Month: July 2025

From Academia: “Daniel Hudson Burnham, the Chicago architect and city planner, is recognized for his work on the development of American tall office building; for the construction of World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893; and for his city plans for Washington, D.C., Cleveland, San Francisco, and Chicago. What is not so well known is how his Swedenborgian faith infuenced his work, especially his 1909 Plan of Chicago. Burnham’s encompassing large-scale view was related to his religious beliefs that posited the correspondence of the physical realm to that of spiritual. Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist and engineer who, beginning in the mid 1740s, underwent a spiritual awakening. The focus of his work changed to the mystical aspects of human experience. He believed that all Christian churches were dead and in need of revitalization and the key to revitalization was to be found in a new interpretation of scripture. His followers founded the Church of the New Jerusalem, sometimes referred to as the New Church.”

The math tutor and the missing $533 million

From Rest of World: “One morning in January, Byju Raveendran sat in the back seat of his shiny black Cadillac as it sped through Dubai. Just three years prior, the schoolteachers’ son had appeared on the Forbes list of richest Indians as founder and CEO of Byju’s, then one of the world’s most valuable education technology companies. By 2017, marquee investors like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative had vaulted Byju’s into the upper echelons of global edtech companies, sparking a worldwide acquisitions spree. In 2022, the company was valued at about $22 billion. But things unraveled — slowly at first, and then all of a sudden. In September 2023, the Board of Control for Cricket took Byju’s to court. The plaintiffs alleged that $533 million of the loan had been siphoned to a sham hedge fund registered at the address of an International House of Pancakes restaurant in Miami. The fund was run by a 23-year-old who’d purportedly spent part of the funds on a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, and a Rolls-Royce.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “The design of Chicago was influenced by a Swedish mystic”

From the Library of Congress: “Thomas Paine was a national hero, best known as the author of Common Sense, which convinced many Americans to join the fight against the British. Over time, however, he became a social outcast, particularly for his controversial views on organized religion. He died in poverty on June 8, 1809 and only six people attended the burial — his isolated grave was all but forgotten until a onetime foe dug up his skeleton ten years after his death. William Cobbett had once been Paine’s bitterest enemy, but he became disillusioned with the Tory class he had so staunchly defended and came to believe that he had done Paine a great injustice. Cobbett was horrified when he visited Paine’s neglected grave, so he dug him up and tried to have a memorial created in Britain. Upon Cobbett’s death in 1835, the bones then were passed to a day laborer, then Cobbett’s secretary, then oblivion. According to legend, some of the bones were lost or destroyed, made into buttons, or sold off individually.”

Scientists say female frogs pretend to be dead to avoid unwanted attention from male frogs

From ABC News: “Female European common frogs were observed engaging in “tonic immobility,” essentially feigning their own death to avoid mating, according to a study published Wednesday in Royal Society Open Science. The phenomenon seems to have evolved in order for females to survive an intense and potentially dangerous mating season, Carolin Dittrich, an evolutionary and behavioral ecologist who conducted the research as part of the Natural History Museum Berlin, told ABC News. European common frogs engage in an “explosive” breeding season, a short season in which males fiercely compete for access to females, which results in scrambling and fighting. Males also may harass, coerce or intimidate females into mating, according to the study. Amid the chaos, female frogs are at risk of getting trapped in “mating balls,” in which several males cling to them to vie for their attention, which could lead to their death.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “No one knows what happened to Thomas Paine’s body”

From the Library of Congress: “Thomas Paine was a national hero, best known as the author of Common Sense, which convinced many Americans to join the fight against the British. Over time, however, he became a social outcast, particularly for his controversial views on organized religion. He died in poverty on June 8, 1809 and only six people attended the burial — his isolated grave was all but forgotten until a onetime foe dug up his skeleton ten years after his death. William Cobbett had once been Paine’s bitterest enemy, but he became disillusioned with the Tory class he had so staunchly defended and came to believe that he had done Paine a great injustice. Cobbett was horrified when he visited Paine’s neglected grave, so he dug him up and tried to have a memorial created in Britain. Upon Cobbett’s death in 1835, the bones then were passed to a day laborer, then Cobbett’s secretary, then oblivion. According to legend, some of the bones were lost or destroyed, made into buttons, or sold off individually.”

