The Curious About Everything Newsletter #42

The many interesting things I read in August 2024

Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter! CAE 41, last month’s newsletter, is here, if you missed it. The most popular links from last month was the harrowing story of Emma Carey’s fall from14,000 feet — and the ways she’s rebuilt her life and redefined who she is since.

The Most Interesting Things I Read This Month

Uh, this month was a doozy. I got shingles the day before my 45th birthday, followed by a hospital visit due to cardiac symptoms a week later. I’ve written about what happened in a post. It’s about preemptive catastrophizing, health advocacy, and (it ties in, I swear) how I went to law school because someone bet me I couldn’t get in.

Bottom line is that I would like an August redo, please.

As a result of this dumpster fire of a month, the links are both shorter and the editorial I usually include is also missing for some of them. I hope to get back to my regular format for CAE 43, but for this month it’s divided differently. (These links are once again formatted thanks to the help of my friend Mike.)

Longform Links, With Commentary:

The pieces I read that I was able to weigh in on before I ran out of brain juice:

💔 Steve Silberman, ally of the neurodivergent community, dies at 66. Silberman, author of “Neurotribes,” has long advocated for autism and neurodiversity rights, and passed away suddenly this week. I've followed him on Twitter for years, and loved his writing. What a loss. May he rest in peace. Salon

A quote that always stuck with me from one of his interviews:

Sometimes the word “neurodiversity” is framed as if it’s merely a political stance or a political conviction. It’s not. It’s a living fact, like biodiversity in rain forests. We clearly have people with many different kinds of minds. There are people with dyslexia, there are people with ADHD, there are people with autism, there are people at all points of the spectrum. And all of these labels are the names of “disorders,” but if you look at them another way, they’re just different kinds of human operating systems.

🤥 The staggering death toll of scientific lies. There are some types of scientific misconduct that self-policing isn’t fixing, and they can have devastating consequences. This piece goes into examples, including a shocking one of a cardiologist who faked data to show better outcomes for patients who were given beta blockers before heart surgery. Europe changed its medical guidelines based on this research — but it turns out that beta blockers increase the risk of death by 27%. One estimate is that 800,000 people lost their lives as a result. Vox

🧑🏻‍🔬️ The Long, Strange History of Teflon, the Indestructible Product Nothing Seems to Stick to. Chemists accidentally discovered the polymer material in 1938, and since then it has been used for everything from helping to create the first atomic bomb, to keeping your eggs from sticking to your frying pan—and more. A deep dive, including about those who say it is not safe to use. Smithsonian Magazine

💻 The Terrifying Rise of Ransomware Gangs. Canada is the second-most attacked country by cybercrime in the world, it turns out. Incidents took down the Toronto Public Library, Indigo and even whole towns, estimated at a cost of as much as $3 billion last year. Canada is “especially flat-footed” in its response to ransomware, the piece notes, “undermined by institutional secrecy, slowness and poor communication” between the mishmash of orgs responsible for cracking down on cybercrime targeting governments, corporations, hospitals and libraries. Maclean’s Magazine

🪆 Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Conspiracy Matryoshka Doll. I can always count on Justin Ling to add entertaining, compelling narrative to his political writing and this piece on RFK Jr. now being “nestled inside the Trump campaign” is no exception. He contains “multitudes of paranoid delusion”, writes Ling in this piece that dives into the depths of RFK Jr’s conspiracy-thinking, which is “more fantastical, and terrifying, than even the constant media attention would have you believe.” Bug Eyed and Shameless

🕊 Nick Cave’s moving conversation with Stephen Colbert (video), of which an excerpt has made the rounds, justifiably so, about hope and fear, and not giving up when life beats you down. It was in response to a fan letter, with Colbert asking “do you still have hope for us human beings?” Nick’s reply:

It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope. Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position — it is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like […] says the world and its inhabitants have value, and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that this is so.”

