A weekly collection of links lovingly curated by Colin Wright.
Mirror Fever
“In the following decades the French developed techniques enabling them to make glass mirrors in larger sizes and became the leader of the trade. Meanwhile in England, the Vauxhall factory founded by the Duke of Buckingham also employed Venetian craftsmen, using an amalgam of tin and mercury to make mirror-glass sheets up to one meter long. These developments ushered in a new era of interior design and furnishing, characterized by adorning wall surfaces with abundant shiny glass mirrors.”
A New Drug Switched Off My Appetite. What’s Left?
“I went alone that night to a Chinese restaurant, the old-school kind with tables, and ordered General Tso’s. I ate the broccoli, a few pieces of chicken, and thought: too gloopy. I left it unfinished, went home in confusion, a different kind of sleepwalker. I passed bodegas and shrugged. At an office I observed the stack of candies and treats with no particular interest. Decades of struggle—poof. Apparently the Mounjaro molecule targets the same hormone as Ozempic, plus a second one, so it doesn’t just stimulate insulin production but also boosts energy output.”
The History and Evolution of the Wheel
“The wheel on its own, while promising, is not very useful. Much like a doughnut, its most important feature is the hole in the center. If it wasn't suitable for attaching a stable platform by combining it with an axle, the wheel would be nothing but a cylinder rolling on its edge. By the time the wheel and axle were invented, it was the Bronze Age. Casting metal alloys, constructing canals and sailboats, and complex musical instruments such as harps all predate the wheel and axle.”
Inside El Salvador’s Brutal Gang Crackdown
“Since then, more than 60,000 people have been imprisoned — 1% of the entire population — adding to another 40,000 already in jail. It’s a mass incarceration comparable with some of the harshest regimes and wars in history — the equivalent of locking up more than three million in the United States in under a year.”
Canada is Set To Make a Massive Protected Area Official—and It’s Underwater
“It’s been in the works since before 2016, and an earlier iteration of the area would have protected an additional 6,000 square kilometres, an area larger than Prince Edward Island. (It’s not clear why that section, on the southwestern side of the protected area, was removed.) It was expected to be officially designated by 2020, but that didn’t happen. Now, the long-awaited announcement will cement into place one of Canada’s largest protected areas—and move Canada 2.31 per cent closer to its goal of protecting a quarter of its ocean territory by 2025.”
Crushed
“For Johna, Jentzen’s success further validated her decision to move to Los Angeles. Every parent hopes that a child will find their thing. Other families travel to soccer tournaments, move across the country to train with gymnastics coaches, or spend thousands on STEM camps where kids learn to code and build robots. Liana and Jentzen didn’t just like acting—they were good at it. Plus, their budding careers allowed Johna to spend time with them, whether that was backstage at rehearsals, stuck in gridlock on the 101, or putting together audition tapes at home. “It wasn’t just something they did,” Johna said. “It was something we all did together.””
Creatures That Don’t Conform
“These intricate structures—netted, patterned, striated, globed—were, I learned, the fruiting bodies of myxomycetes, the scientific name for slime molds. Slime mold is a common name which is an attempt to describe organisms that defy simple categorization. For a while, it was thought they were fungi, so they were once classed as such (hence, myceto-, meaning fungus). But they are not fungi at all, and they live much of their lives like an animal.”
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