NASA-Grade Grails and Kindness

The Knicks are in the NBA finals and the World Cup starts tomorrow, so I'm riding a sportsball high yet again this week. That may change depending on how the Knicks do, but I'm maintaining my optimism.

in this issue:

⌚ Barrelhand Monolith

👴 Mister Rogers

🏀 NBA Jerseys

⌚ Barrelhand Monolith

I typically don't pay attention to watches that are too obviously out of my tax bracket, but this one is special. First off, it just looks amazing and I'm a sucker for subtle orange accents. Second, this watch was made for the future of space travel. At first glance, it may seem like it's just some clever marketing (and it is) but this watch was literally made for space travel. It was designed to meet NASA guidance standards, complete with EVA protocols for missions where the crew might be in the vacuum of space. Pretty badass.

And I haven't even gotten to the coolest part yet. Just like the Voyager Golden Record that has a record of Earth etched onto it, this watch has a 3GB permanent archive "cultural payload" that includes everything from universal navigation to the original version of Le Petit Prince etched onto it. They claim this physical archive will last 1,000 years, which is just insane. The combination of the unique aesthetic, rugged build, and subtle nod to humanity on the caseback makes this an instant grail for me. Right now, I would take this watch over almost any other. Unfortunately, it costs $10,000 so...yeah, probably not going to happen, but a boy can dream.

👴 Mister Rogers

I was never a Mister Rogers guy. If I had to pick a TV show as a kid, I would have chosen Power Rangers or Barney 10/10 times. But I still ended up watching a lot of Mister Rogers because my cousin was obsessed with him. I have no fond memories of the show, but as an adult Mister Rogers has become someone I find myself thinking about often. Mainly because of his views on life, faith, and his impressive dedication to discipline over his mind and body.

Ever since reading the book The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember, I’ve had a new appreciation for the man. He wasn’t perfect, but he really did try his best to leave a positive impact on the world. I’ve been meaning to go back and rewatch some of his standout episodes to see what other nuggets of wisdom he left behind and now that’s a lot easier to do because the show is finally on YouTube. They’re posting to the channel fairly consistently with everything from compilations to full episodes, so if you ever wanted to learn how to be a good neighbor, now’s your chance.

🏀 NBA Jerseys

If you give me a giant 3,000-word wall of text on any given topic, my eyes might start glazing over after the first few paragraphs. But if you spread those words out over beautiful interactive graphs and some clever CSS, you get The Pudding. This is one of my favorite websites not only because they find amazing data-driven stories to tell, but also because they combine that with beautiful web design that is so fun to use.

This particular story is all about NBA jerseys and how they've changed over time. Sure, I did scroll through it all just to look at the pretty animations before reading a word, but I also learned a bunch of cool facts that I didn't know about jerseys. Like so many of the topics on this website, NBA jerseys are something I care about but just never thought to look into. There's so many interesting stories all around us and random stories like this from The Pudding are a nice reminder to look a little closer at what we consider mundane.