Health

The most extreme amnesia case ever recorded, captured in one brutal diary page

A single diary page turns an abstract condition into something painfully real.

I took my wife to see 50 First Dates on one of our first dates. Adam Sandler courts Cameron Diaz’s character, whose memories reset each morning. It was a cute, funny little romp, but by the time we got to the car, we’d clocked the many, many horrifying implications of such a condition.

Now imagine the same premise, but every 7 to 30 seconds. That’s been Clive Wearing’s life since 1985, after a rare viral infection damaged the memory-forming parts of his brain. His days became a loop of “waking up,” over and over, with no reliable bridge from one moment to the next.

As Adam Albright-Hanna reports, a single diary page from January 13, 1990, recently resurfaced online. It’s messy, scratched out, rewritten minutes apart, and weirdly unforgettable. And buried inside it is the detail that flips this from pure tragedy to something almost defiant: even when his mind can’t hold onto time, some parts of him still show up, instantly, every time.

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Well Being

7 ‘life hacks’ from the crowd that’s never heard the term

Avoid life’s lumps by listening to a generation that has taken plenty of its own.

There is something in human nature that triggers a defiant eye roll the second an older person starts a sentence with, “Let me tell you something.” Maybe we are wired to insist on learning the hard way. For those of you trying to override that setting, Mark Wales has culled the best advice from a viral Reddit thread, and it turns out people who have lived a little have been collecting cheat codes all along.

The standout is the “wrong train” metaphor: if you realize you are headed the wrong direction, get off at the nearest stop, because every extra minute makes the return trip more expensive. Not about trains, obviously.

The rest are like tiny mental seatbelts. The windshield is bigger than the rearview for a reason. Before you argue, ask if this is the hill you want to die on. And if you are spiraling about what people think of you, relax: they are too busy worrying about what people think of them.

And what did we learn?

Yesterday, we shared a revolutionary new material that could replace leather, which is made of mushrooms.

What do GOOD readers think the best use of mushrooms is? Well, the new leather concept hasn’t caught on, and unlike yours truly, over 60% of you like to eat the things.

• As food! They're delicious. I eat them all the time! (62.3%)

• As... recreation. (ahem) (14.0%)

• As fashion. I'd rock a fungi leather jacket real hard. (5.3%)

• Honestly? Pass. I still pick them off my pizza. (18.4%)

GOOD reader J F Holden was among the majority and went even further. “And foraging for mushrooms! Nothing like finding morels, lion’s mane, or chicken of the woods, as nature intended.“

Culture

A Pepsi bottle, a ninth-grade note, and a beach find that took 49 years to land

The choice of a generation indeed!

Clint Buffington has found over 120 messages in bottles. Which, I just… how? How does that happen? Are there that many Police fans out there? And the craziest part of this story is that that isn’t the story.

Because one of those 120 messages (HOW?!) took a uniquely epic journey. It started as a ninth-grade oceanography assignment in 1976, when 14-year-old Peter R. Thompson sealed a note inside a glass Pepsi bottle and watched the Coast Guard drop it into the Atlantic. The note basically said: if you find this, tell me when and where, and how it got to you.

Nearly five decades later, two brothers almost canceled a trip to a remote Bahamian island because they were sick. As Adam Albright-Hanna reports, they went anyway. And on a beach walk, a sand-buried Pepsi bottle delivered a 49-year-old question to the exact right people, at the exact right moment. The message finally got its answer, and suddenly this wasn’t about ocean currents. It was about the human on the other side.

On March 4, 2020, Nik Wallenda donned a gas mask, stepped onto a 1,800-foot cable, and crossed above Nicaragua’s active Masaya Volcano.

The amazing feat was performed live for a massive television audience, adding another staggering accomplishment to the Wallenda family’s already surreal résumé.

The Wallendas are less “famous circus folk” than a high-wire dynasty: their modern legend begins in 1922 when Karl Wallenda and relatives formed the act that would become The Flying Wallendas. Over the next century, they became circus royalty by turning balance into choreography, most famously with their towering human pyramids on the wire, including the celebrated seven-person version that became a signature showstopper.

Nik, Karl’s great-grandson, is the modern face of that lineage, translating an old-world aerial craft into made-for-TV spectacles: Niagara Falls (2012), Times Square (2019), and then the volcano crossing, which he made successfully despite the fumes burning his eyes. It wasn’t just a stunt; it was a century of practice distilled into one half-hour of nerve.

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💬 From the group text…

Why does nothing like this ever happen to me? Oh, right, I don’t have long, inviting braids, I don’t live near this sort of bird, and I rarely wear shiny jewels. Still. You know?

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