The Curious About Everything Newsletter #36

The many interesting things I read in February 2024

Welcome back to the Curious About Everything Newsletter! CAE 35, last month’s newsletter, is here, if you missed it. The most popular link from last month was Dan Wang’s annual letter — you all have great taste; it was excellent.

Some Personal Updates

It turns out that my apartment is directly over the garage entryway, something that has been causing problems due to the level of VOCs wafting up into my unit. They’re not supposed to waft up, but they are. And they have been making me very sick. I attributed symptoms to my spinal CSF leak for some time, until I got an air monitor last year. The levels were highest on cold days, apparently due to a vapor intrusion effect; these days were also when my mast cell symptoms (burning feet and swelling in my hands, nausea and GI issues, hair loss, shaking/chills, flushing, my throat was bleeding in the mornings, and more) were at their worst. Even with air purifiers. Fun times, eh? I’m wondering if this issue is part of why I haven’t stabilized as much since my re-leak as I did last time, when I was living in Aylmer? I’ve gotten permission to transfer my lease to another unit away from the garage entryway for health reasons, without penalty. Moving sucks, but I really hope the new spot is healthier for me.

Also in February: Stripe mistakenly gave my celiac translation cards a merchant code of 6051 (“Foreign Currency, Money Orders and Travelers Cheques”) for transaction purposes, which I only found out when customers started writing me angrily. It was fine for many years, until January 1st this year. Their error resulted in hundreds of customers being charged advance cash fees, and a big mess to try and resolve it. To Stripe’s credit, they did work with me to fix and reimburse for those fees—but only after I was able to get help in escalating the problem to a higher helpdesk tier. It’s been … chaotic, and is still ongoing. I learned a lot about merchant codes so far 2024.

In this chaos, though, there are still good things to read:

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.

🐳 How do whales sing? Lab experiments suggest their voice boxes have a unique feature. Whalesong has been the subject of poems and story alike, and now via autopsy of stranded whales (humpback, minke, and sei whales, all baleen types of whales), a Danish study has found that whales have different kinds of voice boxes to other mammals and to humans. Without teeth and vocal cords, baleen whales have a U-shaped tissue that allows them to breathe in massive amounts of air and a large “cushion” of fat and muscle not seen in other animal species. Whales sing by pushing the tissue against the fat and muscle cushion. Associated Press

👀 See what the world looks like through the eyes of different animals. Short read, but very interesting. Animals see the world differently than we do, and now we can see just how different. Ecologist Vera Vasas recorded videos in both visible and UV light, then ran them through software that estimated the wavelengths of light certain animals see with their eyes. At the link, you can see a video showing a bright orange and violet version of what an orange-barred sulphur butterfly looks to animals that can see UV light — like bees or reindeer or mice or birds — versus what we humans see. New Scientist

🧩 Solving the puzzle of Long Covid. This is an important paper summarizing the effects of Covid across all organs and body systems, but also research to date and what is needed next. It also hopefully stops practitioners from saying it’s psychological or “stress”; clearly it’s not. Of note, more than 90% of long Covid cases occur in people who had mild SARS-CoV-2 infection, and reinfection contributes new risks of getting or worsening it. Once you have long Covid, a return to baseline is uncommon. Potential mechanisms of how this affects the body include: viral persistence and/or reactivation, mitochondrial dysfunction, neuroendocrine issues, vascular and/or neuronal inflammation, microbiome problems, coagulation problems. The 1918 Spanish flu, EBV, and other viruses are known to have dire consequences decades later; it’s too early to conclude one way or the other but precedent is no bueno—we urgently need more trials and treatment options. Preventing infections and reinfections remains the best way to avoid long Covid, something very hard to do with public health failing us en masse. This includes using masks, especially in medical settings, but also improving air quality, ventilation, and filtration (and laws relating to building codes to require them for new builds). We also need better vaccines that prevent infection, because the long-term disability numbers are only going to grow. I know this is a LONG blurb, but my inbox is full of readers and friends who are sicker and sicker, and the CDC just removed their 5 day isolation guidelines. This isn’t tenable long term. Science

