I laughed so hard at this caption from Size of Life
“Wilderness begins in the human mind.”
— EDWARD ABBEY
This time it’s no hard news, no industry strategy, just fun links.
We’re colliding chocolate chip cookies, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Shakespeare’s secret code, rigging games against Magnus Carlsen and pictures of forests. I’m throwing in three articles we wrote too, in case you missed ‘em.
Please skip around, read what you want to. Find something interesting in your own internet travels? Send me a link
—JH
Articles
In case you missed these or want to revisit them, here are three articles our team wrote this year:
10 curious links that would have killed the cat
🐈 Size of Life compares the relative size of all living things. It’s another excellent Neal.fun joint to get lost in.
Neal.fun ∙ Interactive Experience
🎙️ Wisecrack is a podcast that’s part standup and part true crime thriller. I’m not usually a true crime person but I really enjoyed listening to this last week.
Wisecrack ∙ Podcast
🍪 The best chocolate chip cookies of your life. There’s no waiting in a line around the block, but you do have to wait 48 hours before baking. It’s hard but man you cannot believe the difference. Perfect for that holiday downtime.
Alvin Zhou ∙ Recipe Video
♟️ Magnus Carlsen plays a guy who started chess yesterday but the game is rigged. It gets more and more unfair: New guy gets two moves every turn. New guy gets 30 queens. Carlsen only gets 30 seconds for the game. Etc.
YouTube ∙ Video
🍗 Decoding Shakespeare’s food references tell us about characters’ temperament and morality. It was the era of humors. Falstaff’s love of anchovies is the last thing his phlegmatic mood needed. When Hamlet says he’ll drink vinegar after Ophelia’s death, he knows it’ll make his melancholy worse. Secret code!
Atlas Obscura ∙ Article
Blancke reveals the forest’s magic through her photos
📸 Otherworldly photos of forests. Photographer Michelle Blancke says, “The colors are a way of revealing an inner layer that already felt present while I was standing there. It’s an attempt to make the invisible atmosphere visible.”
Colossal ∙ Article
🏠 A garage became a crisp art studio. Louvered windows, fancy plywood, nice view, pleasing geometry, lots of elbow room—someone’s been cribbing from my Christmas list.
Dwell ∙ Article
🕹️ Retrospekt refurbishes and sells old electronics like VCRs and Game Boys. Prices vary from not-bad to eye-watering. Fun branding too.
Retrospekt ∙ Website
🎬 Speaking of refurbishing classics: Star Wars (1977) will be back in theaters in ‘27—un-Special Edition’d. No weird-looking Jaba. Here’s hoping this new restoration of the original film sees a physical media release too.
Gizmodo ∙ Article
🥜 Also in classics: How Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are made. Thing I learned: “Dark roasting” the peanuts makes a bolder, grittier peanut butter integral to the Reese’s experience. They discovered it by accident.
Made Vision ∙ Video
in Greenville, SC
Here at HQ in Greenville, SC, we’ve been sweeping up.
We run 6-week project cycles for most of the year. But around the holidays and the middle of the summer, we tackle all the little things that pile up at the edges while you’re working fast. I’ve been rebuilding navigation on our public website. Joe’s been upgrading the oldest parts of our platform. Mark’s been writing an academic paper.
A few years ago, Paul explained this to me. The main point of running a profitable company wasn’t, to him, to get rich as fast as possible. It was to spend on margin—a little extra time. Time to make things on Pathwright nicer just because we can. To write a super long prediction of where the web is going. To run a virtual summer camp for you.
This season, I hope you find the margin. Spend some time doing what only you can do—on what you can’t not do.
See you next year!
High five,
Justin Hall
Editor, Partner at Pathwright