Good food and great denim

This last month or two I haven’t really done anything productive in my personal life, and it feels great. Work has been super fun and I got to go to Google I/O and ride golf carts around the Apple Campus during WWDC which are two bucket list items I can now check off my list, but it resulted in me just spending a lot of my free time reading or sitting on the couch watching YouTube videos. I highly recommend it.

In this issue

 ⛰️ Huckberry Presents: Dirt

 👖 Japanese denim and (Japanese Americana in general).

 🐋 A website that illustrates how fucking deep the ocean is.

⛰️ Dirt

Something that I recently discovered thanks to the almighty YouTube algorithm is this series from Huckberry called Dirt. It’s a modern take on adventurous foodie travel that reminds me a lot of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown (except way less serious and more wholesome) . This four episode series is all about sourcing local ingredients for meals, but that premise is mostly used as an excuse to introduce the viewer to cool people in different parts of the country that do extraordinary things to get the freshest ingredients. The best part of this for me was seeing how beautiful some of the untouched areas of the United States are. As someone who has exclusively lived in coastal cities like New York and Portland, this series really made me want to explore more of the country.

👖 Japanese Americana

About two months ago I decided to buy myself one nice thing that I’ve been wanting. After much deliberation and thinking about what I actually need, I settled on a nice pair of jeans. Turns out, that’s a whole ass rabbit hole I was not ready for! What started as a quick search for “Best Levi’s jeans” led me to the fascinating world of shuttle looms, the Osaka 5, and Japanese denim. As is the case with almost everything I’m interested in, this led me to weeks of research. When I’m going to spend a lot of money on something that at first glance seems like a scam, I need to convince myself by learning as much as I can about the subject before buying anything. My favorite resource I’ve found is this video by Drew Joiner about the history of Japanese Americana. This guy is so honest and it feels like you’re learning along with him instead of learning from him. Even if you’re not looking to blow money on a pair of jeans it’s a very interesting watch.

🐋 The depths of the ocean

One random thing that I found is this clever Deep Sea website by Neal Agarwal. It’s just a website that shows how deep in the ocean different animals can be found. It starts off cool enough with animals like clown fish, polar bears, and salmon, but it quickly takes a turn for the terrifying. It’s wild to think about how deep the oceans are and the kind of creatures you can find living in them. One cool thing about this site is that as you scroll down deeper into the ocean, the page gets darker and darker until it’s basically just black simulating the amount of light that you’d be able to see at that depth. Spoiler alert: it gets pitch black very quickly.

🏠Housekeeping

I’m getting used to using Substack again since Twitter killed its newsletter service and found that there are a few cool new features to play with! For example, I’ll leave you with this: