The Curious About Everything Newsletter #47

The many interesting things I read in January 2025

Thank you for all the well-wishes and kindness about my spinal CSF leak re-opening again. Many of you replied to CAE 46 asking how to help, either with meals or some donation. The best way to support me and CAE, as well as my other writing and the volunteer work I do for the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation, is to become a member of my Patreon. It’s a support-only membership, meaning that all tiers have equal access to what I write. It allows me to keep using my time to help raise awareness for my conditions, and keep sharing these great links monthly without gating them. I share CAE overflow links there as well.

The outpouring of empathy and desire to help more has been truly beautiful.

Thank you so much for the support.

---

Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter! CAE 46, last month’s newsletter, is here, if you missed it. The most popular link from last month was the ProPublica investigation of an oncologist who lied to his patients, with devastating consequences.

Personal updates

Over on Patreon, I shared a 9 minute mini-podcast about my progress since my leak re-opened and also a crash course in what it’s like to live with spinal CSF leak.

It’s been over a month since my leak reopened, and unfortunately I’m still in rough shape, with little ‘uptime’. I said I wasn’t sure if I could manage CAE due to my leak, but in the end it’s not only going out, it’s longer than usual! The world is chaotic and worrisome, both economically (hello tariffs) and otherwise — and bedrest leaves a lot of time for reading.

Featured art for CAE 47

This month’s featured artist is Pedro Luis Ajuriaguerra Saiz, whose image “Galactic Bee” won an award in the macro category for this year’s 1839 awards, linked below. You can follow Pedro on IG. I love this image to bits, and saw it via the TravelBloggerBuzz newsletter.

© 2025 Pedro Luis Ajuriaguerra Saiz

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.

💰 Caviar Pizzas, New Money, and the Death of an Ancient Fish. I’ve shared pieces from Hakai magazine over the last few years, and they’ve consistently put out great writing and journalism, with beautiful feature photos. Unfortunately this is likely the last article I’ll share, as they have shut down. It goes into the history of caviar and its renaissance (putting it on pizza, or Doritos, for example). Caviar used to be a “pricey but very niche menu item first popularized by Russian royalty in tsarist times” — but no more. Global caviar sales are up 74% since 2020, and still rising. Bad for nature, good for restaurants’ bottom line. Great writing from Paul Greenberg, whose books I’ve read enthusiastically. Hakai Magazine

👀 On ‘paying attention’ to the bad stuff. One of the things that I've said a lot during these past 7.5 years of leaking, is to please, please not ask me how I'm feeling. People mean well in asking; they're trying to show they care. But asking causes me to focus on how I’m feeling. And how I feel is almost always terrible, which means it’s one more moment lost to thinking about the terribleness of it all. Instead, I’ve asked people to say they’re ‘checking in’ or ‘sending love’, and not ask ‘how are you feeling’ or ‘how’s the pain’ or ‘are you feeling better?’ It may seem like semantics to you, but to not ask directly means that I can sidestep a renewed focus on the awfulness and pain. I've found it a crucial discussion with readers and friends and family in order to find my way through this time of my life. This thread from Mishell Baker, a patient with incurable cancer, has a similar ethos. She explains the “why” in a way that resonated for me; every moment she’s not focusing on her illness is a better moment for her. Skywriter

📱We’re getting the social media crisis wrong. A lot of the arguments about democracy talks about the wisdom and knowledge of individuals, hoping they are willing to think of others — even though, as Henry Ferrell notes, democracy “is a profoundly collective enterprise.” So we point fingers at social media and how it shapes people. This piece asserts that we’re mistaking outcomes from social for causes of the deterioration of democracy. Instead, he says, “the problem is that actual individual citizens are biased and, on average, not particularly knowledgeable about politics.” I don’t disagree that his thesis is true, but how do we fix that? Especially when cuts to education or algorithms that tamp down on factual reporting are increasingly the norm, and we’re watching the destructive outcomes of that lack of knowledge play out in real time. Programmable Matter

