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Summer Vibes and Warm Tortillas
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Hello!
In last week’s email, I said I needed to swim in a river and, instead, I swam in a lake. CAN YOU GUESS WHAT HAPPENED??? I got swimmer’s itch. This is when a little microbe that lives in the water crawls into your skin, dies, and leaves little itchy welts.
So I wanted to be swallowed by nature, but also nature got swallowed by me. Lol.
If you can believe this, it was only FIVE DAYS AGO that Joe Biden decided not to seek the nomination. I don't know about you, but that feels like it's been at least a month. It may be that simply too many things are happening, but it may also be that I'm just paying an awful lot of attention. I've seen a number of people say that Joe Biden's decision is "unprecedented" and I'm sure in the details it is, but there have been lots of incumbent presidents who decided not to run for re-election, starting with THE FIRST ONE. So, in a strict sense, there is precedent here.
Now, do I think that this election season will be looked at by future historians as a particularly weird and important one? Absolutely, yes. But even if Donald Trump wins, that will still have a precedent, as Grover Cleveland won non-consecutive terms in the late 1800s. I'm sure those people also felt the weight and the peculiarity of their time. They were not wrong, and neither are we. But broadly, if you think there's no precedent for "THINGS ARE GETTING REALLY WEIRD!!" you just haven't watched enough Crash Course: World History.
Things are certainly very weird right now, I think we are sensing that correctly, but no one gets to live in unprecedented times. But everyone gets to go for nice walks outside. Instead of making jokes about couches, I am going to try very hard to do that this weekend.
Hank
You can always email us at [email protected]
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This Week in Stuff
You can watch the live Dear Hank and John from VidCon 2024!
There’s a YouTube channel partially dedicated to covering songs in Zelda. The uploads are infrequent, but art can’t be rushed.
Numberphile explained the new way to represent pi.
A family in Texas wrapped an orphaned bird in a warm tortilla for safekeeping until a wildlife rehabilitation center could step in.
Hank, Ceri Riley, and Daniel Peake faced questions about practical pencils, pyromaniac profiteers, and prodigious protoplasm on Lateral with Tom Scott.
Bouvet Island, the most remote island in the world, has accumulated over 700 reviews on Google Maps.
The moon appeared inside the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower, which is a violation of the Olympic brand guide 📷: @Olympics
— Hunter Schwarz (@hunterschwarz)
12:59 PM • Jul 24, 2024
Please send us stuff you think we should feature to [email protected]
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Fourteen countries in the world get almost all of their electricity from renewables
Pablo Rosado
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Since 2020, 14 countries have consistently generated over 95% renewable electricity, according to Ember’s Yearly electricity data. In eight of these countries, electricity has been almost entirely renewable-based for over 20 years.
Renewable sources include hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal, and wave power. In all these countries, the largest source of electricity was hydropower.
Sub-Saharan countries, however, use significantly less electricity in their energy mix compared to countries in Europe or North America.
Our World in Data is a UK-based non-profit organization that publishes research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. You can find more of their data insights here.
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Art by Ezra
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This Week at Complexly
We’re halfway through the inaugural season of Crash Course Pods: The Universe! In this series, theoretical astrophysicist Dr. Katie Mack walks bestselling author John Green through the history of the entire universe from the first millisecond to the eventual death of… well, everything. Every other Wednesday learn about the next step in the story of our universe with John and Katie wherever you get your podcasts! Catch up on the first seven episodes now in your podcast app or on YouTube.
If someone (say, a small child) asks you why the sky is blue, you might dive into an explanation of Rayleigh scattering. But if you want to give them a way cooler explanation, you can tell them it's because of bacteria.
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Some Games to Play!
Tiles (by NYT)
SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress.)
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This Gubbins postcard was made by Miles. Send yours to [email protected]
If you post your results on social media, we’d love it if you post a link for folks to subscribe to “We’re Here” (https://werehere.beehiiv.com/subscribe)
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Your Summer Vibes
Here are a few of the things that represent summer to you! Thanks to everyone who sent us some virtual sunshine last week. If it’s not summer for you, we hope this reminds you of everything you can look forward to. The seasons start coming and they don’t stop!
![]() Photo by Casey | ![]() Photo by Matthew |
Summer doesn't really feel like summer til I've had my first ice cream float of the year.
That's what I said today when I called my Grampy, who loves ice cream, to wish him a happy Ice Cream Day. I ate too much supper and didn't want dessert but he always says about ice cream that you can never be too full for it because "it slides right down!" I'll be going to visit him in a couple weeks and we'll be going to a local ice creamery that sounds like it's going to be the best ice cream I'll ever eat.
Art by Emery | ![]() Photo by Isabel |
![]() Photo by Emma | ![]() Photo by Abigail |
To me, summer is always represented by Girl Scout Camp. I've been attending camp in my area since I was six years old. Summer has always been the click of beads on my necklace and the smell of the tallest trees I've ever seen; the splash of the lake and faint, gleeful screams of girls in the distance; grass under my socked feet, running as fast as I can, and swaying to the melody of a song, the hand of another girl in mine. Every year, like some sort of spiritual calling, I can feel the melody of Linger (not by The Cranberries, the camp song) in my heart and it inevitably makes me cry like a little kid all over again.
![]() Photo by Arden | ![]() Photo by Darby |
Summer is saying yes.
We have a 10 year old, and I think a lot about how we only have so many summers left with him - so summer is saying yes. Yes to staying up later, watching Jaws for the first time, reading in the sunshine, cut watermelon on the table, piling our things in the car and going to the lake, last minute sleepovers with friends, big heaping turkey sandwiches for dinner, pie every night. A slowing down. A life more flexible and open to possibilities while school is out and the days are hot - and he still wants to hang with us more than anyone else.
Thank you for reading!
Don’t email us immediately, but the next time you see a word you think is extra amazing…just, like, a really good word, respond with that one word. We’ll pick out some good ones to share.
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