The Curious About Everything Newsletter #39

The many interesting things I read in May 2024

Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter! CAE 38, last month’s newsletter, is here, if you missed it. The most popular link from last month was Josh Dzieza’s excellent read on undersea cables.

Some Personal Updates

• Early in May, a fellow complex spinal CSF leak patient named Connie Rim passed away. She fought long and hard for treatment and care, and nonetheless netted out in a state of constant agony. I wrote about her passing, as well as the tense tightrope complex patients need to walk on to get themselves treated with this challenging and underdiagnosed condition. Among the difficulties: that imaging is normal for 20% of patients.

• For those following me elsewhere, I’ve been more prolific than usual with my writing. It’s because it’s this week is leakweek, the annual fundraising and awareness week for spinal CSF leak. If you’d like to help fund research and awareness for spinal CSF leak, please see my personal fundraiser page. I’ve been participating via duradash®, an event that raises funds with each person doing 150 minutes of any activity. I chose walking. Last May, I walked 1.28km total from bed to kitchen and back — my leak had just reopened. This May, I exceeded those 150 minutes and walked dozens of km total. A big thanks to those who have already donated!

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.

🍳 My Lunches with Judith Jones, the Queen of Cookbooks. “This is a story told in lunches,” writes Sara Franklin to open this beautiful piece about lessons learned at the kitchen counter with the editor of Julia Child, Edna Lewis, MFK Fisher, Madhur Jaffrey, and James Beard. “I love the ardor with which Judith eats and lives, her unabashed pleasure in her own pleasure,” she notes enviously, midway through the piece. It’s a love letter to food, to writing, to newfound friendships. It’s a memorial. It’s very much worth a read. Taste

📦 World in a Box. “For many of us, the cardboard box is our closest touchpoint to globalized trade, structuring our relations with people in distant places. It brings the logistics chain to our doorstep.” A fascinating deep dive into the cardboard box, including how it is “a medium for reclaiming the disposable,” as well as for imagination, for improvisation, and more (as any cat owner knows). Places Journal

🪸 Dive Into the Exotic World of Nudibranchs, the Spectacular Slugs of the Sea. Palate cleanser: NUDIBRANCHS! I love them. These awesome tiny creatures have no shells, have exposed gills (which is why they're called what they are; the name means 'naked gills') and can be teeny tiny or as large as 20 inches. They're a family of sea slugs, and nature has rewarded us with a stupendous array of bright colours and fun shapes. Per the piece: “Dorids often resemble tiny rabbits, with their rhinophores, or two antenna-like protrusions on their heads, like bunny ears, and a ring of feathery gills on their backs. There is also the Spanish dancer, a slug in the form of a bright red wavy flamenco shawl. Aeolids are covered in cerata—fleshy growths that resemble anemone tendrils, only shorter. There is one aeolid that looks like a psychedelic hedgehog, and several that wouldn’t be out of place at the tip of an orchid stem. The blue dragon has long talon-like cerata on the end of perpetually outstretched arms, as though it were flying. It is really, really difficult not to compare them to Pokémon characters.” There are around 3,000 nudibranch species all over the world, even in the Arctic, but a third of them are found in Australia. This piece is a fabulous nudibranch deep dive, plus a fun profile of Gary Cobb, a retired American expat who might just be their number 1 fan. Smithsonian

ℹ️ Why Good Information is Gold. Why I write CAE! David Moscrop defines good information broadly as info offered in good faith that is carefully collected and considered, presented with context, and that the sharer is willing to swap it out of info changes. I’ve been sending newsletters like this out since my lawyering days in 2003, but there’s so much more bad info online with the firehose that the Internet has become. Curators you trust are crucial in cutting through the noise. Everyone has a limit as to what they can tolerate consuming, even if my extremely online version is higher than some. In a world where people often believe what they hear first and may rely on shortcuts in their exhaustion, “good information is gold”, Moscrop says — and bad information is poison. Unfortunately, the Internet is full of that poison. David Moscrop

🧠 Why Creatives Will Win by Thinking Small. A complimentary piece to the above. The path to success is different than it used to be, and we’ve reached a point where “even the gatekeepers are sick of dealing with gatekeepers,” writes Ted Goia. Connecting to end-users directly was always a way to sidestep the stodginess, but with this Internet age that tactic is even more powerful and there are now many tools for anyone to do so. Very little of them existed when I started Legal Nomads in 2008, or when Ted started self-publishing in 2007. Like Ted, when I think of my (amazing!) community I think small. I think of my readers as their individual human selves, pinpoints of light connected in the ether. And more and more people are doing the same. The Honest Broker