💀 How Google is killing independent sites like ours. This piece is making the rounds in the blogging groups I'm in. Like many sites, mine has been pushed down in rankings especially when it comes to gluten free food — which is a problem, since that's what drives a large percentage of my income from the celiac translation cards I built. It's an in-depth look about how Google prioritizes larger sites and their 'reviews', and why you shouldn’t trust product recommendations from big media publishers ranking at the top of SERPs. HouseFresh

⚰️ And speaking of: The unsettling scourge of obituary spam. Mia Sato investigates the ghoulish “obituary spam” sites that have popped up in recent years, capitalizing on societal rubbernecking about deaths of celebrities and non-celebrities alike. The sites have hallmarks of being generated using AI tools, and the [chain] of sites that covers it usually has detached and identical information, usually only modifying a few words or re-ordering paragraphs from one to the other, and without facts that would indicate they knew the person. Because, of course, they didn’t. In the case of the recent death of a ME/CFS advocate, they popped up within a day of her passing. The Verge

🦷 With Teeth. “Teeth evolve slowly, changing little over generations. They are also hearty and are some of the most likely remains to be preserved. And they have the potential to tell us so much.” On teeth and their important role in archeology, both for society and for ourselves. Phoebe

🌳A Clock In The Forest. Very interesting thought, that 'plant blindness' leads to time blindness on a larger scale. “Humankind appears to be the only species to have contrived clocks that count without reference to something outside of themselves,” writes Jonathon Keats. “We also appear to be the only species to have use for these contraptions, to use time in this peculiar way.” Can nature clocks help reintegrate us into our environments? Noema Mag

🦋 The Butterfly Redemption. Another beautiful read, this time about an endangered species called Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly that lives for only 14 days each lifespan. The piece was very touching, and weaves in the scientists, volunteers, and incarcerated women from a nearby women’s minimum security prison who are all helping to keep the butterflies alive during their brief time on the planet.

🍜 The Ramen Lord. In-depth profile of Mike Satinover, a chef “obsessed and possessed” by ramen, now opening a restaurant in Chicago. “I decided I’m just going to have no secrets, no matter what happens,” he says. “I’m not even Japanese. As an outsider, it felt very bizarre to think, Well, I have amassed this knowledge; let me just hoard it for myself. Why not share it? These things deserve to be known by everybody.” True to his word, he previously a 137 page free e-book about ramen, which is his "ramen brain downlinked to 47,351 words in a single-spaced Google doc.” A great, nerdy read about someone passionate about his craft without being pretentious. Chicago Magazine

🧪 How a Nuclear Weapons Lab Helped Crack a Serial-Killer Case. Retrospective read about the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a prominent forensic science center in California, played a crucial role in helping to solve a notorious 1990s murder case. It’s the only place in the US certified to conduct forensics on a “whole host of dangerous substances: chemical, biological, radiological, and explosive materials,” earning it the nickname “the lab of last resort.” In this piece, it helped convict a serial killer by proving that his victims’ exhumed remains contained the signatures for paralyzing chemicals pancuronium bromide, also known as Pavulon. Undark

🌭 Mustard. Grey Poupon was founded in 1866, Colman’s in 1814, Maille in 1747. Did you know that legacy mustard brands were that old? I did not! As Chloe List notes in her post, it makes sense given that mustard as a spice was mentioned in Sanskrit manuscripts as early as 3000 BCE. As the condiment we know and love, it dates back to Roman times. I love this deep dive, both about contents and packaging, and really enjoyed learning more about something I enjoy eating. Unbox Inbox

🐗 His Best Friend Was a 250-Pound Warthog. One Day It Decided to Kill Him. Austin Riley dedicated decades of his life to raising exotic animals in Texas, with a particular bond with a warthog he thought he knew best. But life changes in a moment, and in this case the change involved an attack, one Riley calls a "murderous act of betrayal," one that destroyed what he thought he knew about his relationship with the animal he loved. “I put blood, sweat, and tears into his life, and he decided to kill me," he says — after all those years of trust. Texas Monthly 

