The Curious About Everything Newsletter #40

The many interesting things I read in June 2024

Jul 14, 2024

Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter! CAE 39, last month’s newsletter, is here, if you missed it. The most popular link from last month was Sasha Chapin’s piece, “50 things I know”.

Some Personal Updates

We raised a total of $6910 USD for spinal CSF leak research, the highest of any donation campaign during this year’s fundraiser. Thank you so much to those who donated!
I recorded the first episode of my soon-to-launch podcast, which I am excited to share with you all in a bit! The pod is about navigating life’s messy questions, and a project I’ve hoped to start for years now.

The Most Interesting Things I Read This Month

These links are once again formatted thanks to the help of my friend Mike, because Substack still doesn’t allow for easy hyperlinks on mobile.

Start here:

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

💪🏻 The Resilience Myth. “The danger of thinking that you and you alone are responsible for adapting positively to crisis — and today that means crises after crisis after crisis — is that you will almost certainly fail to meet your own expectations. No one is resilient alone, at all times, and in all situations. Resilience is a dynamic process and it is healthier and more accurate to say that we take turns being resilient for one another.“ Important read, since the pressure to ‘be resilient’ is the new ‘think positive’ in society. Not everyone has necessary tools at their disposal, and it’s not fair to blame people deep in grief if they can’t find their way through without them. This is a topic in one of my new podcast episodes as well, as I’ve received many questions about it over the years. Culture Study

✈️ How Lonely Planet Founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler Revolutionized the Way We Travel. My decade of travel feels like a few lifetimes ago, but these two influenced it greatly. A profile of Lonely Planet founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler, and how they and LP revolutionized travel. “They hadn’t set out to write a guidebook, but soon after they made it to Sydney, they found there was a huge interest in the notes and anecdotes they’d gathered along their route. Others wanted to follow in their footsteps. Demand was so great that the young Wheelers, who were still trying to earn money to buy their flights home to England, started to wonder if they could find a way to charge people for the information they were sharing. Tony suggested they write a guidebook, but could they find a publisher? They decided they didn’t need one; they’d publish themselves. And thus a new travel empire was born. LitHub

🌀 Chronic Pain is Psychedelic. I've long been fascinated by Sophie Strand's writings about pain, woven together as they are with her deep knowledge of nature's wonders. In this piece, she talks about pain and ‘enforced presentism’, a feeling of being stuck in the present, combined with the inability to plan ahead. “In moments of extreme pain, physical or psychological, we become stitched to the present moment. It becomes impossible not to be radically present. We can no longer count on a future. And our bright-minded, able-bodied pasts don’t feel like they belong to us anymore.” Beautiful writing, and relatable to me as someone who can’t recall what it’s like not to be in constant pain. She further makes a controversial, but I think accurate statement: that those with chronic pain or illness experience the “ego-destroying trips” currently driving the rise of magic mushrooms and other psychedelics every day: “I think chronic pain (psychological and physical) stitches us to the white-hot present moment in a way that radically exceeds our ideas of good or bad medicine,” she writes, a state she has never reached via meditation of psychedelic use alone. Make Me Good Soil

🍄 The World's Largest Fungus Collection May Unlock the Mysteries of Carbon Capture. Speaking of mushrooms: the world’s largest fungarium is in London’s Kew Gardens, with 1.3 million specimens that comprise half of all the species now known to science. Fungi play a crucial role in getting soil to absorb carbon, and they also nourish other plants’ roots and ecosystems. Super Interesting! WIRED

💻 Spreadsheet Superstars. (One for you, Dalene.) A fun essay about competitive Excel, two words I’ve never put next to each other prior. Fun design for the piece, too! The Verge

🕵🏻 Research as leisure activity. I feel oh so very seen. Personal Canon

🥑 Inside Mexico's anti-avocado militias. On the avocado, both its sale and production, with history thrown in. “[It] looks like an orange, and when it is ready for eating turns yellowish,” observed the Spanish coloniser Martín Fernández de Enciso in 1519. “So good and pleasing to the palate.” More recently, competition for control of growing and selling the avocado, including the resources needed to do so, has gotten increasingly violent of the avocado due to cartels. The Guardia

🧠 The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes. Previously, I’ve shared papers about how CSF helps push waste from the brain through the newly-discovered glymphatic system, and in the process helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease. This piece summarizes the recent studies in layman’s terms: “During sleep, slow electrical waves push the fluid around cells from deep in the brain to its surface. There, a sophisticated interface allows the waste products in that fluid to be absorbed into the bloodstream, which takes them to the liver and kidneys to be removed from the body. One of the waste products carried away is amyloid, the substance that forms sticky plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.” What does that mean for people like me with a chronic leak? I’ve written to a variety of paper authors, but they do not know. (“Great question, we don’t have any data!” is the common reply.) NPR