🪶 Hummingbirds are Wondrous. Replete with lovely prose and hummingbird facts. They are the smallest living birds in the world, most living in the tropics, but 17 species are in the USA (there are 366 known species total). They can fly backward (!), forward, up and down, and even zigzag, and their wings flap faster than any other bird on the planet — up to 50 times per second. They’re also mesmerizingly colourful, and a 2022 study found their range of colour exceeds the known diversity of colours in “all other bird species combined”—they alone increase the total bird-colours by 56 %. Fascinating read. Plough

⚕️ Health care needs a new profession: neuroimaging counseling. Neuroimaging counselors could contribute to the clinical and research neuroimaging process in several ways, like helping consumers and potential research participants make informed decisions about whether to have a brain MRI scan, addressing pre-scan anticipation and anxiety, and following-up to help explain the resulting findings and their consequences. Interesting suggestion, can see how it could be useful. STAT News

🪦 The Last Thing My Mother Wanted. (Archive link.) Oof, what a piece. “My mother had always been a flashlight of a person — shining a small but intense beam on things she wanted to explore — but now the radius had shrunk, the light weakened. […] In the last months of her life, the only thing that appeared to give her real joy was the hope that she would be ending it.” More more than a personal essay about dignity in death, it’s a reflection of the author’s complicated relationship with a narcissistic mother, who still has a stranglehold over her daughter’s emotions even as she nears death. Her mother “tells my sister that part of the reason she has decided to kill herself is that my sister does not love her enough”; the manipulation continues and the decades have not softened her. The Cut

🤑 How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe. Shocking. How many microplastics do you have running through your veins? Not that there are even any commercially-available tests for us to check. Newer studies have linked them to increased risk of heart attack or stroke, as well as potential increased cancer and other health findings. The companies that created these microplastics, like 3M and Dupont, suppressed the harms of these materials even as the toxins were baked into products all over the world. They frequently released microplastics around production plants, all the while muzzling and pressuring their own scientists internally. This piece is shocking, and sickening — literally and figuratively. It’s a pitch perfect profile of corporate greed. ProPublica

🦓 ‘Despite appearances, I finally realise I am not able-bodied’: novelist Daisy Lafarge on her hypermobility disorder. Powerful piece from Daisy Lafarge, who was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome diagnosis at 31. It touches upon how she manages with chronic pain (“I still harbour ableist expectations of myself. I hate being too foggy or racked with pain to write or think”), and how invisible illness comes with a side of public disbelief (“When I couldn’t show him proof of my disability, he shrugged; I looked fine, he said, there was nothing he could do.”) Relatable for me, diagnosed with the same condition in my late 30s, and with a hole in my dura that is invisible to the outside. My tips for chronic pain are here. The Guardian

🧑🏻‍⚖️ All your Trump conviction questions, answered. I’ve been a subscriber to Gabe Fleisher’s newsletter for a long time. His clear-eyed, non-partisan reporting helps cut through the noise and headline manipulation that are prevalent in politics today. I’m including his summary of the recent Trump jury decision because my feed is full of misinterpretations. If there’s one newsletter you want to sign up for (um, in addition to mine I hope!) as we move toward the US elections, this is a good one. Wake Up to Politics

💀 The science of near-death experiences I’ve written about several near-death experiences (NDEs) in my life, but none were as intense or mystifying as when I went into what was described as life-threatening anaphylaxis on the table during my last spinal CSF leak repair procedure. Some of what I experienced at the time has made little sense to me. I really appreciated this podcast transcript from an interview of Sebastian Junger, a former war reporter. He goes into his own NDE experiences, and the medical paradoxes in what science does and doesn’t know about NDEs in detail. Vox

🤯 50 Things I Know. Sasha Chapin takes on a beloved form of writing, the ‘writing out what I learned’ piece. And he does it very well. Among my faves, “I know that being silly is a gift. You un-taboo silliness for everyone around you,” and “I know you can’t suppress pain and anger without also deadening yourself generally.” Lots of interesting prompts, well-consolidated and thoughtful. Sasha's 'Newsletter'

🔎 An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them. Google’s AI mishaps have been in the news lately, but how they organize the web has been one of the Internet’s greatest confusions (and mysteries that search engine optimization people have tried to solve). A huge cache of leaked documents sent to Rand Fishkin sheds some light into what they’ve shared publicly—versus what was actually going on behind the scenes. Another writeup of this document leak is here. Spark Toro; The Verge

🏔 The Man Who Raced to Tell the World That Mount Everest Had Been Climbed.  Incredible, never-before-told story about the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953. One of the Sherpas dispatched to deliver the news about the climb did so by running 200 miles in 5 days. He died shortly thereafter. In this piece, Peter Frick-Wright retraces the Sherpa’s route with the man’s grandson, Ang Pemba. What a read. Outside