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

📜 Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded! Researchers have been trying to decipher text written on ancient scrolls buried under the rubble of a volcanic eruption using AI technology, and launched a challenge (with a prize!) to make it happen. And make it happen they did. Fascinating read into the ‘how’ and process it took to get there, as well as what the scroll says now that they've started to decipher it. Vesuvius Challenge

💰 Deepfake scammer walks off with $25 million in first-of-its-kind AI heist. This is bonkers. The deepfake was realistic enough in video format that the employee did the transactions he was being told to do. Ars Technica

🔎A Teen's Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld. After Zac Brettler mysteriously plummeted into the Thames, his grieving parents discovered that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son. Would the police help them solve the puzzle of his death? What a page turner (uh, whatever the digital equivalent of this is — a scroll burner?) “In the four years since Zac’s death, the family has had to confront the extent to which the boy they thought they knew had been living a double existence.” What a read. New Yorker

🚔 Murder victim Kelly Wilkinson repeatedly visited police in fear. They said she was 'cop shopping'. Another example of the systemic failures to protect women from domestic violence: "In the final frantic days before she was murdered, Kelly Wilkinson visited multiple police stations, warning she was in danger. Official police notes say she was “cop shopping”. On Wednesday, Wilkinson’s estranged husband, Brian Earl Johnston, a former US Marine, pleaded guilty to her murder. A court has previously heard that Johnston tied Wilkinson to a clothesline and set her on fire." The Guardian

🚺 Not unrelated: In Defense of Divorce, an interview with Lyz Lenz on her new book, This American Ex-Wife. “I’m not saying you can’t be in love or you can’t have relationships, but I am saying those relationships should not be predicated on your misery. And I think men should know this too. If you’re in a marriage and your wife is unhappy, that’s a bad marriage.” And, “I do think there’s a problem with masculinity where men don’t know what to do with themselves. “Well, if I’m not the provider, if I am not the father, then what am I?” You’re just, like, a human, dude. You’re a human being.” Currently in the middle of this book. Certainly #notallmarriages, but especially in America with its increasingly frantic push toward a regression of equality and/or freedom — eg. trying to claw back no fault divorce or reproductive freedom, of course by the people who claim they're freedom-seeking in the first place — it's a pertinent cultural read. Slate

🥩 The Women at the Cutting Edge of Butchery. Butcher shops are struggling to survive. Can women picking up the knife help them thrive again? Longreads

🇺🇸 The Real Way to Think About Biden's Age This Run. “Perhaps one way to navigate yourself through this seemingly insoluble morass would be to ask yourself why Biden, who is stipulated Old, has managed to helm the most successful presidency in modern history. Booming economy, eye-popping jobs reports, first gun violence reduction bill in decades, $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan plus COVID relief, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure prioritized, judges seated. Pick your metric—there have been a lot of wins.” Yes, the man is old. But, asks this piece, compared against the alternative, why are much of the media focusing on this and not the accomplishments, or the autocratic threat that lies in wait? Slate

🎬 Every Best Picture Winner Ranked by How Good a Muppets Version Would Be Self explanatory, and fabulous. Hard Drive

🤖 Confessions of an AI Clickbait Kingpin. “I’m not a fan of AI,” Nebojša Vujinović Vujo says, despite having built a "bustling business" by snapping up abandoned news outlets and other websites and stuffing them full of algorithmically generated articles. He's not a fan, but he is capitalizing on large language models and their potential for earning a living. “I hate cars. They’re making my planet bad,” he says. “But I’m not riding a horse anymore, right? I’m driving a car.” So opens an article into the mind of a guy building zombie sites, who he says are the future — whether we like it or not. WIRED

