"She interviewed elders in the community about traditional yogurt recipes.... Then her grandmother said, 'Oh, do you know that I used to use ants?'"

"... Mutlu Sirakova’s uncle gave the research team a crash course in ant yogurt making. The team took four red wood ants and dropped them in a small container of warm milk. They then sealed the container, buried it in the ant hill, and left it there overnight. The next day, the researchers removed the insects from the partially coagulated concoction and gave it a taste. It 'had a slightly tangy taste with mild herbaceousness and pronounced flavors of grass-fed fat,' according to the research paper...."

From "This Traditional Yogurt Recipe’s Secret Ingredient Has 6 Legs/Scientists recreated a formula involving ants and milk that is used in Bulgarian villages to yield yogurt with an herbaceous flavor" (NYT).

"They determined that the ants contributed several types of acids and enzymes that worked together to coagulate the milk. These include formic acid, which the ants produce as a defense mechanism, as well as strains of lactic and acetic acids produced by bacteria living in the ants’ guts. And once the ants start the yogurt culture, more yogurt can be created by adding additional milk — no need for more insects."

I like the part where they buried the container in the ant hill. I don't think that figured into the scientific explanation. It made me think of folk remedies that have burying something as a step. For example, speaking of grandmothers, my grandmother said you could cure a wart by cutting open a potato, rubbing it on the wart, then burying the potato. Maybe there was some curative chemical in the potato — akin to the formic acid in the ants — but the burying must be imagined magic.

"It is the idea that we all contain the world and the world disappears when we disappear. There’s a word for that and I can’t f***ing remember what it is."

"That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of that happening to me and every time that I can’t remember a word or something, I think, 'This is the start.'"

Said Stephen King, quoted in "Stephen King on dementia — ‘I’m afraid of that happening to me’/The bestselling author, 77, talks about why he writes every day — and says each time he can’t remember the right word he worries: 'This is the start'" (London Times).

The article isn't entirely about the fear of your own brain pre-deceasing you. It's about other fears, including the fear of AI. King says:

“I don’t really care about AI. My sons [Owen King and Joe Hill] are both writers … and they’re all hot to trot about AI and how awful it is for writers.... I just think that it’s a foregone conclusion that people are going to write better prose than some kind of automated intelligence.... I think that once there is a kind of self-replicating intelligence, once it learns how to teach itself, in other words, it isn’t going to be a question of human input any more. It’s going to be able to do that itself. And then … have you ever read The Time Machine by HG Wells? In it, a Victorian scientist travels to the year 802,701...

I like how he has the precise year, down to the 1, still in his mind and worth saying as a challenge to the fiend, Dementia, that wants to infiltrate and destroy.

"Juvenal said that being a gladiator turned an ugly man into an Adonis in women’s eyes. 'It’s the steel they love,' the poet wrote."

"Men were obsessed too. Maecenas, a patron of the arts under the emperor Augustus, discussed the warriors’ form on a carriage ride with the poet Horace; the playwright Terence complained that one of his performances had been ruined by a crowd rushing in thinking that gladiators were fighting. The Romans felt it was good luck to part a bride’s hair with a spear that had been thrust into a gladiator’s body and drank tinctures of their blood to cure epilepsy...."

From "Sex, sesterces and status — the perks of being a gladiator/Those Who Are About Die is a myth-slaying history of the world of Roman fighters by the classicist and novelist Harry Sidebottom" (London Times).

"Through it all, Europeans tried their best to bear up, especially in places where air conditioning is still a luxury, or frowned upon."

"Some people worry about the pollution it causes; some older Italians just believe it’s bad for health."

From "Dangerous Heat Grips Much of Europe, With More to Come/A punishing heat wave broke records in southern Europe and hasn’t peaked yet in some places, prompting warnings to residents, employers and tourists to alter their habits" (London Times).

What is this belief held by older Italians... and could they be right? People love the comfort of air conditioning and at some point feel fiercely attached to it and resistant to hearing that it might be bad. Obviously, it's bad for the environment, but what about our health? 

But first, what exactly to the old Italians think? According to Grok, the idea is that you should keep you body in balance and not move it back and forth between hot and cold. And they speak of "colpo d’aria" or "colpo di freddo" — "blow of air" or "blow of cold" — as a cause of various pains and respiratory ailments. There's a mistrust of modern inventions and a preference for traditional ways, such as opening windows, fanning, and seeking out the shade. Natural seems better than artificial. 

Is there an element of truth in that... truth... or beauty?

I wondered if The London Times had ever talked about "colpo d’aria" in any other article. Answer: Yes, 3 times:

"And, for all Haberman’s success in demystifying Trump, at times she seems to vest him with eerie power."