Scientists say female frogs pretend to be dead to avoid unwanted attention from male frogs

From ABC News: “Female European common frogs were observed engaging in “tonic immobility,” essentially feigning their own death to avoid mating, according to a study published Wednesday in Royal Society Open Science. The phenomenon seems to have evolved in order for females to survive an intense and potentially dangerous mating season, Carolin Dittrich, an evolutionary and behavioral ecologist who conducted the research as part of the Natural History Museum Berlin, told ABC News. European common frogs engage in an “explosive” breeding season, a short season in which males fiercely compete for access to females, which results in scrambling and fighting. Males also may harass, coerce or intimidate females into mating, according to the study. Amid the chaos, female frogs are at risk of getting trapped in “mating balls,” in which several males cling to them to vie for their attention, which could lead to their death.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “No one knows what happened to Thomas Paine’s body”

From Now I Know: “Some believe that July 4, 1776, is not truly America’s independence day. That honor should fall to either July 2, 1776, or August 2, 1776. On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress created a sub-committee of five delegates – Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman – empowered to write a first draft of a declaration of independence. Jefferson took the lead and the quintet delivered their draft on June 28th. After a few days of debates and revisions, the Congress voted to declare independence – on July 2nd, not July 4th. nstead, we Americans celebrate independence on the 4th, the day the Continental Congress ratified the text of the document. Ratified – but not signed. According to National Geographic, many of those who signed the famous piece of parchment were not present on the 4th of July and the document wasn’t signed until August 2nd.”

Scientists are using the bodies of dead spiders as miniature claw machines

From Scientific American: “Spider corpses turned into robots sounds like the far-fetched plotline of a B horror movie. But researchers from Rice University have created just that—dead wolf spiders that can be used as machines to pick up and put down objects. In a paper published in Advanced Science, researchers have dubbed the use of biotic materials as robotic components “necrobotics.” They say this area of research could be used to create biodegradable grippers for very small objects. “We understand that many people are put off by the sight of a spider, but from an engineering point of view, the spider’s mechanism of movement is very interesting,” said Faye Yap, a mechanical engineer at Rice. The research began in 2019, when the scientists noticed a dead spider curled up in their lab. Yap and her colleagues did a quick search and discovered that spiders have a hydraulic pressure system that controls their limbs.” 

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Independence Day should be on July 2nd or August 2nd”

I’d like to apologize in advance for the topic of this week’s newsletter, which I fear may not interest all (or perhaps even most) of you. It would be nice to think that lots of people care about the nuances of how news and information gets published, and the challenges that the modern web and social media and tech monopolies (among other things) pose to our information ecosystem, but a long career as a journalist writing about tech — including publishing technology like Substack — has convinced me that this is very much not the case! So if you are one of those people for whom this topic induces snoring, please feel free to ignore this week’s newsletter and then come back later 😄

If you are reading this newsletter via Substack, the headline might seem a little confusing. Don’t I use Substack to publish The Torment Nexus? I sure do, because I want to reach potential readers in as many ways as possible, and lots of people use Substack. However, I also publish this newsletter using Ghost — an open-source platform — and I simultaneously post all of the newsletters to my personal website, which runs on WordPress (a platform that I confess also has some problematic aspects). Unlike many of the people who publish on Substack, I don’t have a paywall that kicks in at a certain point, or hides posts or premium options behind a subscription. I rely on donations through both Substack and Ghost to support my newsletters (including my daily newsletter When The Going Gets Weird), and I also have a Patreon portal where you can send money if you want to support my work with a specific amount of your choosing.

As you can probably gather from the above description, I am not backing one specific horse in the web publishing race. If you want to read my writing via Substack that’s great, and if you want to read it via Ghost that’s also great, but if you’d rather use the old-fashioned open web that’s fine too. This makes monetization somewhat more difficult, since people can easily get my newsletter without paying and therefore there isn’t a compelling reason for subscribing or donating (apart from just the fact that you like me or my writing). But I am willing to live with that because I think the free and open exchange of information is a crucial aspect of the web — although it is becoming less and less common all the time. And that’s part of why I don’t think that Substack is the real future of web publishing, or at least shouldn’t be the future.

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Why Substack shouldn’t be the future of online publishing”

From Now I Know: “Some believe that July 4, 1776, is not truly America’s independence day. That honor should fall to either July 2, 1776, or August 2, 1776. On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress created a sub-committee of five delegates – Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman – empowered to write a first draft of a declaration of independence. Jefferson took the lead and the quintet delivered their draft on June 28th. After a few days of debates and revisions, the Congress voted to declare independence – on July 2nd, not July 4th. nstead, we Americans celebrate independence on the 4th, the day the Continental Congress ratified the text of the document. Ratified – but not signed. According to National Geographic, many of those who signed the famous piece of parchment were not present on the 4th of July and the document wasn’t signed until August 2nd.”

