D&F 8/20/23

It’s an on-call weekend so I spend most of it at my house, playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on my new Steam Deck. This is my laziest weekend in a while and even though I felt antsy, it’s not worth setting-out on a bike ride only to get paged by an incident a few hours in. Next weekend will mean a lot of riding, with a few friends, so it’s ok that I had a bit of rest. On that note, next week likely won’t have a newsletter, but I’ll be back the week after with a ride report and more.

This weekend I also watched the new Alone UK which was hilarious since it seemed to not at all comprise survivalists. Every person on the show is scared of every noise, and a relative failure, which is a nice reset after seasons of extreme outdoorperson on Alone. This isn’t to suggest that I would be any good on this show (I would die), but it’s great to watch.

Let’s get to the links!

Links

I don’t talk about it much, but during the day I work for Slack, and we recently announced a redesign. I don’t think every part of the design will suit people, but the goals as I understand them were to make things simpler for new users and the vast majority of companies who buy Slack for their large companies. I’m a little worried I won’t be able to use my custom theme, but we’ll see! I’ve tested this redesign for months and it’s been fun to give feedback and chat with the teams building the IA.
It’ll be interesting to see if the optimists are right, but this article makes a good case that it’s useful to be optimistic about our chances with righting climate change. I still think consumerism and capitalism won’t be in any way connected to a lasting solution due to very unaligned goals, but getting depressed and giving up on the planet won’t help either.
This weekend marks the beginning of the Paris-Brest-Paris ride, which friend of the ’letter Haley’s dad completed in the past. There are a bunch of folks from my rando club participating and you can follow them here. This event happens every four years so I have no idea how I’ll feel about doing it at 42, but it’s been fun to watch folks prepare and consider doing longer rides myself in the future. Good luck to everyone on a safe and fun PBP!
Finally, for friends planning a trip to Japan, I found these cool guides that I plan to employ a little when I return to Tokyo this winter. Flights are stressful and expensive, but I love being in Japan, and really want to explore the country by bicycle, while documenting and absorbing as much countryside as I can. I’ve only ever travelled in Japan by train, and two wheels will give me a much more intimate, personal view of the spaces between cities. I’ve been inspired by many friends in a bike slack, as well as Craig Mod’s walking journeys.

Closing

That’s it for me this week. I’m back to the world of Faerun (Baldur’s Gate thing, sorry) and some fish curry I just made. Stay safe, and get ready for a delightful fall, space cowgirls~