"In interviews, she has often invoked the children’s book 'Harold and the Purple Crayon' to illustrate Trump’s peculiar blurring of fact and fantasy. The tale concerns a boy named Harold who goes for a walk in the evening and draws things from his imagination, including an entire city, with his enchanted crayon. 'What Trump tries to do,' Haberman told me, 'is create realities for himself and everyone else.'... Toward the end of our meeting, Haberman told me that she is superstitious. She was wearing an evil-eye bracelet. Another evil eye was in her pocket. 'I just have totems,' she said..."

From "Maggie Haberman, the Confidence Man’s Chronicler/During the Trump era, Haberman became an avatar of journalism’s promise as well as of its failures. She sees herself as a demystifier" by Katy Waldman (The New Yorker).

"One player told The Post via Twitter DM that they changed their computer’s clock to do the Wordle early and avoid breaking a 90-day streak."

 From "Wordle players break streaks to support New York Times union walkout While it might be a small sacrifice, breaking a streak can be tough. Here’s why" (WaPo).

Other players weren’t aware of the union’s call to skip the daily puzzle. On the Wordle subreddit, some lamented not knowing about the call sooner. On social media, other players declined to break their streak consciously, with some claiming they didn’t see the point, and others not interested in taking such an action....

As The Cut explored in 2019, people can become attached to their streaks, and the bigger a streak grows, the more a person might feel they have to lose by breaking it....

Do you have any streaks that you're truly attached to, that you feel you'd lose a lot by breaking?

I really only have one: this blog. I'm coming up on 19 years of blogging every single day. The longer it gets the more unbreakably magical it feels. Or... no. That's not really true. Going the whole first year without missing a day felt far more significant than the completion of any other year. Now, it's just normal. But don't misunderstand me: I love normal. I'm very happy to have something that feels so good that I get to do every day. 

What's the tag for this? I had to think for a second: It's "superstition"!

DePape blogged about meditating, playing video games at the library, and buying "a fantasy miniature salamander" on Etsy.

He blogged about not buying "a fairy house on Etsy" because — as WaPo puts it in "Alleged assailant filled blog with delusional thoughts in days before Pelosi attack" — he "was frustrated that the doors were painted and so could not be used by a fairy."

In DePape's words: “They have lots of fairy houses but NONE of them are MADE for fairies,” he wrote. 

WaPo casually defames Jordan Peterson:

In late August, DePape became engrossed in the decision by Twitter to ban Jordan Peterson for his posts about transgender people. The Canadian psychologist turned conservative podcaster had once said that being transgender was comparable to “satanic ritual abuse.”

Jordan Peterson did NOT say that "being transgender was comparable to 'satanic ritual abuse.'" Peterson  compared the belief that one is transgender to the belief that one has been a victim of satanic ritual abuse. He did not suggest that transgender people are like satanic abusers! He was discussing the phenomenon of "social contagion."

Back to WaPo:

DePape published six posts in support of Peterson and then continued with his own caustic takes on transgender people, saying they should not be a protected group. “They were not BORN a freak. They are not INHERENTLY a freak threw no fault of their own. … They are CHOOSING to be FREAKS,” he wrote in one post.

DePape also misunderstood Peterson, but not as badly as The Washington Post misunderstood Peterson.

"I wish I could say that the French Alps healed me. That I basked in their beauty and found the spiritual rest and direction I was seeking."

"But Grenoble frightened me. I heard stories of midday muggings where victims were pepper sprayed. Once, I saw two cars in a parking lot engulfed in flames. Another time, a rock shattered the bus window next to my face while I rode home from work, scattering glass fragments across the seat."

Writes Susanne Parker Loelius, in "To Find Love, Rub the (Bronze) Bulge/Groping a statue seemed a little odd, but entire tour groups were doing it, so I did too. And voilà!" (NYT).

"The Kibbe system relies on Old Hollywood archetypes and a balance between what he calls 'yin' (softness, curve) and 'yang' (sharp angles, edges)."

