Curious Dilettantes #0004

Learn something that expands your mind, in less than 5 minutes each week.

The Eye

All images copyright Alexey Kljatov, the artist featured here

Alexey Kljatov is known for his photography of snowflakes. For those of us who’ve enjoyed the experience of snow, our interactions have likely been limited to playing with and brushing off these crystalline structures from our clothing. By multiplying their scale through the use of macro lenses, Kljatov reminds us that snow possesses delicate and celestial beauty, and has the ability to inspire awe.

Alexey’s website, where you can purchase his prints.

The Mind

Strategic thinking is something we typically associate with business and politics, but its importance in helping us navigate and plan our personal life and future is incredibly understated. While the world changes rapidly, most of us aren’t updating our worldview to reflect our current realities, and we may find ourselves ending up in a place that’s different from where we originally envisioned ourselves being as a result.

Strategic thinking requires us to divorce ourselves from the emotional proddings that are born from our personal experience, so we can think logically about how best to tackle our future. A framework for thinking strategically:

• How do I create my worldview?

• What would change it?

• What are the things I prioritize? Why are they my priorities?

• Do these priorities still make sense in light of all the changes that have taken place in my life and around me?

The Machine

24% of adults in the United States have arthritis, and experts predict that the number will grow to 49% by 2040. Thankfully, the field of bioelectronic medicine (also known as ‘electroceuticals’), an emerging field that treats diseases traditionally treated with pharmaceuticals, may provide relief for many.

A company called Setpoint Medical is trialing an arthritis treatment device that makes use of this approach. Setpoint’s device targets the vagus nerve, the main conduit of brain-body communication, in an attempt to fight inflammation. This device targets the “inflammatory reflex”, which is a neural network that indirectly regulates immune responses to infection and injury. It stimulates the vagus nerve to suppress the release of immune-signaling molecules.

Other companies are also using electroceuticals in an attempt to combat arthritis, but instead of electrically stimulating the vagus nerve, which is central to many bodily processes, they target nerves closer to the site of immune activation, where the pain is.

SetPoint Medical’s neurostimulator device, which is about the size of a peanut

A NEW TREATMENT FOR ARTHRITIS: VAGUS-NERVE STIMULATION

The Heart

Successful relationships require ongoing work. Here are seven rules for how to increase the chances of developing and maintaining them:

1. Our partner must feel heard

2. They must feel we are on their side

3. They must feel appreciated according to their own distinctive love language i.e. what they construe as a loving gesture or action

4. Our partner must know we are making an effort in their name 

5. They must feel wanted, emotionally and physically

6. We need to give our partner an accurate map to the areas in our personalities where we need to grow. We do this by calmly and graciously describing how areas in our past are causing negative reactions, and by removing the pride that prevents us from saying ‘I’m sorry’

7. We must strive to remain calm around their most trying sides, and endeavor to never humiliate them about their flaws

The School of Life

The Wonder

Here’s a list of events in history that happened simultaneously, even though they seem unlikely to have occurred in the same era.

• Woolly mammoths were still around when the pyramids were built around 5,000 years ago

• The last person to be executed by guillotine in France was the year Star Wars was released - 1977

• Oxford University was already 230 years old when the Aztec Empire was founded

• Switzerland gave women the right to vote in the same year an American drove a lunar buggy on the moon - 1971

• Sliced bread was invented 30 years after the filing cabinet was invented

• Jack the Ripper, the famous serial killer, still roamed London streets the same year that Nintendo was founded - 1888

Unlikely events that happened simultaneously