A dedication to optimism from Ian Bremmer:

To a glass half full. That first half was tasty.

What is a chapbook? According to Kirby from Knife Fork Book:

Poetry books used to be maybe, maybe 60 pages. Maybe, at the most, 80 pages. But a chapbook is anywhere up to 48 pages. Which I think is too long, I would still call that a full-length book.

A recent and unexpected curiosity about the internal structure of car tires led me to this diagram on the Continental site:

a stylized diagram highlighting the 9 layers of a car tire from the tread down to the bead core, steel wires that help keep the tire seated in the rim

My layer of interest?

  1. Steel cord belt plies. Strong steel cords provide the tire with rigidity in this layer, which:
  • Enhances shape retention and directional stability
  • Reduces rolling resistance
  • Increases your tire’s mileage performance.

One of the belts had snapped in my front driver’s side tire, adding a jaunty angle to the width of the tread. I knew tires were more complex than inner tubes, but I never realized how many structural layers there are. So now I know more about tires and my van no longer turns left on its own.