Category: Newsletters

This is my last newsletter for CJR, as I am moving on from my job as the magazine’s chief digital writer. (In case the headline doesn’t make any sense, it comes from a Douglas Adams book, in which he describes how all the dolphins suddenly vanished from the Earth, leaving behind the message: “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”). As I reflected on the last seven years or so of writing about the intersection of media and technology, I started to think about what (if anything) has changed since my first CJR piece was published in October 2017—an essay headlined “The 140-character president,” about Donald Trump’s obsession with what was then known as Twitter.

Obviously, some things have changed quite a bit. Trump is no longer president (although he is trying hard to regain that position), and Twitter—now known as X—is owned by Elon Musk, the billionaire who also owns Tesla and SpaceX. Much has been written (by me and just about everyone else) about Musk’s problem-plagued acquisition of the platform, and the changes he has made to it; it is reportedly hemorrhaging money and scrambling for both users and revenue. None of this is particularly new—the old Twitter under co-founders Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams also seemed to be continually scrambling for money and users. The reasons have changed, however: Musk, who maintains that his guiding principle is to enable free speech, has enabled many of the worst kinds of speech, including white supremacy, racism, and misogyny. This has (not surprisingly) led to an exodus of both users and advertisers.

These days, one popular conspiracy theory is that Musk is a Russian stooge who is trying to help Trump get re-elected, a theory based in part on rumors about Russian troops in Ukraine using Musk’s Starlink for internet access and whispers that Putin-adjacent sources helped fund the purchase of Twitter. (The evidence for this is circumstantial—at best.) Russia’s involvement in a variety of nefarious projects (or rumors thereof) has been a consistent theme since I started writing for CJR. An early taste of that came in November 2017, when I traveled to Washington and sat in on a series of congressional hearings looking into whether Meta (then known as Facebook), Google, and Twitter had allowed Russia and Russian-aligned agents to use their services as the foundation of a gigantic disinformation campaign. Did this happen? Yes, at least in a limited way. Did it affect the outcome of the 2016 election? Opinion remains divided, but some of the smartest people in the field say no, it likely did not.

Continue reading “So long, and thanks for all the fish”

From Vox: “Don Poldermans was a prolific medical researcher at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, where he analyzed the standards of care for cardiac events after surgery, publishing a series of definitive studies from 1999 until the early 2010s. One crucial question he studied: Should you give patients a beta blocker, which lowers blood pressure, before certain surgeries? Poldermans’s research said yes. European medical guidelines recommended it accordingly. The problem? Poldermans’s data was reportedly fake. After the revelations, a new meta-analysis was published in 2014, evaluating whether to use beta blockers before non-cardiac surgery. It found that a course of beta blockers made it 27 percent more likely that someone would die within 30 days of their surgery. One provocative analysis from cardiologists Graham Cole and Darrel Francis estimated that there were 800,000 deaths between 2009 and 2013 compared to if the best practices had been established five years sooner.”

A shark’s case of indigestion revealed that a murder had been committed

From Now I Know: “In April of 1935, a fisherman named Bert Hobson caught a 14-foot tiger shark off the coast of Coogee Beach in Sydney. Hobson’s brother ran the local aquarium, so he brought it there — he figured the shark would make for a good exhibit. But the shark didn’t seem too happy. After a few days in which it seemed to adjust to its new home, the shark became irritable and began behaving erratically. It repeatedly rammed the walls of its tank before sinking to the bottom and swimming in lazy, irregular circles. Then it threw up, and what came out was a human arm. Upon closer inspection, there was something strange about this arm. It appeared to have been severed from its owner by a knife, not teeth. The arm had a distinctive tattoo, so the police asked the press to share a description in hopes that someone would recognize it, and someone did. Edwin Smith said his brother, James, had such a tattoo and had gone missing a few weeks earlier.”

