The Curious About Everything Newsletter #46

The many interesting things I read in December 2024

After two years of slowly making progress on my ‘uptime’ from my spinal CSF leak, I slid in the shower on Christmas Day when, unknown to me, my body scrub tipped over and oil dripped down onto the floor. The shower was very slippery even with shower slippers on — they’re no match for body scrub, apparently. I felt my the tearing at my leak site as my leg shot forward, and my heart sunk.

It’s now January, and many symptoms that had disappeared have come rushing back. The screeching tinnitus, the nausea, dizziness, and shakiness upright, the ‘brain sag’ at the back of my head yanking my skull downward the minute I stand, and the searing pain at my leak sites. Before I slid, I was averaging 7-8 non-consecutive hours upright a day. Now, I’m back to being almost entirely bedbound.

This is the first time that I’ll need to manage a reopened leak while living alone. Truthfully, I’m not sure how it will go. I’m planning to hire increased home-care support, and reach out to friends to help batch cook items I can freeze. It’s daunting, and I am so very sad to lose my hard-earned uptime hours. And from such a tiny movement too.

All this to say: next month’s CAE may look different, because I either may not be able to send it, or it’ll be a shorter link list with less editorial.

Either way, I hope you’ll stick around until I can send out CAE the way I usually do.

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Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter! CAE 45, last month’s newsletter, is here, if you missed it. The most popular link from last month was my post about the lumbar puncture-burglary nightmare of an evening that changed my life.

A quick read on seasonal depression

For those who have seasonal affective disorder, or are in the market for a SAD lamp (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, now is the time), I am sharing an article I wrote about what SAD is, and how to help manage it.

Featured art for CAE 46

This month’s featured artist is Elspeth Mclean, an artist who creates beautiful landscapes and mandalas in a riot of colours. Her Autumn Blossom artwork, below, made me feel things. I thought you might enjoy it too. You can find her on her website, or IG.

© 2025 Elspeth Mclean

The most interesting things I read this month

These links are once again formatted thanks to the help of my friend Mike.

Start here:

Start here for my faves, then fill up your browser tabs with the pieces below.

🧠 A devastating nerve disease stalks a mountain village. Why did a cluster of cluster of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis happen pop up in a tourist town in France? ALS, a disease that occurs due to the progressive loss of nerve function in the brain and body (eventually leading to paralysis and death) is rare — and usually does not happen in clusters. Estimated at occurrences of 2-3 out of 1000,000 people, in Montchavin, France a population of only a few hundred people yielded 16 cases since 2009. Neurologists were stumped, until researchers figured out a possible link. I won’t tease with clickbait; the culprit is a toxic mushroom that grows locally called “false morels”—that do indeed look a lot like real morels. They’re illegal to sell Finland and Denmark because they’re so toxic, but nonetheless have an underground market; some people may also purchase them or forage them thinking they’re eating the non-toxic real morel version. How researchers were led to the mushroom thesis is fascinating too, and set out in the article. Knowable

🕳 How to disappear completely. The internet is forever, or so the saying goes. But also, and especially these days, it isn’t. I use a broken link checker plugin for my 16 year old site Legal Nomads, because so many links I’ve shared over the years are simply dead ends these days. “The loss of content is not a new phenomenon,” writes s.e. smith. For every “iconic cuneiform tablet bemoaning poor customer service,” many more have disappeared into the ground (or the ether). And yet it feels more real in the digital age because we’re seeing it happen in real-time in ways that couldn’t be accounted for in prior eras. The digital decay is happening at a breakneck speed, and it’s hard not to feel, like the author does, as if we’re all just fading away. The Verge

🚘 Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars. Fascinating read by Nate Rogers, diving deep into the increasingly-bright (way too bright!) headlights on cars—both why it's happening, and how companies leverage their tech to appeal to safety-conscious consumers, despite it being poorer for roads overall. The Ringer