👃🏻Scent Makes a Place. “Perhaps due to our trouble translating scents into language, it was once common wisdom that human noses were weak, shoddy things compared to our animal friends. Time and research has challenged that paradigm.” Sure, we don’t have the scent-skills of some animals, but we can distinguish between some 1 trillion (!) different odours. Smell is so inextricably linked to memory, and as this piece notes it’s also deeply dependent on a dizzying amount of variables. It can be impacted by lives already lived, by sounds and temperature, by the food we’re eating or the colours we’re seeing. By our emotions. Something may smell amazing to us in one situation, but we get disgusted in another. “It’s a sense that shifts and slips, sometimes in predictable ways but sometimes in totally unexpected directions,” writes Katy Kelleher in this beautiful piece. “Much like the brain as a whole.” Nautilus

❌ Dismissed and Disbelieved, Some Long COVID Patients Are Pushed Into Psychiatric Wards. A hard read. As there still aren’t conclusive biomarker tests for long covid, and because patients often don’t look outwardly unwell, many patients are told it’s just a mental issue and not a physical one. My post-viral anaphylaxis, flushing, hives, and other symptoms were also dismissed as ‘stress’ or ‘migraines’, as was my spinal CSF leak—despite a lumbar puncture that preceded it. Um, I was a former corporate lawyer, and I happen to know stress. It wasn’t stress. I was validated by detailed testing, at least for MCAS, but some physicians still believe that too is ‘in your head’. Invisible illness can be so difficult and isolating. TIME

🧠 Scientists uncover how the brain washes itself during sleep. I have shared many posts over the years about the glymphatic pathway, and how it helps the brain ‘wash’ out toxins as we sleep. Since cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is involved, it’s like catnip to me. If you haven’t read about it, the TL;DR is that the brain doesn’t have lymphatic vessels that move fluid like in the rest of the body. But in 2012, scientists identified an alternative system where CSF (hiiii!) seeps through the organ via teeny passages alongside blood vessels, one that clears out metabolic waste as we sleep. Mostly during non-REM sleep, particularly stage 3 slow-wave deep sleep. I don’t get that much deep sleep, so the early glymphatics papers led me to work on optimizing it; I went from 20 mins deep sleep to 1 hour-1.5 hours a night, which I hope to write about somewhere, when my brain juice (ahem CSF) allows. Anyhow! This link is to a new paper, where scientists found that the sleep drug zolpidem (Ambien) impedes the blood vessel oscillations that help this washing process — meaning it can hamper the brain’s ability to clear waste. Which we do not want. Why? “Studies from Nedergaard’s group and others suggest vigorous glymphatic clearance is beneficial, but circulation falters in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative illnesses.” Ooooh, ok. And given Ambien’s popularity, this is very notable…but it’s also one study among many; more research is needed. This is, after all, a new system. No doubt we’ll find out more — and you’ll be stuck reading about it here. Science

(For those who want to dig into glymphatics, including with great illustrations, please see this post on sleep, brain aging, and waste clearance. It’s a great overview of the pathway, and the recent studies including the one above.)

😱 There Is No Safe Word. (Archive link) I had to include this profile, as harrowing, horrifying, and very very ugly as it is. It’s about Neil Gaiman, sexual abuse, and what consent really means when you’re involved with someone who is ‘untouchable’ and famous. It’s disturbing to read, but important to read. It’s also really really depressing. If you’re even somewhat reasonably online you’ve likely seen it, but for those who aren’t: I didn’t want to let it sit in the dark for CAE. Vulture

🐳 How Whales Found Peace in War. A fascinating article about researchers who used hormone analysis from the forgotten collection of post-war plates of whale baleens (baleen grows from a whale’s upper jaw downward, lined up like the slats of window blinds) to see how the resumption of whaling after WWII impacted the species. During the gruesome years of war, whales were at peace; hunting stopped as people went off to fight in ships previously used for whaling. Now, analysis from the baleen collection show that stress hormones rose in whales in the first year that whaling resumed after the war—even in the whales that weren’t killed. Biographic

