Friday Favorites 9

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I had a few days off work and enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather in Minnesota weeding the landscaping, detailing the car, and scrubbing my basement clean while listening to Peter Heller’s “Celine” and drinking a lot of Bustello coffee.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

“It was good to lie there in our bags watching the glow of our dying fire and the deeper glow of sunset beyond; but most of all it was good to feel the ground again and to know we were back in a country we loved,” said Sigurd Olson. It’s been a tough year for Minnesotans — and the latest attack on our Boundary Waters is enraging.
Big fan of making lists, and love these archive photos of Richard Feynman’s notes, including a “Notebook of Things I Don’t Know About.”
“The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.” Annie Dillard always has great, no-nonsense writing advice. I think if I spent 1/10 the time just creating stuff instead of feeling and thinking about creating stuff, I’d have a much better time.
On that note: “Worrying isn’t writing, and you can only revise drafts, not worries.” Advice I need to remind myself over and over again. Writing with Andrew’s speaking and presentation style is so similar to Technology Connections I googled if they were brothers or something.
Speaking of creative procrastination and typewriters: I’ve been ogling the different distraction-free writing set-ups at r/writerdecks. (For now, it’s my keys-to-go keyboard and Notion against the world.)
David Byrne has a magical, weird way of making everyday routines and items feel unique and creative and interesting to me, so of course this long interview with Nardwuar — who has a unique interview style of his own — has been a delight to watch.
I’ve been missing the bologna sandwiches, PBR, and Moonpies of Robert’s in Nashville, so I’ve been listening to old country music like Ernest Tubbs all week.
I generally don’t mind spoilers for books and movies, but I was flabbergasted at reading a book about the Transcendentalists, finding Margaret Fuller to be the coolest of the bunch, and then being gutted to learn she and her book manuscript were lost in a shipwreck so early in her career.
I liked Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” (and loved Anthony Doerr’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land”), and both feel very similar to this essay from Robert Moor’s upcoming book about climate activists that lived in a treehouse for months to block an oil pipeline. Been thinking about it for a month.
Twice a year LitHub publishes what I call “the big list of cool, new books,” and I discover lots of interesting books I wouldn’t otherwise find.

See ya on down the dusty trail,

Richardfeynman on Isak's Blog

Friday Favorites 9