🕹 Finding a Master Immune System Controller. Ummm this is a big deal. Scientists have identified a new brain circuit in mice that controls body's inflammatory responses, finding that neurons in brain can actually direct the immune system, including in increasing or decreasing inflammation. These neurons located in the caudal Nucleus of the Solitary Tract (cNST) part of the brain, can activate (or de-activate) to produce inflammatory responses. The study opens the door to new research of immune disorders, hopefully mast cell activation syndrome included. Until now, scientists have generally thought that the immune system controls itself and has feedback mechanisms, not that the brain was involved. HHMI

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

🍴 This Doctor Pioneered Counting Calories a Century Ago, and We're Still Dealing With the Consequences. In 1918, only two years before being allowed to vote, Lulu Hunt Peters brought Americans a new method for weighing their dinner options, distilling her passion for calorie counting into a slim handbook that became the first diet best seller in history. In doing so, she launched a century of diet fads that left us hungry for a better way to keep our bodies strong and healthy. As GLP-1 agonists skyrocket in popularity, the piece is also an interesting dive into when it became trendy to be thin, not just healthy. Smithsonian

🦉Positive relationship between bird diversity and human mental health: an analysis of repeated cross-sectional data. A new study suggests that not only can birdwatching provide benefits over and above the joy of listening to birds, but that it's actually more effective at decreasing stress and increasing wellbeing than being out in nature. The Lancet

👶🏻 America's premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: 'There are going to be countries of old people starving to death'. Like the shining, but with lots and lots of kids. Horrifying at several points (like when Malcolm casually backhands his son to stop him from being restless at a restaurant), and confusing at others. Throughout, though, it’s excellent writing by an author who calls her day with this couple “unsettling”. I can see why! The Guardian

🐀 For nearly seven decades, Alberta has been winning the war on rats. Alberta's rat-free status means there is no resident population of rats, and they are not allowed to establish themselves in Alberta. I’m Canadian and I didn’t know this until recently, thanks to my friend Dalene. Globe And Mail

💘 Is “Love Is Blind” a Toxic Workplace? (Archive link.) “That is the nature of all reality shows, however delightful they may be to watch: the power lies with those who design the experiment, who have thousands of hours of footage of cast members, often drunk or confessing to highly personal stories, which the company owns and is allowed to air or not air, at any time it likes, and in any order. The cast members have some choices of their own: they can play up to the producers, resist them, or try to work around them. Like gamblers in Vegas, everyone has a system. But the house always wins.” No additional editorial needed. (Yes, I do watch the show.) The New Yorker

🦠 Clues From Bird Flu’s Ground Zero on Dairy Farms in the Texas Panhandle. There are already many conspiracies floating around about the origins of the current H5N1 avian flu. This article investigates how things spread, and why, and is a straightforward response to many people’s questions. KFF Health News

🩸 Blood Money. “The technicians came to check on us periodically, whispering, ‘doing OK?’ For the first time in years, I got the sense there was someone in charge who cared about me, who was looking over me. It was not perfect, but it was more tender than the world outside.” A short tale of selling blood plasma to make ends meet. Slate

🏺 Scientists have solved mystery behind Egypt’s pyramids. The remains of an ancient branch of the Nile River has been found near the Giza pyramid complex, which may explain why so many pyramids were built at that location. While the pyramids now quite a distance away from the Nile, satellite images and geological data confirm that there used to be a tributary of the Nile nearby, which has been called the Ahramat Branch It would have also offered a convenient way for Ancient Egyptians to move building materials to and from the pyramid sites, to transport materials to the sites. BBC News

🏒 How do you pronounce ‘hockey’? US players say it with “fake Canadian accent”. Short but fun read about how US hockey players have unintentionally changed their speech in the context of their hockey careers, a concepted called ‘linguistic persona’ where someone communicates by how they identify—in this case, as a hockey player. Ars Technica

🦞 Private equity and mismanagement: Here's what really killed Red Lobster. The endless shrimp buffet wasn't itself responsible for Red Lobster's bankruptcy (though it probably didn't help them one bit). Instead, it was the greedy mismanagement by private equity investors, who—among other things—sold the land out from under the restaurants, then forced franchises to rent it back at ridiculous rates. Their demise was caused by the resulting tension from company owners selling to private equity. Fast Company

✍️ Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning. In kids, writing out ABCs (instead of typing them) yields better recognition and understanding of letters, and writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words for kids, “laying down the foundations of literacy and learning”. In adults, taking notes by hand when listening to a presentation or lecture (again, instead of typing) can lead to better conceptual understanding of material. One theory as to why: it forces us to slow down and process the information more fully. NPR

