i am a primadonna girl

and you?

hello

I am in Berlin for the next month sitting a cat named Olga who is recovering from a stroke. Send me your Berlin recommendations, or whatever is on your mind (I love your emails). In an odd struck of luck, I made it into Berghain on Friday and now I can’t shut up about it. Also, the second to last episode of Reply All (the podcast that brought you The Case of the Missing Hit and that multi-part series about its host befriending and visiting a scammer from a call center in India) is a Wikipedia deep dive called “Into the Depths” that is inspired by Depths of Wikipedia! The episode came out on Friday.

Good distractions:

• My friend Max Bittker who has made a lot of cool things (like the New NYT Twitter bot and Sandspiel) made a web toy where you write fridge-magnet style poetry with word suggestions based on Markov chain analysis of famous poets

• Institute for Y2K Aesthetics Tumblr itched a scratch in my brain

• The Sopranos apparently had a cameo on Arthur

• Fact that could save your life: you can go to the store and buy a nectarine and sit on a bench and eat it while you watch the birds. You can do it right now! Maybe you should!

• Fact that could save your life: you can right-click on a tab and press “Close Tabs to the Right”

• The actual C.V. of human rights activist and physicist Yuri Orlov… imagine how good his answer to “please explain any gaps in your resume?” would be

• Nobel laureates reveal the things they do not understand:

  David Macmillan (Chemistry, 2021)
  ”Honestly, I couldn’t understand theoretical chemistry if my life depended on it.”
  
  Frances Arnold (Chemistry, 2018)
  ”I've never fully grasped how enzymes do what they do. If you understand it, please explain it to me.”
  
  Sir Anthony Leggett (Physics, 2003)
  When asked if he can do long division: “No, I can't do arithmetic at all, which is why I thank my lucky stars that I never had to take our qual. exam – I would certainly have failed miserably.”

  Soooooo true guys! relatable!

• The world’s top minds came together to determine the world’s longest palindrome sequence

• Random request but if you or someone you know gives their dad the same gift every year, can you let me know? I might interview you for a project.

• This perfect research paper studied the gender, age, and emotions of pareidolia.

  

• A couple weeks ago, I wrote a brief article about the cat whose embarrassment is not printed in physics textbooks all over the world. Her name is Cooper and she had a happy life.

• I am very excited for Ed Yong, the guy who wrote those Atlantic articles about Covid, to publish his book about silly animals later this month (here’s a Mother Jones interview he did recently)

• Campaign Fowl, an interview in Harper’s with a small town Georgia mayor who “lost his 2021 bid for reelection after spending almost $300,000 to build a sixty-four-foot-tall topiary chicken.” Article best enjoyed as a dramatic read-aloud with a friend after two (2) beers

• Now that I’m in Europe for a few weeks I can’t stop quoting this 1-minute Kroll Show video about Europe… “for breakfast we’ll do something cool like have a cigarette or a bar of chocolate, and then go to work for like one half hour, two half hour, and then we’ll go for lunch and lunch is usually something cool like a cigarette and like 2, 3 bottles red wine and a bowl of heavy cream….”

that’s all for now. tell me what you’ve been reading lately? what snacks you’re obsessed with? what I should do in Berlin? where rats sleep? why it’s called the of in when you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food? the meaning of life? the most underrated mid-2000s reality tv that I should binge? why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch? how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? who’s on first? should I be afraid of the undersea internet cables breaking? the thing you’re most proud of? why does human hair grow so long? how your day is going?