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

Continue reading “Faked research may have caused almost a million deaths”

From The New Yorker: “Everyone hopes for a miracle. And in Kenya—where evangelical Christianity is so popular that the President frequently prays with preachers during official events—the more miracles a pastor performs, the more followers he will gain. Some swiftly build large congregations and become multimillionaires. In 2018, Halua Yaa, a woman in the coastal town of Malindi, heard about a pastor named Paul Mackenzie, who, it was said, could heal the sick. Mackenzie ran a Pentecostal church called Good News International Ministries, on a spacious compound in Malindi, where he also lived. He urged his followers to avoid television, sports, and other secular pastimes, to refuse Western medicine, and to take their children out of school.”

She was an advocate for the disabled but she probably never actually existed

From IGN: “On March 4, 2019, the accessibility community mourned a prominent advocate: Susan Banks. Banks’ partner, Coty Craven, announced her passing on social media platforms such as Twitter/X. The industry lamented the loss of an individual that helped raise awareness for accessibility in games, particularly for Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. However, in the years since Banks’ alleged death, mounting evidence and accounts from those close to her work suggest that she was not the person she claimed to be. In fact, some are convinced that Banks may never have existed at all. Her various jobs are said to have included being a professional model, an asset manager at a financial firm, and a professor of Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University, all before the age of 30. IGN reached out to Gallaudet University’s Deaf Studies program, and they said nobody by the name of Susan Banks was ever employed at the University.”

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

Continue reading “A pastor led his followers into the woods. Hundreds have been found dead”

From CBC: “When a 44-year-old man from France started experiencing weakness in his leg, he went to the hospital. That’s when doctors told him he was missing most of his brain. The man’s skull was full of liquid, with just a thin layer of brain tissue left, a condition is known as hydrocephalus. “He was living a normal life. He has a family. He works. His IQ was tested at the time of his complaint. This came out to be 84, which is slightly below the normal range … So, this person is not bright — but perfectly, socially apt,” explains Axel Cleeremans. Cleeremans is a cognitive psychologist at the Université Libre in Brussels. When he learned about the case, which was first described in The Lancet in 2007, he saw a medical miracle — but also a major challenge to theories about consciousness. “It is truly incredible that the brain can continue to function, more or less, within the normal range — with probably many fewer neurons than in a typical brain.”

The killer lakes of Cameroon

From Damn Interesting: “On the night of 15 August 1984, a truck sagging with the weight of a dozen passengers trundled along a misty road in Cameroon, Africa. Although there had been no indication of a problem mere moments before, the vehicle suddenly sputtered and stalled. The driver turned the key, but the churning ignition was unable to reanimate the engine. Most of the Cameroonians clambered out of the vehicle to investigate, but two remained atop the truck. Within a few moments, each of the ten passengers who had stepped off the vehicle slumped to the ground. Within minutes, they were dead. They weren’t the only ones. In the neighboring low-lying villages, twenty-seven other residents inexplicably passed away in their sleep, and an unspecified number of animals perished in the vicinity. Investigators were at a loss to explain the mass fatalities.”

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

Continue reading “Man who is missing 90% of his brain leads a normal life”

From Vanity Fair: “At 12:30 P.M. on November 22, 1963, bullets fired into the open roof of the presidential limousine tore through John F. Kennedy’s body. The first shot to hit the president went through his neck, but did not kill him. Within five seconds another shot damaged his brain and skull. During the critical time between the first shot and the fatal blow—about five seconds in which the president’s life might have been saved—the Secret Service agents within a few feet of the man they were duty-bound to protect—failed to take evasive action. Nine of the 28 Secret Service men who were in Dallas with the president the day he died had been out until the early hours of the morning. A few of them were sleep deprived and had been drinking while traveling with the president, an activity that was clearly prohibited in the Secret Service rulebook.”