🍁 Why Do So Many Maple Syrup Bottles Have a Little Handle? Ideally, you’d be able to hold the handle of a maple syrup container while you carry it and also while you pour the syrup onto pancakes, waffles, or whatever other foodstuff calls for it. But the typical handle on a glass bottle of maple syrup is way too small and positioned too far up the bottleneck to be functional in either respect. So why is it there? Most likely explanation is that it’s a skeuomorph, “an ornament or design representing a utensil or implement” — that is, it’s useless but pretty. Mental Floss

🏠 Sicily Sold Homes For One Euro. This Is What Happened Next. Sicily’s buy-a-house for 1-euro scheme was so successful they launched a 2-euro one in 2021. One of several schemes globally aiming to rebuild charming regional communities abandoned for city-living. Afar

☣️ Lauren Southern: how my tradlife turned toxic. This piece addresses how the ideology around living a “tradlife” can lead to significant risks for women who buy in, and illustrates just how by interviewing a former alt-Right media darling turned tradwife who found her way “back to reality”. Says Southern, on why she’s speaking out (despite the backlash for it): “There are a lot of influencers who are not in good relationships, who are still portraying happy marriage publicly, and bashing people for not being married while being in horrendous relationships.” As is often the case, the ideology and the reality diverge. UnHerd

🎿 Slippery Slope. The forces that are remaking the Mountain West covered in this piece include the consolidation of land and wealth in the hands of a few, and the “substitution of corporate power for civic authority”, both “uniquely visible” in Big Sky, Montana where private interests have burrowed deep and destabilized the local community. Locals in the piece are saying it’s already on its way to becoming a “company town”. I found it an interesting and depressing read, and a compliment to the Red Lobster piece above. Harpers

✈️ The Risk of Aircraft-Acquired SARS-CoV-2 Transmission during Commercial Flights: A Systematic Review. A review of 50 flights found that Covid-19 incidence increased with flight duration: it was 26 times higher on long flights(over 6 hours) vs. short flightS (under 3 hours), and 5 times higher on medium flights (3-6 hours) compared to short. Important to remember but often ignored these days is this quote: “long flights with enforced masking had no transmission reported.” MDPI

😷 Masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: a state of the science review. Related: a new mask study that analyzed hundreds of other mask studies and the data and logic they used to conclude their findings, found that masks most definitely work (as we've seen in that plane study), and that the type and fit matters. They pooled data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to conclude that N95 respirators (masks made using higher-grade filtration material and designed to fit closely around the faces) are superior to surgical (looser blue masks) in healthcare workers, especially when respirators were worn continuously at work. Non-RCT evidence also showed that masks work and respirators work better. With a spinal CSF leak, ANYTHING that makes me cough (Covid, a flu, a cold) risks blowing out my leak further and undoing all of my healing progress. But the post-viral tissue damage from Covid has also led to patients I’ve heard from getting spontaneous leaks after infection. ASM Journals. (Summary article here: Masks work, our comprehensive review has found. The Conversation.)

🔗 Quick links 🔗

• Single purpose site useful for all: copy the shrug emoji.

• The Federal Open Science Repository of Canada is a web-based open access database of federally-authored science publications. I didn’t know about this!

• For the first time ever, more online news sites produced Pulitzer finalists than newspapers did.

• Love this fun website that lets you play the birdsongs from different birds in the UK.

• A big change for companies and their lawyers: the FTC’s new final rule bans noncompetes with any workers, including senior executives. Existing noncompetes for the vast majority of people will no longer be enforceable after the rule’s effective date (120 days after publication in the Federal Register), the exception being senior executives who have noncompetes already in place. Here’s a fact sheet from the FTC.

• Researchers in the US found that the average age that girls began menstruating decreased from from 12.5 years old (for those born between 1950 and 1969) to 11.9 years old (for those born between 2000 and 2005).

• Another single purpose website: nohello, imploring people to stop saying hello when using instant messenger for work and instead just dive into the ask.

• A new colour of cat has been discovered, and the name is worthwhile: salty-liquorice. Also, cute.

• Venezuela loses its last glacier, now reclassified as an ice field.

• Indiana judge rules that tacos are sandwiches, at least in Indiana.

• PowerOfAttorney lets you make free PoA forms, with templates organized by state. It gives options for a medical power of attorney, durable and financial power of attorney, and more, each with the requirements for signature listed out. Very useful resource. 

• Green’s Dictionary of Slang, gifting us hundreds of years of “the vulgar tongue” for the English language. (via Kottke)

• It’s the month of single purpose sites! This one lets you turn off Google’s new AI view in search, and brings you back to a web-only option. Directions for desktop and mobile.

This month’s featured artist is Gabrielle Smith. Her photo is one of many wondrous pictures from the geomagnetic storm that blanketed a good swath of the planet in May. Photo taken on in Wellesley, Ontario, Canada, via long-time reader Justine Wei.

Hope to see you next month,
-Jodi