My favorite nature fact is that somewhere in the world, there's a tree that sprouted the same day you were born and has been growing alongside you ever since.

The umpire got hit in the nuts not once, not twice but three times in four innings. And not once did he think, maybe I should find a cup. But the noise he made every time he got hit was the best. And I swear, I’m pretty sure someone said “he’s dead” on the very last one. Funniest shit you’ll see today.

New to the Iowa state fair this year. Butter dipped Ice cream. 💀

WARNING: Longer post (but worth reading or bookmarking for later). Your life has seasons. Each one is unique. Characterized by its own distinct desires, struggles, opportunities, and identity. But one reflection I've had recently is just how easy it is to completely disassociate with the present season. To give all your time and energy toward a longing for some nostalgic memory of a prior season or an anticipation for some beautiful state of a future season. You look back at the past and all you see is sunshine. Because it all worked out. You forget (or glaze over) the struggle you endured. You're here today. You made it. You're alive. You're doing fine. You look forward at the future and dream on what could be. You'll have so much more. More freedom. More purpose. More health. More deep connection. More everything. The past is beautiful and the future feels limitless. So, logically, you slowly start to treat everything about the present as the bridge. A dash connecting your past and your future. A gap to be crossed as quickly as possible. Everything you do today is in anticipation of some eventual end state. I'm doing this now, so that I can have that later. Unfortunately, the danger of that dissociation with the present is significant. You may spend your entire life living for a future that has a decidedly mirage-like property. You inch closer, but when it's right in front of you, it disappears and reappears on the horizon. You may spend your entire life skipping through the present, deferring your presence, your joy, and your very humanity to a future that never comes. In a classic French fable, a young boy is gifted with a magic ball of golden thread. He's told that if he simply pulls on the thread, time will leap forward. The catch, of course, is that once it's pulled, it can never be put back. The young boy takes advantage of the newfound powers. Each time he's faced with a boring day at school, a frustrating set of chores, or a scolding from his parents, he pulls the thread, skipping through to the good parts. As an adult, he continues, leaping through mundane struggles in his marriage, the friction of having a newborn, and the boredom at work. He finds himself pulling on the thread more and more, avoiding even the most minor inconveniences of his life. But when he wakes up one day and sees an old man looking back at him in the mirror, he's filled with regret. He realizes in that moment that as he chose to skip through the boredom, struggles, and friction, so too did he miss the real texture of being alive. How often do we all do the same? How easily do we default into this disassociation? Disconnecting from the present in anticipation of some future. A mentor recently asked me this: "Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?" It hit me hard. And to be honest, I haven't stopped replaying those words since he said them. Why are you in such a rush? The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines. In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours. In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence. Be in the season you're in. Don't romanticize the past, don't fantasize the future. Be here. Be now. Be in this. All of its texture, depth, and struggle. All of its joy, tension, and pain. Sit with the uncertainty. Become friends with it. Fall in love with it. Because every single thing you do today is something your younger self dreamed of and something your older self will wish they could go back and do. The good old days are happening, right now. And the next time you find yourself skipping through the present, remember these words: Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?

The world's largest — and best air conditioned — Museum of Ice Cream opens in Las Vegas on July 3, at AREA15. It'll feature the biggest all-you-can-eat ice cream buffet ever built, a cake-shaped wedding chapel, and a temporary-tattoo parlor for some reason.

Ice cream is actually one of the healthiest foods in existence, judging by a multitude of recent research articles. There was a very highly publicized article that came out in 2018 out of Harvard. It was for a student's dissertation, he found that ice cream was inversely associated with heart disease. The nutrition department and the student himself tried repeatedly to "make the association go away" with different analysis, and checking his work. But it didn't. Not only was ice cream reported as beneficial, it was actually one of the most beneficial dairy products analyzed. With up to a 12% reduction in heart disease risk for having >2 servings of ice cream per week. This wasn't the first study to find benefits of ice cream, and it also wasn't the last. In a 2013 meta analysis of studies, they also found a protective effect of ice cream on diabetes. You can see the bias against ice cream, as they don't even mention it in the main page. That's despite ice cream showing one of the BEST results of any food studied for diabetes risk. Another study from 2014 showed the same thing. Again, this is a meta analysis, not just one study. They are pooling together all of the studies on ice cream and diabetes and still finding this. The best result of any dairy food studied - here with a 32% reduction in diabetes risk. The bias against ice cream is very strong in these studies. A 2016 study once again showing the same benefit of ice cream for diabetes risk. They say that the study above (Chen et al) showed "attenuated association" once diet collection information was stopped after hypertension or high cholesterol diagnosis. They argue that this means that the association is invalid. But not only did they not try to dismiss any other food studied like this, but this is just objectively not true (see above - there still was an association). They also buried their results on ice cream in the supplementary tables so it didn't even make the paper. That's probably because they didn't like the fact that once again, ice cream intake was inversely and strongly associated with diabetes risk. So you really can't argue that there was some kind of agenda in favor of ice cream here. More recent studies show the same thing. A 2019 paper again showed a lower risk of diabetes with increased ice cream consumption. And again, they put this information at the very end in the supplementary tables to try to hide it. Finally, the most recent study in 2024 showed the STRONGEST association for ice cream's protective effect on diabetes. There was a linear dose response. That means more ice cream = less diabetes, straight up. In fact, there was a 50% reduction in risk for having one serving per day. Which, as you could guess by this point, was the greatest risk reduction of any dairy food studied. Why would ice cream actually be good for you? My main guess is the unique protective fats in dairy, that are abundant in ice cream. ◇ C15 ◇ C17 ◇ CLA ◇ TVA ◇ TPA are fats almost exclusively in dairy fat, and all have unique effects. ◇ Mitochondrial enhancing ◇ Anti-inflammatory ◇ Anti-thrombotic ◇ Lipid lowering ◇ Fat burning ◇ Cancer preventing I've covered these all at length in other content. Of course, this is all observational. This is simply seeing what people eat and then seeing what happens to them. It's not an experiment. That is definitely a limitation. However, when you see the same association, consistently, across decades, regardless of analysis and confounding adjustment, you probably have something real. This is not to say everyone should go and immediately pound gallons of ice cream for invincibility. But... it does mean having reasonable amounts of ice cream is likely good for you.

Your brain basically stopped recording your life around age 25. Everything since then is a blur for a reason. Neuroscientists measured this so many times they named it: the reminiscence bump. Ask anyone over 60 to recall their strongest memories and almost every answer clusters between ages 15 and 25. The decade where everything was new. First job, first apartment, first real relationship. Your brain encoded each day because nothing had a template yet. After that window closes, most people enter a repetition loop. Same commute, same office, same weekend rhythm. The brain stops recording repeated experiences as distinct events. A year with 300 novel days leaves 300 memory anchors. A year with 10 leaves 10. Both took 365 days to live. Only one of them will exist when you look back. This is why people at 50 say "where did the time go." The time went into routine that felt like living but left almost nothing behind. Your remaining years are fixed. How many your brain bothers to remember is entirely up to you.