Shared links
Adam Sowards on being Unconfined in the Desert:
Americans were slow to embrace the desert as a landscape worthy of preservation. Geysers and canyons and mountains were one thing; dry expanses with prickly plant life and poisonous creatures were another. The National Park Service existed for a generation before it started protect desert spaces, and the American public did not really change their attitudes until after World War II. For most of the nation’s history, “desert” meant desolation.
It’s a good piece, though I bristled a bit when reading the above paragraph. Sure, this was certainly true for most Easterners, but I’d also remark that this wasn’t true in Southwestern communities.
Phoenix, for instance, just a small unassuming town at the time, purchased 16,000 acres to establish South Mountain Park in 1924. Similarly, nearby Papago Saguaro National Monument had been designated ten years prior, before even the National Park Service itself existed. Tucson Mountain Park was created in 1929. Several other desert landscapes had been protected as national park units, though often due to archaeological sites or other scientific fascinations. But, really, nearly all national parks were designated for something unusual, not just a standard representation of their flora, fauna, and geology.
Smithsonian Magazine has a list of 250 Places to Celebrate America that’s fun to peruse.
This site collects laptop sticker collages.
Discover a unique collection of laptops adorned with creative stickers from around the world. This project celebrates the art and culture of laptop personalization each laptop tells a story through its stickers and gives us a glimpse of the personality of the owners.
Here’s an interesting interactive photo map of trains:
Railfan Atlas is a map interface for exploring Flickr’s railroad photography. Started in 2014, it has grown into one of the largest databases of railroad images.
Oliver Burkeman has a proposal to make:
2026 should be the year that you spend more time doing what you want. The new year should be the moment we commit to dedicating more of our finite hours on the planet to things we genuinely, deeply enjoy doing – to the activities that seize our interest, and that make us feel vibrantly alive. This should be the year you stop trying so hard to turn yourself into a better person, and focus instead on actually leading a more absorbing life.
In the end, though, there is a consideration even more fundamental than any of these, which is that it’s not clear what life is really for at all, if it isn’t for doing more of whatever makes you feel most alive. It’s notoriously easy to slip into the unconscious assumption that any such aliveness is for later: after you’ve sorted your life out; after the current busy phase has passed; after the headlines have stopped being quite so alarming. But the truth for finite humans is that this, right here, is real life. And that if you’re going to do stuff that matters to you – and feel enjoyment or aliveness in doing it – you’re going to have to do it before you’ve got on top of everything, before you’ve solved your procrastination problem or your intimacy issues, before you feel confident that the future of democracy or the climate has been assured. This part of life isn’t just something you have to get through, to get to the bit that really counts. It is the part that really counts.
Read the whole piece: The secret to being happy in 2026? It’s far, far simpler than you think…
A Deeper Map is a mobile app that invites you to discover where ancient irrigation canals and agricultural fields once existed in what is now the Phoenix metro area.
Interesting post on Instagram’s year-end memo. The future returns to the individual—there’s never been a better time to have your own website to post your stuff. Feeds are dying, as is virality + influencer-status (thank fucking goodness!). Let’s abandon social media and return to social networking.
How to Not Get Hit by Cars: important lessons in Bicycle Safety is a good guide for new cyclists.
Enjoyed this hour-long PBS documentary on the Rails to Trails movement.
ShadeMap.app is a useful map that simulates sun shadows for any time and place on Earth, along with the total amount of sun it receives over the course of the day.
Commenting on domain names with a buddy and was reminded of why I killed off my outdoors/travel blog a number of years ago.
I love that @PaulTibbetts summarized both his itinerary and full expenses for his epic hike on the Tour du Mont Blanc. I’ll refer back to this when I start planning my own trip (I’ve punted for the time being, after originally hoping to join some friends in doing it this year).
I don’t recall hearing about this at the time, but this was a fun watch.
→ He secretly changed this freeway sign, helped millions of drivers
Dave Karpf on the “Five things I believe about actually-existing AI today.”
If you live in Phoenix, you are often told that—especially with a warming planet—the city will soon be uninhabitable. Here’s a counterargument:
Despite the flood of east-coaster think pieces, I think there’s an argument to be made that Phoenix is well-positioned to thrive in the climate crisis.
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When it comes to redesigning our civilization around renewable energy, it makes much more sense for people to live in places where the big temperature-based energy needs come during summer days, when sunlight is most abundant, rather than needing that energy on winter nights, when photons are scarce.
Chris La Tray is feeling like a poet again (and also shares some poems from 2025’s Voices for the West compilation).
What I mean by “feeling like a poet” is the sense of awareness to the world beyond the task list. It means looking for and acknowledging the return of all my bird friends and relatives, more who arrive at the end of their migration here every day. When we cloister indoors all the time it is easy to overlook, or even forget, all the lives that are being boisterously lived all around us, all the time. Recognizing this and reveling in it is what makes me feel like a poet again.
I love the adventure that Robert put together for the summer.
Here’s a listing of how to remove your personal information from data brokers. It’s a loooong list and definitely an endeavor, but start with the 14 marked 💐 and work your way deeper, if you can.
Really love this Nevada skiing quest:
The Idea
To ski every peak in Nevada, USA with over 3,000‘ of prominence (64 total).
Why?
To lure myself into skiing Nevada’s lesser-visited places.
This sort of thing is exactly why I love quests so much.