Decibel #9
Here’s some things from around the internet I consumed this week and found interesting:
Below, you can find some of my thoughts on them.
1. Lead Sugar?!
Like other lead(II) salts, lead(II) acetate has a sweet taste, which led to its historical use as a sugar substitute in both wines and foods.
!!!
Excuse me?! I’m not sure how long we’ve known lead is toxic, but it still astonishes me to learn that humans used to (and maybe even still do) use lead compounds as sweeteners.
2. Petrov Day (9/26)
I do enjoy averting nuclear war.
I think Petrov Day is worthy of celebration. It’s rather wild how close we’ve (the collective human we) come to large scale nuclear war, so I’m all for public celebration that might encourage behaviors or traditions that continue to advert nuclear war.
Petrov Day doesn’t have a precise definition for what exactly is being celebrated, but then again neither do most holidays. Any one person might have a precise definition of what is being celebrated on Thanksgiving, but across the population, I suspect we would find some wiggle. For Petrov day, common answers might be:
- Not doing things that would cause immense destruction (or the end of the world)
- Avoiding the dangers of unrestrained escalation
- Not taking unilateralist action
- Resisting social pressures in order to do the right thing
- Making the right decision even in the face of uncertainty
This also got me thinking about holidays and celebrations in general. I used to think that holiday traditions were mostly silly. Not stupid, they just didn’t hold much value to me. They felt antiquated.
As I’ve aged I’ve gained an appreciation for a good tradition. But it must be a good tradition. Good traditions are the ones where you find meaning in them. I first found this happening for me when I made up my own. Examples: Sharing a hug with a girlfriend whenever we hiked across a bridge, doing a little dance while tasting dishes while cooking.
Of course, popular traditions can be good traditions too — I find joy in fresh cut Christmas trees, but just because tradition says to make turkey on Thanksgiving, it doesn’t mean you can’t choose to make a better bird1 instead. When you actively choose to celebrate using a personally meaningful tradition, that is when they have the most value.
3. The Anthropocene Reviewed
Author’s note: I know it’s not a link to an “internet” thing… but maybe book reviews can fit in Decibel too? Let me know if you’d prefer me to stick to digital content. You can’t exactly click off and read this quickly… but then again I have a tendency to watch and write about 1.5 hour YouTube videos, so maybe it just doesn’t matter.
The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green
4.7/5.0
John Green’s stories and flow bring a humor and joy and solemn solidarity to an appreciation of life, humanity, and living.
[p.58] she just nodded, and then I filled the awkward silence by asking her what her biggest fear was. “Geese,” she answered.
The book is a collection of vignettes reviewing various parts of human existence. Some are universal and some are extremely niche or personal. Almost all of them are moving in some way. Not necessarily emotionally moving, but moving my of thoughts, and of my attention, and sometimes my emotion too. Drawing me in, John explores his experience of humanity while keeping my rapt attention.
[p.62] It would be inaccurate, then, to claim our dominion over bears is a wholly recent phenomenon. Still, it’s a bit odd that our children now commonly cuddle with a stuffed version of an animal we used to be afraid to call by name.
John has a knack for an excellent quote, which he uses often (self admitted maybe too often), and in which my inner poet delights. I found myself often highlighting passages to remember, or to quote myself.
[p.149] In her strange and beautiful interactive memoir Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, published in 2016, she wrote, “If one is generously contracted 80 years, that amounts to 29,220 days on Earth. Playing that out, how many times then, really, do I get to look at a tree? 12,395? There has to be an exact number. Let’s just say it is 12,395. Absolutely, that is a lot, but it is not infinite, and anything less than infinite seems too measly a number and is not satisfactory.”
A few stories fell a bit flat for me (especially the final one about the photograph). John chased some rabbit holes, which I appreciate, but for which I didn’t share his enthusiasm and can’t give the full five stars accordingly.
An excellent read, worth my time and very likely yours. Would recommend.
Page 6 “For anyone trying to discern what to do w/ their life: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. That’s pretty much all the info u need.”
Duck. Or chicken. Or just about any other bird. But duck would be at the top of my list. Of course “a better bird” could be fish or root vegetables as well.