Take a deep breath. Really hit the back walls of your lungs
Orlando Bloom's cheater curls, the guy who started Hawaiian Tropic, and Playgrounds by West Elm x Restoration Hardware. This is Links 43!
You know what—I wrote a whole long and really good post I was going to send out today before realizing that, not only was this maybe the worst week on record nationally, I had a bad week personally, such that I didn’t even notice that it’s These United States of America’s Birthday Weekend, and boy, does she not care what ANYONE thinks. America is getting blackout drunk and her mascara is running down her face and she’s alienating the whole rest of the global party and she does not know where her shoes are. America is acting out big-time at the function, and while she is, to be sure, embarrassing, her localized inability to conduct herself is revealing to the audience that the trauma and dysfunction is systemic and generational. America needs help, but also, the familial structure responsible for her as she is has—not that surprisingly to some, but to the shock of many!— turned out to be deeply diseased and rotted from the inside. Even the inveterate toxic black-sheep uncle is a little put off.
I need a deep breath. I think you do, too. I am tired, here are links.
What subscribers got last week: Dealing with injuries or pain is one of the least-fun parts of having a body. The setbacks are mental as well as physical, especially for the high-strung perfectionists among us. While I can’t address every possible injury and how to deal with it practically in one column, I can encourage everyone to be patient and humble themselves before the dumb little tasks that come with it.
Eat
~Discord Pick of the Week: A reader visited the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina earlier this week, and more specifically its gym, and they shared pics! I love olden-time gyms and the way they look like Playgrounds by West Elm x Restoration Hardware. If you Ctrl-f “biltmore” in the #general-chat channel you should be able to find them!~
Jane Fonda’s whole original workout.
The Mountain Goats, “Training Montage.”
The dramatic rise of arm wrestling YouTube.
A wonderful Susan Orlean obit for the guy who started Hawaiian Tropic, the bottle that launched hundreds of thousands of tanned bods.
I saw @thesportsphysicist doing this, uh, highly specific movement with an athlete on Instagram. Reminder that these kinds of things are usually not for the general population!
Happy Friday: Orlando Bloom doing cheater curls.
Fear, uncertainty, and period trackers. There are period trackers that do not sell their data, including Euki, Drip, and the Apple Health app.
Drink
Why one neuroscientist started blasting his core. I’m a fan of anyone working out, though the core is badly overrated.
Why people are getting their nose jobs reversed.
TikTok has become a deluge of health misinformation. Honestly the most encouraging rebuke I’ve seen of this is not people fighting wrong information with truth, but dismissing all of TikTok as a cesspool. TikTok is, at best, for jokes and vibes; it is not your doctor.
Rest
The internet is beating the crap out of us.
If you need a break for your brain to laugh at some extremely well-constructed and clever jokes, extremely good friend of the blog Josh Gondelman’s standup special “People Pleaser” is out on all your favorite streaming platforms!! My favorite is the very underplayed, pitch-perfect impression of a Boston native giving a best-man speech.
That is all for this week, hopefully!! I love you for reading, please enjoy your holiday to the best of your ability, don’t give up and I won’t either, thank you, let’s go—
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