Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my  "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan

Grace and Typos

Hi!

Today’s Weekender is about typos, but nothing I wrote about this week prompted me to write this essay. I’m sure I had a typo here or there, but there wasn’t anything egregious or anything that you all emailed me to laugh or yell about. What spurred me to write this is the other part: grace. But let’s start with the ttypos. (That one was intentional.)

If you’ve been reading Now I Know for long enough, you’ve probably come across a typo or two. For me, the occasional error is part of the cost of doing business (to misuse a phrase). Now I Know is a passion project for me — a hobby I do on the side — and has been since I started it way back in 2010. I publish something just about every weekday and, as a result, move quickly and don’t have time for a regular editor. Plenty of you have offered to do so, free, and with one rare exception years ago (thanks, Steven!), I’ve always politely declined. There are many, many days when I’m writing the newsletter the night before or even the morning before I send it, and having to wait for someone to catch the errant typo or adjust a turn of phrase doesn’t work for me.

And that taught me something that I want to share today.

Over the years, I’ve gotten a handful of notes from readers telling me that they are unsubscribing because they can’t handle the typos. I get that — Now I Know isn’t bringing them joy, and as a storyteller, it’s on me to tell the story in a way that feels fun, not like a chore. The first few times I got notes like that, I felt bad, like I was failing my readers — and to be clear, I kind of was. But the rest of the feedback I was getting (and continue to get!) was positive in spite of the typos. I was watching my readership numbers go up, I received note after note from people whose days I’d improved, etc. I realized that most of you were accepting of the typos, giving me the grace I needed to provide you with something worth reading, day in and day out.

So I decided to give myself the same grace. And I’ve really never looked back on that decision.

I think a lot of us let perfection get in the way of progress. I’ve had dozen of other neat ideas that I’ve tinkered with and never gotten quite right, and therefore, never shared with the rest of the world. But a few times, I’ve decided that “good enough” is, actually, good enough. Now I Know is the biggest of those, and I’m glad that you’ve given me the grace to enjoy what I send you, imperfect as it is.

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: The Mystery of the Third Shaker: Salt, pepper, and… mustard, maybe?

Tuesday: The Great Geraint Woolford Coincidence: Two men, one name, one massive coincidence.

Wednesday: Wash Out: The lake that swallowed itself.

Thursday: The Farmer Strikes Back: Pollution falls to adult education.

And a bonus: Untying the Not: A typo that is so egregious, it’s worth a fortune if you have one lying around.

A Few Dollars = A Big Difference

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And thanks! — Dan

Long Reads and Other Things

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “He Thought He Knew Horses. Then He Learned to Really Listen.” (New York Times/gift link, 16 minutes, November 2024). The subhead: “Warwick Schiller made his name as an expert trainer. An enigmatic little horse completely changed his outlook.”

2) “Get in, Loser—We’re Chasing a Waymo Into the Future” (Wired, 22 minutes, November 2024). Journalists follow a self-driving car for six hours and share what they learned from the experience.

3) “Inside Sotheby’s $6 million sale of a banana” (Washington Post/gift link, 6 minutes, November 2024). An artist’s effort to mock wealthy art buyers is so successful, it attracts wealthy art buyers. Or, as the Post says in this piece, “a buyer of one of the original ‘Comedian’ editions sold it at auction for a whopping $6.24 million — and it became hard to tell who was in on the joke.”

Have a great weekend!

Dan