🍟 How McDonald's Found Out Its Wildly Popular Monopoly Game Was a Fraud. A fabulously written piece about how FBI agents in Florida confronted McDonald’s executives over the way their Monopoly promotion had been scammed. CrimeReads

🇬🇧 The enemies within: How the pandemic radicalised Britain. Discussion of how a subset people who began ‘just’ asking questions during the pandemic, questions that showed an underlying paranoia in logic, led to a slippery slope and laundry list of conspiracies and violence. The author believes that, while the recent UK riots have “been blamed on everything from the economy to Elon Musk”, the networks that mobilized the violence were initially put in place in opposition to pandemic vaccines and lockdowns. The Mill

👁 What Happens in a Mind That Can't ‘See’ Mental Images. Another great read about aphantasia, where people don’t experience mental imagery — aka the opposite of how my brain works. I’m a “1” on this chart; where do you all stand? Though it was described more than 140 years ago, the term “aphantasia” was coined only in 2015. Researchers think it’s less a disorder, and more a different, subjective way of existing in the world. Quanta

🧠 The Kidnapping I Can't Escape. (Archive link.)  Raw, beautiful, honest — worth the time it takes to read this, a piece about two lives intertwined and marked by separate traumas, and what it means to live through something huge that changes you. “Maybe, actually, there was something I could learn from Jack. That after all your attempts at healing — when you finally realize that you are forever changed — you can allow yourself to embrace your trauma. You survive what happened to you, then you survive your survival, and then the gift you’re given is that you fall in love with your whole life, inextricable from the bad thing that happened to you.” Powerful stuff. New York Times Magazine

💰 Sasse’s spending spree: Former UF president channeled millions to GOP allies, secretive contracts. This is an absolutely bonkers story, which I was pleased to see is written not by a big news outlet but by a 4th year journalism student, reveals how former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has spent millions of dollars as University of Florida's new president — hiring his former staffers for made-up, insanely high paid remote jobs at the university. Alligator

✨ What a bioluminescent petunia had to teach me. I shared these luminescent petunias, only available for now in the United States, many CAEs ago. This piece dives into bioluminescence generally, and how these commercially-available plants came to be—they contain genes from bioluminescent mushrooms that make the plants glow. Really interesting read about how organisms use bioluminescence in different ways. Knowable Magazine

💬 Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials. I don’t usually link to an FTC press release, but this affects anyone who runs a business online. The FTC’s new rule bans fake reviews, which not only prohibits buying and selling fake followers, but also includes hints beyond followers themselves. They note that the rule is applicable to AI-generated reviews, or buying / selling reviews to wield influence, as well as “selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by a bot or hijacked account.” The FTC does note that to violate it, the company or person seeking inauthentic reviews must have or should have known it was fake or misrepresenting reality. Pretty interesting, broad decision on their part and I'm curious how they'll enforce. FTC

🐦‍⬛ The World's Rarest Crow Will Soon Fly Free on Maui. The planned release of five ʻAlalā, or Hawaiian Crows comes at a critical moment: the birds are already extinct in the wild, and prior attempts to reintroduce them failed. The 120 crows currently in captivity are what’s shielding the species from total extinction, but scientists say the crows are weary of being caged, losing their extensive vocabulary of vocalizations, and having less young. Audubon

📔 Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era. “Do you know there’s a section of our customer base that buys a fresh Moleskine every time they come into a store?” asked a buyer at Barnes & Noble’s Fifth Avenue head office in NYC. “We have no idea what they do with them.” I loooove Moleskine notebooks myself, and used to use them as journals when I traveled. Really enjoyed this piece on their appeal. The Walrus

🔎 What's wrong with the fact-checkers? The mainstream media’s fact-checking during the Democratic National Convention was (rightly) ridiculed for “an obsession with semantics and pedantic nitpicking”. Even thereafter, in Dana Bash’s interview with Harris and Walz, to ask Walz “how” the American people can trust him when he mixed up IVF vs. IUI, for example, is such a strange take when there are substantive policy questions that are more worthy of time and energy. That kind of mix-up is not a “gotcha” moment. This piece discusses how the result of this nitpicky focus only serves as “political spin” for Trump, gifting him an unearned benefit of the doubt that ignores his established and substantive criminal and deceitful record. Public Notice

🐭 Origins of the Lab Mouse. A fascinating read about how the lab mouse found its way from Victorian novelty to a biomedical mainstay, essentially by accident. The first mice used for research came from people collecting and breeding them as a hobby, but eventually they were standardized by the Jackson Lab, in Maine, in the early 1900s. Full story at the link, and the authors in the comments that that the next version of the essay will also discuss animal testing generally, as well as solutions to rely on it less. Asimov Press

