Watches, Stories, & Gear: A Peek Behind the Curtain at Lego, Baseball’s Biggest Contract, and a Camera Lost Since the 1970s Provides Clues to a Mountain Mystery

“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a roundup of our favorite content, watch or otherwise, from around the internet. Here, we support other creators, explore interesting content that inspires us, and put a spotlight on causes we believe in. Oh, and any gear we happen to be digging on this week. We love gear.

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“Ghosts on the Glacier” from the New York Times

In the New York Times this week there’s an absolutely stunning story, told with words, video, and incredible photographs, about a mountain expedition gone wrong in 1973. Writer John Branch conducted dozens of interviews to get to the bottom of what happened on Aconcagua, the peak in the Andes range that is the tallest in the western hemisphere, fifty years ago. What we already knew was that the expedition took the lives of John Cooper, a NASA engineer, and Janet Johnson, a schoolteacher from Denver and perhaps the group’s most talented climber. The intervening years saw contradictory statements from survivors, shrouding the trek in a layer of mystery. But a recent discovery, Johnson’s camera from the expedition with undeveloped film still inside, has provided new details on the team’s fate. It’s a riveting story with incredible images, and should be at the top of your reading list this weekend.  

Jesse Armstrong Talks About the Succession Ending 

Succession mania gripped many of us earlier this year, but if you’re still hungry for commentary on the TV show’s final season and (somewhat) controversial ending, a new story in Vulture is worth a look. Jesse Armstrong, Succession creator and showrunner, hasn’t talked much about the conclusion of the series, and the SAG and writer’s guild strikes over the summer put a stop to interviews with writers like Armstrong altogether. But now he’s talking, and shedding some additional light on how the ending came together, and how little details made it into the final cut. For Succession obsessives, it’s a lot of fun to get insight on how the final episodes took shape after having several months to digest them. Check out the interview here. 

Ming’s First Book, Written by Jack Forster

Something a little unexpected from Ming: a book! The Quest for all Positions, an evocative title if there ever was one, is the first book from the upstart indie watchmaker, and serves as a detailed history of the brand’s first five years and their initial 50 or so references. Written by Jack Forster, the book also includes a ton of photography by brand founder Ming Thien (a personal friend of Forster’s for decades) as well a complete collection of sketches by Lee Yuen Rapati that have famously accompanied so many Ming releases over the last five years. The book is available now, and can be ordered here.

Shohei Ohtani’s Blockbuster Contract

Shohei Ohtani, the transformative baseball superstar whose free agency was one of the most closely watched in sports history this year, signed what is perhaps the most lucrative contract in sports history this week with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The dollar amount alone – $700 million for ten years – is staggering. But the deal is potentially paradigm shifting in another way: a huge percentage of the Ohtani’s pay will be deferred. In an unusual move, the contract has been structured so that Ohtani will receive roughly $2 million per year from Dodgers over the next ten years of his career, with the rest being paid out in (massive) installments over the following ten years. The decision frees up salary cap room for the Dodgers, who will now be able to surround Ohtani with hot prospects and established stars to make World Series runs for a decade. It’s a controversial move that could have ripple effects for decades, and change how professional teams do business in a fundamental way. There’s a lot of great analysis of the deal all over the internet, but this piece in Slate is a good place to start to get a handle on the basics.     

Alex Garland’s Civil War, Coming this Spring, Gets a Trailer 

Alex Garland is a favorite filmmaker around here (we covered his great sci-fi flick Ex Machina on Time on Screen earlier this year) so any news of a new project is welcome and something we want to share. This week saw the debut of a trailer for his next project, Civil War, which apperas to be a big-tent action movie unlike any he’s made to this point. The premise is, as the title suggests, a civil war has broken out in what looks like a familiar, contemporary United States. All Garland movies have a certain political charge to them, but it’s usually under the surface – this is perhaps a little less subtle, which honestly just has us even more curious about what he has to say.

Behind the Scenes at Lego

The Verge has a great story this week taking us behind the scenes at Lego as they develop one of their most compelling products ever, a replica of the classic Polaroid OneStep SX-70 instant camera. The Lego camera itself is a fascinating piece of kit, but this piece gets into granular detail about how the project came together, offering rare insight into how things work behind the scenes at the legendary toy company. There’s also, as you’d expect for a story about a camera, all kinds of cool photography to look at over at the Verge, right here.