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Hey Seq-ers, Maddie here! After three tries, I can say I have finally done something that most Americans do between the ages of 16 and 18. I passed my road test and officially have a driver’s license. And yes, I looked up statistics from the Department of Transportation to fact-check myself and found out that nearly 60 percent of U.S. 18-year-olds can drive. Another shocking car statistic: almost 90 percent of Americans ages 25 and older have a driver’s license. What! That’s so many people. Try getting 90 percent of Americans to do anything — go to the doctor, vote, even graduate high school — and you’d come up short. But nope, everyone was out there driving except for me, apparently. I want to say loudly and clearly (because this did come up in a recent phone call, and we Jews are notorious for passing around guilt like it’s norovirus) that it is nobody’s fault that I have just now received my driver’s license at the age of 26. Driving is hard, and growing up in a city predisposed me to not driving or feeling like I didn’t have to the way most of my peers did. It also is squarely the fault of my driving test administrators that it took me three tries. I mean, I failed my last test because I put the car in park when parallel parking but didn’t engage the parking brake. Sure, Jan. As a newly minted member of our car-centric driving society, I’ve been thinking a lot about statistical anomalies. One of my favorite Planet Money episodes is titled “The Modal American” and explores this concept of what we really mean when we say “normal” or “average.” It’s one thing to worry about what the “average” person is thinking or feeling on a philosophical level, but it’s another to be a journalist and to wonder about normalcy in the context of a job. As a reporter, I often feel like I need to be a middleman for the reader, introducing them to topics and stories that interest me, but also acting as a bullhorn for their concerns and preempting their questions when interviewing public figures, scientists, and the like. In that context, it’s critical to understand my readers — or better yet, empathize with them. Getting behind the wheel as a now licensed driver and realizing that it is an experience that literally everybody else has had threw me for an unexpected loop, since it made me wonder what other statistically normal things I don’t realize I don’t do.* But normalcy can also be boring and stupid. And also, it’s simply not who I am. I am not normal, nor are many of the people I hold dear. It’s cliche, but I find a lot of joy in eccentricities, whether shared or not. It would probably be a net positive for society if everyone were as obsessed with reading the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s BeefWatch Newsletter as I am, but then I’d be a lot less fun at parties. I am also so grateful that the four of us at Sequencer are weird in our own ways. Case in point: Dan’s thinly veiled screed against the very notion of a “humane” execution. Leave it to him to deliver a gut punch with a smile on his face. Another Dan banger: whatever this is. Also this week, I blogged about when weirdness goes too far in the form of people eating undercooked bear meat and getting parasites. (Shoutout to Max for the inspiration behind the “potluck catered by the Kennedys” line). As always, stay strange out there, and drive safe! -Maddie *I also work in public radio, where our listenership is often behind the wheel. Kind of a mind trip to think I have not experienced our product in the way that most of our listeners do. I wonder if this will change some fundamental aspect of my storytelling going forward! What we’re working on: Max: I'm working on a new essay for you guys. It's about color vision deficiencies. It's also about this RGB color guessing game I'm obsessed with https://hexcodle.com/. Stay tuned for that. Also, I have some ~~two exciting new developments~~ to the story I wrote last week. One is that, without spoiling too much for those who haven't read yet, I can now claim VICTORY for the mission I lay out in the story's introduction. The other development is that I did a couple of face recognition tests (1, 2) and they were both fun and flattering. Lmk how you do! Dan: I got 10/14 on that first test which is bullshit because how am I supposed to tell apart a bunch of identical looking white guys? Especially when I started laughing because of this guy:  What a cool guy. He’s so cool! This week I had a couple of short pieces in Sequencer, which I highly recommend you read. Last week, coming off some reporting in Bolts about the state of Alabama using nitrogen gas to execute prisoners on death row, I wrote a bit. It’s about research in euthanasia for animals, and how no one should ever use nitrogen gas for anything like this. Capital punishment is inherently barbaric and using a method of execution not humane enough for laboratory mice is somehow worse. In lighter news, a man had three penises. Nothing really new to add, I think I left it all on the field with this one. Guy had three penises. Maddie: I got 10/14 on the first one, which means I’m great at recognizing faces but not a super-recognizer (this pretty much squares with how I think about my own ability). Would y’all like more H5N1 content? I thought the recent CDC update was super interesting, particularly the part about the new pilot program with pharmacy chains to provide free testing. That’s a good first step, since getting tests from public health labs into people’s noses has proven difficult. But I’d be very surprised if this new pilot program solves all our surveillance issues. In day-job land, I’m very vocal about how much I like the TV shows “LOST” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” so it was fun and wild to be able to produce stories on both of them! A new documentary about “LOST” and the actor who plays Josh Chan comes to Honolulu! Worlds collide and I’m feelin’ great. Kim: I got 12/14. Am I a super recognizer? Email us hello@sequencermag.com and let us know your score! What we’re reading: Max: I finished The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin this weekend. It was really fun and tender!! So in my personal tradition, I celebrated by watching the movie adaptation and .... wow. It was terrible! I'm usually pretty easy to please but it's hard for me to find anything nice to say about it! It's actually such a good case for *not* trying to make a movie match a book. Anyway, in science stuff, I really liked this piece from Matt Simon in Grist about a food of the future, featuring aquatic ferns, pond scum, and something called Very Fast Death Factor. Dan: I’m still reading The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, which continues to be a hilarious case study in macho mid-century military dudes butting heads with buzzcut mid-century engineers, when they’re not fighting with each other. At one point John Glenn, one of the Mercury Seven and by far the most obnoxiously white bread, gets up at a private meeting of the seven astronauts (which they called “seances”) and tells them they have got to stop cheating on their wives, if only for the sake of the mission’s public appearance. Alan Shephard stands up and says their wives aren’t there in Cape Canaveral, which at the time was a fourth-rate nowheresville, most military spouses at the time had some kind of an arrangement or understanding about what their husbands got up to on assignment, and also to mind his own beeswax. After this settles down, all seven of the astronauts close ranks and literally start changing the parameters of the mission itself, taking control of things like their own training, the design of the spacecraft (they wanted a window), and even the words they used. The spacecraft was initially referred to as a “capsule,” but they thought that was a befitting term for the best fighter pilots in the world, which is how they saw themselves. Besides that, I’ve been doing sudoku puzzles from a big book before I go to sleep. It’s nice and it makes me way less angry than doing the New York Times’s Connections. Kim: This very much doesn’t count as reading, but I’ve been hooked on the Korean cooking competition series Culinary Class Wars, on Netflix. It’s the culinary equivalent of Squid Game, plus it’s actually a reality show. The competition is fierce; the tasks are brutal. The playbook of South Korean entertainment is all about turning everything into a battle-of-attrition-style competition, from improv comedy to school to social media to fitness. South Korea, you’re a country of sadists — entertaining sadists. Maddie: I just got home from watching a production of the opera “Stuck Elevator.” A 10/10 idea and execution, it’s a contemporary opera that follows a delivery man’s descent into madness as he remains trapped in an elevator for 81 hours — based on a true story of a guy in New York!! If and when it tours elsewhere, I’d highly recommend checking it out.
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