This story is admittedly sort of gawk-at-medical-abnormalities, but I think it's okay because it's written by the person with the condition, and he's an excellent writer who is currently in good place with it, so it doesn't seem as exploitative?* He has testotoxicosis, which is extremely early onset puberty. Think pubes at age 2 and raging boners by age 4.

It came with a lot of shame and unsuccessful treatments, and also with massive behavioral issues both due to sex drive and from fiddling with his testosterone levels. But he tells the story with a light enough touch, and reassures you that he's really okay now, that it keeps it from being too dark.

*I think The Cut is usually paywalled, but this article is temporarily free due to some promotion, probably because it's borderline salacious. So I'm playing right into their target-demo-hands, by enjoying the story in all its borderline salaciousness.

Matty Y gets the profile treatment.

I'm having a long run of books that I find sort of off-putting halfway through, and I end up not reading for a long stretch and just fiddling around the internet. Recommend me some books that I won't be able to put down!

The only other link I have in my queue is this atavist story about a prehistoric tooth that was found in Nebraska in the earliest 20th century, and how it ended up figuring prominently in the William Jennings Bryan et al context of the Scopes monkey trials.

In the same vein as the first paragraph, I found the article riveting until I abandoned it halfway through, and haven't finished it. So maybe the problem is me.

I walked to the train station this morning, to take the train to visit my friend in a city a few hours away, like I'm a freaking New Yorker or European or something. Very pleased with myself. $12 each way.

Sure do wish there was a more functional train system in this country.

My mom shipped me a wardrobe that my grandfather made and it arrived last Thursday. I've now unpacked and can access all the clothes I like to wear, which makes me very happy. (I've been relying on big tupperware tubs.) But I absolutely have zero room to acquire anything new, unless I'm willing to let something go. Which brings me to: How many articles of clothing should you own?

To the question of "What's an upper bound on clothes you should buy?" they say,

Researchers from Berlin's Hot Or Cool Institute found that we should only be purchasing five new garments a year in order to stay in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius, if nothing else changes.

I think if I'm allowed to freely supplement with thrifted and resold clothing, I would not find that onerous at all. My closet is a stricter limiting factor long before the 5 new items constraint would kick in. (I'm not sure how they count things like socks and underwear.)

So if we're allowed to accumulate 5 items per year responsibly, and the researchers could presumably estimate the responsible lifespan of clothes (I heard 30 wears recently, which seems super do-able), then:

The researchers found that a "sufficient" wardrobe consists of 74 garments and 20 outfits in total. As an example, they've suggested six outfits for work, three outfits for home wear, three outfits for sports, two outfits for festive occasions, plus four outdoor jackets and trousers or skirts. "It's a very generous allocation that we've given in our estimate," Akenji explains. An average French wardrobe during the 1960s consisted of around 40 pieces, although times have admittedly moved on since then. 

I have way more clothes than that. But I also try to wear things until they're truly destroyed (or, uh, until I outgrow them.)

This part sounds like total bullshit:

Buying second-hand clothing can help, but only if you're purchasing that item instead of something new. "In most cases, second-hand is used to keep consuming excessively," Coscieme says. "When you buy a second-hand garment you still have all of the impacts associated with consumption; it still counts as a garment that you have to wash and eventually dispose of."

If you buy ten used t-shirts, you're still only wearing one garment per day. How does it increase the amount of washing you're doing? And you have an obligation to ethically dispose of your clothes, whether you wear them out to the point of rags or donate or re-sell them. How does having used clothing coming into your house alter that?

(Brazil conversation in the Check-in thread. Didn't think we needed two threads on that.)

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while. There is no way it could function as that sentence implies, but it's still nice to have a thread.

Episode Kobe forty-eight