Intestinal Consequences
Internet round-up for the week of March 3, 2025
Hey hey, happy Friday!
It’s gray and overcast here today, kind of cold, and snowing — what is this, winter? I mean, come on. Extremely Chicago-coded.
I’m feeling a bit nostalgic this week as I found out that the Northbrook Court Apple Store is closing, which is the store out in the suburbs that I worked in after we first moved to Chicago in 2010. The Apple Store I’d been hired to work at, in Lincoln Park, had an issue with the external stainless steel during the build process and had to be completely re-wrapped, delaying the opening of the store.
So, from June to October of that year, I drove myself and a couple of car-less Lincoln Park coworkers out to the ‘burbs every weekday to work in Northbrook. I made a lot of new Midwestern friends there, became acquainted with California Pizza Kitchen, and even did a repair on (THE) Harold Ramis’s Mac Mini.
At that store, I had a parent bring their child’s MacBook Pro in and tell me that it was a “lemon” because the trackpad wasn’t working, and opened it up only to discover that the underside of the click mechanism was completely full of Cheeto dust. (I cleaned it.) Someone also told me they wanted their computer replaced because the MagSafe adapter wouldn’t charge their computer, and I found a staple magnetized to the charging port. (I pried it out.)
Ah, those were the days. Anyway, I worked there for a few months, and we still visited the Northbrook mall every so often afterwards — in fact, Damon and I stopped by there to buy sunglasses and have lunch at CPK the day we got engaged at the nearby Chicago Botanic Garden. 🥰
I eventually moved to my “home” store in Lincoln Park, where I spent the rest of my time at Apple. Here’s a pic from when the SVP of Retail, Ron Johnson, came to speak there:
Fun fact: The Lincoln Park Apple Store was (may not be anymore?) the only Apple Store with three sets of doors — one on each end, and one in the middle on the little plaza/promenade coming out of the North/Clybourn red line station.
Ah, nostalgia. It’s nice to look back on those days over a decade later when you’re not pissed off because you were assigned a “clopen” shift (close one night (2PM-11PM), open the next day (6AM-3PM)). Retail, am I right?
These days, I’m very grateful to be able to spend my days in sweatpants, having a sparkling clementine Izze for breakfast while I’m piddling around on the computer. And speaking of being on the computer — let’s get in to the goods from this week:
Headline of the week
Sigh.
Scientists, y’all seem to have a lot of time on your hands — researching deep sea creatures, attempting teleportation, letting fungi take the wheel — yet you still haven’t figured out how to revamp the human body so that it can eat one pound of cheddar cheese without intestinal consequences. Interesting priorities.
So yeah. Why not try to “reconstruct the woolly mammoth,” right?
Whatever. Just show me the damn elephant mice.
Ohhhh.
Okay, I get it now. Woolly mouse is very cute.
But — I would like to understand how cute fuzzy mouse = resurrected ancient elephant…
CBS News says:
On Tuesday, Colossal announced that its scientists have simultaneously edited seven genes in mice embryos to create mice with long, thick, woolly hair. They nicknamed the extra-furry rodents as the "Colossal woolly mouse."
Colossal said it focused on mice first to confirm if the process works before potentially moving on to edit the embryos of Asian elephants, the closest living relatives to woolly mammoths.
. . .
"You might be able to alter the hair pattern of an Asian elephant or adapt it to the cold, but it's not bringing back a woolly mammoth. It's changing an Asian elephant," said University of Montana's Preston.
Got it, so this is just gene editing, and we’re not bringing back the woolly mammoth, but instead making extra hairy Asian elephants. Huh.
I’ll be honest, scientists: I think you guys really hit the mark here with the cute mice. We’re good. It’s not like anyone can keep a fuzzy elephant in their house, and it’s too fucking hot out for us to be releasing elephants wearing coats into the wild.
Great job, team. Wrap it up. We’re done here.
Billionaire boys
Sorry to say I only knew Benson Boone’s hit song “Beautiful Things” that he performed at the Grammys from watching TikTok videos, but this week we learned that apparently Mark Zuckerberg is a big fan of his music.
So big a fan, in fact, that he found it necessary to dress up just like him and pretend to be him during his wife’s 40th birthday party:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Zuck, if you can’t do a flip off the piano, it ain’t worth it, bud.
There was a very short moment in time, you know, when Zuck was commissioning statues and wakeboarding in a tux that it seemed like he was truly trying to rehab his image from “awkward android” to “only slightly out of touch rich guy.”
Unfortunately, when you have too much money and have no one to tell you no, you run the risk of recording an autotuned Lil Jon song with T-Pain and doing musician cosplay at a party meant to celebrate someone else’s birthday.
You’re teetering dangerously on the edge of an endless cringe spiral, Mark!! Better call your PR team!
Shameless self-promotion corner
Speaking of billionaire boys — this week, I was invited on the
Podcast to chat with my pal about none other than my favorite damp anti-aging freak, Bryan Johnson.
You can listen to it here on Substack or on Spotify, and you’ll even hear some of my hot takes on Bryan’s Don’t Die documentary ahead of the forthcoming Deep Dive!
This was my first time ever on a podcast, and I had an absolute blast chatting with Johnny and probably could have talked about BJ for another 5 hours. Check it out!
Randomly selected animal cutie
I am officially obsessed with Mischief, the cat that’s wandering ALL OVER the city of Plymouth, England. Seriously, he’s everywhere. Just look at this Mischief sighting map a local Facebook group has made:
Mischief shows up in people’s cars, schools, and even a vet’s office. He’s very busy!! It’s a lot of hard work! 80% travel!!
He actually does have a home according to the linked article, and his owner has to drive around and pick him up fairly often. It seems like, though, that Mischief kind of just belongs to everyone in Plymouth. We love to see it!
That’s it from me this week! I’m off to watch the Love is Blind weddings (last week’s drop was a lot of the same nonsense, along with expected breakups (*cough cough* Dave)) and eat some cottage cheese. Have a great weekend!
K
Mischief is pretty much my role model. I too, would like to wonder around all sorts of places and be picked up and taken home no matter where I am.
Cheeto dust!! People are full of surprises.