2023-01-08

🟩Introduction

This marks roughly one month of collating “Crow’s Curios”, and what an invigorating month it’s been. I’ve been able to interact with so many talented writers, artists, developers, and others who have been inspiring me to continue discovering, sharing and creating.

This week is no exception, with writing, video, and content I hope will spur your curiosity, as it did mine. No more rambling, onto the curios!

-crow

🟩Essay of the Week: In Praise of Obsessive Curiosity

Letting your curiosity go deep into a weird place can be enormously joyful. And in the long run, it can be powerfully useful, too.

The Power of Indulging Your Weird, Offbeat Obsessions

by Clive Thompson

A lot of times I start a project wondering “how will this bring me money?” or “will this actually be useful?” or any other number of questions that snuff out the spark of curiosity.

But in this essay by Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social), he argues for taking on endeavors just for curiosity’s sake based on two of his observations:

1. It’s enormously valuable to simply follow your curiosity—and follow it for a really long time, even if it doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere in particular.
2. Surprisingly big breakthrough ideas come when you bridge two seemingly unconnected areas.

He provides powerful stories that include Yellowstone National Park, PCR tests, and Post-It notes to illustrate these observations, which are spot on.

So if you need a little inspiration to continue that weird project of yours, read Thompson’s essay for a bit of encouragement.

And speaking of weird obsessions…

🟩Video of the Week: The “Basketball Mile” World Record

RunnerBoi (Patreon link) is one of my favorite smaller YouTube channels, which just released a video on a very obscure competition. The “Basketball Mile”:

Even if you don’t like running or basketball, watching the evolution of this “sport” from niche meme to a legitimate competition is a great reminder of our ability as human beings to remix and create whole new categories of recreation.

But if athletics aren’t for you, maybe you’d like to hop on for a ride on this next item…

🟩Factoid of the Week: Steam Cars in the 1700s

It might be a stretch to call Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot‘s “Fardier à vapeur” (meaning “Steam dray) a car, but all the way back in 1770 he created the above vehicle, which was high tech for the time.

With four passengers on board, it went roughly 3.6 kilometres per hour (2.25 mph), which might not seem like much, but it was fast enough to cause the world’s first car accident in 1771:

The original machine is preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

And for our last curio of the week…

🟩Art of the Week: Street Photography

I’ll admit the iframe below is giant, but I wanted to fully show off the beauty of omi’s (@omi_geek@mstdn.jp) photo:

No additional words on this one needed, but give omi a follow if you enjoy photography like this.

🟩Afterword

Thank you for coming along on this journey with me to find and admire these shiny web curios, do let me know if you’ve found anything interesting this week. You can find me at: @crow@lonely.town

Until next week, so long!

-crow