🇬🇱 Inside the race for Greenland's mineral wealth. What a bizarre timeline we’re in. Yep, the US is trying to take over Greenland, the world’s largest island and home to more than 56,000 people — despite it being part of Denmark and self-governing. Why? It’s in a unique geopolitical position, for one; its capital Nuuk is closer to New York than it is to Denmark’s capital Copenhagen. But also, it’s rich in rare minerals and as the ice melts there and in the Arctic due to climate change, it will only afford more access to areas that can be mined. (As an aside, Greenland has been looking for more independence from Denmark, but it still relies on a $500mm USD annual grant from them.) BBC

🏜 Signs of Life in a Desert of Death. Beautiful read from Nick Hunt, who journeyed through the Aralkum desert. It’s a thoughtful contemplation about natural and renewal, informed by his time visiting the world’s youngest desert, left by the vanishing of the Aral Sea. Sure, the landscape looks post-apocalyptic — but it also contains new life. And, new to me, it also houses an Apocalypse Clock from an ancient civilization, counting toward the end of the world. Noema

♿️ Fleeing the LA fires alone on a wheelchair: ‘I had to take my chances’. A society is only as good as it treats its most vulnerable. As I’ve said many times, I may be disabled now, but we’re all going to get there eventually (usually in older age). It’s unacceptable to treat the vulnerable as if they don’t matter, yet we often get left behind both figurative and literally. And being blamed, as we have publicly this week, for a plane crash we had nothing to do with is horrifying. I can’t count the number of times trolls have told me that I’m “useless to society” with my leak disabling me, and that I should just kill myself. My situation could be anyone. It only takes one moment. In this piece, Galen Buckwalter shared how he fled the Eaton fire alone in a wheelchair, dodging debris as the fire closed in. “In emergencies, disabled people are the last to get services … [w]e have no system. You’re on your own.” The Guardian

⌚️ Building a (T1D) smartwatch from scratch. Detailed post about how the watch was built for the author’s 9 year old son. He wanted something simple, no bells and whistles that would distract his son in school, and something that could withstand sports or occasional water. He also wanted it to provide reliable CGM data on demand, and haptic feedback for urgently low or high glucose levels. And a fun watch face. Talented, and creative! Andrew Childs (via Hacker Newsletter)

🪖 The Militia and the Mole. This piece made the rounds when it came out, rightfully so. Outraged by the Jan 6 riots, a wilderness survival trainer spent years climbing the ranks of right-wing militias undercover, telling no one until now. The person who chose to tell was reporter Josh Kaplan, whose piece goes into militias, their tactics, and domestic terrorism, and is supported by documentation and covertly recorded conversations. Well worth a read. ProPublica

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

🇯🇵 Eastern Promises. A thoughtful essay on the changes in Japan’s megacity, one that shows how much things have evolved even since I visited in 2015: “As Tokyo’s economy has become a client of the service industry, it has drained its reservoirs of young people to run cash registers and deliver food, meaning guest workers must be tolerated.” In a Tokyo of tourists, many of its residents have become strangers. The Baffler

🦠 Are some cases of Alzheimer’s disease caused by infection? A very large study compared people who had contracted Covid (even mild cases) to people of similar age who had not had Covid, and found that over the next 3 years, those who’d had the virus were nearly 2x as likely to develop Alzheimer’s. Several other viruses (and bacteria) also have been linked to the condition, though the evidence is more preliminary: see this recent piece about how getting shingles is linked to cognitive decline, and also how head trauma may be linked. Harvard Health Publishing

🪦 Donald Trump Wants You to Die. Unfortunately, though, these kinds of studies are in question. We were able to mostly conquer infectious disease via advances in the scientific understanding of disease and vaccines, but those also depend on public policy, which is what is currently being dismantled in real time. Paul Krugman

🎥 The Second Trump Presidency, Brought to You by YouTubers. (Gift link) Related: a Bloomberg team — seriously, there's a robust byline here! — analyzed 2,000 videos and 1,300 hours of podcasts to map their interconnectedness in one dataviz story, showing how only a few podcasters (including Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Logan Paul) are mobilizing America’s men to lean to the right. Bloomberg

