I’m going to start with the fun stuff — the rest is mostly me trying to make sense of some recent thoughts, so read on if you’re curious.
Good News (we need it):
A possible treatment for Huntington’s has emerged from a group at the University College of London. The one-time treatment found that those given a high dose of the drug, AMT-130, have 75% less disease progression over three years compared to untreated individuals. There are some caveats — the test group was small (12 individuals), and the treatment had to be administered over 12 hours through catheters directly into the brain. BUT, this is still an incredible development!
The third interstellar object ever detected is currently moving its way through our solar system. 3I/ATLAS was discovered on July 1, 2025, and is currently estimated to be between 3 and 5.6KM in diameter. The asteroid has garnered a lot of attention, even pulling some observation time from both the Hubble and James Webb telescopes.
Good Gear
There’s something about printed photos that just hits different. I got a photo printer a while back for my own photos that I put up around the house. But we also got a Fujifilm instax mini Link 3 (not an affiliate link…I don’t do those) and it is absolutely perfect. Prints from photos on your phone and gives them such an incredible look and feel.
There are so many things I would like to have on my desk. Not for any real purpose, just to distract me really. Here are a couple I’ve come across recently:
Desktop wind tunnel for car models
Nano Tracks. I very nearly backed this one on Kickstarter. So cool.
Good Sites
Everynoise.com is a wild ride — it maps every genre and subgenre of music you could possibly think of, plus all the ones you never new existed. The creator of this masterpiece is Glenn McDonald, a self-proclaimed “music evangelist” who I think has the chops to deserve the title.
Not a website, but a YouTube channel. I could not recommend a YouTube channel more strongly. Hank Green will not only keep your curiosity going with incredible science updates, but he’s also an extremely effective communicator at navigating through the fog of science mis/disinformation.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. I think that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re coming up on turning 30. Buy a house, be passionate about my work, challenge myself, etc. etc. The question I keep coming back to is “but why am I supposed to do those things? Why is that better than alternative?”
So, consider this an overview of my recent side quest to figure out one of those question’s answer.
Buy the Abode?
Ally (my wife) graduated from USU in 2019 and I graduated a couple years later in 2021. She started teaching in 2019, and we figured that, based on our trajectory, we could probably buy a house and live out the American dream by 2022 — 2023 at the absolute latest, for sure.
Well, then 2020 happened, and rates went up, and prices went up, and the supposed American dream went up in flames for us and everyone else our age without some inheritance money queued up (which we most certainly did not).
We’ve had a great few years though since. Graduated from UofU, both of us have gotten new jobs, we live in a great area for a great rental price, and our landlord conveniently owns a landscaping company and does our lawn for free. We’ve kept looking at houses. Every time we travel to a new cool place and eat at enough good restaurants to convince us that moving there will solve all our problems, we pull up Zillow and check out the local market. It’s all good fun.
But, the whole time we’ve been wondering if our holding pattern of saving and looking and looking and saving is all we’re after right now.
We decided it’s not.
So, we bought a van. A 2019 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter that my kid wants to name “Ford Transit.”
The van has a bed (which we had to modify so I could actually sleep on it), a sink, a fridge, solar, a solid battery, all the things we could need, and it’s already been an incredible investment.
Now, some of you may be thinking “but Max, that’s not an investment, that’s a money pit that will depreciate massively each year!”
Correct.
When I said “investment” I should have clarified — not a financial investment but a life investment. We’re still saving lots and thinking long-term - meaning that we’ll get to that house purchase eventually - but we aren’t convinced about where we want to live or when buying will be right for us. What we are convinced of is that there are a million memories to be made right now with our little family and this will help us make them.
So, say hello to the newest member of our family, Ford Transit (name pending a family vote), the Mercedes Sprinter van. The house will come. I’m not fretting.