🌝 Moon. Everything you ever wanted to know about the moon, and then some. A whopping 16,000 words of deeply-researched information, this explainer by Bartosz Ciechanowski about “a fellow companion that gently affects our own existence” is full of physics, interactive graphics, and bolded words to illustrate its points and break up the density. His pieces are always educational marvels, and this one is no exception. Bartosz Ciechanowski (via The Browser)

🔊 The Ghosts in the Machine. A surprising investigation about how Spotify is aggressively replacing artist-driven music on its most popular playlists with “fake artists” or “ghost artists”. Apparently at Spotify this is called Perfect Fit Content. The piece explains that the use of ‘Perfect Fit Content’ to bulk up playlists allows Spotify to replace real artists and therefore minimize the royalty payments they’d otherwise be forced to pay. Le yikes. Harper's Magazine

🦀 Animals as chemical factories. Why do we still rely on animals for life-saving chemicals? We use a “Noah’s Ark of biofarming”; horses for antivenin, horseshoe crab blood to test medical equipment, silkworms for silk, eggs for influenza vaccines, and much more. Some of these practices go back millennia, and this piece gives us a deep dive. These days, though, just about any molecule that has historically been made from animals can be made synthetically from engineered cells, note the authors. So why don’t we? It’s complicated. Partly scaling issues, partly finding the right solutions. But it’s a worthy cause, and not only because the animals we’re farming are clearly worse for our vampirish tendencies. This piece has it all, charts of the synthetic process, an overview of a niche but fascinating topic, and sets it all out with a ‘meta’ take on concept overall. I’ve only read micro-histories on the individual animals prior. Very good piece. Works In Progress

🎗 “Eat What You Kill.” Imagine going through 9 years of chemotherapy only to discover you never had cancer in the first place? This horrifying fact pattern is but the tip of the iceberg in this investigative piece by J. David McSwane. He called it one of the more haunting pieces of journalism he’s worked on in two decades of writing. ProPublica

💔 How Does My Divorce Make You Feel? (Archive link) Oof, what a read. This is a personal essay by Dr. Lilly Jay, about her divorce from actor Ethan Slater. But it’s not a gossip piece, it’s about healing after betrayal and shaming. The piece made me wince, both for how she was treated and for the public callousness of it all. Her ex is now with pop singer Ariana Grande, and he left Jay just after she gave birth — while she had PPD, and having recently moved to the UK so that he could film Wicked. “My entire adult life, I feared that loss of control and postpartum depression would destroy me,” Jay writes. She encourages us to think about her “messy not-so-personal” life in that way, that her loss, rage, powerlessness, and sadness allows her to hold ours. “Some of what you loved most about your partner is actually your own goodness reflected back to you,” she says. “It’s yours to keep and carry forward.” We’re hearing from her, but we can’t hear from Ariana’s ex-husband (who presumably has some thoughts on the topic); allegedly he signed an NDA as part of the divorce settlement. The Cut

The rest of the most interesting things I read this month:

❓ Medical Mysteries: Her depression and poor memory had an unusual cause Woman’s suicidality and depression turns out to have been misdiagnosed for 50 (!) years. So, how did she finally get the diagnosis? A neurologist ordered a high field epilepsy brain MRI, her first MRI in nearly 50 years of suffering. How did no one suggest an MRI for this poor woman?! What she really had was a hypothalamic hamartoma, a tumorlike growth that is present at birth and as it grows affects mood, release of hormones, and memory. Washington Post via archive link

🍚 The Secret History of Risotto archive link - https://archive.is/YqDMG Another long read, this time about the ‘why’ of risotto. I’d read a full book on this one. “Nobody is quite sure where risotto came from,” Anthony Lane notes early on, sharing that there is a recipe for riso giallo in padella, or “yellow rice in a pan,” that dates from 1809. “Did that mark an innovation or codify a long-held custom?”, he asks? A very delicious read. The New Yorker