🩸 Rags to Riches. Centuries of shame have ensured that periods have been understudied and underrepresented in medical literature. It didn’t help that women of reproductive age were excluded from most US clinical trials until 1993, leading to a gender data gap in health research. “The uterus is an incredible organ for many reasons, chief among them is that it repairs itself—without scarring—after shedding its tissue every month or so during a person’s reproductive years. It does this with the help of stem cells, some of which are present in menstrual effluent. There have recently been clinical trials testing the use of these stem cells for conditions such as infertility and severe Covid, and studies showed they helped with wound healing and stimulating insulin production in diabetic lab mice.” This piece, about how period blood can provide crucial health information but researchers have pretty much ignored the topic altogether until recently—and even then faced backlash—was a very informative read. It seems like a no-brainer to test it for health data! And it's non-invasive to collect, too. Mother Jones

🦋 What happens during the first few moments of butterfly scale formation. New findings about butterfly scales could help engineers design materials for light and heat management, emulating the processes with “tailored optical, thermal, chemical, and mechanical properties. Pretty and educational! MIT News

❓ Why don’t we know how antidepressants work yet? On the ongoing “feisty dispute” over antidepressants, with some researchers seeing depression primarily as having biochemical causes, and others seeing it as a consequence of a broken society. Interesting overview, with a focus on Parastoo Hashemi’s team, who are taking a closer look at these meds. Chemistry World

🌱 A Masterclass in Living to One's Fullest, Weirdest Potential. Are plants intelligent? A fascinating overview, part narrative and part book review, about plant communication and information processing. Researchers hesitate to opine just yet, but “a growing number of them” hypothesize that the full plant acts as a brain, in a distributed network much like octopuses’ multiple brains. Really interesting stories, including species of plants that put out alarm signals differently depending on the relative danger of their environment. He ends the piece as follows: “Plants and people are weird. We are all weird beyond comprehension, and that is okay. It is the way nature works. We should treasure the inherent nature we were born with and allow our full selves to manifest throughout our lives. We should all reconnect with a childlike state of wonder where anything is possible.” A philosophy I can get behind. Easy By Nature

📩 The New Generation Of Online Culture Curators. Fun read about what I do, and what you’re reading. Back in the late 1990s I’d just send links of the day to friends; now there’s a lot more of you! “Curation takes work, and like any other kind of labor it is only sustainable if it’s reasonably compensated … The onslaught of online content requires filtering, whether technological or human, and those of us who dislike the idea of A.I. or algorithms doing the filtering for us might think more about how we support the online personalities who do the job well.” (Via fellow curator Caitlin’s Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends) New Yorker

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

🚲 The West Coast's Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico. Very interesting whodunnit piece where the stakes are lower than people: bikes. It’s a lively detective story about a brazen international theft ring with a cast of interesting characters, chasing the bikes all the way back to where they end up, in Jalisco, Mexico. WIRED

🤔 To pee or not to pee? That is a question for the bladder - and the brain. Scientists used to think that our bladders were ruled by a relatively straightforward reflex, an “on-off” switch between storing urine and letting it go. Now they realize it’s a lot more complex, and involves an “intricate network of brain regions that contribute to functions like decision-making, social interactions and awareness of our body’s internal state”. Given how terrible UTIs are, and how overactive bladders can impact day-to-day living, this piece provides a good overview of the ‘why’. Knowable

👍🏻 Getting to grips with an extra thumb. Cambridge researchers tested their robotic device on a diverse range of participants, and everyone found it super easy to use. Why have a third thumb? It falls under motor augmentation, “using motorised wearable devices such as exoskeletons or extra robotic body parts to advance our motor capabilities beyond current biological limitations”. University of Cambridge

🇸🇩 Why No One Will Save Sudan. History is repeating itself in Sudan, but this time while a “seemingly endless thread of headlines and editorials” lament that the crisis there is forgotten, Cameron Hudson writes that it is neither forgotten nor ignored. It’s been deprioritized, which he argues is worse. Though we know far more about the conflict than we did 20 years ago when Darfur became a household name, several million people “awaiting a coming onslaught by the Rapid Support Forces militia” are being ignored. Persuasion

💉 The Insulin Empire. Not about GLP-1 but the development and use of insulin itself. Before insulin’s discovery, diabetics were put on “starvation diets” to manage their blood sugar. Today, though, insulin has become unaffordable—so much so that some patients are rationing it so they make it last longer and keep themselves alike. Excellent writing on how how profiteers pushed a lifesaving drug out of reach. The Baffler