✍️ Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand? In elementary school, I had to earn a “penmenship certificate” to be allowed to write in pen, instead of pencil. (I was the last one in grade 4 to achieve this dubious honour, and yet the idea of losing handwriting-as-skill is one that I never really thought much about). I’m surprised the author doesn't differentiate between cursive and block handwriting, and the piece veers a bit too hard into nostalgia (or maybe I'm too bitter about that last-place finish). Still, an interesting discussion for this month's CAE. The Guardian

⚖️ A former tech CEO is on a crusade to get the record of his arrest removed from the internet. How? By suing a journalist for $25 million for truthfully reporting that his domestic violence arrest had occurred. Gazetteer San Francisco

💬 Blake Lively Reshoots the End of Her Story. You may be asking yourself why I’m bringing this case up again, because I mentioned it in CAE 46. It’s not because of the gossip, it’s because few articles reveal the “contemporary machinations of Hollywood” (as Petersen calls it) this nakedly. And it’s a reminder that, even if you’re not on TikTok, you’re still susceptible to and absorbing a messaging strategy that you may not realize is a strategy — because it’s cloaked in the furtive tone of small-town gossip. Yes, TikTok has shaped the narrative of public opinion thoroughly, but also: yes, readily we can be manipulated, even when we think we’re not. And this applies to anything, right? To baseless conspiracies about wildfires, about Haitian immigrants, about birth certificates, about covid. We’re so easily manipulated by “a nefarious army of people working in the shadows to manipulate the public,” as Petersen calls it. To our detriment. Culture Study

😡 Does One Emotion Rule All Our Ethical Judgments? (Archive link) Not unrelated, this Elizabeth Kolbert review looks at Kurt Gray’s new book about outrage. The book asserts that as long as there’s a perception of harm, there’s a potential for outrage — because fear and moral indignation are inextricably linked. Gray argues that the less physical danger humans have been in, the more hazards we ‘see’ lurking out there. “Millions of years of being hunted have made us preoccupied with danger,” he writes. “But without saber-toothed cats to fear, we fret about elections, arguments in group texts, and decisions at PTA meetings.” Interesting theory. New Yorker

💻 The Rise & Fall Of Silk Road. From 2015, but worth a read (and an excellent piece) on why the Silk Road founder, recently pardoned by Trump, was sentenced to two life sentences in the first place. WIRED

🧬 The genetic key to bipolar disorder. In the largest study conducted to date on the genetics of bipolar disorder, researchers have identified 36 genes linked to the condition. This marks a significant step toward understanding the genetic factors behind bipolar disorder, which could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment in the future. University of Oslo

🔎 AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. AI is reshaping search — and to what end? This piece explains how it’s pulling away access to links and providing direct answers instead, leaving publishers and blogs with far less traffic. Also those answers aren’t always accurate. My celiac cards primarily depend on search, and I’ve seen a considerable downturn of late. It’s pretty demoralizing for those of us working for years to build the sites Google said it wanted. Those guidelines changed, as has the ability for smaller sites to rank well. Evolve or die, as they say. Technology Review

🗳 On Tyranny. For those who want democracy and the rule of law in the US after 2024, notes Timothy Snyder, “I would only add: now is the time to organize, to prepare to win locally and nationally, and to talk not only about what is to be lost but what can be gained.” This list of lessons from tyranny in the 20th c. was written years ago, but has been used around the world since and is still (very) relevant now. Thinking About

🔥 LA is Toxic, and We Need to Talk About it. Like many, I’ve watched in horror as flames engulf the LA area. I was relieved to see the fires are now all contained. This talks about post-fire toxicity, and it’s not to be missed; I have more than one close friend directly impacted by exposure during 9/11, both now with significant health issues as a result. Their lives have not been the same since. Please read, and if you’re in the region, please try to protect yourselves. I realize not everyone can leave, but at minimum please mask up with a good mask — even when it seems like the air is better. Good Material