"If you’re all yang — tall and lean with sharp shoulders, like Katharine Hepburn — you could be a dramatic. If you’re all yin, with soft curves like Marilyn Monroe, you’re probably a romantic. Naturals (yang-dominant but 'blunt' rather than sharp, often with broad shoulders, like a ’90s supermodel), classics (think Grace Kelly) and gamines (petite and high-contrast) are somewhere in the middle. The types are modified using adjectives like 'soft' (Sophia Loren is a soft dramatic, for instance) or 'flamboyant' (Audrey Hepburn, a flamboyant gamine). For each one, there is a set of guidelines on how to dress to look one’s best.... The Kibbe system, like the Myers-Briggs test, also has a social component: Finding out that a celebrity shares your type may help you 'feel a connection to another person, a very glamorous and visible and beautiful kind of person,' Professor Emre said.... One entry from Mr. Kibbe’s 1987 book states that romantics, defined by a curvy figure, 'possess extraordinary human empathy' and that logic is secondary to their 'innate experience of a situation.' Gamines might have a 'bubbly energy,' Mr. Kibbe said, and a soft dramatic, with her blend of yang and yin, is both 'bold' and 'receptively accommodating' according to his book. 'The key is the integration of the inner and outer,' Mr. Kibbe said. Some may take issue with the essentialism of such logic. While Mr. Kibbe sees it as analogous to astrology, the system nonetheless suggests that something true and inherent about a person can be gleaned from their bone structure."

From "What’s Your Kibbe Type? David Kibbe, an image consultant who got his start in the 1980s, has watched his body-typing system take off with a new, digitally native audience" (NYT).

Something true and inherent about a person can be gleaned from their bone structure? That's most analogous not to astrology but phrenology.

This craze is out of synch with the current interest in transgenderism. It assumes your mind fits your body.

"[A]n 1885 anti-vaccine banner that read 'Pure blood and no adulteration'; and activists who asserted that vaccination was 'pollution of our veins.'..."

"The association of 'pure,' 'natural' and 'good' would have made perfect sense at the time, since natural goodness and unnatural evil were standard in popular discussions of health. In his immensely popular 1867 book 'The Philosophy of Eating,' homeopath Albert J. Bellows blamed all illness on impurity and in a chapter titled 'Impure Blood' explained how good health depended on 'natural food' and 'pure water.' Illness was the result of 'unnatural drugs or medicine.' The same associations remained powerful in the mid-20th century, when opponents of water fluoridation complained about unnatural adulteration of what should be pure. Their position — described by social scientists at the time as 'naturalist syndrome' — was so mainstream that Stanley Kubrick skewered it in his classic 'Dr. Strangelove,' wherein the lunatic Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper bemoans how fluoride corrupts the 'pure blood of pure Americans.'"

 From "How the phrase ‘natural immunity’ misleads us about real risks and dangers/Antibodies to the coronavirus are not better just because they are ‘natural'" (WaPo, September 29, 2021). 

That's written by Alan Levinovitz, an associate professor of religious studies at James Madison University and the author of "Natural: How Faith in Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science."

Believe the science... of tossing coins into fountains.

These maniacs are flipping coins into a fountain for good luck on fighting climate change after they flew their private jets to hang out and talk.

Stop the madness. pic.twitter.com/egt3A0HNhc

— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) November 1, 2021

Believe the science... of astrology.

The Salt Lake County Health Department gives us this:

Now that Mercury is not in retrograde, we're just going to leave this here...

(and yes, this is based on data) pic.twitter.com/fOxBHaDPvY

— Salt Lake Health (@SaltLakeHealth) October 19, 2021

Is that okay because it's sort of a joke or all in good fun or a possibly effective way to stimulate a competition to get your group to win? But it reinforces superstition and channels people into fantasy, and it might cause some people to become more resistant to getting the vaccination. It's easy to imagine a Scorpio identifying with a rebel image and leaning into it.

I got there via The Washington Post, which has a headline that isn't grounded in science but is perfectly supportive of astrology believers: "What does your star sign say about your covid vaccination status? One Utah county crunched the numbers. Leos are apparently most likely to be vaccinated, and Scorpios the least. An astrologer weighs in."

I know WaPo will defend itself by claiming astrology is just for fun and it's a relaxing diversion from all the sad news. And surely its readers know astrology isn't science. They can dabble in astrology and then get back to following real science. 

From WaPo:

For the Annals of Lateral Thinking: Ohio makes vaccinating into a million-dollar lottery.

Governor Mike DeWine announces on Twitter: 

Two weeks from tonight on May 26th, we will announce a winner of a separate drawing for adults who have received at least their first dose of the vaccine. This announcement will occur each Wednesday for five weeks, and the winner each Wednesday will receive one million dollars.

The pool of names for the drawing will be derived from the Ohio Secretary of State’s publicly available voter registration database. Further, we will make available a webpage for people to sign up for the drawings if they are not in a database we are using. The Ohio Department of Health will be the sponsoring agency for the drawings, and the Ohio Lottery will conduct them. The money will come from existing federal Coronavirus Relief Funds.

To be eligible to win, you must be at least 18 years of age or older on the day of the drawing. You must be an Ohio resident. And, you must be vaccinated before the drawing. We will have further, specific details tomorrow and in the days ahead.

