Links
Sorry about the short e-mail this week!
3 stars
The Guadalupe Swept Us Away. This Is the Story of All That Came After.
27-minute read
In the days after last July’s historic disaster, I wrote about the tragedy that befell my family. But crawling out of the river was only the beginning.
[...]
Runyen cautioned me at the start of this conversation about emotions that might surface. He’s reassuring me again, telling me that he and his colleagues will do whatever they can to keep people safe. Not only that, he wants people like me, my family, and anyone else who experienced this flood or any other natural disaster to feel secure again.
Then it hits me: High up in that hackberry tree, I wasn’t alone. In what had seemed to be the loneliest moment of my life, Runyen was here, working frantically to try and keep us safe, to protect my family and hundreds of others as best he could. Even if he couldn’t control whether I received the warnings—even as the weather was violently out of our control—he was here, doing his best with what he was given.
I also think of Patrick, jumping out of his tree, swimming to the bank, emerging from the flooded Guadalupe, and weaving through debris and rubble to try and find the rest of us.
Being there for one another: Isn’t that all there is?
Runyen tells me he’s read my flood story four times, including this morning in his office, behind a closed door. He thanks me for writing it and tells me he’s shared it with his staff. “So we don’t lose sight of our mission. Our mission is the protection of life and property. And we certainly take it harder when we lose life.”
He asks about my family, and then offers to show me around the operations area, where there’s a shift change underway. Two other forecasters have arrived. I say hello to them, shake hands. Then Runyen and Vesper walk me to the door. Outside, it’s a beautiful day.
Original link | Archive.is link
2 stars
Your Next Dog May Live Longer | The Atlantic
8-minute read
One day last November, my dog, Forrest, sat on the cold marble steps of the Smithsonian’s natural-history museum in Washington, D.C., ready to meet Celine Halioua, a woman who may one day add a tail-wagging year or so to his life, and also the lives of millions of other dogs. In 2019, Halioua founded a company called Loyal, and in February 2025, a pill that she developed for dogs was deemed likely to be effective by the FDA. If the company ticks a few remaining boxes, the drug could soon be on sale, kick-starting a new era of longevity medicine that could eventually also lengthen humans’ lives.
[...]
Halioua had another reason for starting with dogs, beyond her connection to them: Federal approval for animal drugs is easier to come by than it is for human drugs. And because dogs tend to live only a decade or so, she can quickly tell whether a life-extension drug is working in them. Her end goal is to lengthen human lives. For thousands of years, dogs have gone out ahead of humans as wilderness scouts. They have ventured into buildings to sniff out explosives. Some even got killed rocketing into space before us. Now they’re entering another new frontier that may be fraught with its own unforeseeable dangers.
Original link | Archive.is link
Nobody Knows Whether Michael Jackson Is Canceled | Rob Henderson’s Newsletter
3-minute read
In a 1955 essay, the Russian-British philosopher Isaiah Berlin suggested that there are at least two ways of thinking about art and the people who make it.
There’s the “French” way, and the “Russian” way. These are only labels for the sake of brevity and convenience. Plenty of Russian writers, Berlin explained, held the “French” view and many French writers held the “Russian” one. These views originated in the nineteenth century.
Most French writers and artists in the 1800s thought of themselves as akin to craftsmen. An artist had a job to do, for himself and for the public. And that job was to produce the best thing he could. If you painted, you tried to paint a beautiful picture. If you wrote, you tried to write the best book you could.
In this “French” view, an artist’s private life was nobody’s business. Think about how you treat a carpenter. When you order a table, you don’t ask whether the guy who made it cheats on his wife or has noble reasons for sawing the wood. You just want a good table. And if someone told you the table must be bad because the carpenter is a bad man, you would think they were being absurd. What does his character have to do with the quality of his work?
[...]
Once you see the two systems, the Jackson puzzle resolves. The taste system is doing what it always does. It registered Jackson’s music as extraordinary in 1983 and today. The signaling system, though, requires social consensus that an artist is guilty. Jackson, for whatever reason, has never produced that unified verdict. His estate fights every accusation in court. His most devoted fans dispute the allegations against him. The case remains legibly contested in a way the others have not.
1 star
Here’s Why Buttons and Zippers Are on Different Sides of Clothing for Men and Women | Reader’s Digest
6-minute read
I have buttoned thousands of shirts in my life. Maybe tens of thousands. (I am a mom of five.) I am a grown adult with multiple degrees and a functioning brain, and yet the first time I grabbed my husband’s flannel to throw on before walking the dog, I stood there for a full 30 seconds, brow furrowed, hands fumbling like I’d never encountered a button before. Why did it feel so strange? Was I having a stroke?
No. I was just experiencing one of the most common and most casually accepted little fashion quirks: the fact that buttons and zippers are on opposite sides depending on whether the clothing is designed for men or women. I don’t know how, in all my years of dressing myself, I’d never noticed it before. Men’s buttons and zippers go on the right side; women’s go on the left. It’s so standard that we rarely think to ask why or even notice it, and yet once you start pulling on that thread, you end up in a surprisingly interesting tangle of history, class politics, military strategy and fragile emperor egos.
The Pulse of NYC: How the Knicks Playoff Drama Impacted Oura Members’ Metrics | The Pulse Blog
1-minute read
If you walked through the streets of New York late on Wednesday night, you could practically feel the electricity in the air. But as it turns out, the excitement of this Knicks playoff run isn’t just palpable—it’s measurable.
Anonymized, de-identified data from local Oura Members reveals that the city experienced both a live physiological spike during the nail-biting game and a measurable slump in recovery the next morning.
From the 8:30pm tip-off to the final moments when the Knicks staged the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, New Yorkers were riding an emotional rollercoaster. Here’s a look at how the drama on the court translated into the Oura data.