🦋 The Technological Poison Pill. Mike Masnick’s thorough post explaining why Bluesky is enshittification-resistant (not enshittification-proof, but resistant!), mainly because it has a tech poison pill baked in. TechDirt

💸 Dangerous Oligarchs Grab Everything. Yeah, CAE has a lot of political reads this month, I know. There’s a lot going on, and it’s going to get worse as the current admin continues to flood the zone. This read is about the new era of “regulations are bad, cost cutting is good” type of governance (if we can call it that) will bring us in the hands of DOGE — not just in the US, but broadly — here in Canada, in Greenland (clearly) and otherwise. It’s not cheerful, but it’s also important. In talking with outraged MAHA-leaning Americans in my inbox, they don’t seem to realize just how much of their safety is corralled into a reasonable place due to public health policy. Which is how Trump et. al wants it wants it, of course. You may say, why is this piece focused on billionaires? It’s because the current admin has a combined net worth at least $383 billion — higher than the GDP of 172 countries. It's going to be a rocky few years, at best. Can We Still Govern?

🥰 She Is in Love With ChatGPT. (Gift article via my friend Eugene!) A wild piece about a woman in love with ChatGPT—or Leo, as it named itself. She spends up to 56 hours a week on the ChatGPT app, with it filling the role of boyfriend, therapist, advisor, and erotic partner. Wilder still is that her friends think it's been good for her, and her husband (yes, husband) doesn't mind. New York Times

🛒 Inside ‘Teflon Joe’s’: Why your favorite grocery store is not what you think. We don't have Trader Joe’s here in Ontario, and many a Canadian has brought back a haul on a visit to the States, sharing the coveted goodies with their loved ones (or sometimes hoarding it for themselves). I've had readers mail me ube pancake mixes, and family bring back gluten free treats. And yet, as this piece notes, not all is great at this beloved institution, with its food recalls, safety violations and more — but somehow, none have tarnished their reputation yet. Fast Company

⚕️ Study Ties COVID to Higher Risk of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A now-conclusive American federal study (RIP, federal study monies) of 15,000 people shows that Covid has a 1 in 20 disability rate, and triggers ME/CFS at rates 15x higher than pre-pandemic incidences. In the study, those who had Covid had nearly 8x high rates of ME/CFS than uninfected participants. Make America Sick Again, I guess? Psychiatrist.com

💵 There’s One Weird Trick to Being Healthy. Speaking of, I can confirm that there would be no way I could have made the progress I did on slowly getting ‘uptime’ and some mobility back — including via the many different accessibility aides I bought such as electric blinds and others that improve my quality of life — without my income supporting that privilege. I’m lucky I built out my celiac cards as mostly passive income to contribute to my business even while ‘laying flat’ and leaking, but for many the support I’ve put in place is out of reach for many. Slate

🌨️ When a Deadly Winter Storm Trapped a Luxury Passenger Train Near the Donner Pass for Three Days. In January 1952, a train heading from Chicago to San Francisco, normally a 40-hour trip, got stranded in the Sierra Nevada because of snow — despite having three engine cars trying to haul it. There were 226 on board. Very engaging read! Smithsonian Magazine

📰 Becoming Trauma Informed. We're going to see more harrowing reporting, more tragedy, more angst — and how to report it effectively, kindly, or ethically is something not everyone learns in J-school or generally. As the author of this piece notes, in journalism school, “we were instructed to never share a draft of your story with your subject”. But practicing ‘trauma-informed journalism’ involves its own special set of guidelines. This piece goes into them. The Reported Essay (via ‪Mark Armstrong‬)

📸 Photography!

• BigPicture’s 2024 competition winners.

• 1839’s Photographer Of The Year Contest winners, also where the featured image from CAE 47 is from.

• Life in Another Light Infrared Photography Contest 2024 Winners. I’ve not seen this one prior, though it's got earlier years of winners too so it's been going on! Interesting galleries, and different than the usual award types.