Grocery billionaire claimed a tax deduction for the ransom paid after his kidnapping

From Wikipedia: “Theodor Paul Albrecht was a German entrepreneur who established the discount supermarket chain Aldi with his brother Karl Albrecht. In 2010, Theo was ranked by Forbes as the 31st richest person in the world, with a net worth of $16.7 billion. In 1971, Albrecht was kidnapped. A ransom of seven million German marks (approximately US$2 million at the time) was paid for his release. He was held at gunpoint by Heinz-Joachim Ollenburg, a lawyer, and his accomplice Paul Kron. The ransom sum was delivered by Franz Hengsbach, then Bishop of Essen. His kidnappers were eventually caught by authorities, but only half of the money was recovered. Albrecht later unsuccessfully claimed the ransom as a tax deductible business expense in court.”

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

Continue reading “JFK’s Secret Service agents were too hungover to react quickly in Dallas”

From The Guardian: “Over the course of the day, about 30 people sat with Emily. Some used their three minutes for quiet reflection. Others wanted conversation, asking her questions or sharing why they had come to see her. Usually you’d describe a project like this as performance art, but Emily isn’t an artist: she’s a terminally ill 32-year-old who doesn’t know how much time she has left. Her performance is part of a project titled Time to Live, designed by the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) to raise awareness and funds. Each participant has effectively “bought” a slice of Emily’s time. Some were complete strangers, others were family and friends; either way, the experience provoked strong emotions. Afterwards, I meet another participant, Helen, who is visibly moved. It has raised a lot for both of us: we speak about the grief of losing our mums to cancer, the anxiety of living with a genetic predisposition.”

This Nazi villa is falling apart but the German government doesn’t know what to do with it

From the New York Times: “No one knows what to do with the estate beside the Bogensee lake in Brandenburg. It was built for Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, by his grateful country just before the start of World War II. Owned by the State of Berlin today, it has sat moldering expensively on the public’s tab, along with a set of dramatic dormitories built later by the Communist Party to house an indoctrination school. It is a nearly 20-acre campus that echoes with the pasts of two totalitarian regimes. Too burdensome for the state to continue carrying, prohibitively expensive for most real estate prospectors and tainted by history, Berlin has given up on selling or developing it. Instead, it has offered to give the Nazi mansion away, free. In exasperated comments made to Parliament this spring, Stefan Evers, the state’s senator for finance, made the pitch — take it off our hands, or we will tear it down.”

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

Continue reading “Emily is dying. So why is she selling off her remaining time to strangers?”

From the Paris Review: “I sat down at a conference room round table and gnawed on an undercooked chicken quarter, looking around at my fellow VIPs. Most of the other attendees were of retirement age. Their hats, tattoos, and car bumpers in the parking lot indicated that many were former military, police, and/or proud gun owners. Many were Trump supporters—beseeching fellow motorists to, as one bumper sticker read, MAKE THE FOREST GREAT AGAIN, a catchphrase which had been written out over an image of a Bigfoot on a turquoise background in the pines, rocking a pompadour. The sticker was a small oval on the larger spare wheel cover of a mid-aughts Chinook Concourse RV. Above it and below it, in Inspirational Quote Font, was the phrase “Once upon a time … is Now!” As a thirty-six-year-old progressive, I was an outlier in this crowd. But, like many, I was a believer.”

Doctors are mystified by the sudden onset of unusual brain diseases

From the New York Times: “It turned out that Laurie Beatty was just one of many local residents who had gone to Marrero’s office exhibiting similar, inexplicable symptoms of neurological decline — more than 20 in the previous four years. The first signs were often behavioral. One patient fell asleep for nearly 20 hours straight before a friend took her to the hospital; another found himself afraid to disturb the stranger who had sat down in his living room, only to realize hours later that the stranger was his wife. But these anxieties and sleep problems quickly gave way to more acute presentations: limb pain and trouble balancing, teeth chattering and shocklike muscle spasms so violent that some patients could no longer sleep in the same bed as their spouses. Many patients developed vision problems; some experienced terrifying hallucinations.”

(Editor’s note: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you really like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via my Patreon. Thanks for being a reader!)

A Grade 10 student invented a soap that might cure skin cancer

From Time magazine: “Last October, the 3M company and Discovery Education selected Heman, a rising 10th-grader at Woodson High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, as the winner of its Young Scientist Challenge. His prize: $25,000. His accomplishment: inventing a soap that could one day treat and even prevent multiple forms of skin cancer. It may take years before such a product comes to market, but this summer Heman is already spending part of every weekday working in a lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, hoping to bring his dream to fruition. When school is in session, he’ll be there less often, but will continue to plug away.”

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

Continue reading “A believer attends a Florida Bigfoot conference”

From the New York Times: “The descendants of Geronimo sued Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University, in 2009, charging that its members robbed his grave in 1918 and have kept his skull in a glass case ever since. The Apache warrior’s heirs were seeking to recover all his remains and have them transferred to a new grave at the headwaters of the Gila River in New Mexico. Geronimo died a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Okla., in 1909. A longstanding tradition among members of Skull and Bones holds that Prescott S. Bush– father of President George Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush – broke into the grave with some classmates during World War I and made off with the skull.”

Null Island doesn’t exist, but its presence on modern maps serves a purpose

From Stamen: “Null Island is a long-running inside joke among cartographers. It is an imaginary island located at a real place: the coordinates of 0º latitude and 0º longitude, a location in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa where the Prime Meridian meets the Equator, hundreds of miles from any real dry land. Null Island is not just a silly place to think about when cartographers are bored, it is a phenomenon that repeatedly and annoyingly asserts itself in the middle of day-to-day cartographic work, often when you least expect it. Sometimes you load a new dataset into your GIS program, but the coordinates aren’t parsed correctly and they turn into all zeroes: cartographers say your data is on Null Island.”

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

Continue reading “Did George W. Bush’s father steal Geronimo’s skull?”

From Wired: “The flood of text messages started arriving early this year. They carried a similar thrust: The United States Postal Service is trying to deliver a parcel but needs more details, including your credit card number. Like thousands of others, security researcher Grant Smith got a USPS package message. A couple of days earlier, he says, his wife called him and said she’d inadvertently entered her credit card details. Smith began a mission: Hunt down the scammers. Over the course of a few weeks, Smith tracked down the Chinese-language group behind the mass-smishing campaign, hacked into their systems, collected evidence of their activities, and started a months-long process of gathering victim data and handing it to USPS investigators and a US bank.”

This athlete’s favorite part of the Olympics was the free health care

From The 19th: Ariana Ramsey, a member of the history-making U.S. women’s rugby team, is going viral on TikTok, not for her skills on the pitch, but her newfound obsession with free health care in the Olympic Village. For nearly a week, Ramsey has been documenting her experience taking advantage of the free health services available to athletes. The Olympic and Paralympic Village accommodates about 22,250 athletes who have access to a medical clinic at all times. According to Sports Illustrated, the Olympic Village has offered health care to athletes since the 1932 Los Angeles Games. She first got a pap smear, then booked dental and optometry appointments. She has since deemed herself a universal health care advocate, saying free health care in America will be her “new fight for action.”

(Editor’s note: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you really like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via my Patreon. Thanks for being a reader!)

He wanted a cheap warehouse but wound up buying most of Pine Bluff, Arkansas

From Max Read: “Fenley’s story begins in 2019. After separating from his wife, with whom he has three kids, Fenley had moved in with his father, a sculptor, and uncle in Los Angeles. Two weeks after his arrival, his uncle received an eviction notice, and Fenley and his father began to look for somewhere new. So Fenley hopped on the commercial real-estate listing site Loopnet and searched for properties over 65,000 square feet and sorted by price. At the top of the list was the former home of the steel company Varco Pruden – a 17-acre property in Pine Bluff that had been vacant and decaying for 15 years. The property was listed at $375,000; Fenley initially assumed the price was a typo.”

