D&F 8-30-20
Welcome to my delayed last newsletter of the month. I had some pals by yesterday to sit at a distance in my courtyard and when the last one went home, I fell right asleep. It’s such a nice thing to see friends right now, especially when you can share some wine and lots of laughs.
This week is a mix of weird and sad as usual. I’m working on some longer form posts for brookshelley.com in the coming week about backpacking and mechanical keyboards, so keep your eyes peeled for those too.
Links
- What if environmentalism but also racist and xenophobic? Unsurprisingly the global north doesn’t want to talk about our role in destroying the planet through unreasonable use of resources. It’s just so much easier to blame the “other” of the global south for having children, or daring to build industry. The sooner we see Earth as a planet we all need to share equally, the better in my mind.
- Speaking of resources, I watched quite a bit of the TV show Alone over the past few weeks in preparation for a podcast and I wondered, “how easy would it be for them to harvest salt from the ocean to season their dang food?” The answer, it turns out, is both not too hard, and very challenging to do in a survival situation. I super hope on some season someone becomes a master of seasoning.
- If you were a kid in the 80s, you might remember these fantastic toys from MASK, and apparently huge dead stock crates still exist of them:
- The MASK toys led me down a bit of a curiosity hole, and I found out a cool feature of Transformers was actually a way of verifying toys weren’t bootleg. Honestly, bootleg toys are super weird and cool. I fondly remember shopping at dollar stores and shitty grocery stores that mostly stocked these knock-offs. If you’re still a fan of Transformers, like I know my friend Justin is, you might enjoy looking at these reproduction parts made by a guy with a passion for recreation. The world of toys is… something I try to avoid spending money on, but it’s certainly tempting to help 35 year-old Brook live the dreams of poor kid Brook.
- Do you like cats? Do you like poems? Here’s some very old Chinese poems from a person who hired a cat to kill his pests, and ended-up as we all do, falling in love:
In closing
Sorry about the delay! I am writing this conclusion while I watch the Belgian Grand Prix, grateful that F1 has managed to race despite not having a bubble. This week was long, but next week I’m on vacation! I’m excited, even if I don’t get to do much outdoor adventuring due to the smoke that blankets so much of California right now. I hope you too get to take a vacation soon—you deserve it. For now though, stay safe, keep fighting and I’ll see you next week, space cowgirls~