Science

Nature has another startling trick in store for those enduring this year’s blizzards

The booms and explosions aren’t your imagination.

Close on a family huddled in a dark, cold room, their every breath a puff of frozen air. Through frosted windows, we see snow fall in shocking quantities. It is pin-drop quiet until… the CRYOSEISMS begin to boom!

Though it sounds ripped from a winter horror movie, cryoseisms, often called frost quakes, are a real and surprisingly common phenomenon during extreme cold snaps. As Ryan Reed reports, the noises aren’t trees snapping or houses shifting as many people assume. The real cause is stranger, quieter, and happening beneath your feet.

The eerie RUMBLE subsides and we… SMASH CUT - Greg jumps on the first plane back to Los Angeles.

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Do we know our Dante?

724 years ago yesterday, Dante’s Divine Comedy defined much of our modern impression of hell. Did GOOD readers know the eternal punishment that betrayers of special trust could expect in the 9th circle? Not quite! Most thought it would be forever wandering a burning desert.

• Forever wandering a burning desert (45.8%)

• Eternity frozen in ice with Satan himself (27.8%) ✅

• Spending all of time toiling over heavy weights (15.3%)

• Swept endlessly in violent winds (11.1%)

I wonder how many of these answers were what people thought the answer was, and how many were what they thought the answer should be.

Culture

A routine courtroom question put this judge in the hot seat

One quiet courtroom question exposed something no one else had noticed.

Michigan District Court Judge J. Cedric Simpson is a recurring character in the YouTube courtroom universe, known for the calm, steady presence he brings to the bench.

As Mark Wales reports, a young defendant, Mr. Hampton, was preparing to enter a guilty plea when the judge noticed something off. The judge paused and asked a question that felt small, but wasn’t.

“[…] did somebody threaten you to plea?”

There was a beat. Then came an answer no one in the courtroom was expecting.

“Well, technically you, your honor.”

The exchange, caught on camera and shared online, flipped the dynamic in the room and forced the judge to confront his own role. Many judges would pounce, but this story doesn’t have the ending you might expect.

Culture

A sociologist’s counterintuitive fix for political self-care

The most common instinct when things get overwhelming may be the one wrong move you can make.

There are plenty of reasons to feel stressed right now. It is hard not to feel anxious in a world where a computer-curated torrent of horrific news floods our screens with everything, everywhere, all at once. When that happens, tuning out can feel like the only sane option.

And to be fair, there is a case for stepping back. There are tools to stop your feed from traumatizing you if you choose to stay connected. But as sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom shares in this piece by Mark Wales, neither total disengagement nor constant doomscrolling contains the one proven ingredient that matters most for easing that knot in your gut.

According to Cottom, doing something, anything really, to change the things weighing on you can do wonders for your mental health. And while many people report feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, participation has been shown to be surprisingly restorative. Read the full story to learn what kind of action actually helps, and how moving the needle, even a little, can be good for you too.

On January 28, 1887, Paris had something to prove. A century after the French Revolution, the city was preparing to host the World’s Fair and wanted a bold way to signal that France was modern, innovative, and very much looking forward. In 1887, that meant iron, a lot of it. And 139 years ago today, ground was broken on a tower that would come to define the Paris skyline.

Luckily, the world’s most accomplished iron builder happened to be French. Gustave Eiffel, fresh off the engineering triumph of the Statue of Liberty’s internal structure, was tapped to design a tower that would announce France’s technical prowess to the world.

The original plan called for a purely decorative structure, essentially a grand entrance to the fairgrounds. Eiffel had other ideas. He built in space for scientific labs near the top, which proved wildly successful. When construction finished, the tower became the tallest man-made structure on Earth, a title it held for more than 40 years.

Not everyone was thrilled. Art critics and newspaper editors loathed the tower’s appearance, calling it an eyesore. The public disagreed. Tickets to the top paid for the entire project in less than a year. By the time the tower was scheduled to be dismantled, it had already proven too useful as a radio tower and too beloved as a tourist attraction to tear down.

Thanks to meticulous maintenance and regular repainting, from early Venetian red to today’s signature Eiffel Tower Brown, it looks like it’s here to stay. If you ever plan to visit, book your tickets early. They sell out fast, and the view is still worth the climb.

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💬 From the group text…

Much of the country's population is coping with significant snowfall. Well, the humans are coping. The snow-breed pups like Pippa are loving it!

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