Scientists are using the bodies of dead spiders as miniature claw machines

From Scientific American: “Spider corpses turned into robots sounds like the far-fetched plotline of a B horror movie. But researchers from Rice University have created just that—dead wolf spiders that can be used as machines to pick up and put down objects. In a paper published in Advanced Science, researchers have dubbed the use of biotic materials as robotic components “necrobotics.” They say this area of research could be used to create biodegradable grippers for very small objects. “We understand that many people are put off by the sight of a spider, but from an engineering point of view, the spider’s mechanism of movement is very interesting,” said Faye Yap, a mechanical engineer at Rice. The research began in 2019, when the scientists noticed a dead spider curled up in their lab. Yap and her colleagues did a quick search and discovered that spiders have a hydraulic pressure system that controls their limbs.” 

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Independence Day should be on July 2nd or August 2nd”

I’d like to apologize in advance for the topic of this week’s newsletter, which I fear may not interest all (or perhaps even most) of you. It would be nice to think that lots of people care about the nuances of how news and information gets published, and the challenges that the modern web and social media and tech monopolies (among other things) pose to our information ecosystem, but a long career as a journalist writing about tech — including publishing technology like Substack — has convinced me that this is very much not the case! So if you are one of those people for whom this topic induces snoring, please feel free to ignore this week’s newsletter and then come back later 😄

If you are reading this newsletter via Substack, the headline might seem a little confusing. Don’t I use Substack to publish The Torment Nexus? I sure do, because I want to reach potential readers in as many ways as possible, and lots of people use Substack. However, I also publish this newsletter using Ghost — an open-source platform — and I simultaneously post all of the newsletters to my personal website, which runs on WordPress (a platform that I confess also has some problematic aspects). Unlike many of the people who publish on Substack, I don’t have a paywall that kicks in at a certain point, or hides posts or premium options behind a subscription. I rely on donations through both Substack and Ghost to support my newsletters (including my daily newsletter When The Going Gets Weird), and I also have a Patreon portal where you can send money if you want to support my work with a specific amount of your choosing.

As you can probably gather from the above description, I am not backing one specific horse in the web publishing race. If you want to read my writing via Substack that’s great, and if you want to read it via Ghost that’s also great, but if you’d rather use the old-fashioned open web that’s fine too. This makes monetization somewhat more difficult, since people can easily get my newsletter without paying and therefore there isn’t a compelling reason for subscribing or donating (apart from just the fact that you like me or my writing). But I am willing to live with that because I think the free and open exchange of information is a crucial aspect of the web — although it is becoming less and less common all the time. And that’s part of why I don’t think that Substack is the real future of web publishing, or at least shouldn’t be the future.

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Why Substack shouldn’t be the future of online publishing”

From Vice: “Back in 2010, in social media’s Wild West years, Eminem shared a photo on Twitter of a Donkey Kong machine, boasting a high score of 465,800, which, per DonkeyKongBlog, would have put him very near the top 30 scores in the world at the time. The high score at the time of Em’s post was just over 1,000,000 points, which is a pretty far shot from his total, but it’s still impressive. A 2014 YouTube playthrough of the game that lands at a similar score takes just over an hour to complete, meaning that for his high score alone, Eminem was sweating and twitching over an arcade cabinet for at least an hour straight. For what it’s worth, The Verge reported in 2014 that top tier players sink thousands of hours of practice into their record-breaking runs, so it’s likely that Em had to put some serious time in to hit that mark. Of course, given that he only posted a still and not a stream or a video clip, Eminem’s run at Kong is unverifiable, so he doesn’t land on any of the official leaderboards.”

Scientists are using modified E. coli bacteria to turn plastic into a common painkiller

From Nature: “A common bacterium can be adapted to convert plastic waste into paracetamol, a study published this week in Nature Chemistry reports. Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, is widely used to treat pain and fever. It is produced from molecules derived from fossil fuels, but researchers are working to develop processes that use more sustainable source molecules, such as plastic waste. Central to the project’s success was the discovery by Wallace and his team that a synthetic chemical reaction that typically requires conditions that are toxic to cells can occur in their presence. The reaction, called the Lossen rearrangement, has been known for more than a century, but had previously been observed only in a test tube or a flask. The researchers used conventional chemical methods to degrade and modify polyethylene terephthalate, then added this molecule into a culture of E. coli, where the Lossen rearrangement transformed it into a more biologically relevant molecule.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Eminem was once a world-class Donkey Kong player”

From Vice: “Back in 2010, in social media’s Wild West years, Eminem shared a photo on Twitter of a Donkey Kong machine, boasting a high score of 465,800, which, per DonkeyKongBlog, would have put him very near the top 30 scores in the world at the time. The high score at the time of Em’s post was just over 1,000,000 points, which is a pretty far shot from his total, but it’s still impressive. A 2014 YouTube playthrough of the game that lands at a similar score takes just over an hour to complete, meaning that for his high score alone, Eminem was sweating and twitching over an arcade cabinet for at least an hour straight. For what it’s worth, The Verge reported in 2014 that top tier players sink thousands of hours of practice into their record-breaking runs, so it’s likely that Em had to put some serious time in to hit that mark. Of course, given that he only posted a still and not a stream or a video clip, Eminem’s run at Kong is unverifiable, so he doesn’t land on any of the official leaderboards.”

Scientists are using modified E. coli bacteria to turn plastic into a common painkiller

From Nature: “A common bacterium can be adapted to convert plastic waste into paracetamol, a study published this week in Nature Chemistry reports. Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, is widely used to treat pain and fever. It is produced from molecules derived from fossil fuels, but researchers are working to develop processes that use more sustainable source molecules, such as plastic waste. Central to the project’s success was the discovery by Wallace and his team that a synthetic chemical reaction that typically requires conditions that are toxic to cells can occur in their presence. The reaction, called the Lossen rearrangement, has been known for more than a century, but had previously been observed only in a test tube or a flask. The researchers used conventional chemical methods to degrade and modify polyethylene terephthalate, then added this molecule into a culture of E. coli, where the Lossen rearrangement transformed it into a more biologically relevant molecule.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Eminem was once a world-class Donkey Kong player”

From Aeon: “In September of 1848, Phineas Gage was using an iron ‘tamping rod’ to pack an explosive charge into a hole. The charge exploded prematurely, firing the iron straight through his head. Miraculously, Gage survived, but his doctor noted a marked change in Gage’s personality: he had become ‘fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity’ and ‘a child in his intellectual capacity.’ The doctor concluded that this decline was a consequence of the damage done by the tamping iron to the frontal lobes of Gage’s brain. More than a century later, Gage’s transformation would still be referenced as the quintessential case study. ‘He took to gambling and sleeping with prostitutes,’ neuroscientist David Eagleman said in a talk at the Royal Society for the Arts in 2010. ‘He could not be trusted to honour his commitments,’ wrote neuroscientist Hanna Damasio and colleagues in 1994. The sensational impact of this version of Gage’s story would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that it’s largely fictional.”

He bought a house and then found a massive model train setup underneath the floor

From SBS News: “After Daniel Xu and his wife finalised the purchase of their house in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, he found what can only be described as a train enthusiast’s dream beneath their feet. Underneath his new home, Xu discovered a model train setup, designed around an extensive network of train lines and miniature landscapes. With plans for renovations, Xu needed to get beneath his house, much of which is raised, sitting above a carport. Entering the undercroft of his new home via a small door, Xu was shocked to find the area, which is just tall enough to stand in, entirely taken up by the elaborate setup. He said nothing had been mentioned about model trains during the open home inspections. Coincidentally, Xu is a train enthusiast. He works as a rolling stock engineer for a company that manufactures new trains.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Most of what we know about a famous brain injury case is wrong”

From Aeon: “In September of 1848, Phineas Gage was using an iron ‘tamping rod’ to pack an explosive charge into a hole. The charge exploded prematurely, firing the iron straight through his head. Miraculously, Gage survived, but his doctor noted a marked change in Gage’s personality: he had become ‘fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity’ and ‘a child in his intellectual capacity.’ The doctor concluded that this decline was a consequence of the damage done by the tamping iron to the frontal lobes of Gage’s brain. More than a century later, Gage’s transformation would still be referenced as the quintessential case study. ‘He took to gambling and sleeping with prostitutes,’ neuroscientist David Eagleman said in a talk at the Royal Society for the Arts in 2010. ‘He could not be trusted to honour his commitments,’ wrote neuroscientist Hanna Damasio and colleagues in 1994. The sensational impact of this version of Gage’s story would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that it’s largely fictional.”

He bought a house and then found a massive model train setup underneath the floor

From SBS News: “After Daniel Xu and his wife finalised the purchase of their house in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, he found what can only be described as a train enthusiast’s dream beneath their feet. Underneath his new home, Xu discovered a model train setup, designed around an extensive network of train lines and miniature landscapes. With plans for renovations, Xu needed to get beneath his house, much of which is raised, sitting above a carport. Entering the undercroft of his new home via a small door, Xu was shocked to find the area, which is just tall enough to stand in, entirely taken up by the elaborate setup. He said nothing had been mentioned about model trains during the open home inspections. Coincidentally, Xu is a train enthusiast. He works as a rolling stock engineer for a company that manufactures new trains.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Most of what we know about a famous brain injury case is wrong”