🌾 Researchers crack a key celiac mystery: Where the gluten reaction begins. My celiac eyes perked up when I read this. It was previously believed that immune cells inside the gut triggered the body’s inflammatory response to gluten, causing damage. New research now reveals that the gut's inner lining, called the epithelium, also plays a crucial role — it’s not solely the immune cells after all. Medical Xpress

🇯🇵 M7.1 earthquake strikes southern Japan; megaquake advisory issued. New publication for me, having seen a tweet about this earthquake, and then Mike pointed me to a publication that discusses all things earthquakes in detail. I love discovering single purpose newsletters with expertise I can only even dream of. I just subscribed. Their newest piece cover’s this weeks earthquake in my hometown of Montreal. Earthquake Insights (via Everything Is Amazing)

😵 This Is What It's Like to Camp in One of the Hottest Places on Earth. The CDC estimates that extreme heats causes 1,220 deaths annually in the USA, so Leath Tonino headed to the Mojave desert for some extreme camping to see what it was like to live in it for a time. “I felt compelled to make raw somatic contact with our new and thoroughly dismaying climate regime, to face the faceless temperatures of the 21st century.” It’s so hot he can’t find words and realizes his pencil is sizzling. Outside Magazine 

🤖 Burst Damage. Ed Zitron thinks the AI bubble is close to bursting, and the people propping the bubble up don’t really experience human problems anymore, and being so out of touch therefore can’t be trusted to solve them. Interesting read, including that he thinks people will realize the “mediocrity of generative AI” and that will bring an apocalypse for big tech. I don’t use AI in my work or life; I’ve seen patients refer to it for symptoms and summaries of their conditions, or writers use it for prompts or filler text, though. Curious what you all think? Where's Your Ed At?

🤸🏻 The AI Keeps The Score. And speaking of AI: the governing body of international gymnastics has pushed for an AI-assisted aid for judges to settle disputes. But it’s very costly. How does the World Gymnastics Championship justify the expense? The author, demoing the system, doesn’t know that it can. “It felt like a solution in search of a problem,” and one that can’t assess on factors that include the beauty of gymnastic movement itself. It’s an interesting read not only this AI system, but also the inconsistent nature of gymnastics scoring and how it differs from other sports. The Verge

📱 Hey Big Spender. What your smartphone knows about you, and how it gets there. This piece is an excellent digital advertising primer, including about the tension between privacy and fostering competition. “Tensions such as this haunt our attitudes to the digital economy. We want privacy, but we also want free information and entertainment, the economics of which often depend on targeted advertising.” Machine learning optimisation of advertising can be more effective than the burdensome human-guided targeting options, but as with anything there are consequences of increasingly relying on an amoral machine. These days, whoever has the most data, wins. London Review Of Books

🖼 Ukraine's death-defying art rescuers.  A fascinating, courageous story about Leonid Marushchak, who has worked tirelessly to save Ukraine’s art from becoming a casualty of war. The Guardian

🐌 From silicon to slime. A really interesting conversation about the increasing overlap between the natural world (biology, and everything surrounding it) and technology (specifically computing), and how everything is porous in the end. “At some point we’ll realize that what’s happening in the natural world is more computationally efficient, inventive & resilient than anything we could create from silicon. Can biology teach us to create new computing architectures that aren’t extractive?” A thoughtful read. Dark Properties

💊 We bought everything needed to make $3 million worth of fentanyl. All it took was $3,600 and a web browser, it turns out, to have enough to do so. Reuters became customers to investigate how Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that causes many overdoses between 18-45 years old, was made, distributed, and sold. This meant getting the components raw, enough to make millions of tabs of the drug, via shipments disguised as other things. Quite the investigative piece, and shows how hard it is to crack down on such a porous market. From the perspective of someone chronically ill, it’s one of the few drugs patients with many medication sensitivities seem to be able tolerate for pain during surgeries or procedures, so the general crackdown is of concern. No question, though, that small amounts in trafficking do great damage. Reuters

♻️ The Cure for Disposable Plastic Crap Is Here—and It’s Loony. Clive Thompson on the environmental problem of our serious addition to single-use plastics, and whether we're willing to embrace the out-of-the-box solutions (like stretchy seaweed or reverse vending machines) to have less dependency on them. WIRED 

