisions (Alabama, Georgia, Arizona, Missouri, Arkansas... I would like a word)
And while we are talking about state things, why are so many state/city flags so bad....
is this where I carp about the Ohio flag being the greatest
This is a safe space for that. Ohio, SC, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, Washington DC. That's it, I think that's the whole list of good state flags. I'm not willing to say Ohio is better than SC, but it is a great flag
The real dividing line is Maryland, which I'm willing to give the value-neutral title of Most State Flag.
I may be biased (I am biased), but Rhode Island has a pretty good flag too, though yellow on a white background is not very readable
Ohhh as an Alabamian, I can say the Alabama one hurts. It is so squatty.
As much as New Hampshire is a barren wasteland with liquor stores on I95, their state route markers are iconic with the (deceased) Old Man In The Mountain profile
They've mostly removed it in rebuilding but one of my favorite highway spots is what used to be the northern terminus of I-39 at US-20 just south of Rockford; you can see where the groundwork for the (unbuilt) expressway north through the middle of Rockford was laid.
I-84 going through West Hartford has a giant stack interchange that was built for an anticipated northern bypass route around Hartford (I291). After environmental concerns the route was scrapped but the bridges remained. (They now have a partial use where route State Route 9 terminates but you can see the existing rights of way in satellite images and where the ramps would have gone)
As always, ladies is dads too.
Centralia is one of mine too, because weird PA municipalities are one of mine. Shoutout to SNPJ, the smallest municipality in the state.
The troubles are also one of mine.
I am irrationally proud of how many of these I knew.
My favorite weird topic that is constantly on my mind are the Glacial Lake Missoula Floods; about 13,000-15,000 years ago, a giant ice dam formed as the ice sheet was melting and receding and created a massive lake about half the size of Lake Michigan. The lake would periodically burst through the ice dam and as it drained to the Pacific, it carved out the scablands that make up the Palouse and tore through the Columbia River, helping to form the Gorge (which is one of the most beautiful places in the country) and left giant boulders and geological fingerprints across the Northwest; I grew up in a house that was at the bottom of what was essentially a sandbar formed by the floods, only it's about 150 feet high. Geology rocks. (/rimshot)
I spend a lot of time thinking about weather, natural disasters, and infrastructure. Some highlights:
The Krakatoa Eruption - If this happened 100 miles away from you right now, it would blow out your eardrums and shatter your windows.
The El Reno Oklahoma Tornado - 2.6 miles wide. Large enough to cover some small towns completely and black out the sky if you were close to it.
A lack of trains in Chattanooga - There's literally a song about trains being in Chattanooga and yet there are currently 0 passenger train routes in Chattanooga (provided you don't count the scenic train that's basically a loop).
Megatsunamis - Tsunamis are usually caused by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but if a large enough object were to displace enough water, it could lead to monster waves that move up to 500mph. Currently the best-observed megatsunami to have happened was in Lituya Bay Alaska, where a large piece of sheer cliff face was dislodged during an earthquake and fell into the narrow bay, creating a maximum wave height of 1719 feet.
North American Weather in general - Something about North America, and very specifically the United States, makes it home to much of the worst weather in the world. Tornadoes happen all over the place but the US reports more F4 and F5 tornadoes than anywhere else, and more tornadoes on the whole than anywhere else. We also get super gnarly Derechos, downbursts, hurricanes, nor'easters and other strange weather.
I have a friend who is a font of trivia and stats about a blizzard that hit the East Coast in 1993 when we were kids. It dropped about 30 inches in one day on our town, and the measureable snowfall went all the way from Maine to Florida.
This is exactly the type of thing I want to know more about
And to add to your list, dust blizzards. I loved “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl” by
Timothy Egan
I'd add to the list opening credits: for TV or movies. We used to have more of these and sure some of them were highly annoying but so many were great. When I was a kid I had a whole mix tape (and later a CD) of just theme songs from tv shows and another one from movies. Not just songs with words, but the other day the theme from e.r. was in my head all day it was so great and at various points in bopping my head along I'd always picture Anthony Edwards leaning back in his chair and Eric La Salle's fist pump.
And then there are opening credits that are just perfect. The opening credits of the 60s To Kill a Mockingbird is a perfect overture: it weaves in all the main themes of the movie and while scrolling over toys that basically tell the whole story of the movie. In perfect time with each other too - a ball rolls across the screen to the tune of an echo of what plays when the kids are goofing and run up to Boo's house for the first time.
Okay, maybe I just think about the opening credits of To Kill A Mockingbird alot.
The looping shot of the cab going over the Queensboro Bridge set to Bob James's "Angela" for Taxi is so perfect and soothing
CHiPs and Simon and Simon were not great shows, but they had great opening credits, although I think the overall winner for LA based shows credit sequences is the Rockford files.
Scott....I have to work today. You can't just drop all these Wikipedia links in a Wednesday newsletter!
I would like statistics like those specious ones that drop before March Madness every year about how much productivity I've cost
productivity can get bent, there are FACTS to learn
As it happens I bought Say Nothing last week.
I know it’s a touch heretical here, but I’m not really a cocktail guy. There is, however, a very tasty cocktail called the Boston 1919 that I have enjoyed.
Do I have an informal list of Roman ruins to visit? Perhaps. But recently I’ve been stuck on things like “could I fly around the world on 747s still?”* and “what would be a jolly Mitteleuropa train-based holiday?”**
* I think I’d cheat a little on this: Korean Air from JFK to Seoul, train to Busan, ferry to Fukuoka, train to Tokyo, Lufthansa to Frankfurt and then back to JFK.
** Munich - Innsbruck - Budapest - Kosice - Bratislava - Vienna or possibly Berlin - Prague - Bratislava - Kosice - Budapest - Vienna - Innsbruck - Munich
I've done Prague-Vienna a few times on overnight coach (stupid visa process)
I'd like to do it in the daytime and actually see the countryside. Then a river cruise down the Danube calling on Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade, then hop off and travel up to Bucharest
Munich 1972 is part of mine which is enveloped within the Mossad. Which is also enveloped within terrorism in general. It’s definitely one where I have slight concerns about my google search history and library book history.
Euro train guys (almost always guys anyway) get really fired up about sleeper trains, and i get it in principal, but I'm a little suspicious of how much they're really showering on those trips. Maybe if I were looping back along a route I'd seen already because I wanted to get a morning train / afternoon flight or something similar.
From the moment I saw “Let’s review,” I knew this would be gold 🏅🤣
This is the kind of bespoke weirdness I expect from my subscription.
Also, I'm thinking about ancient Egypt and the ancient Minoans. Specifically how it's the same amount of time from us to Cleopatra, as it is from Cleopatra to them. (more or less)
The Minoans are so interesting! I've had 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline on my TBR pile for a while, maybe this comment section is the motivation I need to get distracted and start reading it
I feel both seen and attacked by everything on this mood board, because it also me