Your Mid-Week Experiment

In which we get an unexpected lesson in positivity from the Dutch

Hey, how are you, have you lost weight? You look great. No really, I mean it. I don’t remember who posted the entry on the “flourish of approval” online (probably birthday boy Austin Kleon), but I’m adopting it as my signature. From now on, instead of signing my name, I’m going to bestow approval upon an unknowing world. Consider it my hopepunk resistance to reality.

Let’s get to it.

It was great to see so many of you at Book People. Had a good time, signed a lot of books which you can buy here. Thanks again to Sewell Chan for being such an excellent moderator.

Cuff Balboa @cuffbalboa

I'm attending my first ever author-driven book discussion tonight with @cltomlinson, @BryanBurrough and @JasStanford discussing #ForgetTheAlamo at @BookPeople (which drove to go that old tweet of mine in which I actually correctly predicted something!).

Cuff Balboa @cuffbalboa

So I've just discovered what Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw and Dan Patrick will be ranting about on social media next summer. https://t.co/vUvrlNC0yR

“The volume of candidates means that one could theoretically squeak into the finals with just a sliver of the vote, and so the race has become a poll rush, a modern-day chance at a big strike, the kind of haphazard opportunity that defines Alaskan mythology.” (Dan Zak)

Jason Stanford @JasStanford

Q-Anon has become so mainstream among conservatives that it doesn’t register anymore when I’m called a pedophile at work.

jasonstanford.substack.comWhy are our brains so dumb?When it comes to things we don’t want to believe, our brains are the hardest targets.

I love baseball. This looks like competitive ballet.

Orioles on MASN @masnOrioles

Jorge Mateo 😲

I got a new boss this week. He’s good people.

Apparently elephants attack humans so often that it’s become a public health issue with an official name: Human-Elephant Conflict, or HEC. Side effects include getting your head stomped by a damn elephant.

I’m sure you heard about the lady who got trampled by an elephant who showed up to her funeral to stomp her corpse? Are you like me? Did you assume she did something? Apparently not. It was an unprovoked trampling.

Hard to say what I like best about The First Lady… No, it isn’t. Michelle Pfeiffer owns as Betty Ford.

Really digging Tehran.

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Thanks to Noom, I lost 40 pounds over 2020-21 and have kept it off since then. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works. No, this isn’t an ad. Yes, I really lost all that weight with Noom.

We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment. 

We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is some

Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House. Out in paperback now!