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

Continue reading “They tricked his wife so he hacked their scam operation”

From Atlas Obscura: “As atmospheric and chemical scientists, we study the air quality and ecological effects of wildfire smoke and other pollutants. In a study that started quite by accident when smoke overwhelmed our research site in Colorado, we were able to watch in real time how the leaves of living pine trees responded. Plants have pores on the surface of their leaves called stomata. These pores are much like our mouths, except that while we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. On the first morning of heavy smoke, we did our usual test to measure leaf-level photosynthesis of Ponderosa pines. We were surprised to discover that the tree’s pores were completely closed and photosynthesis was nearly zero. We also measured the leaves’ emissions of their usual volatile organic compounds and found very low readings.”

WWII pilots who refused missions were designated LMF for Lack of Moral Fiber

From Inside Story: ““Lack of Moral Fibre,” or LMF, was the punitive designation promoted by the RAF leadership throughout the war to stigmatise aircrew who refused to fly on operations, avoided operations or did a boomerang — flew home early from a sortie without a persuasive excuse. By early 1940, senior officers had become concerned that medical staff were excusing too many men from flying duties. A memorandum issued by the air ministry to all commands in April sought to limit the definition of mental incapacity by promoting the alternative, if unspoken, diagnosis of cowardice. The service records of those classified as LMF cases would be stamped with a large red “W” for “waverer.” All would be stripped of their flying badges, sometimes publicly in front of their peers. Officers would lose their commissions and be refused ground jobs.”

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

Continue reading “Trees hold their breath to avoid wildfire smoke”

From Damn Interesting: “In 1922, a bank teller named Grace Fryer became concerned when her teeth began to loosen and fall out for no discernible reason. Her troubles were compounded when her jaw became swollen and inflamed, so she sought the assistance of a doctor in diagnosing the inexplicable symptoms. Using a primitive X-ray machine, the physician discovered serious bone decay, the likes of which he had never seen. Her jawbone was honeycombed with small holes, in a random pattern reminiscent of moth-eaten fabric. As a series of doctors attempted to solve Grace’s mysterious ailment, similar cases began to appear throughout New Jersey. One dentist took notice of the unusually high number of deteriorated jawbones among local women, and it took very little investigation to discover a common thread; all of the women had been employed by the same watch-painting factory.”

London Museum’s new pigeon and “poo splat” logo causes dissent in the UK

From the BBC: “The new logo for the Museum of London featuring a porcelain pigeon and a glittery poo splat is dividing opinion. The director of the museum, Sharon Ament, said the pigeon and splat represented the “grit and glitter” of the capital. However, museums newsletter author Maxwell Blowfield said pigeons were “one of the least unique things about London”. The museum, which has been renamed as the London Museum, has a new premises due to open in Smithfield and a revamp is taking place at its Docklands site. Ms Ament said: “The pigeon and splat speak to a historic place full of dualities; a place where the grit and the glitter have existed side by side for millennia; an impartial and humble observer of London life.” Mr Blowfield, author of the popular Maxwell Museums’ newsletter, wrote: “No-one ever thinks, feels or speaks about pigeons. They’re one of the least unique things about London.”

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

Continue reading “The story of Undark and the Radium Girls”

From LitHub: “At the 1912 games in Stockholm, gold, silver and bronze medals were handed out in five arts categories: Architecture, Literature, Music, Painting, and Sculpture. All submitted art works had to be original and sports-themed, and, like their more athletic counterparts, the artists participating in the new “Pentathlon of the Muses” were supposed to be amateurs. The 1912 Olympic Arts Competition was little more than a sideshow, with only a few dozen submissions and a handful of awards given out (the very first Literature gold medal was awarded for the poem “Ode to Sport,” submitted by none other than Pierre de Coubertin himself under a pair of pseudonyms) but as the years rolled on, de Coubertin’s celebration of the arts grew in popularity.”

