Boy, that submersible story was something, huh. The phrase “catastrophic implosion” is going to stick with me for a long time. Every time I saw a picture of what the inside of that submersible looked like, it gave me hives, and I don’t usually consider myself a claustrophobic person. Revising my personal sea opinion to be “the top of the ocean is nice.” The hot takes sure were flying about this one, and my stance is [static noises], but I also fully agree with whatever you think about it! Capitalism, amirite?

I can’t believe there are now two tragic wrecks down there. People are never going to stop being obsessed with that area.

What I’m Reading Online

This entire saga, of two employees of the state of Rhode Island who went and made fools of themselves on a business trip in Philly, is very funny? But I also do feel bad for the woman who hosted them in Philly and bore the brunt of their nasty behavior, and described them as “bizarre, offensive, and unprofessional.”

This is one of those like, peak local news stories even though it’s in the Washington Post, but it’s still nice and sometimes we can read nice things. A young engaged couple was flipping through the bride’s baby book and then realized the groom’s mother helped deliver her.

For no particular reason, this is a neat graphic that shows you how deep various animals go in the ocean. You think you’ve reached the last mammal, and I promise, you have not. I would recommend looking at it on a desktop, though, since it’s a scrolling feature.

Also, one of the people mentioned in there is a member of the Piccard family, which I just read about in the New Yorker. They are a multi-generational family of explorers who have all managed a series of firsts, usually at tremendous risk to themselves using unproven science, and they served as inspiration for the name of Captain Jean Luc Picard on Star Trek.

The same artist made a space elevator, too, if you’re not done looking at things on the internet.

Did you know that one of the founders of Stanford was poisoned? And that the founding president was involved in covering up the murder? Read all about it here, and remember that renaming buildings and institutions is not usually a bad idea, because, to put it lightly, many people who have things named after them were absolute stinkers who managed to be rich. Particularly people who made their fortunes building railroads in California in the 19th century.

My old grad school pal Ariel Ramchandani wrote this heartbreaking piece for Mother Jones about how doctors across medical specialties are confronting the implication of abortion bans in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. The morass of anti-abortion legislation with vague wording around medical exceptions means that doctors face grueling legal questions over the basics of providing care for patients who happen to be pregnant, or even just might be pregnant, as in the case of a rheumatologist facing the possibility that she’ll have to prescribe patients a less effective, more expensive medicine since the best possible one is known to cause harm to fetuses.

What I’m Watching

I saw Past Lives, Celine Song’s semi-autobiographical story of a woman who moves to Canada from Korea as a tween, then eventually New York, maintaining an often tenuous but emotionally fraught connection with the boy she had a crush on before she left. They finally meet in person in New York in their 30s, when she’s established in her writing career and married to someone else. It’s romantic and wistful and sad. The movie has had the blessing and the mild curse of rapturous reviews, which is good for buzz but hard to live up to, especially for a movie as delicate and light on plot as this one is. I hesitate to even call it a drama, which it really only is because it’s not any other genre—there are basically three characters in this movie, and none of them is in the dark about the nature of the other relationships, so there’s no sudden explosive fight about the whole situation. There’s so much in here that’s specific to the immigrant experience, especially for someone who came to Canada at a pivotal young age, but at the same time there’s something deeply universal about getting a chance to visit a completely different version of your life.

I’m also starting a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I’ve never been a Star Trek fan before; my strongest memory of it growing up was my dad watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and every time something dramatic happened, red lights would flash and all the cast members would put their hands out and gyrate slightly to indicate the ship was moving in a jarring way. This still happens on this new show BUT also the captain is very good looking (so is Patrick Stewart, but not in a way that was apparent to a child). And everyone on the ship is generally working towards something idealistic, which makes for a pleasant viewing experience in this era of anti-heroes. I feel like I’m constantly on a quest to find shows to watch that won’t stress me out too much but still have enough of a dramatic arc to hold my interest from episode to episode, so I hope this works.

My other favorite memory of Star Trek is that I only remember the plot of one episode, and I tried to recount it to my roommate, who grew up watching Next Generation, as follows: Wesley, the teen intern (or whatever, I can’t remember what Wesley was doing as the only minor on a space ship) has an eye infection, and the other members of the ship try to hold him down to force him to take his eye medicine, which was administered through some kind of weird visor. I believed this eye infection was the plot of this episode, which is, again, the only Star Trek: Next Generation episode I remember, for roughly 20 years. And my roommate finally told me that actually the “eye medicine” was some kind of game that exerted mind control over anyone who played it, and Wesley, far from having an eye infection, was actually the only one who resisted the game, and when the other people on the ship held him down, it was because they’d been mind controlled into trying to make him join the cult. They were not trying to give him eye medicine. Every time I think about this, it makes me laugh. How did I mix up the hero and the villain of the episode? Why did I think he had an eye infection? Why would an episode of Star Trek be about a teenager getting pinkeye and being SO RESISTANT to taking eye drops that a group of adults physically restrains him? Classic Star Trek plot.

What I’m Reading in Print

I read two books that I did not like terribly much so will not be recommending! I like to mention the books I didn’t like so no one mistakenly thinks I didn’t read anything in the last week. But I have been enjoying a book of short stories called Shit Cassandra Saw, by Gwen Kirby. I don’t read a ton of short stories, but these are a lot of fun. Here’s how one of them starts, which I think gives you a pretty good idea of the general vibe.

Not all of them have supernatural aspects like this one, but many if not most take on as their subject matter what we might call the experience of being a woman in this world. Some of them are violent, many of them are funny. Good stuff.

All Newsletters Are Written by Committee

His preferred editing tactic is to sneak a paw onto the trackpad without me noticing and select every single item onscreen. You can see a paw making the attempt below.

Hope everyone is avoiding eye infections out there! And if you have one, just take your meds. Your coworkers are too busy to tackle you and give you your eye visor drops.