11FEB2024
Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate it! We visited Austin Beerworks for their Lunar New Year celebration this weekend-- for anyone local to Austin, or passing through over the next few weeks, I highly recommend trying to get ahold of their seasonal release to celebrate the holiday. Their Year of the Dragon-themed "Power & Elegance" rice lager was brewed with a combination of Vietnamese and Taiwanese oolong teas, and is just delightful. I'm trying to figure out how to hoard some for the warmer months to come.
Alright, back to our regularly scheduled Good Stuff™ this week--
- 🚀 General Dynamics' Space Age Playing Cards - Love these vintage playing cards made by General Dynamics in 1964 to celebrate the American Space Program, back when it was really running at full steam trying to get us to the moon. Factory-sealed decks (unopened for 60 years!) are up on EBay for ~$250. Egads!
- 🗣 Tween and Teen Slang Dictionary for Parents - I feel a bit like I sipped from the wrong chalice in the crypt of the Grail Knight when I read this, but it was honestly really helpful. I have heard a lot of these terms and only been able to guess at their meanings from context clues. I don't imagine I'll be slipping many of these words into conversation any time soon, but I believe there's a lot of power in language, and tremendous benefit to learning new languages, so here we are!
- 🎧 Arushi Jain's Under the Lilac Sky - Having been tinkering with modular synthesis lately, I've been listening to a lot of blippy, bloopy, ambient music to pair with the new hobby. A lot of it is very pleasant to have on in the background but not particularly interesting. Arushi Jain's music, by contrast, is really stimulating and rich listening. Well worth a listen.
- 📰 Project Tapestry by The Iconfactory — Kickstarter - The good folks at The Iconfactory are responsible for making many of my favorite apps and games for Mac and iOS. They've recently launched a Kickstarter for a new app / ecosystem they're working on that will serve as a universal reading aggregator, pulling from RSS feeds, podcasts, Federated content (Mastodon, Threads, etc), and so on. I'm excited to see where this goes, and backed it within an hour or so of launch.
- 🧗♀️ Hero Clip Carabiner - I was reminded recently of how much I love this thing... It's a very clever twist (literally?) on the classic carabiner design, letting you use it both as a carabiner and as a hook for hanging things on tables, tree branches, strollers, etc. It's one of my travel backpack essentials.
That's it for this week, be well everyone!