#5. Sometimes You Have to Be a Little Bit Naughty
It has been a week. That’s what I say at the beginning of every one of these newsletters, but I think that only highlights how much of a year this week happens to be part of.
There’s been a lot of good stuff that has happened this week! And I’m not just talking about the de-extinction of dire wolves (which I’ll talk about below). But there have been a lot of people who are Doing Things and Taking Action. My wife and I went to the big protest on Saturday—we didn’t think we’d be able to go, but we wanted to drive by and honk and wave at least. And the cool thing was that it was SO crowded that we couldn’t hardly get there—streams of people walking, carrying signs, waving flags. It took us two full hours to go half a mile. It was inspiring.
In related news, I love musical theater, and one of my recent loves is Matilda The Musical. If you don’t know Matilda (of Roald Dahl fame) it’s the story of a young supergenius who has a terrible home life (and a terrible school life) but has remarkable mental powers and uses them for good—and mischief. She is only seven years old, after all.
Her dad is a used car salesman, and the most stereotypically sleazy kind of used car salesman. He treats her horribly. (He calls her “boy” constantly, because he always wanted a son. And that’s just the start. He does all kinds of illegal things to con people into buying his cars.) And Matilda decides that she’s going to do something about it.
This song, “Naughty”, is what she sings when she decides to take action. I think these lyrics relate to our current climate:
In the slip of a bolt, there's a tiny revolt.
The seed of a war in the creak of a floorboard.
A storm can begin with the flap of a wing.
The tiniest mite packs the mightiest sting.
Every day starts with the tick of a clock.
All escapes start with the click of a lock.
If you're stuck in your story and want to get out,
You don't have to cry, you don't have to shout.
'Cause if you're little, you can do a lot, you
Mustn't let a little thing like "little" stop you
If you sit around and let them get on top, you
Won't change a thing
Just because you find that life's not fair, it
Doesn't mean that you just have to grin and bear it
If you always take it on the chin and wear it
You might as well be saying you think that it's OK
And that's not right
And if it's not right
You have to put it right
But nobody else is gonna put it right for me
Nobody but me is gonna change my story
Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty
Fun and Fascinating Things From This Week
Romulus and Remus. They’re cute now—but wait…
#1. We have brought back the dire wolves from extinction. And I don’t mean that we’ve rescued them from the brink of extinction, like they’re the white rhinos—we’ve cloned them from DNA of a 12,500 year old tooth!
Dire wolves are 25% bigger than regular gray wolves, and are famously seen in Game of Thrones. And, a company called Colossal Biosciences has cloned two male dire wolf pups, named Romulus and Remus. And they’re adorable, and they’ll probably lead to some kind of Jurassic Park situation and we’ll all die.
(Okay, editor’s note here: I’ve read since I initially wrote this that these are not EXACTLY dire wolves, but they’re regular wolves with some gene splicing to make the more like dire wolves. But the people who are pointing this out seem to forget that it was just this exact kind of DNA tomfoolery in Jurassic Park that mixed dinos with frogs and brought about the Downfall of Mankind.)
Aurora on Neptune
#2. By combining the forces of the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Telescope, we have the first conclusive sighting of aurorae on Neptune. We have suspected that there has been aurora there since one of the Voyager missions got a tantilizing glimpse, but these pictures are noteworthy for how clear they are.
You’ll notice that Neptune’s aurora are not at the top and the bottom, like we get here on Earth, and that’s because Neptune is WEIRD. While all planets rotate, and some rotate on tilts (like Earth’s 23.5 degree tilt) Neptune is practically on its side—due, it is suspected, to some enormous object colliding with the planet and knocking it over. So the aurorae are all over the place.
#3. A retired world-record-holding competitive jump roper—yes, there are such people—used his jump roping skills, and his jump ropes, to save a boy from a frozen lake.
In December, in Midfield, Indiana, David Fischer was alerted to trouble when he heard a boy and his mother screaming for help. They were not in danger, but their dog had gone out on the ice, and fell in. But then, while Fischer was getting ready to help, the boy fell in, too.
Of course, Fischer, who was dubbed “The Rope Warrior” in the 80s and 90s, (and was now age 60) grabbed his two Double Dutch ropes and ran to the rescue. He gave the end of one to the mother on the shore, and then ventured out onto the ice. He whipped the other rope, in a fashion that was not unlike Indiana Jones, and it landed next to the boy. The boy grabbed on, got the dog up on the ice, and then Fischer and the mom pulled them to safety.
#4. We have known for centuries that the Roman statues that we see are NOT what they looked like back in Roman times. While we picture pristine marble, they were actually brightly painted. And, we’re just now learning (or rediscovering) they smelled of perfume.
A researcher named Cecilie Brøns has put out a paper saying that not only were many statues regularly doused with perfume, but we know the ingredients that were put into the perfume. So, the next time you’re in the British Museum, just think of Chanel No 5.
Distractions and Diversions
Normally, I’d post YouTube videos that I have been enjoying, but today you’re getting TV shows and movies:
Severance
I have heard about this show for years—the first season came out three years ago and didn’t get a second season until this year—but I couldn’t get into it. The story is science fiction, about how office workers can have a procedure that severs their working mind from their home mind, so the self that works is only aware of everything that happens at work and the self outside is only aware of what happens outside.
I think the reason that I had such a hard time getting into this show for years is that I wanted Answers To Science Questions: Why do they get finger traps at work as an incentive? Why do they have waffle parties? Why why why?
But then I realized, after getting through the first three episodes, that it’s not “hard” sci-fi, and that not everything is going to be literal. It is, rather, part office satire, part philosophical musing, part thriller. And what it definitely is is an amazing group of characters with mesmerizing mysteries. After I got through that third episode, ten days ago, I was hooked and I binged the full two seasons in as many days.
Interstellar
I slept on this movie for a decade, but it has suddenly risen to be in my top five movies of all time. I saw it in the theaters when it came out, but must have forgotten it, because I recently rediscovered it when it came on Netflix, and in the time that it has been free to watch I have probably had it playing two or three times a week (I put movies on in the background while I work).
I love so many things about this movie—and there is indeed a lot to love, from the incredible visuals to the mind-bending astrophysics (which are as true as a Hollywood movie can get) to the performances. But what I really love, and what I find missing from so many Christopher Nolan movies, is the absolute humanity in this one. Yes, it’s about wormholes and blackholes and apocalypse, but, as Anne Hathaway’s character puts it, it’s a story about how love transcends time.
A Final Note
You may have seen in the news that the Heard and Macdonald Islands have been hit with tariffs, despite the fact that the islands are inhabited solely by penguins and have never exported anything to anyone. We all had a pretty good laugh about that one.
BUT WAIT: penguins are known for their gift giving. Male penguins very carefully select smooth, pretty stones and carry them back to their mates—penguins mate for life, because they’re serious and not into casual penguin free love—so WHAT IF: maybe male penguins from the Heard and Macdonald Islands have been mailing pretty, smooth stones to potential prospects in America (penguin long-distance relationships) but no American penguins have been sending rocks back to the islands. This clearly is a trade imbalance and will result in good, decent, patriotic, American, female penguins leaving the United States for a new life on the islands, but no female penguins are leaving the Heard and Macdonald Islands to come to meet their suitors in the USA.
And where does that leave us? With a net penguin loss. So, please. Be serious before you mock.