👩🏻‍💻 Girl blog. The personal essay is dead... or is it? “Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand,” but is it posturing or is it real? I don’t think the personal essay isn’t going anywhere, and it's a good thing too because with all these AI pieces it's a counterpoint of very human messiness that helps dull the sharpness of our inbound robot overlords. As another curator Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends said, “at a time when the internet feels cold and algorithmic and hopelessly over-polished, maybe we need the personal essay industrialization complex.” Amen. Vague Blue

🎼 Instrumental Archaeology: The Oud. A short dive into the oud, commonly known (though certainly not to me until I read this) as the sultan of all instruments. Meaning meaning “from wood” in Arabic, the oud’s history dates back centuries and it remains an integral part of Arabic music today. Its ancestor is an instrument known as the barbat, which was popular during the Persian Empire. Today there are many varieties of the oud, including the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian oud. Minor Fossil

🫀All about cholesterol. My inbox, weekly full of long covid reports or just post-covid reports from readers, is likely full as a side effect of my writing openly about how a mast cell disorder sprung to life following my own viral infection. These readers are confused about the changes in their bodies, and man do I get it. It sometimes feels like I’ve zipped my skin around someone else’s body — surely this isn’t how I am now? But I am, and it is, and this primer about cholesterol and artery disease and different lab measures and medications, is a good short-ish read for anyone who is trying to understand the workings of their body a little more. Many in my inbox report a sharp rise in cholesterol following a Covid infection, so I wanted to share. Knowable

🌐 Westactica: The micronation with a real-world purpose. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 prohibited nations from making new land claims on the continent. But it never mentioned claims from private individuals. There have been 7 individuals who have staked a claim to a slice of the continent, all under that treaty. But in 2001, naval intelligence specialist Travis McHenry found a loophole in the Antarctic Treaty and founded Westarctica — a Napoleonic-mimicking micronation with its own flag, currency, and Grand Duke (Grand Duke Travis I). The piece gives an overview of Westactica but also other “advanced micronations” that exist in the world. Big Think

🇦🇶 And, also from the continent: Glacial Longings. Elizabeth Rush’s lyrical read about the first shipbound expedition to the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, a huge source of melting ice on the continent. Thwaites Glacier has 3 continuous parts: a floating ice shelf, the grounding line, and the land-based ice behind it. Its deterioration steps — warming water “gnawing away” at the ice shelf, causing it to break off, causing the glacier behind it to flower faster and eventually passing the grounding line and allowing more water to flow into the sea —  are standard. But how the “melt, thin, break, retreat” cycle plays out in Thwaites is less predictable. A part of the glacier’s ice shelf collapses during her trip; “I never considered that collapse could appear so still”, she writes. A compelling read about events that are already in motion, ones that will continue to have far-reaching consequences. Emergence

💍 The surreal life of a professional bridesmaid. People don’t have the support networks they need, says professional bridesmaid Jen Glantz, not just on their wedding day but in everyday life. She is selling, among other things, a support system to help weather any crisis during wedding planning, “no matter how mentally, physically, or emotionally exhausting” — and someone to stand up with a bride during a wedding when others may not. I’m pretty sure there are several romance novels about this meet-cute possibility alone! The Hustle

🪫 Clever cathode design open doors to first rechargeable calcium battery. Very interesting! Calcium-oxygen batteries have a theoretical energy density comparable to lithium-ion batteries, but could be cheaper to produce and/or buy because there’s a lot more calcium on the planet than there is lithium. Scientists have thus far struggled on this front, though, because rechargeable calcium batteries give off calcium compounds during use that are subsequently hard to break down. But! A recent version of the calcium-oxygen battery, the subject of this article, solves that problem with a new electrolyte and cathode design—one that works at room temperature and is rechargeable for 700 cycles. Chemistry World

🍚 Scientists Create Beef-Infused Rice With Cow Cells. Korean scientists said in February that they've invented a new hybrid food, consisting of beef muscle and fat cells grown inside grains of rice. The experimental meaty rice was developed to be an affordable and eco-friendly source of protein. MEAT RICE. Gizmodo

