{"id":255066,"date":"2023-04-03T09:28:33","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T13:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=255066"},"modified":"2023-04-03T09:28:33","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T13:28:33","slug":"the-poet-who-invented-social-media-in-the-18th-century-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/04\/03\/the-poet-who-invented-social-media-in-the-18th-century-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The poet who invented social media in the 18th century"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 1747, the young poet Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim was sitting in his study in the small German town of Halberstadt, surrounded by stacks of letters from his friends and associates, and had an epiphany. He realized that despite having corresponded with so many people, he had never actually met most of them in person. And this got him thinking: what if there was a way to visualize all the people he had formed relationships with through letter writing? And thus, the poet\u2019s Temple of Friendship was born. Gleim set out to collect painted<\/a> portraits of all his friends and relatives, creating an extensive personal portrait gallery that soon filled all the walls of his apartment. He referred to this portrait gallery as his Tempel der Freundschaft (\u201cTemple of Friendship\u201d). He carefully thought about the arrangement of his portrait gallery: his own portrait was always at the center of the gallery, while other portraits were positioned around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean Denis and the \u201cTransfusion Affair\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beginning in the spring of 1667, public opinion in Paris was rocked by a remarkable affair involving domesticated animals: the first practical experiments to transfuse animal blood into humans for therapeutic purposes. The experiments that came to be known as the \u201cTransfusion Affair\u201d were shrouded in the competing claims of a highly public controversy in which consensus and truth, alongside the animal subjects themselves, were the first victims. \u201cThere was never anything that divided opinion as much as we presently witness with the transfusions<\/a>\u201d, wrote the Parisian lawyer at Parlement, Louis de Basril, late in the affair, in February 1668. \u201cIt is a topic of the salons, an amusement at the court, the subject of philosophical dissertations; and doctors talk incessantly about it in all their consultations.\u201d At the center of the controversy was the young Montpellier physician and \u201cmost able Cartesian philosopher\u201d Jean Denis, who experimented with animal blood to cure sickness, especially madness, and to prolong life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: 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<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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For insect detectives, the trickiest cases involve the bugs that aren\u2019t really there<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gale Ridge could tell something was wrong as soon as the man walked into her office at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. He was smartly dressed in a collared shirt and slacks, but his skin didn\u2019t look right: It was bright pink, almost purple \u2014 and weirdly glassy. Without making eye contact, he sat hunched in the chair across from Ridge and began to speak. He was an internationally renowned physician and researcher. He had taught 20 years\u2019 worth<\/a> of students, treating patients all the while, and had solved mysteries about the body\u2019s chemistry and how it could be broken by disease. But now, he said he was having serious health issues he didn\u2019t know how to deal with. \u201cHe was being eaten alive by insects,\u201d Ridge, an entomologist, recalled recently. \u201cHe described these flying entities that were coming at him at night and burrowing into his skin.\u201d The biggest problem, however, was that the bugs didn’t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vikki Dougan, the 1950’s starlet who may have inspired Jessica Rabbit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the late ’50s, Vikki Dougan and her backless dresses became tabloid fodder for Hollywood gossip columns \u2014 and inspired a profuse number of groan-inducing puns. In a March 29, 1957 Hollywood Today column headlined \u201cVikki Dougan \u2026 Backs Into a Film Career,\u201d Erskine Johnson suggested that Ms. Dougan\u2019s dresses are \u201clower in the back than a teenager\u2019s hot rod.\u201d But after a whirlwind year of public appearances and seemingly nonstop press, interest in<\/a> Ms. Dougan\u2019s fetching backside waned. The starlet seemed to disappear from Hollywood as quickly as she had arrived. Online biographical information on Ms. Dougan is scant, unlike the pages and pages devoted to Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor. There\u2019s a wan IMDB page, and a number of blog posts citing conflicting information about her life. And while Ms. Dougan\u2019s rise to fame is well documented, there is little explanation of where she went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are the Great Lakes actually inland seas?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Great Lakes of North America\u2019s midsection\u2014Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario\u2014together span nearly 100,000 square miles, with a combined coastline just shy of 10,000 miles. They hold more than a fifth of Earth\u2019s unfrozen fresh water, straddle an international border, and help move more than $15 billion dollars worth of cargo each year. They even have their own U.S. Coast Guard district, the only lakes with such a distinction. So should we really be<\/a> calling them the Great Inland Seas? \u201cThe most accurate answer you\u2019re going to get is, \u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019\u201d says John Richard Saylor, author of the upcoming Lakes: Their Birth, Life, and Death<\/em>. \u201cI do think it comes down to semantics, what you want to call a \u2018sea.\u2019\u201d For many, the Great Lakes are indeed greater than lakes. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, for example, describes them as \u201cvast inland freshwater seas.\u201d A seminal 2017 paper in Limnology and Oceanography<\/em>, authored by some of the most influential researchers studying the lakes, also refers to them as \u2018inland seas.\u2019 But what makes a sea varies by source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brandon Sanderson makes $10M a year with his writing, but you’ve probably never heard of him<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Most years, Brandon Sanderson makes about $10 million. Last year, he made $55 million. This is obviously a lot of money for anyone. For a writer of young-adult-ish, never-ending, speed-written fantasy books, it\u2019s huge. By Sanderson\u2019s estimation, he\u2019s the highest-selling author of epic fantasy in the world. In five months, Sanderson published two books. During the Covid lockdowns, he wrote and\/or edited seven<\/em>: two for his regular publisher, a graphic novel<\/a>, and four more in secret, telling no one but his wife until he surprise-announced a Kickstarter in March 2022 to crowdfund their publication. (He raised $42 million in a month, by far the most successful Kickstarter ever.) Since his debut, Elantris<\/em>, in 2005, Sanderson has published 30-plus books, the biggest ones in excess of 400,000 words; there are far more if you count the novellas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beluga whale returns a phone someone dropped<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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That time a beluga whale returned a phone someone dropped in the sea waters of Norway

[full story: https:\/\/t.co\/Qgx9yM0Pow<\/a>]
[about the beluga: https:\/\/t.co\/8bnwtYRuGO<\/a>]https:\/\/t.co\/VQkKW1UfsT<\/a><\/p>— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 2, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>