How I Fell in Love with a Bagel
Getting eight hours of sleep is extremely underrated.
Welcome to perhaps the most jet-lagged edition of the newsletter. I am fully in that “I can barely hold my head up past 6pm and wake-up like a rocket at 3am” stupor-zone. I’ll get over it but boy this sucks.
Folks, I’m aware the newsletter often takes a pessimistic tone. That’s usually because I’m responding to events in the world and we live in rather silly times. This week is no exception. The Iowa Caucuses are on Monday, meaning the 2024 presidential campaign is officially underway, bringing us closer to the return of La Naranja to the Whitehouse—a return to the clown show and all the brutishness that entails.
How bad is it out there? This week, the internet's carnival of conspiracy theories reached a new low with notable right-wing grifter, [Name Redacted], suggesting Iowa's snowstorms were a “deep-state” plot to suppress Trump voters, to boost their favorite, Governor Nikki Haley. Deep-state, man-made… blizzards? Look, I usually have a high tolerance for absurdities, but this one takes the cake. So, in response to the ludicrousness (and peril) of the moment, let's shift gears and celebrate some things that actually brought me a shred of joy this week.
I’ve been to New York a handful of times. Usually, my routine involves checking into the hotel and asking the person at the desk “where's the best slice in the neighborhood?” This time around though we did something different. Instead of getting pizza, well actually in addition to getting pizza, I had my first New York bagel experience.
I've heard people rant about bagels in New York and have generally rolled my eyes. Like, it's bread... chill. But after firing off last week’s newsletter, we went bagel hunting. We were recommended Tompkin Square Bagels on East 17th, near the Flatiron Building. My goodness! I had an Egg Everything with salmon cream cheese (check the selection of schmears below). The bagel was easily one of the ten best things I’ve eaten in my entire life. I am a changed man.
I know it’s silly to be obsessed with a piece of dough but it was an absolute joy. Warm from the oven, toasty outside, soft doughy inside. The cream cheese was the right temp, not too cold and stuffed with chunks of flavorful salmon. Ten out of ten experience–I shall return!
Next, I am not really a gamer. In the past, I typically only played sports games—first Madden then FIFA—and did so, rarely. However, during the peak of the pandemic, while stuck in our apartment, I ticked up my gaming a bit. I probably pumped one hundred hours into Red Dead Redemption 2, for example. But I realize my sweet spot is casual games, where the focus is more on the story than gameplay. I shared in a prior newsletter about my experience with Firewatch. Set in the early 80s, it's a walking simulator about Henry, a man running from his problems, who finds himself working in a firewatch in the Shoshone National Forest. On the flight home from New York, I reckon somewhere over Italy, I finished another banger in the genre, Oxenfree.
Oxenfree was released in 2016. The protagonist is a young woman named Alex. She and her group of friends head out for a bonfire and a bit of exploring and stumble into trouble. The game is set in coastal Oregon and features a compelling story and excellent voice performances. The controls aren’t especially complicated: you’re mainly selecting the dialogue you want Alex to say to her colleagues; you click on circles to interact with nearby objects; you have a radio that you adjust with a dial that allows you to unlock some spaces and interact with the ghosts in the game. I’ll stop there before I give too much away but I really enjoyed it and I’ll likely cop the sequel, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, which came out in July.
Lastly, ArtButMakeItSports, has a pretty straight-forward premise. They take works of art and mash them up with moments from sports to create “paired texts.” It’s nothing earth shattering but I spent way too long after work on Friday scrolling the archives.
Here’s a few of their greatest hits from 2023.
I don't know how you can't love that.
I’ll be back next Sunday with a report back from our first week at our new campus here in Abu Dhabi. I finished setting my room up on Friday and am looking forward to getting back to work after a long break.
In closing, at the top, I mentioned my unfortunate 3am wakeups. The upside of those is I get to catch some really great sunrises. Here’s Thursday morning. Everyone always raves about sunsets but I think I prefer a sunrise.
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This Week on the Nerd Farmer Podcast
Social Diversification, Blogging is Back, and How to Combat Disinformation – Dave Clark – #212
We talked about navigating the social media landscape, given the decline of Twitter. We also discussed why blogging and RSS feeds are the answer for many of us and we closed with a conversation talking about how to avoid outrage and clickbait in the 2024 election cycle.
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share the newsletter with their friends.