The other week I was talking to a friend about a research study on the Best Possible Self exercise. “The best possible self intervention consists of a brief writing exercise in which you imagine your best possible self in a potential future when pretty much everything has gone right.” There’s been some suggestion that the exercise can make participants happier. Although the research study found that the exercise won’t make a lasting change in well-being, serious attempts were found to give happiness levels a short-term boost.
Lobsters aren’t exactly immortal, but they can live for a very, very long time. My favorite source for lobster facts is Jacob Knowles, a lobster fisher who posts videos about lobsters he catches, with facts, on tiktok and instagram.
I was pretty enthralled by this article in Outside Magazine about how a three-person crew survived in the Pacific after their ship’s mast fell off and they were later overturned by a huge storm wave. (Although, I have follow-up questions!)
My two favorite apps for IDing birds are Audubon’s and The Cornell Lab’s Merlin Bird ID. Earlier today I was walking on a pier along the ocean and saw a bird on the water with a crab in its beak. The bird flipped the crab over a couple of times, a few crab legs falling off in the process, then swallowed the crab in one gulp. After, the bird dove and kicked deep down to the unseen bottom of the harbor to hunt for another one, and I watched air bubbles trickle up from the dark before the bird returned. I thought the bird was some kind of loon I’d never seen before, but from the Merlin app I was able to figure out that it was just the same common loon I’d seen all summer, now in its winter molt.
Artist and Writer Jenny Odell wrote about bird watching, and bird weirdness, in a review of What It’s Like to Be a Bird for the Atlantic.
“How Nature Can Make You Kinder, Happier, and More Creative” brings together research on how walking in nature relieves stress, fatigue, and brooding, increases creativity, and might make us feel more alive.
Scientists are on track to sequence a human genome in its entirety by the end of 2023, something which has never quite been done before. “Why the human genome was never completed” explains the reasons the sequencing work was never finished before, why you might have heard differently, how this time is different, and what a complete sequence might offer.
Thanks for reading,
Kate
I absolutely love the scene you painted of watching that loon eat and hunt. I am always in such awe of writers who can say so much in such a short format. It's also so fun to not only get a look into that loon's life, but the smallest peek into yours.