📉 The Story That “Hillbilly Elegy” Doesn't Tell. This piece is about some inconsistencies in Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, but as he opposes no-fault divorce and sees divorce as something that “harms children”. There’s a specific quote that stuck for me: “As no-fault divorce became the norm in state after state, domestic-violence rates dropped by some thirty per cent, suicides among women dropped by as much as sixteen per cent, and the number of women murdered by their partners dropped by ten per cent.” Removing no-fault divorce as an option is one of many policy positions from Vance that harms women, but it’s not focused on much so I wanted to highlight it. (As a child of divorce, I’d say it’s more harmful for a kid to grow up in a household of conflict than for parents to split up.) See also: this piece on where the techno-authoritarian side of his platform comes from. The New Yorker; New Republic

📦 Pole vaulters' biggest challenge: Getting their poles to Paris. The difficulty of traveling with poles has some fearing it could endanger the sport, but has me thinking “why did I never think of how olympians transport these poles before?!” It makes sense that these poles are so hard to transport! Y! Sports

🚩 Investigative pieces from ProPublica, both topics I get messages about asking for the facts (“are what we reading is true?”). When things are murky in terms of outrage reporting, I turn to Pro Publica for answers; their investigations are top notch. Both are important reads prior to November’s US elections:

• The Man Behind Project 2025's Most Radical Plans. As Donald Trump tried to disavow the politically toxic project, its director, Paul Dans, stepped down. But the plans and massive staffing database that he prepared—to replace thousands of members of the “deep state” with MAGA loyalists—remain. A deep dive into Dans and the goals of P2025.

• Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia. The author covered January 6th as an investigative reporter back in 2021. Ever since, he wondered where the militia movement went, and the answer is unsettling at best. He spent the last months getting “inside the turbulent, secretive world of one of the largest militias in the US”, noting that some senior members of it grew so alarmed that they quit, spooked by the number of people, including high-level leaders, advocating for acts of terror. The militia has made inroads with sheriffs and police departments, the piece notes, conducted its own border operations, and regularly contemplates mass violence. ProPublica 

Just the Links

Longer reads without editorial because shingles:

• This rural Saskatchewan town is offering $30,000 to anyone who builds a home there As rural Canada’s population declines, Moosomin wants to be a model for small-town growth. CBC

• How Raygun made it to the Olympics and divided breaking world. Memes, outrage, fandom. BBC News

• Stonehenge’s enigmatic centre stone was hauled 800 kilometres from Scotland. Nature

• Subdued, sleepy and despised by snobs: how minimalist piano eclipsed classical music.The Guardian (via The Morning News)

• Where Facebook’s AI Slop Comes From. Facebook is paying creators in India, Vietnam, and the Philippines for bizarre AI spam. 404

• New Method Tracks How Psychedelics Affect Neurons in Minutes. UC Davis

• El Fonoll, the medieval village in Spain where clothes are banned. El Pais

• Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases? A deep dive into GLP-1s. Astral Code Ten

• “You Have to Live Your Life”: Responses to Common COVID Minimizing Phrases. Olivia Belknap Therapy

• Alive and Well, As a Matter of Fax. Regulatory requirements and technological advancements are behind the continuing growth of the fax market, defying all odds. Communications of the ACM

• 40 Of The Best All Time Images From The International Dog Photography Awards. Bored Panda 

🔗 And some shorter quick links 🔗

• A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee, going through the different methods companies use to decaffeinate.

• Meet the Granfuencers, who are blurring lines and defying stereotypes on social media—and having lots of fun in the process.

• Corn sweats?! TIL, honestly. Like humans, plants sweat to keep cool. And in the midwest, with heaps of farmland, that collective sweatiness leads to worse heat waves. I had no idea!

• More than $1.6 million worth of cocaine washed up on Florida beaches during Hurricane Debby, authorities say.

• Related: sharpnose sharks taken from the shores near Rio de Janeiro also test positive for cocaine

• Researchers hope the Garvellach islands off the west coast of Scotland will tell us why Earth went into such an extreme icy state for so long. The islands “are the best record of Earth entering its biggest ever ice age” they discovered.

• Bee bandits are on the rise in Quebec, with one woman losing 200,000 bees in one heist.

• Poetry was an an official Olympic event for 40 years.

This month’s featured artist is the wonderful Beto Val. I have purchased two of his prints for my wall, and share his fabulous vintage surrealism frequently on IG. It was hard to select one image for this month, but I’ve opted for this birds-as-leaves one that always makes me smile. You can see his images on IG here, and his shop is here.

Hope to see you next month,
-Jodi