🎳 Meet The New Kingpin. I grew up bowling with family on holidays, and with a grandfather who, even into his 90s, could bowl a perfect game. So it was with great interest that I read this piece about an empire of bowling facilities that is wiping out independent bowling alleys in the USA. “I don’t think anyone takes bowling seriously,” the CEO of Bowlero, a private equity bowling company, once said. “Why would you?” (Uhhhh… ?!) The Lever

🏥 Tips for Surviving a Hospital Trip When Chronically Ill. When you're disabled, the decision of whether or not to go to the hospital is complex. In my case, few physicians here understand chronic spinal CSF leak, and many still erroneously believe a lumbar puncture “can’t” be chronic. With a leak plus a heritable connective tissue disorder and frequent anaphylaxis from a mast cell disorder, things can go poorly from several angles. This piece from my friend Kelly is a good overview for those chronically ill, with tips for how to make an ER visit easier. The Disabled Ginger

👻 Inside Snapchat's Teen Opioid Crisis. Law-enforcement sources and grieving families allege that social media site Snapchat (and all of its features that boast secrecy) have helped fuel a teen-overdose epidemic across the country by giving drug dealers a perfectly-constructed place to sell illicit goods. Now, their parents are fighting back. I had no idea this was going on, and this well-reported story was an interesting, albeit horrifying, read. Rolling Stone

♥️ A lifetime of love for the charismatic narwhal. A group of narwhals is called a blessing, and this piece was a blessing to read. Such fascinating, wondrous animals. This is the second piece this month from Knowable Magazine, but they’ve really put out some fascinating work! Knowable

💸 You Can't See Me, But I Can Make You Rich. My explore tabs on social media don’t show me the kinds of accounts described in this piece, about which the author notes: “If it sounds MLM-y, well. Be careful how loudly you say it.” Instead, I get a constant stream of cats, dressmaking, and bugs or insect art. So this article covered a form of network marketing that was new to me, and perhaps to you too. Trying In Public

💊 Moldy Factories and Recalls: Inside CVS' Generic Drug Problem. (Archive link.) Running out of adjectives for things like this. And SCOTUS’ decision in June in the Chevron case is only going to give less oversight for these dangerous practices. In this case: CVS’ generic drug recalls. A factory making CVS-branded pain and fever medications for kids used contaminated water in the production process, another made nasal sprays for babies on the same line as pesticides, and a further issue was that certain drugs for children were over-potent. Why does this happen? Use of contract manufacturers, because they're cheaper than building a production plant of their own. Bloomberg

🧪 The maddening saga of how an Alzheimer's 'cabal' thwarted progress towards a cure for decades. Spotlighting what happens when dogma undermines research, and how 'group think' can stymie important progress. Research that fell outside the dominant amyloid hypothesis (of how Alzheimer’s occurs) was suppressed, preventing publication of findings stemming from alternative ideas. And it's not a 'good and evil' discussion either, it’s more about a lack of transparency impacting access to information. The lack of access eventually closed the ranks to other progress. STAT

🇨🇳 Where are the Tiananmen Protest Leaders Today? 35 years after Tiananmen, the most-wanted student and worker demonstrators now all live outside mainland China, out of contact with their families still in the country. Interesting interviews with each of them. (via The Browser) China Books Review

🏅 How the 1904 Marathon Became One of the Weirdest Olympic Events of All Time. Athletes drank poison, dodged traffic, stole peaches and even hitchhiked during the 24.85-mile race in St. Louis. Smithsonian Magazine

🦟 Oldest malaria cases reveal how humans spread the disease across the globe. “Archaeologically speaking, malaria is a ghost disease”, this piece notes poetically. The two parasites that cause it leave no obvious traces, so scientists haven’t been able to trace it over time. But! A new study of ancient DNA found 36 case, including a man who died 5600 years ago in Germany and soldiers buried in Belgium in the early 1700s. They also found the earliest case thus far in South America (from 1600ish CE), and infer that European colonists introduced malaria to the New World. Before then scientists found no malaria in the region. Science.

🗺 Coming Home. Haley writes: “I don’t want to make a case for or against travel. I just want to talk about what happens when it’s over, when wherever we went or whatever we did delivers us back where we started, and forces us to reacquaint ourselves with what we’ve left behind.” I wrote a piece in 2012—ignore the July 4 date, something’s up with my site and all posts are reading July 4 now, I’m working on it!—about what ‘off the beaten path’ really means. People are obsessed with it, yet they often forget about “the little strings and cobwebs of habit” that are beautiful everywhere. “Sometimes, rather than something new, we need to locate a way of seeing the same old stuff anew,” she notes. Thoughtful advice, for all of us. Maybe Baby

😱 She's living with a needle left in her spine, yet no one will tell her which doctor did it. UM WHAT. Horrifying and terrible. Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons has been rightfully criticized for botching investigations into this patient's complaints CBC

✍️ Birkenstock fever: Bloomberg's Tim Loh writes about the evolution of a very famous scandal. A recent Bloomberg piece traced the company’s growth over the centuries, but I enjoyed this behind-the-scenes interview on how Tim Loh put together his piece. The Sunday Long Read.

🥃 Is Your Japanese Whisky Actually Japanese? On a controversy I didn’t know was brewing. (SEE WHAT I DID THERE. I know, I know, wrong alcohol type.) Esquire

🦠 “Debilitating a Generation”: Experts Warn That Long Covid May Eventually Affect Most Americans. Contrary to public belief (though as you know, not my belief!), this piece warns that Covid is not like the flu and as reinfections stack up, so does the possibility of getting Long Covid. Daily, new research confirms this. I realize most people are stuck in the endless sickness loop society has created, unlike me who is isolated due to my leak and can control my environment. But based on the prior and emerging data, I am worried for my loved ones, and society generally. Institute For New Economic Thinking

❌ How Cancel Culture taught me to love myself. “During moments of shame, nobody can make me feel worse than I can,” writes Marie Andrew, noting that her brain tells her she’s terrible and “I ruin everything”. In those deep dips of spirit, she’d restrict her own access to fun or joy, and to self-compassion, saying she didn’t deserve it. She gave more grace to criticized strangers online than she did to herself. Raw, human piece from Marie Andrew, who yet again proves that she's both an incredible illustrator and a deeply relatable writer. Out of the Blue

💡 Major cause of inflammatory bowel disease found. Wowza, interesting news for sufferers of IBD! Researchers found the macrophage’s “master regulator” of inflammation. Curious where this leads. BBC

🥣 The Unbearable Romance Of Dirty Dishes. “Romantic cleaning content wants us to view care work as an exercise in proving one’s excellence as a mother. As a certain kind of mother.” Today's MO is that cleaning should not result merely in functional outcomes but an enviably lovely interior that can be neatly posted to Instagram. In Pursuit of Clean Countertops

🪿 Face of ancient Australian 'giga-goose' revealed after fossil skull found. I am including this in part because this is pretty cool, and a thunderbird thought to be the ancestor of emus. But in part because I can’t stop saying ‘giga-goose’. After more than a century of searching, “the newly uncovered skull provides a detailed insight into how Genyornis newtoni lived”. Biggest goose ever. Natural History Museum

🎞 The Life and Death of Hollywood. With everything seemingly driven by quarterly results these days, even Hollywood, “the only thing that matters is the next board meeting. You don’t make any decisions that have long-term benefits. You’re always just thinking about, “How do I meet my numbers?” How will Holywood survive when efficiency and risk avoidance run the game? Harper's

⚖️ The Supreme Court Just Limited Federal Power. Health Care Is Feeling The Shockwaves. On the terrible Chevron SCOTUS decision I referenced earlier in the CVS writeup. KFF Health News. (For a quick summary of this issue, see Axios’ round up of how this (terrible) decision will affect climate policy, too.)

🔗 Quick links 🔗

What happens when a magazine gives up on “feeding the algorithm”? British GQ’s European director of audience development, analytics and social did just that, and this interview explains the strategy shift and how they’re faring.
Ahh, the nostalgia. What the internet looked like in 1994, via 15 pages that were created that year.
Neonazis are all-in on AI. Detailed investigative work throughout.
Why France is finding vegan croissants ‘hard to stomach’ (the indignation!).
And, another option for croissant lovers (but not croissant purists): the onigiri croissant.
New research suggests the timing of sleep, not just the duration, affects mental health. Earlier is better, regardless of whether someone is a night owl or not.
A short history of the word “electric”, from a fantastically named newsletter Useless Etymology. The word was first used in the 1600s, and comes from the Modern Latin electricus, meaning “resembling amber”. Yep, tree resin.
Obvious travel advice, including “Mindset matters more than where you go”, and “Don’t confuse scarcity with value. A really good afternoon in the park (a really good one) is maybe about as good as it gets.” (via @Kottke)
Tiny Awards 2024. Cute! And Jason Kottke is a judge.

This month’s featured artist is Brit Chida. I met them via the Patreon ambassador programme. Patreon matches us with 1:1 for monthly “coffee chats”, which have been a lovely way to get to know other creators. Brit’s images hit deep, and are a wonderful artistic expression of the breadth of the human experience. For anyone interested in prints, curious20 will get you 20% off.