🎞 Casual Viewing. A very long piece that discusses how Netflix has significantly shaped the film and television industry, including the studios themselves. With Netflix’ membership model, audiences no longer pay for films in one-offs, at least not from the privacy of their homes, and what Netflix creates doesn’t need to be profitable or pretty or even well-made. Netflix’s audiences watch from their homes, on couches, in beds, on public transportation, on toilets; oftentimes “they aren’t even watching.” This very big shift has allowed their programming to be a guinea pig of sorts, crashing through the fences of cinematic rules. n+1

👯 Twins were the norm for our ancient primate ancestors − one baby at a time had evolutionary advantages. Recent research suggests that having twins used to be the norm, not the exception. Despite the fact that almost all primates today (including people) usually give birth to one baby at a time, our most recent common ancestor from North America (and by ‘most recent’ the article means ‘60 million years ago’) likely gave birth to twins as the standard. TIL. The Conversation

📱How WhatsApp ate the world. WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app, with 2 billion users who every day send 100 billion messages in 60 languages across 180 countries. I’ve used it for many years, to communicate with my landlord in Mexico, to arrange for a ride in Vietnam, to book appointments for a hair cut in Thailand. While Americans don’t use it much, it’s a humming part of business infrastructure in many a location. This is a deep dive into how WhatsApp grew so big — and Meta’s plan for what comes next (hint: making you use Meta products as much as possible). Rest of World

🇸🇾 Dawn in Damascus. ‪ “‘Forever is over,’ Syrians chanted over and over” notes Kareem Shaheenin this moving read that attempts to share the importance and feeling of Assad’s regime disintegrating thereby ending 60 years of Baathist rule. New Lines Magazine

🌱 In a Noah’s Ark move, PNG migrants bring thousands of trees to safer ground. Maria Kamin left the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea in response to rising sea levels. She and others moving to the nearby Bougainville Island have started a ‘green migration’ — taking plant and tree specimens from their native islands with them across the ocean to preserve their biodiversity. Mongabay

🩹 Seeing the Forest for the Trees. Good overview of simple tips to improve health from a ground level in America, a likely counterpoint to the MAHA messaging which — much like the messaging surrounding chronic illness, often paints America as lazy and unwilling to be healthy or well. That may be part of the issue for some of the population, but there are systemic issues of access to healthier food, to infrastructure that makes it easier and more pleasant to exercise, and to care that play in. Ignoring those factors only victim-blames for something that is a societal responsibility. This short post also goes into some of those inequities and how fixing them would boost health of the country overall. Your Local Epidemiologist

🇻🇦 Inside the Vatican’s secret saint-making process. To be recognised as a saint, a person has to go through what is essentially a long ‘posthumous trial’, one that picks apart their physical and spiritual remains to decide what is worthy of canonization. How does the Vatican do it? As the Vatican contemplates canonizing a ‘millennial saint’, this piece unpacks the process, as well as the office that handles it. Named the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, it has been in operation since 1588. The Guardian

ℹ️ Why Misinformation Must Not Be Ignored. I am glad to see substantiated pushback to the bizarre assertion from other research that misinformation is not that big of a deal, and that fear of it is a form of moral panic. It is a big deal. And as the paper notes, “[i]t is not irrational to be alarmed when alarming things are happening”. In this new article, researchers respond to critics in detail, and clarify two key points for the field: (1) that when misinformation is properly defined, its prevalence in society is substantial, and (2) misinformation causally impacts attitudes and behaviours in society. APA PsychNet

⚖️ Speaking of: I Fell For Justin Baldoni’s Act — And His Smear Campaign. This piece by Ella Dawson is a good reminder that even savvy modern people, well-schooled in the smoke and mirrors of social media, can fall for misinformation campaigns. Says Dawson, “He represents so many advocates and allies who are neither, and are in fact the perpetrators of the injustices they claim to fight.” For those unfamiliar with Baldoni’s coordinated campaign against Blake Lively, it’s also a primer of what unfolded from it. Patreon (ungated)