I know that some may say, “DeWine, you’re crazy! This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money.” But truly, the real waste at this point in the pandemic -- when the vaccine is readily available to anyone who wants it -- is a life lost to COVID-19.

You could spend $5 million on ads cajoling people — or shaming them — into getting vaccinated. One way or another, it costs money to complete the vaccination project. The great thing about the lottery idea is that it's an effort to reach minds that are not primarily oriented to science — people who are emotional and transrational.

Am I making up the word "transrational"? I had to look it up. I can't credit myself with coinage. There's a whole Wikipedia article, but let's see if it means what I — in my thwarted word-coining effort — had in mind:

"In Scottish custom, Unspoken Water was water believed to have healing properties when collected 'from under a bridge, over which the living pass and the dead are carried...'"

"'... brought in the dawn or twilight to the house of a sick person, without the bearer’s speaking, either in going or returning.'... The custom is long obsolete. The 1901 The Book of Saint Fittick by Thomas White Ogilvie contains an elderly woman's account of being 'the last wife in Torry to cure a bairn wi' unspoken water ... comin' or gaun I spak' tae naebody — for that's what mak's unspoken water.'"

From "Unspoken Water," Wikipedia, clicked on from "Religion and Water," Wikipedia, which I was reading to pursue some ideas that occurred to me as I was listening to the song "Drifting Too Far From the Shore," which Meade has been playing — in various versions — all morning. (The Dylan song with virtually the same title is different, but influenced by this old song.)

The Scottish meaning of "unspoken" is "Without having spoken" — according to the OED, which quotes an 1825 Scottish dictionary: "Unspoken water, water..brought..to the house of a sick person, without the bearer's speaking either in going or returning."

"'Speak of the devil' is the short form of the English-language idiom 'Speak of the devil and he doth appear'..."

Says Wikipedia, in an article I'd say more about, but I've blogged it in the past — here, just last August. "It is used when an object of discussion unexpectedly becomes present during the conversation." I didn't say back then what had happened that got me thinking of that saying, and I won't say this time either. But it's weird when you say the name of a person you haven't seen around or even mentioned in years and he shows up the same day.

"'The cries were deafening,' the elderly vendor says as she serves up dishes of grilled mackerel, yellow curry and steaming glutinous rice."

"She saw at least nine girls being carried out of their classrooms, kicking and screaming. She recognised some of them as regulars at her stall. 'It was a heartbreaking sight,' she says. She later saw a witch doctor enter a small prayer room with his assistants.... 'Women are softer and physically weaker,' [said Zaki Ya, a spiritual healer with 20 years of experience]. 'That makes them more susceptible to spiritual possession.... Science is important but it can't fully explain the supernatural... Non-believers won't understand these attacks unless it happens to them.'... Academic Afiq Noor argues that the stricter implementation of Islamic law in school... is linked to the surge in outbreaks... The theory is that such a constricted environment could be creating more anxiety.... To clinical psychologists like Steven Diamond, the 'painful, frightening and embarrassing symptoms' often associated with mass hysteria could be 'indicative of a frustrated need for attention. Might their remarkable symptoms be saying something about how they are really feeling inside but are unable or unwilling to allow themselves to consciously acknowledge, feel or verbalise?'"

From "The mystery of screaming schoolgirls in Malaysia" (BBC). Much more at the link, with interesting photographs of life in Kelantan, Malaysia and of a $2,000 "anti-hysteria kit" (containing formic acid, ammonia inhalants, pepper spray, and pain-causing bamboo 'pincers' intended to drive out evil spirits).

Please note that there are certain kinds of events in this world that I do not blog.

I will quote my mother: It will only encourage them.

CORRECTION: The post title originally began "Please not..."

I noticed the error when commenter Unknown wrote:

do you mean 'note'?

And Birkel said...

Please not to leave that title as it is.

... which I originally misread as "Please leave that title as it is," because I instantly became entranced by the accidental phrase "Please not." It's my new motto.

ADDED: I'm reading the Wikipedia article, "Speak of the devil":

"Speak of the devil" is the short form of the English-language idiom "Speak of the devil and he doth appear"... It is used when an object of discussion unexpectedly becomes present during the conversation. It can also be used about a topic that quickly becomes relevant, such as the onset of rain or a car breaking down....

