Playlists, Loofahs, and the Eternal Rise of Hollywood
Hope you're all doing well and finding reasons to be outside (or reasons to stay inside with the AC, no judgment). This one's got a little of everything: music, some good reading, a couple of genuinely useful tools, and one bathroom product that I feel compelled to tell you about. Let's go.
Feature Image: KangHee Kim
Listen
YeeHaw Playlist
First one in a while, and it felt good to put together. It's mostly newer stuff but also some older songs I've been wanting to resurface, the kind of tracks you forgot you loved until you hear them again and feel unreasonably happy about it.
Also, if you want a productivity hack, have you ever worked while listening to the Top Gun Soundtrack? Those emails are not ready for the Danger Zone version of you.
Watch
The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Hollywood
The title alone earns the click. A really well-made history of Hollywood that covers more ground than you'd expect and moves fast enough that you won't notice an hour went by.
via Covert Film
Slow Horses: Season 6
Slow Horses has become one of my favorite shows, and it aired the first episode of season 6 this week. The show is about what happens when you take a bunch of spies who have spectacularly screwed up their careers, stick them together in the saddest office in London, and put Gary Oldman in charge as a brilliant, disgusting, permanently irritated wreck of a guy. Somehow, this collection of MI5 rejects keeps getting dragged into very real espionage disasters—and, even more somehow, occasionally saves the day. It’s tense, clever, genuinely funny, extremely British, and one of those rare shows where six episodes disappear alarmingly fast. Come for the spies. Stay for Gary Oldman insulting everyone within a 20-foot radius.
If you haven't watched the show before, check out the Season 1 Trailer on YouTube. Episodes are short (30-45 minutes), as are the seasons (6 episodes each). This is one of the easiest shows to catch up on.
BingeBrowse
Remember wandering around Blockbuster for 45 minutes, picking up movies, judging them entirely by their covers, and somehow enjoying that more than scrolling Netflix? BingeBrowse brings that experience back. It turns your streaming services into a virtual 3D video store where you can actually wander the aisles, browse shelves, discover something to watch, and pretend it’s 1999 again. You pick your streaming subscriptions, and it lets you browse everything available like you're walking the aisles of a video store on a Friday night. Genuinely solves the "I pay for four services and can never find anything" problem, which I did not think was solvable.
via BingeBrowse
Read
Never Bet Against America
Why did the U.S. become absurdly rich and powerful—and why might it stay that way even when its politics are a mess? This article makes the fascinating case that America basically won the geographic lottery: ridiculous amounts of fertile farmland, the Mississippi and its enormous network of cheap waterways, great ports, abundant energy, two giant oceans for protection, and neighbors that pose little military threat. It’s a fun, map-heavy explanation of how geography quietly shaped American wealth and power—and once you see the country this way, it’s hard to unsee it. If you've ever wanted a well-structured argument to deploy at a dinner party, this is it.
via unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com
The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson
You still have time to see The Odyssey in IMAX if you haven't yet (I highly recommend it, but hurry). However, if, like me, you have never read the epic poem but didn't want to join a high school English class to do it, Emily Wilson's translation is an easy read. The story is only a few hundred pages, but the book also includes tons of background and reference material if you want to dive deeper. She also has a great Iliad translation.
via Amazon
CHECK OUT
Stowaway
Ever look up at a plane and wonder where it’s going—or what the view looks like from up there? Stowaway is basically a flight tracker for people who find normal flight trackers incredibly boring. Pick a real plane currently flying somewhere in the world and it drops you into a virtual window seat, recreating the view using the plane’s actual position along with the real time of day, stars, satellites, and terrain below. You can even hop aboard the ISS and other satellites. It’s free, requires no account or download, and is exactly the sort of wonderfully unnecessary website that can eat 45 minutes of your evening before you realize what happened.
THE ORIGINAL LOOFAH
Okay, hear me out. Plant-based (actually it is a plant), dye-free, biodegradable, comes in a four-pack. This is the original loofah...it is called a loofah plant. It is a gourd! I ordered these, and they are genuinely better than whatever synthetic puff thing I had before. They dry really fast and are easy to travel with too. And super cheap!! Sometimes the newsletter is about loofahs, and that's fine.
What to Watch This Weekend
Sep 18 – Sep 20
#2 UGA vs Arkansas (Noon - ABC) - Go Dawgs!!
#7 LSU vs #8 Ole Miss (7:30PM - ABC) - Go away, Lame Lane
FUN SOCIAL STUFF
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