Hurricane Debby sweeps cocaine worth $1 million onto Florida beach

From the New York Times: “Tropical Storm Debby’s strong winds and heavy rain have downed trees, submerged streets and drenched neighborhoods across Florida this week. The storm also heaved an unexpected type of debris onto one beach: blocks of cocaine worth about $1 million. Debby, which made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of at least 74 miles per hour, blew 25 packages of cocaine onto a beach on the Florida Keys, according to Samuel Briggs II, the acting chief patrol agent for the U.S. Border Patrol in Miami. The drugs were discovered by a “good Samaritan,” who alerted the authorities, Briggs said. The cocaine blocks, which weighed about 70 pounds total, appeared to be wrapped in plastic and marked with a red and black symbol. Their street value, he added, was over $1 million.”

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

Continue reading “They used to give Olympic medals for literature”

From NBC News: “A Russian chess player is under investigation after allegedly being caught on camera spraying her opponent’s board with what authorities said was a substance containing mercury as part of an attempted poisoning ahead of a match last week. Amina Abakarova faces a possible lifetime ban and potential criminal proceedings, Russian authorities said, after the incident during a tournament in the Caucasus republic of Dagestan. The Russian Chess Federation issued a statement Wednesday on what it said was “an attempt to poison a participant in the championship of the Republic of Dagestan in Makhachkala,” referring to Dagestan’s capital. It said Abakarova has been temporarily suspended from all competitions under the authority of the national federation, pending the conclusion of a criminal investigation. A 34-second surveillance video purports to show Abakarova walking around what looks like a room with chessboards set up for a tournament and appearing to rub something on one of the boards, before walking away.”

The Voynich Manuscript has baffled scientists for 500 years

From The Atlantic: “In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969. Its 234 pages contained some 38,000 words, but not one of them was readable. The book’s unnamed author had written it, likely with a quill pen, in symbols never before seen. Did they represent a natural language, such as Latin? A constructed language, like Esperanto? A secret code? Gibberish? Scholars had no real idea. And there were otherworldly illustrations: groups of naked women who held stars on strings, like balloons, or stood in green pools fed by trickling ducts and by pipes that looked like fallopian tubes. Many of the women, arms outstretched, seemed less to be bathing than working, almost like plumbers.”

(Editor’s note: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you really like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via my Patreon. Thanks for being a reader!)

The strange saga of Kowloon Walled City, once the most densely-populated place on earth

From Atlas Obscura: “The most densely populated city on Earth had only one postman. His round was confined to an area barely a hundredth of a square mile in size. Yet within that space was a staggering number of addresses: 350 buildings, almost all between 10 and 14 stories high, occupied by 8,500 premises, 10,700 households, and more than 33,000 residents. The city’s many tall, narrow tower blocks were packed tight against each other—so tight as to make the whole place seem like one massive structure: part architecture, part organism. There was little uniformity of shape, height, or building material. Cast-iron balconies lurched against brick annexes and concrete walls. Wiring and cables covered every surface: running vertically from ground level up to forests of rooftop television aerials, or stretching horizontally like innumerable rolls of dark twine that seemed almost to bind the buildings together. Entering the city meant leaving daylight behind. There were hundreds of alleyways, most just a few feet wide.”

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

Continue reading “Russian chess player accused of trying to poison opponent”

From Atlas Obscura: “They come when a boat is quiet, the posse of adolescent orca whales looking to rumble. Finding the propeller still, they crash into it like semi trucks, each animal a monochromatic, five-ton torpedo on a mission of destruction. Although killer whales are often observed interacting with boats, sea life, and ocean detritus there’s no clear explanation why gangs of young males suddenly began ramming boats around Portugal, Spain, and France this summer. Since July, they’ve sunk or damaged at least three. Researchers believe the behavior may be a temporary cultural fad—the cetacean equivalent of the ice bucket challenge or rickrolling—and it’s not the first killer whale trend to go viral. Orcas, like other whale and dolphin species, have culture, behaviors that are socially shared and learned within a population. Some are transmitted from older generations to younger ones. Others are shared “horizontally,” between members of the same age group.”

