The Eel-luminati
The Eel-luminati
Hello there :)
Welcome to issue eighty one of Manufacturing Serendipity, a loosely connected, somewhat rambling collection of the unexpected things I’ve recently encountered.
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Speaking of coffee, grab yourself a suitable beverage my loves, let’s do this thing…
Part I: Things I’ve been thinking about
DO YOU KNOW ABOUT EELS?
This week I watched Bodkin (a new comedy-drama on Netflix). In the fourth episode, we see a character called Seamus slip into something of a reverie about how eels are a mystery and we don’t know how they breed.
This sparked my curiosity (because of course it did).
It turns out that whilst we do know how eels breed (they’ve been bred in captivity and so their reproduction has been observed), the real mystery is where they breed — apparently, all eels in both America and Europe travel distances of up to 10,000km to spawn in the Bermuda Triangle, but no one’s ever seen them there.
Wild, huh?
I came across this article about eels, which contains a bunch of fascinating facts from Emily Finch, a doctor of geology, who fell head over heels for eels, and authored this viral twitter thread in 2022:
“ALL the eels in Europe and America are born in the Sargasso Sea (in the Bermuda Triangle! Ominous? Yes). Eels might even live in a landlocked part of Europe and yet they will travel thousands of kilometres over land (yes, land!) and sea to get to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.”
“Eels just need a bit of dampness on the ground to travel over land. They can even CLIMB UP DAM WALLS! Have you seen how big dam walls are??!”
“Wherever eels live in the world, they just wake up one day, DISSOLVE THEIR STOMACHS, and decide to start their incredibly long journey to their spawning place. They travel all those many thousands of kilometres LITERALLY EATING THEMSELVES ALIVE FROM THE INSIDE!”
“Even though mature eels die once they spawn (fair enough; no stomach), their offspring return to the place where their parents lived, many thousands of kms away. HOW DO THEY KNOW WHERE TO GO??!”
“A man named Johannes Schmidt originally discovered that eels spawned in the Sargasso Sea by surveying the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea and finding younger and younger eels until he finally found the youngest eels in the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Despite Schmidt’s discovery almost 100 years ago, no one has ever been able to find direct evidence that eels spawned in the Sargasso! Scientists tried to track eels using trackers, but the eels always mysteriously disappeared…”
“UNTIL THIS WEEK*! Researchers were finally able to track European eels all the way to the Sargasso Sea using satellite trackers! Despite this, NO ONE HAS EVER PHYSICALLY SEEN A MATURE EEL IN THE SARGASSO SEA!”
*NB this article is from 2022, the research Finch is referencing was published in this Nature article, from October 2022.
Here are a few more eel facts from the article:
They range from very small (5 cm or 2 in) and slight (30 g or 1.1 oz) to the very large (4 m or 13 ft) and heavy (25 kg or 55 lb).
Some species of eel can live up to 85 years.
Eels swim by generating body waves. They can reverse the direction of these waves, meaning they can both swim forward and backward.
Eel’s blood contains a toxic protein that cramps muscles, including the heart. In other words, eel’s blood can kill. Never eat raw eel.
Serendipitous finds:
Christian Louboutin and Pierre Yovanovitch perch chairs on legs informed by "iconic women"
“Chairs with high heels for feet feature in this seating collection from French designers Pierre Yovanovitch and Christian Louboutin, meant to reflect "female individuality".
No, this is not a joke:
I’m struggling to articulate why this collaboration gives me the ick to the extent that it does. Is it the liberal use of the word “female” peppered throughout the press release? Is it because the position of both the feet and ankles on these chairs looks both eerily unnatural and tortuously painful? Is it because these chairs don’t reflect individuality, they reflect an homogenised ideal? Or, is it because this project is objectification in the most literal sense — they’ve turned powerful women into actual objects for people to park their arses on?
WTAF?!
If you want to belong, find a third place
“Meng Liu spent years ping-ponging around the world looking for community. It was her dream to live in New York City, but after she found it difficult to make friends, Liu moved to Los Angeles, where she faced similar social roadblocks. Loneliness followed her across the globe to Shanghai, where she again chased a sense of belonging that never came.
Thinking back on a comment a friend had made years ago, Liu had an epiphany. “Belonging isn’t some magical place that you can find in your next destination,” she recalled the friend saying. “It is where you feel most connected with the people around you, and that you have people who love you and that you love.”
A really interesting piece on the importance of third places, (places people can frequent beyond their home & work), their benefits, and the challenges people face in finding them.
I Asked a Grammarian to Help Me Unpack “That’s That Me Espresso”
Regardless of whether you love, hate, or are blissfully unaware of Sabrina Carpenter’s summertime bop, I think you’ll find this interesting. — the grammar nerd in me loved it.
The 2024 Uber Lost & Found Index
Here are some of the weirder things folks have left behind:
“I left a leaf in your car that’s much needed”
“Two containers with spiders in them”
“Gray tub of surgical implants”
“My live pet animal turtle”
“I left expensive blueberries that are special that I need that the store is completely out of. There’s two packages that I absolutely need.”
“A spear and a furry fox tail”
“Fake butt”
“Panty liner and 1000 bucks. That’s all I can remember”
“Some lotion or my thong”
“I might have left my garden fence in the trunk.”
“I lost my wizard woman”
Exploring how pareidolia might have inspired ancient cave artists. Super interesting.
“…Chantel Walkes is a multidisciplinary artist born in Canada, and now based in Brooklyn. She is known for her collage works that reckon with Black history both as a personal exploration for her, the collective and eventually the viewer. But what’s most apparent in her work is a flair for time and place, as well as a decisive vision of what it means for Black people to gather together. Be that in churches, house parties, or the high street, she amplifies their presence through a sense of connection.
[…]
Inspired by a pool of artists throughout the African diaspora, such as Gordon Parks, Malick Sidibé, Carrie Mae Weems, Bisa Butler and Lorna Simpson, it’s clear that she has a reverence for the power that photographic imagery has on recollection and its ability to showcase the times. “I’ve found deep joy in creating collages, or what I like to call, snapshots of memories. The goal is to create art that extracts a beautiful memory of Black joy within the viewer.”
Part II: Books I’m Reading Right Now
Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton — I absolutely loved the recent Netflix adaptation of this gritty coming of age novel, and the book itself is absolutely delicious. I’d acknowledge that the magical realism might turn some readers off, and the ending is arguably a little far-fetched, but I loved it.
Part III: Things I’ve Been Watching
Ripley, (Netflix) — Andrew Scott is great in this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, but the stand out performer is Eliot Sumner who’s utterly electric as Freddy Miles. Visually, this series is stunning, but it is SOOOOOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOOOOOW. This was clearly a deliberate creative choice, but honestly, it didn’t fully work for me.
Bodkin, (Netflix) — this dark comedy-drama about true crime podcasters showing up in a small town in West Cork to investigate a twenty-year-old missing persons case has received mixed reviews, but I liked it. It takes unflinching aim at our obsession with true crime, is weird, twisty-turny, and a bunch of fun. Worth watching.
Part IV: What I’ve been up to…
So many lovely things! I had an amazing time at Confidence Live, a wonderful weekend away at my friend Diana’s; a gorgeous trip to Ludlow; plus I’m having a blast running the latest cohort of my Ideation Course.
What’s next?
I am excited about:
Running weeks 3 and 4 of my Ideation Course
Making an art or two
Emceeing WTSFest Berlin
Shameless self-promotion
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That’s all from me for now :)
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Big love,
Hannah x
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