The article has a long list of the equivalent expression in many languages. A sampling:

• Libyan Arabic: "آحكي على القط يجيك ينط" (`ihky al ket yajek yanot), which translates to "mention the cat, and he will come jumping"...
• Tunisian Arabic: "اذكر الصيد ياكلك" (odhkour essed yaklek), which translates to "Mention the lion, he eats you"...
• Bulgarian: "Говорим за вълка, а той - в кошарата", translated as "Speak of the wolf and it is in the sheep pen."...
• Dutch: "Als je het over de duivel hebt, trap je op zijn staart", which translates to "If you speak of the devil, you step on his tail."....
• Italian: "Parli del diavolo e spuntano le corna", which translates as "Speak of the Devil and the horns will appear."...
• Swedish: "När man talar om trollen (så står de i farstun)", which translates to "When you speak of the trolls (they stand in the entrance hall)."...
• Yiddish: "מע זאָל דערמאָנען משיחן" (me zol dermonen mshikhn) which translates to "We should have talked about the Messiah," or "אַ שאָד מ'האָט נישט גערעדט פֿון משיח" (a shod m'hot nisht geredt fun mshikh), which translates to "A shame we weren't talking about the Messiah."...

The source of the myth that you need 10,000 steps a day is a Japanese clockmaker that marketed a pedometer called Manpo-kei in 1965.

There's no more science to it than that. Read Marketwatch, here.

Believing hitting the 10,000 number might motivate you to push a little further or to do it every day. Sorry to spoil that for you. But did you actually believe that 10,000 was magical?

Do you have any beliefs involving numbers? Do you know the point at which it deserves to be called "arithomania"? It would be funny if your answer to that last question had a number in it? (It's arithmomania when you've got 10 beliefs about numbers.)

Arithomania is a mental disorder that may be seen as an expression of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Individuals suffering from this disorder have a strong need to count their actions or objects in their surroundings. Sufferers may for instance feel compelled to count the steps while ascending or descending a flight of stairs or to count the number of letters in words. They often feel it is necessary to perform an action a certain number of times to prevent alleged calamities. Other examples include counting tiles on the floor or ceiling, the number of lines on the highway, or simply the number of times one breathes or blinks, or touching things a certain number of times such as a door knob or a table....

I'm empty and aching and I don't know why/Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike/They've all come to look for Arithomania....

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH brings up Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule and "New Study Destroys Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Rule." And Limited blogger said "I always thought 10,000 Maniacs was an unusually large number of maniacs." Here's the Wikipedia article "10,000" where you can make many discoveries about the meaning of 10,000. I'll just pick one, from Taoism:

The great Tao covers everything like a flood.
It flows to the left and to the right.
The ten thousand things depend upon it
and it denies none of them.
It accomplishes its task yet claims no reward.
It clothes and feeds the ten thousand things
yet it does not attempt to control them.
Therefore, it may be called "the little."
The ten thousand things return to it,
even though it does not control them.
Therefore, it may be called "the great."

So it is that the True Person does not wish to be great
and therefore becomes truly great.

"Much better article than reading about Trump."

That's the top-rated comment — by far — on the NYT article, "'Dog Suicide Bridge': Why Do So Many Pets Keep Leaping Into a Scottish Gorge?"

From the article: "The bridge’s location, hushed, lush and sometimes still, fits the description of what the pagan Celts called a 'thin place,' a mesmerizing spot where heaven and earth overlap. 'People in Dumbarton are very superstitious,' said Alastair Dutton, a local taxi driver. 'We grew up playing in the Overtoun grounds, and we believe in ghosts here because we’ve all seen or felt spirits up here.'"

Consider that the NYT news about Trump also feeds our hunger for stories about the supernatural. It was a "witch hunt." Dogs in Scotland are jumping off a bridge because of a ghost — "The White Lady of Overtoun." We like getting caught up in that sort of thing — like it, though we feel we loathe it. That's the way we are. Oh, not you, dear reader. You are above that sort of thing. No ghosts, no witches. Carry on.

"We need to drink the red liquid from the cursed dark sarcophagus in the form of some sort of carbonated energy drink so we can assume its powers and finally die"

... says a petition at change.org that has 16,000+ signatures, according to "Scientists identify mystery liquid in Egyptian sarcophagus/A POOL of murky, red liquid found around three mummies in an Egyptian sarcophagus has been analysed by scientists."

Horrifying images of a trio of skeletons floating in the murky soup led to rumours the “mummy juice” contained medicinal or supernatural properties, with locals anxious to bottle the stuff....

Authorities... revealed the liquid was neither “juice for mummies that contains an elixir of life” nor “red mercury” but something far more pedestrian — sewage water.

As if the "authorities" would tell us if it were the elixir of life. I say bottle "the murky soup" and let people buy it. And caveat emptor... or however you say that in Archaic Egyptian.

ADDED: