Hello there, reader. This is Vishal with another issue of Kat’s Kable, and the last one for 2022. I’ve not been feeling particularly myself of late, and part of that is being too tired. I also want some time off to figure out what I want Kat’s Kable to be going forward. Right now it feels effortless and chill and almost like I’m just a conduit, relaying things to you, instead of the newsletter being more about me. I think it’s best for me to take some time off (early holidays!) and figure things out. When I decided to take the rest of the year off, I was relieved, and I think that’s as clear a sign as I’ll get that I need the break. For once, I’m taking a planned break instead of an impromptu one! Ha, I’m pleased about that. As always, though, hope you enjoy this week’s list, and feel free to reply to the newsletter if you’ve anything to say. I love receiving mail.
If you got this from a friend and want to subscribe, here’s the link. Also, if any of the links are paywalled and if you don’t want to pay for a subscription, try opening the link in incognito mode in your browser. This works if the website has a “soft” paywall. If that doesn’t work, you can access the website using a different browser on the same device, or use a different device altogether. Another, slightly involved, method is to try to disable JavaScript and reload the page. This works on some websites for me.
1. Grief Almanac For An Apocalypse - The Sun Magazine (soft paywalled)
This is a series of personal journal-type notes stretching from 2020 to 2022. It’s about maintaining a garden, dealing with grief, and dealing with the pandemic, of course. It’s poignant and touching.
2. Age of the bacteriophage - Works in Progress Magazine
Oooh. Bacteriophages are viruses that live by hijacking bacteria’s metabolic processes. They are also naturally abundant in nature. Before the antibiotic revolution in the mid 1900s, bacteriophages were considered serious contenders for treating bacterial infections. However, there are challenges associated with using them–for example, they are hyperspecific, and just like antibiotics, they encourage bacteria to evolve resistance to them. However, given our law of diminishing returns race using antibiotics, it appears like the time is nigh for a renaissance of bacteriophage therapy.
3. The Curious Afterlife of a Brain Trauma Survivor - Wired (soft paywalled)
This is a story adapted from Mike Mariani’s book What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us , which is about tragedy and trauma.
Because of the deep-seated, manifold ways the head trauma affected her brain, Sophie had become a markedly different person. A quiet, easygoing young woman fell into a weeklong slumber and woke up talkative, tempestuous, and inscrutable. Of course, she would always be Sophia Papp, daughter of Jane and Jamie, born December 12, 1994, with the same singular two-decade narrative. But at times it seemed as though the Sophie Papp everyone knew had been swapped out for a charismatic, capricious changeling. “It was like losing a child, but a physical representation of that child is still living, and we had to get to know who she was,” Jane said.
Sophie’s continuity of self had been ruptured forever. Her new reality forced her to reckon with an identity crisis writ large as she began her afterlife living under the skin of somebody who’d been born in the crash.
4. How mud boosts your immune system - BBC
Ha! I guess this makes intuitive sense to me too–being in contact with mud, or soil, is good because of the plethora of microbes in it. These microbes are absorbed into our body via the skin and generally make us feel better, healthier, happier, etc.
5. How Brian Eno Created “Ambient 1: Music For Airports” - Reverb Magazine
This is fantastic. Brian Eno’s “Ambient 1: Music For Airports” is one of my favourite albums to listen to, especially when sitting down, taking a slow bath, or watching over a slow process. It’s a pretty unique album, and popularized the notion of “generative music”. This interactive page/article goes into depth about how Eno created his album, and you can in fact play around with the different musical loops that constitute two of the tracks in the album. It’s amazing and one of those resources that make you think, “that god for the internet”.
6. Not Everyone Should Have a Say - The Atlantic (soft paywalled)
Interesting. This article has been written with a USA-centric perspective, and it’s about how projects are held back by waiting for community input. I find this very confusing, honestly.. I think it’s a good rule of thumb that involving community and seeking feedback delays the progress of various projects, but does it stretch out the timelines so much, or does it even kill certain projects from the beginning? I find the article to be clickbait, but the article goes into more nuance and seems quite measured.
7. What it’s like to be a food writer when you can taste everything you see - Atlanta Magazine
Julia Skinner here writes about her synesthesia, which results in her tasting everything she can see. Wow!
Most describe their synesthesia as a gift: It’s like having a bonus sense, like a secret track on an album that only had a few copies made. For me as a food writer and all-around food enthusiast, that means an extra-rich soundtrack for my culinary adventures: I can cook flavors unique to my own experience and share them with others. […] The secret track becomes your secret track: a special part of the world that no one else tastes or feels in exactly the same way. It’s beautiful, confusing, exhausting, and wonderful all at once.
It reminds me of Living with perfect pitch and Synaesthesia – what it’s really like, which I shared all the way back in… issue #170 (May 2019!).
8. When The Drummers Were Women - Drum Magazine
This is an excellent piece, and it’s originally from way back, in 2000. It talks mostly about the history of the drum, and how women drummers were seen as a conduit of sorts for certain goddesses. It’s interesting to read, and well written too.
9. Laboratory of Evolution - The Kodai Chronicle
I’ve been reading a little bit here and there about the Shola grasslands in the Nilgiri hills of South India. They are very interesting ecosystems, and because of the fact that hills are isolated from each other, you find different species living on different hills! Things like this are what give this article its title, as the Shola grasslands are truly a “laboratory” of evolution. Again, very cool.
10. The Identical Twin Sisters Who Retreated Into Their Own World - The New Yorker (soft paywalled)
This is also from 2000. And wow, it is haunting. It’s about Jennifer and June Gibbons, who moved to the UK from Barbados. During their schooling years, they refused to talk to anyone but each other, and led a strange and disjointed life. It made me feel both sympathy and awe for them. They obviously faced many struggles growing up, and were in psychiatric institutions for a long time.
See you… next year!