A rare neurological disorder makes people think they are seeing monsters

From the New Yorker: “After he recovered, Werbeloff was eager to be around people again, and he spent a night clubbing. In the shifting red light, he looked at a friend’s face and realized that the right side looked odd. It seemed to stretch outward, like Silly Putty being pulled, and a dark, rough patch was visible around the friend’s right eye. Werbeloff blinked and looked away, and his friend’s features briefly returned to normal. Then the distortions appeared again. In the weeks that followed, Werbeloff started to notice similar unsettling changes in everyone he looked at. “If they were smiling with their teeth very visible, then, on the right-hand side, the canine tooth would elongate,” he told me. Even his own face in the mirror looked malformed on the right. He had long known that his ability to recognize faces was so poor that it bordered on prosopagnosia—face blindness—but now he wondered whether he suffered from something else.”

(Editor’s note: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you really like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via my Patreon. Thanks for being a reader!)

Son of Russian spies feels relief after becoming a Canadian citizen

From the BBC: “The son of Russian spies has spoken of his relief after a court decided to let him keep his Canadian citizenship. Alexander Vavilov had his citizenship revoked after his parents, who worked for Russia’s foreign intelligence service, were arrested in 2010. He was born in Canada, and until their arrest he believed his parents were Canadian too. Mr Vavilov was born Alexander Foley in Toronto on 3 June 1994 to Tracey Lee Ann Foley and Donald Howard Heathfield – or so he thought. Their real names were Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov and they had moved to Canada using false identities, in order to establish a “deep cover” that would allow them to travel the world and spy for Russia’s KGB. In Canada, they seemed like a normal, happy young family. Mr Vavilov’s older brother Timothy was born just four years before, also in Toronto. At one point, his parents started up their own diaper delivery service.”

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

Continue reading “How young killer whales learn to become hooligans”

From Book of Joe: “A  study by Susan Diem and others of how CPR is portrayed on TV found that it was successful in 75% of the cases and that 67% of the TV patients went home. In reality, a 2010 study of more than 95,000 cases of CPR found that only 8% of patients survived for more than one month. Of these, only about 3% could lead a mostly normal life. Of the 92% of the 95,000 patients who did not survive more than a month, most did not survive the initial episode of CPR. Of those who did, even if CPR was successful in restoring spontaneous heartbeat and cardiac function sufficient to maintain perfusion and blood pressure for up to 30 days, that time was spent in ICUs hooked up to all manner of monitors, intubated, on a ventilator, and for the most part with little or no spontaneous brain activity and function.”

M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie Trap is based on a real sting operation

From GQ: “The loose inspiration for Trap is Operation Flagship, a plan hatched by the U.S. Marshals Service’s Fugitive Investigative Strike Team in 1985. They needed to catch a bunch of fugitives in Washington, DC. In order to keep both costs and risks down, they planned an elaborate sting operation to lure in wanted men: F.I.S.T. sent letters to the last known addresses of over 5,000 fugitives, telling them that they had won two free tickets to an upcoming Washington Redskins game against the Cincinnati Bengals, plus an opportunity to win additional tickets to the Super Bowl. They targeted a big upcoming Washington Redskins home game against the Cincinnati Bengals on December 15, 1985. Then, they invented a new TV network, Flagship International Sports Television, that would be giving out free tickets to celebrate their supposed launch.”

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Did the world’s oldest message in a bottle just wash up on a beach in Ocean City?

From The Inquirer: “Amy Smyth Murphy was taking an early morning stroll on the beach in Ocean City the other week when she spied a distinctive looking bottle by the water’s edge. Intrigued, she picked up the corked green vessel and saw paper inside. She decided to take her find back to her mom’s beach house so she and her relatives could explore it together. With the aid of a corkscrew, her niece Avery Smyth’s nimble fingers, and nephew Jack Smyth’s assistance, they were able to coax the message out of the bottle. Given the other clues so far — the likely age of the bottle, the Klemms — Smyth Murphy said she feels pretty sure the 76 refers to 1876.”

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