A Classical Playlist, A Rare Lobster, Olympics as Global Harmony, etc.
In which history has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas.
🥇 The French baron that revived the Olympics over 120 years ago believed they were more than sport, envisioning “the Games as much more than the sum of their parts. ‘Olympism,’ as he coined it, was a new type of religion – one shorn of gods, yet transcendent all the same.
To Coubertin, honing an athlete’s body and mind for peak performance in a competition was a way of ‘realizing perfection.’ And if the competition were nation vs. the world, held in varied host cities every four years, individual interest would be subordinated to national pride and a global synergy. Coubertin called this sport in the service of global harmony.”
🥤 The bacteria-laden Sein River is wrought with infection. Apparently Coca-Cola can help. “After braving the bacteria-laden waters of the French capital, some of the world’s fittest athletes will immediately take a slug of sugary soda. ‘If you Google it, it says it can help.’”
🪂 “She decided to put in the effort but let go of the outcome.” On Emma Carey, the skydiver who survived a 14,000-foot fall. “There's a whole world out there to see, and none of it depends on if I can walk well.”
🎹 Writer Tyler Cowen shared a playlist of his favorite classical performances that he made for music legend Rick Rubin. “Here is an idiosyncratic list of some of my favorite classical performances. Some tasks drive you crazy if you think too long about them, and this is one of those — best that I did it quickly!” From a reader: “There is not a single piece on this list that is not one of the glories of Western civilization or that any person in [their] right mind could take exception to.”
🪨 Felt compelled to share this rock found in Lake Michigan, described as “crinoid stem hash, with some bivalve cross sections thrown in.”
🦞 …and also this rare lobster caught in New Hampshire, a one in 100 million cotton candy crustacean saved from the dinner plate.
👩💻 Apparently the only way to see everything Netflix has to offer is with a computer.
📽️ The trailer for Saturday Night is here.
🤍 I love reading about the friendship between Helen Keller and Mark Twain. “It won’t do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a fame that will endure in history for centuries.”
✍️ Also stumbled into this, a letter Keller wrote to Nazi students in Germany after discovering her books were to be burned there.
“To the student body of Germany:
History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.
You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books for all time to the German soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion for the German people.
I acknowledge the grievous complications that have led to your intolerance; all the more do I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds.”
✌️ Keep that Hoping Machine running. ‘Til next week.
Love,
Luke