🐔 How America Lost Control of the Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic. No one wants to hear it, but here we are. Bird flu could still be contained on dairy farms if the US shifted gears rapidly — but politically, that is not going to happen. We don’t know yet if it’ll become a pandemic, but it’s a short mutation away from transmitting between humans — and if it does, notes a source in the article, “we’re screwed.” KFF Health News

🏥 What I've learned about long-term disability insurance providers. I know Leif, the author of this piece, from my travel writing days. Like me, he’s shifted careers and in his case spent the last years writing legal content online, with a task list that included finding some of the “most egregious court cases involving providers spending vast sums of money to avoid paying benefits to seriously sick and injured people.” Killing Batteries

⚕️Gisèle Pelicot, Medical Misogyny, and Disability. Kelly writes about why she thinks Gisèle’s physicians failed to listen and help her, and how disabled people face higher risks of abuse. The Disabled Ginger

🇻🇳 The Forgotten History Behind Saigon's CEE Colonial Substations. During my years in Saigon, I loved this bright blue building. I always thought it said EE, my dad’s initials, and it gave me an extra smile to wonder by. It turns out it’s CEE, not EE, and it’s an electrical substation. Woven into the fabric of modern-day streets, the aging building is a throwback to the “complex legacy of French colonialism,” writes Uyên Đỗ. Saigoneer

Some fun stuff! Year end lists and photos:

• Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards’s 2024 finalists. Always delightful.

• Astronomy Photographer of the Year’s gallery of 2024 winners.

• The Best Of 2024 from Longreads.

• The 2024 Bloomberg Jealousy List (Archive link), a list of the pieces Bloomberg staff thought were so good, they wish they wrote them. I look forward to this post every year.

• Tom Whitwell’s 52 things I learned in 2024. Another annual tradition.

• Time Magazine’s best inventions of 2024.

• Pretty niche, but New Scientist has a roundup of the best and weirdest photos of robots from 2024.

• Deadline’s best films of 2024.

• Wikipedia’s most popular articles of 2024.

• Far Out Mag’s 50 best albums of 2024

• The 8 worst technology failures of 2024 courtesy of Technology Review

• The top 10 product designs of 2024 from Dezeen

• And, finally: the most scathing book reviews of 2024 from LitHub.

🔗 Quick links

• Former lawyer (now a writer and more) Irene Kim compiled a ‘best of 2024’ list from around the Substackverse, and asked me to contribute the best things I read, bought, wore, etc.

• New reports sharpen the clinical picture of recent human H5N bird flu illnesses in US and Canada.

• An barred owl flew down a chimney and into an Arlington, Virginia home to perch atop the family Christmas tree. (video)

• A team of biologists, mycologists and microbiologists found that a species of mushroom growing in parts of Africa is the closest relative of Psilocybe cubensis, the most widespread hallucinogenic mushroom known to science.

• Vietnam to spend $67 billion on a new high-speed railway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city.

• Toronto man builds tiny mobile homes for the homeless

• Diamonds can now be created from scratch in 15 minutes.

• Why did your insurer deny your claim? Use ProPublica's claim service to request notes and documents (via Kottke).

• Do your shoelaces sit crooked? This granny knot primer will fix that for you, for life.

• A new way to tackle inflammatory skin conditions, via inhibiting mast cells in the skin. (Sign me up)

• A species of whale so rare it’s never been seen alive.

• New slug “glue” can stick brains back together. Can we get this for my dura too, please?

This newsletter is free because the projects below all support me enough to pay the bills.

If you’re able, please consider supporting my work elsewhere, as it helps keep CAE free!

• Patreon. A monthly membership where I share overflow links from CAE, write more personal posts about managing chronic pain and tools that have helped me, and share photos (mostly of flowers and trees!).

• Typographic maps of food. I designed these maps, and they are for sale as museum-quality posters, tees, and tote bags.

• Celiac translation cards. I’ve sold 19,000 of these gluten free cards, now in 19 languages, and I’m thrilled that I can still help celiacs travel safely, with less anxiety.

Hope to see you next month,
-Jodi