Six Things, Volume 26

Thing 1 – Bagels

I like bagels.

I also like watching people do things with love and expertise.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that I liked this short film.

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Thing 2 – Fonts

Rob Walker of The Art of Noticing shared this interesting article from The Washington Post about how type design decisions influence our comprehension levels in everything we read.

If it’s of interest, I found the font designed specially for dyslexic readers easiest and fastest to read, and the one designed to look like cursive script absolutely unbearable. I’d be interested to know if the same applied to you.

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Thing 3 – Bus racing

There are some odd sports out there. Chessboxing, for example, which is exactly what you think it is, even if you were hoping it was something different. Another intriguing one is Jollyball, a cross between… well, see if you can guess.

Then there’s volcano surfing, which… I mean… just, nope.

A lot of the results that come up when you Google ‘weird sports’ seem to involve some sort of low-to-medium-level animal cruelty (“Ostrich racing tops the list of funny sports” – not for the ostriches it doesn’t, you ghouls). I avoid listing those.

Instead, let’s have a bit of double decker bus racing, a cruelty-free sport (“will nobody think of the double decker buses?”) that had its moment in the sun in the 1980s on ITV’s World of Sport (along with barrel jumping and ice speedway).

Human beings are strange.

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Thing 4 – Pastry and cycling

I write this in the aftermath of Mark Cavendish’s untimely and upsetting abandonment of the Tour de France. All careers come to an end, of course, but you want the greats to go out on their own terms. What a career, though. What an athlete.

But the Tour goes on, as it always does. Part of the viewing pleasure, for the casual watcher, comes from having it burbling away in the background as the peloton rolls through picturesque French countryside, the less eventful stages enlivened by shots of vultures, chateaux or vineyards.

Today, I learned from Twitter, it crossed from chocolatine country to pain au chocolat country. These distinctions are important.

The map was made by Adrien van Hamme

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Thing 5 – Bike lane

Talking of cycling, this is delightful.

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Thing 6 – Whendle

Fed up with Wordle? Gave up on Worgle? Ran out of steam with Quordle, Octordle, Sedecordle, Duotrigordle and all the other variants on the game? Filled with ennui at the thought of Waffle and Worldle?

Have a go at Whendle. You get five clues to find the year. I’ve found it fun. SO FAR.

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Bonus thing

Here’s a little follow-up to last week’s typewriter piece from Atlas Obscura.

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