Fission for Compliments

Peace Prize, Feel Good Friday

It took the inventor of dynamite 158 years to blow up irony. The Nobel Prizes were famously established in the will of Alfred Nobel. While Nobel invented dynamite (and a lot of other stuff) and made his fortune off that creation and by selling armaments, the peace prize given in his name was just awarded to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again." Maybe the Nobel committee should start giving awards for reputation management? Or maybe my nuclear reaction is the result of being too jaded by our current era when lying and gaslighting are often rewarded. Let's focus on the positive and embrace the progress this award represents. NPR: A Japanese organization of atomic bombing survivors wins the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

+ "Adam Smith has spent 18 years recording the moments after the world's brightest minds receive a life-changing call from the Nobel Prize committee." Not all Nobel laureates react the way you might expect. (These days, every call or text I get is from someone raising money for a campaign. So if by chance I'm selected by the Nobel Committee, I've requested that they slide into my DMs.)

2

Novel Use of Fiction

During a speech in Pittsburgh, Barack Obama lamented that Trump can lie about something as serious as a hurricane and not pay a price. "The idea of intentionally trying to deceive people in their most desperate and vulnerable moments ... My question is, when did that become OK?" Sadly, it's more than OK. For a lot of politicians and others, it's working. In The Atlantic (Gift Article) Charlie Warzel explains why what’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis. I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is. "Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants."

3

Tough as Old Boots

"It was the call the family of a young British climber who went missing on Everest 100 years ago had given up hope of ever getting. Last month, a team of climbers filming a National Geographic documentary stumbled on a preserved boot, revealed by melting ice on a glacier. This boot was believed to belong to Andrew Comyn 'Sandy' Irvine, who disappeared while attempting to climb Everest in June 1924 with his partner George Mallory. What's more, it could potentially help solve one of mountaineering's biggest mysteries: whether or not the pair succeeded in becoming the first people to summit Everest, 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top." BBC: Family tells of 'relief' after 1924 climber’s foot found on Everest.

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: It's always perplexing how some shows that are pretty good get a ton of attention and many awards while other shows that are much better get very little attention and few awards. As far as I can tell, Pachinko's main Emmy nomination was Outstanding Main Title Design. Yet, the show is a multigenerational epic with an outstanding cast, great cinematography, etc. Season two is out on AppleTV and it's another excellent one. Check out Pachinko. (And yes, the main title design is quite good.)

+ What to Hear: John Hiatt is one of my favorite artists. My proofer RD and I have probably seen him more than 20 times. Great writer, great performer, and a great guy. Here he his is sitting down for an interview (with a few songs) at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum as part of their Poets and Prophets series.

+ What to Read: George Saunders, Percival Everett, Dennis Lehane, Lauren Groff ... what could bring many great great writers and artists together on one project? They've come together to present 270 Reasons to Vote for Harris/Walz. "Maybe you have a loved one or friend or colleague who still needs evidence that a Harris/Walz administration would be preferable to four more years of Trump. Maybe you know a new voter who is just beginning to focus on the election. Or maybe you yourself are weighing the pros and cons." These are all short pieces providing concrete reasons. Check out and please share 270 Reasons. They even included one from some schmuck named Dave Pell.

5

Extra, Extra

What Elon Strange Trip It's Been: Something is pretty wrong in American politics if the best we can hope for is that our billionaires will outspend their billionaires. "In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the richest man in the world has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history. He has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election. He has relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44 billion and has used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and to insult its candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris." NYT (Gift Article): Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump. (If he wins, the billions he blew ruining Twitter will seem like a bargain.)

+ Princess Diaries: "Hala said that she and three of her sisters—Sahar, Maha, and Jawaher—were being held captive in the villa. They had been there since their mother, one of the King’s wives, absconded to London to escape his control years earlier. Burdick offered to try to find a way to help, and the princess agreed to return the knife to the kitchen. 'I did my method of sedating a patient, which is to talk with them,' he said." The New Yorker: The Texan Doctor and the Disappeared Saudi Princesses. "Four daughters in the royal family were kept drugged and imprisoned for almost two decades. A physician who tried to free them speaks out for the first time."

+ Not the Hummer They Had in Mind: "In Granbury, Texas, residents can hear the sound of money being made at all hours of the day, but it’s not making them rich. Instead, neighbors in the town southwest of Fort Worth say that the persistent low hum emanating from the Bitcoin mine operated by Marathon Digital has caused them stress, loss of sleep and other unexplained ailments." Neighbors of Bitcoin mine in Texas file nuisance lawsuit over incessant humming.

+ Aisle Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places: Want to feel better about grocery prices in America? Check out grocery prices basically everywhere else in the world.

+ The Calgorithm: The remaking of college athletic divisions will result in more money for participants, but it is also making for some crazy travel for the so-called student-athletes. Cal taps NASA specialist amid concerns over ACC travel.

+ If the Spirit Moves You: Spirit Halloween is transforming some of its stores into a Christmas spinoff. (In the end, the only things that will survive are cockroaches and Spirit pop-up stores.)

6

Feel Good Friday

WaPo (Gift Article): Doctor running half marathon sees woman collapse, saves her, finishes race. "Emergency room doctor Shane Naidoo saw Chrystal Rinehold on the ground and helped her, then accompanied her to a hospital. After, he completed the race."

+ "A teenager, then known as William Martin Joel, lived in the working-class suburb of Hicksville — his family so limited that they didn’t own a TV. He took a tiring minimum wage job dredging oysters. The dredge crisscrossed the waters of Long Island Sound, including a bay that curves like a comma and faces some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. From the boat, he could see a stately brick mansion. 'Rich bastards,' he thought to himself. 'I’ll never live in a house like that.'" Billy Joel Is Selling the Mansion He First Saw While Dredging Oysters. Because you had to be a big shot, didn't cha...

+ "We do a lot of searches for people in the water ... So to get to have a success story like this is not as common as we'd like it. And we were all very, very excited. We couldn't believe it, honestly, that he was OK." ‘We were ecstatic:’ Coast Guard rescues a man clinging to a cooler in open water.

+ Teen breaks record by climbing Earth's highest peaks.

+ Taylor Swift Donates $5M to Feeding America for Hurricane Relief.

+ Northern lights dazzle skies across the U.S. and world.

+ Grandad's secret to 90-year friendship with childhood best friend. (I remain best friends with my childhood best friends and I'm pretty sure the secret to doing so is finding a group of folks who are all bad at making new friends.)