Escape
More from Mark Aurelius
A young poet wrote his way out of prison in the early 1900s
It was 1905 and 19-year-old Carter had just started his ten year sentence – arrested for burglarizing the station in Karlstad, MN, while hopping trains westward. He’d taken $24 to buy food and shelter. Not much is known about John Carter — in fact, that’s a penname and the public record’s silent about his personal life. All we know is that he was an Englishman from a well-to-do family, and when he failed the family business he was sent to Canada. After he was arrested, like so many who pass through the prison system, Carter was on his way to spending his sentence hidden from the public eye. But this changed as, trying to pass the time, Carter wrote essays and verse, publishing them in the nation’s major magazines. Through his art he won public support and, eventually, even his freedom, leaving the prison hailed as a brilliant, creative mind. And the judge who helped him get a pardon was the same judge who sentenced him. (via Josh Preston)
The sugar substitute Aspartame was invented thanks to a work-safety violation
he artificial sweetener aspartame, which is found in everything from diet soda to toothpaste to ice cream, was an accidental discovery. In 1965, American chemist James Schlatter was researching drugs to treat ulcers, which at the time were thought to result from too much stomach acid. He sought to develop a drug that could inhibit gastrin, a hormone that prompts stomach acid to form. While testing compounds for this medication, he licked a white powder off of his finger as he picked up a piece of paper — a blatant violation of work safety regulations. He noticed that this powder had a “surprisingly potent sweet taste,” and decided to develop it into an artificial sweetener. Schlatter eventually applied for a patent, which was granted on this day in 1970. Aspartame is up to 200 times sweeter than sugar, yet contains nearly zero calories. Today, you can find aspartame in more than 6,000 food and drink products, and around 40 percent of Americans regularly consume sugar substitutes. (via Nautilus)
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Continue reading “A young poet wrote his way out of prison in the early 1900s”Scientists are inventing mirror cells that could kill us all
It’s 2036, and scientists are working on a new class of drugs. These medications are mirror-image versions of the molecules your body uses to fight disease. Their big advantage is that reverse compounds last longer because destructive enzymes don’t recognize them and rip them apart. The scientists experiment on a mirrored version of the common bacterium Escherichia coli. Unfortunately, a researcher with a small cut on her thumb from dry skin forgets to put on her gloves and touches a surface contaminated with just a few of these cells. Her immune cells, which usually kill off intruders, don’t recognize the mirror proteins on the novel bacteria. Three days later she dies. But while in her house, she had already spread the bacteria around. Her cat carries some into the garden, where they grow in the soil. Worms and insects become infected and transmit the mirror microbes throughout the neighborhood. Her children bring the bacteria to school. More and more people fall ill and begin to die. (via Scientific American)
Network of submerged stone structures rewrites early European prehistory
A new study, published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, documents granite complex structures located at a depth of between seven and nine metres below today’s current sea level. Between 2022 and 2024, a LIDAR survey and numerous diving expeditions confirmed that the structures have a linear alignment and date from approximately 5800–5300 BC during the late Mesolithic period and Neolithic transition. In Brittany, local folklore has long spoken of a sunken city said to lie beneath the western reaches of the Bay of Douarnenez, just 10 kilometres east of Sein Island. The study authors suggest that the presence of human-made stone structures now raises questions about the potential prehistoric origin of the legend. “It is likely that the abandonment of a territory developed by a highly structured society has become deeply rooted in people’s memories.” (via Heritage Daily)
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Continue reading “Scientists are inventing mirror cells that could kill us all”Social media and teen mental health: There is no smoking gun
As I wrote a few weeks ago in a previous edition of Torment Nexus, the Australian law banning kids under 16 from using social media is the first of its kind, but it is unlikely to be the last. The French parliament just voted to pass a similar law, and Malaysia’s new law went into effect January 1, and the communications minister said the government is looking to Australia for guidance on implementing it. Denmark is also moving toward a ban for users under 15, with parental consent allowed from age 13, and Norway is raising the minimum age from to 15. The EU recently voted by an overwhelming majority to set an minimum age of 16 for social media, video-sharing platforms, and AI companions, and France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Greece are all testing a European age-verification app that could power such bans. These laws are being driven by concern that social-media use is responsible for an increase in rates of teen depression, anxiety and other mental-health related issues. But is there any proof that this is the case? In a word, no.
As I noted in an earlier post on this topic — which I think approaches the level of a moral panic — the conventional wisdom is diametrically opposed to the vast majority of research on social media and teen depression and anxiety. One of the main reasons why people probably believe it causes harm is a seemingly never-ending stream of news articles claiming this to be the case. “Smartphones and social media are destroying children’s mental health,” the Financial Times wrote, while the Guardian described the smartphone as “a pocket full of poison.” Many of these articles are based on books such as The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the Stern School of Business, which talks about how smartphone use and social media have caused an epidemic of anxiety among young people. Haidt provides research that he says backs up his case, but virtually every other study that has been done on this topic disagrees.
That list of contrarian takes includes two major new studies, one done by psychologists in Australia, and another done by researchers at Manchester in the UK. In the first, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Pediatrics journal, reseachers studied over 100,000 Australian teens (grades 4-12) for 3 years. Interestingly enough, they say their results show that the best possible outcome for a self-reported sense of well-being was moderate use of social media. Heavy use of social media was correlated with a lower sense of well-being, but so was no social media use at all. For teen boys, the outcome of no social-media use at all “became increasingly problematic from midadolescence, exceeding risks of high use by late adolescence.”
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Continue reading “Social media and teen mental health: There is no smoking gun”People who have Alzheimer’s almost never get cancer
For decades, researchers have noted that cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are rarely found in the same person, fuelling speculation that one condition might offer some degree of protection from the other. Now, a study in mice provides a possible molecular solution to the medical mystery: a protein produced by cancer cells seems to infiltrate the brain, where it helps to break apart clumps of misfolded proteins that are often associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The study, which was 15 years in the making, was published on 22 January in Cell and could help researchers to design drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Weaver has been interested in that puzzle ever since he began his medical training, when a senior pathologist made an offhand comment: “If you see someone with Alzheimer’s disease, they’ve never had cancer.” (via Nature)
A security guard stole $400,000 he was guarding and still hasn’t been found
It sounds like the plot of a movie: A long-time employee of a cash handling firm snatched nearly $400,000 from three banks whose money he was tasked to protect, then quit his job and disappeared. This appears to be what happened on Kauaʻi on July 19, 2023, according to previously unreported documents from civil and criminal cases filed in the 5th Circuit Court. In September 2025, Kauaʻi prosecutors filed criminal theft charges against Kody Corbett, a former employee of global cash handling firm Loomis. Earlier that year, Loomis also filed a lawsuit against Corbett, which lays out how the alleged crime occurred, largely based on an affidavit from David Bailey, Loomis’s corporate risk manager. Following the incident, Loomis reimbursed the three banks for the lost funds, but the money has not been discovered. Corbett’s whereabouts are also a mystery. A warrant was issued for his arrest this September. (via Civil Beat)
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Continue reading “People who have Alzheimer’s almost never get cancer”Costco founder
A glossary of book blurbs and what they mean
Perfect date
Michael Jackson’s pet chimp Bubbles is now in his 40s
Bubbles is a chimpanzee once kept as a pet by the American singer Michael Jackson, who bought him from a Texas research facility in the 1980s. Bubbles frequently traveled with Jackson, drawing attention in the media. In 1987, during the Bad world tour, Bubbles and Jackson drank tea with the mayor of Osaka, Japan. Bubbles was initially kept at the Jackson family home in Encino, Los Angeles, but was moved to Jackson’s home, Neverland Ranch, in 1988. There, he slept in a crib in Jackson’s bedroom, used Jackson’s toilet and ate Jackson’s candy in the Neverland movie theater. By 2003, Bubbles had matured into a large and aggressive adult chimpanzee unsuitable as a pet, like many captive chimpanzees, and was sent to a California animal trainer. When the trainer closed his operation in 2004, Bubbles was moved to the Center for Great Apes, a sanctuary in Florida, where he has lived since 2005. (via Wikipedia)
He thought he had a new job as a soccer coach in Saudi Arabia and then he disappeared
Adrian Heath couldn’t help but think of the places football had taken him. The sport first lifted him out of Knutton, the iron-forging village in Newcastle-under-Lyme, England. It carried him to Stoke City, and then into becoming Everton’s most expensive signing at the time in 1982. He became one of the first English footballers to venture to Spain’s La Liga, signing with Espanyol in 1988. And when his playing days were done, the sport brought him to the United States through coaching stints at Austin Aztex, Orlando City and Minnesota United. For those clubs, he traveled the globe looking for players. He coached a Ballon d’Or winner in Brazilian legend Kaká. This trip to Morocco was supposed to be another adventure: an interview for a coaching job in Saudi Arabia. Heath thought of it as a chance to work on a new continent, experience a different part of the world. Another chapter that football would write in his life. (via The Athletic)
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Continue reading “Michael Jackson’s pet chimp Bubbles is now in his 40s”Pizza-parlor owner got shot and invented the bulletproof vest
Wearing a green hat, spectacles and ear protectors, a man loads .44 Magnum bullets into the chamber of a gun. He hands his car keys to another man and twirls the gun cylinder while invoking Matt Dillon, the fictional marshal of Dodge City in Gunsmoke. He proceeds to turn the gun on himself and, after a tense pause relieved only by birdsong, fires into his chest. The bullet had been stopped by body armour. Davis was the inventor of the modern-day bulletproof vest and shot himself point blank 192 times to prove that it worked. The ex-Marine, bankrupt pizzeria owner and born showman also mythologised his work by producing his own low-budget movies popular with police across America. At its zenith Davis’s company, Second Chance, was worth more than $50m with products being worn by police, soldiers and even the president. (via The Guardian)
An amateur cryptographer claims he has solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac killer cases
When police questioned Marvin Margolis following the murder of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia, he lied about how well he had known her. The 22-year-old Short had been found mutilated in a weedy lot in South Los Angeles, cut in half with what detectives thought was surgical skill. A generation later and hundreds of miles north, a killer who called himself the Zodiac terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area with five seemingly random murders from 1968 to 1969, taunting police and media for years with letters and cryptograms. A letter he sent in April 1970 to the San Francisco Chronicle said “My name is —” followed by a 13-character string of letters and symbols. It came to be called the Z13 cipher, and its brevity has stymied generations of PhDs. Alex Baber, a 50-year-old West Virginia man who dropped out of high school and taught himself codebreaking, now says he has cracked the Zodiac killer’s identity. (via the LA Times)
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Continue reading “Pizza-parlor owner got shot and invented the bulletproof vest”That Mark Aurelius guy knew a thing or two
Believe in yourself
A Roomba of thought
He is rich who owns the day