🚭 Smoking has long-term effects on the immune system. A comparison of immune responses in smokers versus ex-smokers showed that the body’s inflammatory response returned to normal levels quickly after stopping smoking — but the impact on adaptive immunity kept on for 10 to 15 years. This is the first time it has been possible to demonstrate the long-term influence of smoking on immune responses. Institut Pasteur

🧠What Your Brain Is Doing When It's Not Doing Anything. Is your brain active even when you’re zoning out on the couch? The answer, it seems, is yes. “Over the past two decades they’ve defined what’s known as the default mode network, a collection of seemingly unrelated areas of the brain that activate when you’re not doing much at all.” Um, I could have told you this, as someone whose brain does not have an ‘off’ switch! Quanta

🏭 Riders in the Smog. To better understand air quality exposure among gig workers in South Asia, Rest of World gave three gig workers — one each in Lahore, New Delhi, and Dhaka — air quality monitors to wear throughout a regular shift in January. The readings were sky high. Rest of World

✅ Against Disruption: On the Bulletpointization of Books. I keep getting Facebook ads for accounts that summarize books into bulleted lists, likely with the help of AI. I keep closing out on them, but much to my chagrin they continue to pop up in my feed. “Too many entrepreneurs come into the book space and don’t realize that the majority of readers love to get lost in books and to ponder them and process them and to argue with our friends about them.” Yes, that is me. And what it trains our brains to do, continually and in addition to so many other modern processes, is to pull away from deep concentration and be satisfied with a superficial understanding. LitHub

🧫 McMaster and ALK researchers discover new cell that remembers allergies. Researchers have discovered a type of memory B cell that has unique characteristics and a unique gene signature that has not been described before, one that causes (and remembers!) allergies. Brighter World

💉 Opioids Decimated a Kentucky Town. Recovering Addicts Are Saving It. After the collapse of coal mining and the rise of the opioid epidemic, the town of Hazard, Kentucky seemed finished. Then locals started to rescue it. A moving piece from Sam Quinones about small towns that are, in the smallest ways, moving beyond addiction and into recovery. It takes recovery beyond not doing drugs, and into something broader. The Free Press

📢 Everyone's a sellout now. This piece has made the rounds, but if you haven’t yet seen it: “To achieve the current iteration of the American dream, you’ve got to shout into the digital void and tell everyone how great you are. All that matters is how many people believe you.” Hardly anyone wants to “build a platform;” we want to just have one. Vox

❓Why are you such a massive wanker? Nick Cave, who I’ve shared advice from in the past, posted very short answers to 50 different reader questions including the title question. Among the rest on the list: “What does it mean to be normal?” Answer: I don’t know. (Lots of ‘no’ answers in here, but it’s refreshing that someone is willing to say they don’t know something these days!) The Red Hand Files

😶‍🌫️ What Happens When We Stop Remembering? “Shifting baselines is the idea that each successive generation will accept as ‘normal’ an increasingly degraded and disorganized ecology, until at some point in the future, no one will remember what a healthy ecology looks and feels like. Absent any personal or societal accounting of migrating butterflies, winter snowfall, or spawning salmon, future generations will have tolerated so many small losses in population, abundance, and habitat that eventually they won’t know what they’re missing. Worse, they may not even care.” A thoughtful read by Heidi Lasher juxtaposing her parents and their descent into dementia with the ongoing changes to our planet. We need to pay attention and ‘call forth what once was’ to avoid societal blindness, Lasher writes, not just personal degeneration. Orion Magazine

🧑‍💻 In the Shadow of Silicon Valley. Alarming read from the always-readable Rebecca Solnit, this time about how San Francisco has been shaped and reshaped by Silicon Valley's drive toward an ultimate state of efficiency and productivity. Is this good for society? Solnit says no, not only because the gap between haves and have-nots have widened, but because of the cascade of other issues that arose within that gap. London Review of Books

