Newsletter on Clay Carson

December 2025

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

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Do not hesitate to reply to this month’s email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

November 2025

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

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Do not hesitate to reply to this month’s email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

October 2025

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

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Do not hesitate to reply to this month’s email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

September 2025

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

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Do not hesitate to reply to this month’s email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

August 2025

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

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Do not hesitate to reply to this month’s email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

June 2025

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

The Bone Collector

Carnivorous ‘Bone Collector’ Caterpillars Wear Corpses as Camouflage

Caterpillars are known for their fuzzy exterior and sometimes weird behavior. Some vibrate aggressively to scare predators; others create their own antifreeze to survive the cold. But a newly identified member of the offbeat caterpillar club might be the weirdest of all. Nicknamed the “bone collector,” it builds a disguise from insect cadavers it scrounges from a spiderweb, covering its body with these spider-meal leftovers—and occasionally engaging in cannibalism.

Five-Thirty-Six

Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive(…yet)

Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.

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Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

May 2025

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

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Do not hesitate to reply to this month’s email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

April 2025

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

Stacks on Stacks

If You Ever Stacked Cups In Gym Class, Blame My Dad

I know this whole endeavor is silly, that it’s worthy of your slight mockery and general patina of confusion. But also understand that my dad created a culture in which German coaches passed strategic tips to Australian competitors. Where Japanese teenagers became pen pals with suburban Texans. Where nerves collapsed faster than the cups. Where kids and adults shrieked with joy over millisecond improvements. Where tension and drama and friendship mingled with the clattering cacophony of sliding and tapping plastic (there really is no sound like the one at these competitions).

Brain Busted

How Much Do I Really Need to Know?

But I have recognized an impulse in myself to keep intaking information, as though it were a moral imperative to know every meticulous detail of all Earthly horrors. And, as much as I would like to think that it does, I don’t think that this impulse comes from duty. I think it comes from guilt. If I couldn’t directly help, the least I could do was witness. The least I could do was watch, feeling increasingly helpless, feeling increasingly numb.

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Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

March 2025

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

Sign Off

Do not hesitate to reply to this month’s email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

February 2025

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

Sign Off

Do not hesitate to reply to this month’s email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

January 2025

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

Man of Steal

Joe Posnanski’s wonderful obituary, ‘Being Rickey’

My favorite Rickey Henderson story of the many hundreds happened when he came back to Oakland and was looking to assure his new manager, Tony La Russa, that he would be a team player. Up to that point, Rickey ran whenever he wanted to run, he had a perpetual green light, but he asked to be shown the signs and promised to follow them. So they showed him the steal sign, the hit-and-run sign, the bunt sign. And they told him that when a coach swiped his arms, that took off all signs.

Not long after, Henderson was on first, and the coach swiped his arms, signaling to Henderson that he was to stay. Rickey stole second anyway, and came around to score. The next time he reached first, the coach again swiped his arms, again signaling Henderson to stay. Rickey stole second again.

La Russa furiously cornered Henderson in the dugout and asked him why he wasn’t following the signs. Henderson looked puzzled.

“You said if he swipes his arms, that means take off sign,’” Henderson said.

La Russa nodded.

“Well, he swiped his arms,” Rickey said. “And Rickey took off.”

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Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

December 2024

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0000

This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.

You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.

Find and Replace

Hunter S. Thompson, writing in September 1972, a little over one month ahead of Nixon’s landslide reelection:

The polls also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states.

Well … maybe so. This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves: finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government”, is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

Jesus! Where will it end?

We go again.

Favorite Finger Up

Why I hate the index finger

To demonstrate what a poor participant the index finger can be, get a pound of eight or ten penny common nails, a well-balanced hammer, and a heavy log into which you can drive the nails. Start four rows of ten nails, each well spaced, with at least two inches of the nails still to be driven into the wood. The object of this little exercise is to hit the individual nails, solidly, with hard, precise hammer strokes. We will grip the hammer differently in nailing each row. First hold it between the thumb and the index finger and strike each of the ten nails in turn. If you manage three good hits out of ten strokes, you will be about average. Now add your middle finger to the hammer and try again. With this addition, you should be able to get five solid hammer blows out of ten. If you add the ring finger, you should hit eight or nine good ones. When you add your little finger and grip the hammer with your entire hand, you should get ten out of ten good strikes. Oh, I forgot to say the results will depend, of course, upon your being effective with a hammer at the outset.

Now let’s reverse the procedure. You cannot really hold the hammer with the little finger and thumb so you have to start with the ring and littler fingers and the thumb. Voila! You should strike nine or ten good blows. Now add the middle finger and feel the strength, comfort, and accuracy improve.

It appears that good, accurate hammering doesn’t really require an index finger. In many acts of manual function requiring strength, the hand may function superbly without the index digit. As an example, with both the overlapping and the interlocking grips on a golf club, the object seems to be to get the index digit of the nondominant hand out of the act. Due to the way the club is held, the dominant index finger doesn’t grip anyway.

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Thanks for reading. Have a great month,

Clay

Newsletter on Clay Carson

December 2025

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November 2025

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October 2025

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September 2025

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August 2025

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June 2025

The Bone Collector

Five-Thirty-Six

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May 2025

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April 2025

Stacks on Stacks

Brain Busted

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March 2025

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February 2025

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January 2025

Man of Steal

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December 2024

Find and Replace

Favorite Finger Up

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