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Family Photo: Dinosaur Land

For Luana's birthday we visited Terra dos Dinos, which claims to be the world's largest dinosaur park. Outside of maybe one or two Florida golf courses, the claim feels accurate.
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We hired a van, rode 2 hours on roads of varying quality, and toured the park as a group of 16 friends and family.

The park is at the bottom of a lush, very Jurassic Park-esque valley. A shuttle takes you to the bottom of the valley, and then you walk a nature path with a mix of dinosaur statues, dinosaur animatronics, and dinosaur costumes. Some of the cast members even holding "baby velociraptors."

Overall, Terra dos Dinos is a fun excuse to get out of the house, walk around outside with friends, and take selfies with dinosaurs. Recommended.

Terra dos Dinos was culturally interesting to me in dinosaurs as pure entertainment. I feel like in North America, dinosaurs are always presented through a scientific lens: bones or fossils in a museum, make us wonder at the eras of the earth, ponder their mass-extinction event. Even Jurassic Park focuses on DNA and biology.

None of this is part of Terra dos Dinos. It's just, "Here are the dinosaurs!" At the trailhead, a video tells a story answering, "Why are there dinosaurs here?", but I don't know who the fantasy explanation is for. The video explains 100 years ago a meteor landed in the valley and secreted a substance that reanimated the dinosaur fossils that had been dormant under the surface - if you want to feed a fantasy to a child, wouldn't it make more sense to just say dinosaurs never went extinct and had always been in the valley?

The result is that there are dinosaurs in Dinosaur Land because dinosaurs are unregistered intellectual property. It could as easily be Dragon Park or Alien Park - maybe those will be future expansions:)

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Fun fact: dinosaurs found in South America are different from the Jurassic Park fan favorites. I can sympathize to the commercial decision to include T-Rex in Dinosaur Land even if it is not "geographically accurate". A trip to DinoLand wouldn't be a trip to DinoLand without a T-Rex selfie.
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Another fun fact: Stegosaurus lived ~150 million years ago, while T-Rex lived ~70 million years ago. So we are closer to living with T-Rex than T-Rex was to living with Stegosaurus.

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Dad Joke: Dinosaurs

Longtime Just Joshin' fans may remember I once compiled a list of dinosaur puns. This week I explored that some more with some AI assistance. I wrote a blog post about it:

​What Do You Call A Dinosaur…?​

Have a dinosaur pun you'd like to share?
Send me a reply.

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Highlights: Lands

I'm not a geographic-determinist (Guns, Germs, and Steel was not my favorite college book), but I found these parallel threads on the US and Brazil compelling.

Land formations in the US and Brazil create distinct natural benefits and challenges. The US has abundant ports and navigable interior waterways, while Brazil is regionally fragmented by its geography.
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The sweeping cliffs that make Rio famous? Those mountains are common to all Brazilian coastal areas and make interior logistics networks difficult.

​Can Brazil become a superpower? by Tomas Pueyo​

In case you are wondering, Tres Rios (where we're staying) is beyond the Great Escarpment. Flying into Rio, you have to climb through the mountains of the Great Escarpment to get here.

​There is no chance the USA will stop being the global superpower by Michael Girdley​
(ignoring, the clickbait title, there's some interesting stuff here)
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iamJoshKnox Highlight

​Thoughts on Atomic Habits​

Writing this newsletter has become a weekly habit. My daily free-writing habit has been slipping though.
I need to re-ignite that routine.

Sometimes it helps to write from conversation:
If you're interested and want to talk for 30 minutes about business, ERP, AI, or family and education: Let's Chat!​

(Book some time even if you don't know what you want to talk about. Paul Millerd inspired me to schedule time in my day specifically for curiosity conversations)

​https://calendly.com/iamjoshknox​

Until next week,
​iamJoshKnox​​

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Thoughts? Feedback?
😊Hit Reply and let me know😊

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