How Lady Gaga's biggest fan wound up in prison

On Tuesday, Kirill Nguyen shared a rare personal dispatch from the @GagaDaily X account: “Sorry about the lack of updates, I was literally in prison 😭”. The profile, an outgrowth of the eminent Lady Gaga fan site Nguyen, now 32, founded nearly two decades ago, had gone dark for a year beginning in February 2024. His return was met with an overwhelmingly effusive response. Nguyen was deliberately vague about the circumstances of his detainment, but speaking to Pitchfork, he revealed some of the details. In 2020, Nguyen attended a protest in Belarus, where he’d lived most of his life. The former Soviet satellite had recently catapulted Alexander Lukashenko, “Europe’s last dictator,” into a sixth term as president, in an election widely disputed as fraudulent. “I just came out with a flag and walked,” Nguyen says. “It was a regular protest like you guys have in America every day.” Four years later, Nguyen returned to visit his family in Belarus, where he was arrested by state police forces. (via Pitchfork)

Scientists say acupuncture may work via a newly discovered vascular network

The practice of acupuncture made it into the pantheon of accepted medical methodologies in the West through trade, politics, immigration and fascination. But it took thousands of years for scientists to understand the exact physical system that makes it effective.
In China, acupuncture predates the common era. Its most foundational text was written around 1st or 2nd century BCE, mapping energy meridians and points along the body the same way that circulatory or skeletal systems are mapped. As European missionaries and traders ventured to China, the West flirted with Traditional Chinese Medicine several times. It caught hold in France, where a unique form of acupuncture developed in the 19th century: The French school of acupuncture created new methodologies like ear acupuncture, and using electric currents with needles. In 2021, scientists discovered a new system inside of our bodies. They’ve labeled it the "interstitium". They say that it plays a role in how acupuncture actually works. (via Why Is This Interesting)

If you like to travel by train but don't like crowds you can rent your own private sleeper car

Amtrak, the national railway company, and a dedicated but dwindling set of enthusiastic owners, have kept private train travel alive by way of something called the Privately-Owned Rail Car Program, which charges owners of private rail cars a fee per mile to hitch them to existing Amtrak trains. Mr. Henry named his first two cars, purchased as a pair in 2004 for $900,000, after his parents: Warren R. and Evelyn Henry. He recently added a 1954 Pullman named Santa Fe — the railroad for which his father worked for 41 years. He declined to share what he paid, but a car immediately ready for Amtrak typically costs around $1 million. Maintenance costs Mr. Henry $60,000 annually on the domed Warren R. Henry car, and $40,000 for each of his two other cars, which are sleepers. Leonard Cherry has chartered Mr. Henry’s trains three times and finds rail travel soothing. “It’s like being rocked to sleep at night,” he said.Mr. Cherry, a 71-year-old Houstonian who sold his material supply and demolition company in 2020, said a weeklong trip typically costs $10,000 per person. (via the NYT)

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.

A steamship company owner revolutionized weather forecasting in the 1800s

Very few in scientific circles would have heard of William C. Redfield’s name before the publication of his storm paper in 1831. A New York businessman, he had made his name with his Steam Navigation Company. In 1831 Redfield chanced to meet Denison Olmstead, professor of mathematics and physics at Yale. Soon Olmstead and Redfield were talking about storms and it was then, for the first time, that Redfield unveiled his theory of whirling winds. Redfield had devised this idea a decade before, after the “Great September Gale of 1821.” The gale — as the hurricane was then called — had sparked panic right along the northeastern coast, causing a storm surge that had flooded the New Jersey coastline as well as several streets on Manhattan Island. In the days afterward Redfield had been out walking with his son in rural Connecticut, which had been equally affected. He noticed that near Middletown, in the center of the state, trees had been blown over toward the north-west. But in neighboring Massachusetts the trees had fallen in the opposite direction, pointing toward the southeast. (via Nautilus)

Harry Potter fans helped divert a power cable because of the grave of a fictional character

Harry Potter fans succeeded in diverting a power link between the UK and Ireland after they complained it would disturb a "memorial" to Dobby the House Elf. The £430m Greenlink interconnector links the National Grid to Ireland via 125-mile cable between County Wexford and Freshwater West, a beach in Pembrokeshire where the death of fictional character Dobby was filmed. Project manager Simon Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast the cable was originally going to go straight through the tribute, before fans left his firm hundreds of calls. Ludlam, founder of Etchea Energy, said a BBC News interview about the project had turned into a public relations nightmare after fans got wind of what was to happen. He told the podcast that during the filmed interview he had pointed out where the cable would go underground, saying: "We did the shot, we finished I went back to London, and they then aired it a couple of weeks later. "And we got hundreds of calls, I mean hundreds of calls." (via the BBC)

Caracal kittens sound a little like laser beams

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places that I rely on as "serendipity engines," such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg's Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis's Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton's The Browser, Clive Thompson's Linkfest and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com