The Curious About Everything Newsletter #44

The many interesting things I read in October 2024

Nov 04, 2024

Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter! CAE 43, last month’s newsletter, is here, if you missed it. The most popular link from last month was the read about Wim Hof’s history of domestic violence and abuse.

Personal Updates

Yesterday, I had the honour of presenting my story to a room of patients and physician experts in spinal CSF leak, as well as an audience from 32 countries virtually. The conference is unique in the field, as patients are able to share their story alongside physician presentations. Because of my volunteer role as Board president with the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation, I was also able to help plan the event. While a ton of work, especially while leaking, feedback thus far from patients has been overwhelmingly positive. I’m so glad.

I need much rest, but first: I wanted to get CAE out pre-election, to give everyone something to read if you so choose. I figured we all needed something to distract during the stress of those interstitial hours or days when results are still pending.

This month’s featured artist is Gael McGill, who a few years ago created this stunning 3D rendering of a eukaryotic cell, modeled using X-ray, nuclear magnetic resonance, and cryo-electron microscopy datasets. It’s truly awe-inspiring to think of how complex and beautiful one teeny tiny cell can be. Interactive versions of parts of this image can be found here.

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.

🐙 The Argonaut Octopus Has Mastered The Free Ride. Although most octopuses live near the ocean floor and its “ample hiding places,” argonauts spend their entire lives floating around in the open ocean, but just under water’s surface. Researchers have found that most large female argonauts preferred to “scoot around” on plastic waste, plant debris, and jellyfish, while smaller ones clung to free-floating tinier animals. Either way, this octopus loves to ride! Crustaceans, mollusks, fish, even other argonauts. New type of octopus for me. And that fist photo truly is ‘accidental renaissance’ in action. (via Peter O, a longtime CAE and Legal Nomads reader.)

🦈 A Shark Attack and a Terrorist Bombing: This Is a Love Story (Archive link). A masterclass in profile writing, weaving a beautiful and complicated story of two people whose lives were rocked by tragedy outside of their control, and how they found and then fell in love with each other. “When our deepest trauma leads to our most profound joy, what do we call that feeling?” Worth your time. Esquire

🐋 The Coming Collision Between Whales and Tankers on British Columbia’s Coast. “For a few exhilarating moments, time slows as the whales and boat glide next to one another.” Decades after they were hunted to local extinction, fin whales are finally recovering in the Kitimat fjord system—only to be threatened by a booming liquefied natural gas industry. This piece looks at the collateral damage to mammals from marine traffic. Some 20,000 whales are estimated to be killed by ship strikes each year, likely an underestimate because “the vast majority of struck whales vanish, sinking to the bottom”. Hakai Magazine

🐘 Elephants develop wrinkles through both form and function. During fetal development, wrinkle numbers in elephants double every 20 days, with later wrinkles slowly added (but faster in elephants living in Asia vs. in Africa). Here’s a read that provides a deep dive into wrinkle distribution and how the elephant’s trunk became the “most unbelievable grasping organ on the planet”. It’s SO much more than just a nose! It’s a “prehensile probosces” that can be used to pick up food, spray water or sand across their backs to cool off, and trumpet warnings to other elephants. Baby elephants nurse by sucking up milk via their trunks and spraying it into their mouths. But why does the trunk, “a muscular appendage without any bones,” work so well? THE WRINKLES. It’s the wrinkles. In case you couldn’t tell, I found this fascinating. Royal Society Open Science

👵🏻 Gasping at Straws. Moving on from animals, this is a delightful short read about an author turning into her mother as she ages, but in the sweetest way possible. Peak Notions

🎭 The divine discontent. “The most fulfilled people I know tend to have two traits. They’re insatiably curious—about new ideas, experiences, information and people. And they seem to exist in a state of perpetual, self-inflicted unhappiness.” A bold statement. Why do those curious people working on big projects often feel they’re not doing enough, are not skilled enough, or feel a lot of self-doubt? Celine calls this “restless pursuit of greatness” a divine discontent, because “even when they feel demoralized and inadequate, that shapes their lives and makes things interesting.” Excellent read, from a newsletter I look forward to. Personal Canon

🌐 McDonald’s Macarons. At international outposts of McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and others customers can find menu items infused with regional flavours, textures and trends, like bastones la lechera, yuzu citrus tea and macarons. While living in Hong Kong, the author bought Macanese-style egg tarts at KFC. “The custard filling was smooth and pudding-like, cradled in a buttery, flaky crust,” she writes. Determined to find out why they were so good, she finds out that KFC bought the original recipe from the bakery that put the desserts on the map. And because they were produced by a big chain, they were consistent every time. “America does not have a monopoly on fast food. What it does have is a draw so powerful that franchise owners worldwide often feel compelled to adopt American branding or imagery to attract customers, even when serving their own traditional dishes.” The Dial

🎖 Not all Nobel laureates react the way you might expect. Adam Smith spent 18 years thus far recording what it’s like when someone receives a life-changing call from the Nobel Prize committee. “In a perfect world, the news is breaking as I'm phoning, and they haven't talked to anybody else. And sometimes that really does happen,” says Smith. “It's a very nice point in time to catch somebody, when their guard is down a bit.” Delightful insider baseball read. BBC Future

🧳 A parasympathetic panacea via our vagus nerves? The vagus nerve is all the rage these days. It’s the longest nerve in the body, and sends its “branches and roots” all over the place. The vagus connects with so many circuits that bridge mind and body that Quanta mag called it “the conduit of the mind.” The name ‘vagus’ comes from the latin word for wandering — hence the word vagabond! And as it’s been in the news a lot these days, and I wanted to share this straightforward post about the ways that we can engage with it to our benefit. It’s is a good resource new to the parasympthatic system, too, the part of our nervous system that helps us know when to relax and rest. These tips help increase parasympathetic tone, something that can engage with that state of unclenching. Examined

🇫🇷 The Miraculous Resurrection of Notre-Dame. In 2019, a fire nearly destroyed the crown jewel of France, the Notre-Dame Cathedral. The country set a deadline of 5 years to bring it back from the ashes, and this piece is the story of how. It shares that an army of artisans turned back centuries to rebuilt Notre-Dame by hand. The cathedral “has a soul”, the piece notes, and in this painstaking revival the artists ended up reviving a closer replica to the original than they ever thought possible. More of a resurrection than a restoration. GQ

✈️ The Final Flight of the Airline Magazine. When I started writing about travel, airline magazines were a pub type many recommended I aim for, a great way to get in front of millions of readers monthly, but they also had beautiful, glossy spreads, and paid reasonably well. With a captive audience in a flying tube of metal, these magazines convinced people to buy or visit or do; they “possess powers of persuasion that on-the-ground reading material lacks,” the piece notes. These days, most airline magazines are digital, the end of an era for what was once a coveted byline, and a way to “connect with humanity” from many thousands of feet in the air. Lovely, nostalgic read. Columbia Journalism Review

🧠 In a First, Scientists Found Structural, Brain-Wide Changes During Menstruation. Hormones that guide menstruation don’t just affect the reproductive parts of the body. Any person who menstruates could tell you that it deeply affects mood and cognition and much more. It turns out, that “much more” includes reshaping the brain (!), something we now know thanks to a recent study that showed “simultaneous brain-wide changes”, including that as hormones fluctuate, gray and white matter volumes change too—as does the volume of CSF fluid. Relevant to my interests! Science Alert

💫 A Head Is a Territory of Light: Seeking answers about my migraines. I’ve shared many pieces about pain over the years, and several of them are about migraine, a condition that affects many millions of people and has no cure. The many medications on offer aren’t a balm for everyone, and in this essay Tan Tuck Ming goes digging for why theirs exist. Migraines are unpredictable, both in triggers and how each person is affected by the severe pain that accompanies them. They are genetic, and because women are 3x more likely than men to suffer from them, some researchers think that they are matrilineal. They cluster like earthquakes. And the triggers can feel arbitrary. “One migraine begins when I’m lying on my side, reading the Wikipedia page for La Niña,” Ming notes, “Is the trigger the phone screen? The encyclopedic formatting of the text? Or the depressing lurk of climate change?” His writing is lyrical, and it hits hard; the “when is it going to hit me” feelings come across perfectly; an excellent essay on a terrible condition. The Yale Review

🖤 The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age. What a read. Thea Lim on how algorithms now decide what is art and what is worthy. We’re all expected to perform online now, even if we aren’t doing it for a job. And that performance is measured in clicks and likes and monetized; it can easily corrode a sense of self. “And when the reception started to roll in, I’d hear good news, but gratitude lasted moments before I wanted more. A starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, but I wasn’t in ‘Picks of the Week.’ A mention from Entertainment Weekly, but last on a click-through list. Nothing was enough. Why? What had defined my adult existence was my ability to find worth within, to build to an internal schematic, which is what artists do. Now I was a stranger to myself.” The Walrus

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

🇪🇸 How Did a Chartreuse Slushy Become the Signature Drink of Tarragona, Spain? Austin Bush on mamadetas, a drink from the city of Tarragona that is spiked with Chartreuse — not the colour, but a French herbal liqueur created in the early 17th century, when Carthusian monks in France were given a recipe for an “elixir of long life.” These days, Bush writes, Chartreuse is still made in France (a mix of “130 different herbs allegedly known by only two monks”), but the drink remains beloved in Tarragona. Punch Drink

🇰🇷 As these Korean adoptees search for their roots, some are finding what they knew about their past isn’t true. This is an online interactive feature that tells the stories of over a dozen Korean adoptees searching for information about their origins. It’s a tough read as they were simply sold for adoption with fabricated records, others stolen from families. We’re talking an adoption system that carelessly separated generations of Korean children from their families. I can only imagine wanting to have more understanding of who you are but finding that withheld. It must be so achingly hard. PBS

🇺🇸 She Voted for Trump. Then She Had Two Terrifying Miscarriages in Texas. “In 2023, my sister Victoria spent more than 24 hours hemorrhaging into three diapers when Dallas-area hospitals declined to help her.” A devastating, but important read especially given tomorrow’s election. The Barbed Wire

🦠 Inside the Bungled Bird Flu Response, Where Profits Collide With Public Health. When dairy cows in Texas began falling ill with H5N1, alarmed veterinarians expected a fierce response to contain an outbreak with pandemic-sparking potential. But politics—and, critics say, a key agency’s mandate to protect dairy-industry revenues—intervened. And I hate to say it, but it’s getting more worrisome as a result. Vanity Fair

📸 My Big List Of Photography Videos. Nearly 400 videos in this very long Big List of Photography Videos playlist by photographer Andy Adams. I don’t do well with videos myself, having a leak, but this looked like a great resource to share with all of you. YouTube

🧑🏻‍🔬️ Scientist scans her own brain 75 times to study the effects of birth control pills. There's not enough data about women's brains, so Carina Heller hopped into an MRI machine to take matters into her own hands. CBC

🐍 She’s One of Florida’s Most Lethal Python Hunters…but the Invasive Creatures Still Have a Hold on Her. Compelling writing in this portrait of Donna Kalil and her many years of professional python hunting. She is “the original python huntress,” the piece notes, as the first woman to ever do so. Garden & Gun

🆓 How Substack’s follow feature betrays its original mission. Taylor Lorenz recently moved to Substack, and discusses how the ability to follow people here without subscribing is a departure from the initial goals of Substack, since you can’t ‘export’ follower lists so they don’t really belong to you. Still, she finds it of benefit. I personally have barely used Notes as my cognitive capacity limits don’t allow for it with my leak, but can see how it would be useful! As a results though, I use Substack as a distribution platform more than anything, sharing CAE with you all. User Mag

🍸 I Don't Drink. Short and useful read featuring 8 lessons from a woman who went sober in NYC. Includes tips like what to say to the bartender (“what can you do for a non-drinker like me?”) and more. Plant Based

🚿 Viruses are teeming on your toothbrush, showerhead. Ok I’m not shocked that there is a “jungle of untapped biodiversity” in the bathroom, but the SHOWERHEAD?! A new study’s findings yes — but don’t worry, these are phages that target bacteria, not people. Northwestern News

🌌 The ‘Beautiful Confusion’ of the First Billion Years Comes Into View. Astronomers are revelling in the James Webb Space Telescope’s many discoveries, including some answers as to why some galaxies bigger and brighter than expected. They’ve found new cosmic structures like far-away, massive black holes, mysterious red dots, early galaxies shaped like pickles, and much more. It’s changed what we know about the early years of cosmic history. Quanta

⚜️ Learning French in Quebec Just Got Harder. Last-minute changes, outdated textbooks, and financial aid cuts are some of the many challenges immigrants face in learning French in Quebec. This piece shares how Quebec’s government focuses on “controlling the use of the language in private spaces”, using coercive measures to do so that forces immigrants to learn the language in just six months after arrival. The Rover

🎵 Stevie Nicks: ‘I believe in the Church of Stevie’. An enjoyable read for any other Fleetwood Mac fans out there, from a long interview (close to four hours) that dives into a lot of personal stuff often omitted from her prior profiles, like why she ended her relationship with Lindsay Buckingham, politics, and more. I was entertained, I was engrossed, and kudos to the author who clearly got Nicks to open up more than usual. Rolling Stone

😴 Sleep perfectionists: the exhausting rise of orthosomnia. I found this read interesting, urging people to to keep a pen and paper sleep diary of what time they go to bed, how tired they feel, when they wake up and how awake they feel at 11am. A sleep expert notes to “listen to your body, not data”. But I use sleep trackers and they’ve only helped me sleep better. I’ve figured out when I need to go to bed to get the most deep sleep, helping my leak symptoms considerably. And the data also also helped me correlate the VOCs issue last year, when I was in my old apartment that was getting me sick and I couldn’t figure out why. I can see how obsessing over data may cause someone to worsen insomnia, but I love me some data and find the opposite. YMMV! The Guardian

😭 I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is. (Gift link.) The truth is, Charlie Warzel writes, “it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality”. This may sound like hyperbole, but the nihilism of the current moment is truly something to behold. Some Americans, distrustful of authority during early pandemic years, spread many conspiracy theories that attacked public health. But when Hurricane Helene hit, the second in a short period of time, “those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not.”. The primary use of misinformation isn’t to change beliefs, as some may think, says Warzel. It’s rather offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The Atlantic

💸 Welcome to the Golden Age of Scams. US consumers lost a record $10 billion to fraud in 2023, at least according to the Federal Trade Commission — which was a 14% increase over 2022. This is likely underestimated, too, and the real amount is far higher. The majority of victims, three-quarters of them according to this piece, don’t report that they’ve been defrauded. And we’re constantly being bombarded with spammy scammy crap, whether by phone or text or email. Per the piece, an average smartphone user in the US gets 42 spam texts and 28 spam calls per month, more sophisticated than ever before. We have romance, investment, fake-job scams, scammers that target corporations or target individuals. We’re being scammed at all levels, all the time. The question is: what can we do about it? TIME

🌀 Deadly Helene. A paper in South Carolina tells the story of Hurricane Helene. “By some estimates, more than 40 trillion gallons of rain fell on the Southeastern United States — enough water to create a lake 3.5 feet deep and the size of North Carolina.” Soon thereafter, a year of rain fell in Eastern Spain in just one day, the deadliest disaster in the country's recent history. We think of both areas as not particularly susceptible to a changing climate, but the planet is proving us wrong. Post & Courier

🌊 I Stayed at This Coast Guard Station in the Middle of the Ocean. And so can you! The author stayed overnight at the Frying Pan Tower, a decommissioned Coast Guard light station a few dozen miles off the coast of North Carolina. It sits high above the water, overlooking the fish and underneath the stars. He calls it “the coolest vacation rental on earth,” and his writeup doesn’t make that sound like hyperbole. Outside Online

🔗 Quick links 🔗

Most meteorites come from just 3 sources! 70% of the meteorites found on Earth to date can be traced back to just 3 separate collisions in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Crazy!
New emoji drop! A beet, a new flag, and a splat.
The three loudest animals on earth.
How comic sans became “the crocs of fonts”.
The FTC adopts a rule to make it easier for consumers to cancel unwanted subscriptions. Happy to see this change.
An AI model helped uncover 303 previously unseen Nazca Lines in Peru
The history of the strawberry.
Infinite Mac is a collection of classic Macintosh system releases and software, all easily accessible from the comfort of a (modern) web browser.