🦠 Superbug crisis threatens to kill 10 million per year by 2050. Scientists may have a solution. Terrible headline, but an interesting read about phage therapy, something patients I’ve spoken with have used in Europe for a variety of infections. It’s less common in North America. (In Russia and the country of Georgia, where phage therapy has been used for decades, patients can buy phage cocktails off the shelf in pharmacies — not so much here!) CNN

🇷🇺 Putin's genocidal myth. Timothy Snyder is always an important read on Russia and politics, and this time he’s writing about the foolishness of fascism as revealed by Tucker’s interview with Putin, as well as the bending of truth that took place during their exchange. “In his conversation with Carlson, Putin focused on the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.  Moscow did not exist then.  So even if we could perform the wishful time travel that Putin wants, and turn the clock back to 988, it could not lead us to a country with a capital in Moscow.  Most of Russia's present territory is in Siberia. Europeans did not control those Asian territories back then. On Putin's logic, Russia has no claim today to the territories from which it extracts its natural gas and oil.  Other countries would, and Russia's national minorities would.” And related: Why is Trump Trying to Make Ukraine Lose? Thinking About; The Atlantic

🔗 Quick links 🔗

• An analysis of gum from 10,000 years ago in the Stone Age reveals that teens used teeth as tools, aided by the gum that was made by burning bark and scraping resin off a rock. They then used the sticky gum to make axes, or fix a hole in a boat.

• After months of isolation in Antarctica, scientists began to develop their own accent. Fascinating!

• I’ve posted articles before about the diseases affecting the main species of banana we eat. So it was interesting to read of a genetically modified banana in Australia that is resistant to Panama disease.

• Covid’s effects on the brain: brain shrinkage, drops in IQ, higher risks of dementia.

• The Paris Olympics medals will have pieces of the Eiffel Tower melted into them. (Don’t worry, these are pieces that they already replaced!)

• A great butternut squash and coconut milk soup recipe for winter that I used to make when I could. Friends have loved it when I suggested it to them, so I’m sharing here too! (Link is to the printable version)

• Yikes, I hadn’t thought of this: electric vehicles weigh 20% - 50% more than gas-powered vehicles, and a study found that they can tear through steel guardrails on US roadways. Add this to the infrastructure upgrade list.

• Rest in Peace, the legend that you are. Iris Apfel dies at 102.

• A unified theory of fucks (of the ‘giving a’ kind, not the other kind).

• China’s next cultural export could be TikTok-style short (2-min) soap operas.

• How the TV show The Love Boat changed the cruise industry.

• A new dating app for people with good to excellent credit. Markets in everything, as Tyler Cowen would say.

• 9 experts weigh in on how to stop catastrophizing. Though I am not a psych expert, I am a catastrophizing expert, and I would add one more to this list: spending time to spotlight the resourcefulness you have to manage crises when they occur, and remind yourself of them when the worry spikes.

🎉 Friends who wrote things! 🎉

• Dan Saltzstein’s first book That's So New York: Short (and Very Short) Stories about the Greatest City on Earth comes out March 12th, compiling anecdotes, essays, and stories from the city that never sleeps.

• Also coming out March 12th is Austin Bush’s newest cookbook The Food of Southern Thailand, featuring 100 full-color photographs, detailed recipes, and 50 illustrations from a region of Thailand that the west rarely focuses on. I love the food from this part of the country, and I’m excited to dive into this book.

• If politics is your jam as much as it is mine, Luppe B. Luppen (who you may better know as @nycsouthpaw on the site I still call Twitter) co-wrote The Truce: Progressives, Centrists, and the Future of the Democratic Party with Hunter Walker. It’s out now.

This month’s featured artist is Marcio Cabral, one of the Nature Photography Contest winners for 2023, with the image below. It is a a panorama of the Milky Way over Chapada dos Veadeiros, a national park in Brazil. (The white flowers lit up in the foreground are a rare species of Paepalanthus, a genus of plants endemic to the region.)

Hope to see you next month,
-Jodi