🇺🇸 The Values Gap. On how the USA is an outlier in the developed West, both for its political norms and for its attitudes toward and tolerance of a high scale of violence. Scrupulous Pessimism

🥺 More Than Just Things: The Deep Ache of Losing Everything. For those on the outside of the LA fires (or other disasters), it’s tempting to say, “they’re just losing things.” To the people who’ve lost those things, it’s a complex issue, layered with sentimentality and memory and meaning. “When everything is gone, grief runs deeper than belongings—it's the loss of security, identity, and the physical proof of a life once lived. Survival is a gift, but it comes with an unshakable ache for all left behind. Recovery isn't just about rebuilding but finding a way to heal when the flames have taken more than just things.” The grief isn’t just about the item lost, it’s also about a reality of living that is also now gone. It’s pure saudade, a melancholic nostalgia and the love that remains for something that can never return. Dispatches with Holly McKay

🥷 What The Thieves Did Not Steal. A car break in led to a loss of some things for Andrew Chee, but he was able to claw back some of them during his stay in Montreal, including his annotated manuscript of a new novel. This is a different piece about theft than we’re used to; it’s about the nostalgia of what was recovered more than than the initial loss. It reminded me of finding my backpack again years after the burglary night that started my life of disability. The Querent.

Mostly links, less editorial: sorry, I ran out of brain juice:

David Lynch was here. A dispatch from the real Twin Peaks, where fans flocked after the director’s death.

Chins Are In. Hypermasculine jawlines are all the rage in Hollywood, and beyond. Vulture

The battle for the soul of Serbia. The need for lithium is driving a global race for resources, while plans for a mine 190km from Belgrade have triggered social and political turmoil. New Statesman

Parents Are Gaming Their Kids’ Credit Scores. (Archive link). Title is self-explanatory. The Atlantic

My Mom Was Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Then She Got Better. A spinal CSF leak patient misdiagnosed, and finally treated. She had a CSF-venous fistula, a different kind of leak to the one I’ve got. The Free Press

How Watch Duty Became an Essential Resource for Angelenos During Wildfires. I hadn’t heard of this app before the LA fires, but it was a critical download for many in harm’s way. Hollywood Reporter.

The School Shootings Were Fake. The Terror Was Real. For almost 2 years, a California teen terrorized schools across the US with violent swatting calls. This piece tells the story of the PI and former hacker who tracked him down. WIRED

What Happened to School Lunch Hour? Everyone’s concerned about nutritious school lunches, but they don’t give the same thought to whether kids actually have time to eat them. Play Makes Us Human

Y2K seems like a joke now, but in 1999 people were really freaking out. I remember it well! NPR

The pandemic’s untold fertility story. A well-researched longform piece by Hayley Gleeson about how Covid can affect fertility, as well as complicate pregnancy for those who are able to conceive. ABC News

🔗 Quick links

• As there’s a US pause on health comms, including recalls, I shared on social that it may be useful for Americans to sign up for Canada’s safety recalls and alerts newsletter. As a celiac, I’ve long been signed up for both, and there is overlap as lots of products are sold in both countries — for now at least (hello tariffs 😭). Subscribe here, or see the online database here for food recalls, where you can also search by type of recall / alert.

• Where did dinosaurs evolve from? We finally have a clue! Due to supercontinent Pangaea, it’s not where I expected.

• World Sports Photography Award winners.

• A statistical analysis to determine the best movie sequels, and why they’re so good.

• Speaking of statistical analysis, there’s a 1.3% chance that a giant asteroid will hit Earth in 2032. (This may be good or bad news, depending on whether you’re bullish on humanity or not)

• My bio used to say “I eat soup for a living” and that is likely why 384372 of you sent me a link to these new ‘soup cough drops’ from Progresso this month.

• Dartitis: like the yips, but for darts.

• A marriage proposal entirely in office jargon.

• A primer on hydroclimate whiplash.

• A paralyzed man flew a virtual drone using a brain implant that links neural signals to fine movements.

Hope to see you next month,
-Jodi