Odessa's Oddities & Curiosities | Week of 6/30/2025

Dear friends,

Oh my, we have much to catch up on. I hope you didn’t mind the departure from my usual newsletter format last time, but now, I’ve got nearly a month’s worth of recommendations piled up… so buckle in.

First, I’m in Paris! My goals for my gap year before grad school were to spend some time in Paris and New York City (the best cities in the world), and I made it happen! For the sake of your attention span, I’ll save my Parisian highlights for next week.

I know you thought you’d be receiving this next newsletter in a different medium (i.e. Substack), but I just cannot cope with saying the phrase “I have a Substack.” Perhaps, it is the long-buried ‘I’m-not-like-other-girls' complex. Perhaps my contrarian instincts. Anyway, I will stick to my little corner of the internet, Beehiiv—where only you can find me. Perhaps, I will switch to Substack one day (when I feel important enough, I guess).

Due to the sheer length of my list at the moment, I’m going to parse my recommendations into categories.

Navigation

I’d like to introduce my idea for an app (or rather a feature to be added to a navigation service) called Take a Walk. In the app, you could toggle between options: Take a Walk on the Shady Side or Take a Walk on the Sunny Side — (the third enduring option is the ‘wild side’, of course). This is the concept. When you are traversing a city by foot, you often have preferences for sun or shade. For instance, Paris is truly made for walking, but this heat wave makes it inhospitable unless you are in the shade. I would like a path routed to maximize my time in the shade, given a certain buffer of added time. For example, I would like to spend as much time in the shade as possible given it doesn’t add more than 10 minutes to my walk overall. The same can be true for the sun in the wintertime. I think it would be rather simple to map out shade and sun (all you need is the position of the sun and the height of the buildings). Another option, Take a Walk on the Windy Side, would maximize wind flow. Anyway, if anyone at Google or Apple Maps (or Waze) is reading…email me!

My second idea for a navigation app is less fleshed-out. But I find that my constant use of Google Maps has atrophied my ability to navigate on my own. What if you had a navigation app meant to be deleted? Akin to Hinge’s tagline (“the dating app designed to be deleted”), this app would teach you to navigate intuitively, then wean you off. I’m brainstorming how it could gradually fade out directions, encourage landmarks, or ask you to guess next turns. If you have ideas, email me & let’s brainstorm.

Speaking of maps and navigation, I really enjoyed this video on the history of the map of San Francisco.

Movies

A while ago, my parents and I saw Bad Shabbos in theaters. And holy shit, it was so good. Impeccably funny. Sharp. Very, very, very Jewish. Add it to your list immediately.

Science

THIS IS SO COOL (yes, it merited all caps). A new study has found that “Robot Yawns Spark Contagious Yawning in Chimps”— inanimate objects can provide social triggers! and in chimps! crazy crazy news.

You should be very concerned about microplastics. It’s an omnipresent worry of mine as I chug from my 1 euro plastic water bottle. But seriously, read more here.

A new theory of cultural continuity as a key psychological motivator for an array of human behaviors. Side note: The Secrets of Our Success by Joseph Henrich is a fabulous book on how our cultural (i.e. collective) intelligence is humanity’s special sauce.

YouTube

This is one of my favorite series on the internet where WIRED invites experts to answer questions about their field from social media. Here, you can learn about farming and all the technology involved in modern-day farming. Super fascinating.

Poetry

For the sake of heat-wave relevance, let’s take a poem too literally: a reminder from Danez Smith to appreciate the sun (even when you’re sweating from every pore). Smith’s poem: I’M GOING BACK TO MINNESOTA WHERE SADNESS MAKES SENSE. Really a study in the power of contrasts. A delight.

Articles

I read this article over a week ago, and it keeps circling back to me. Robert Capps outlines 22 new jobs that AI may usher in. He really argues that there are three key areas where humans will remain important:

1. Trust — basically accountability. At the end of the day, someone needs to be held responsible.

2. Integration—how can we best integrate AI into our daily workflows and tasks (I’ve been having a lot of fun on this end)

3. Taste— “In a future where most of us have access to the same generative tools, taste will become incredibly important.” i.e. creativity without craft

Please write to me and let’s discuss further. I find this such a generative framework.

I think a lot about brand loyalty—it’s a delicious cognitive intersection of tribalism and capitalism. I am fiercely loyal to brands in a way that is bewildering (but I think, also, carries over to my friends). I very much enjoyed this case study into the betrayal of a discontinued item.

Finally, the world at large is remembering the joy of reading for fun, and how ironic that TikTok is the medium that brought us back. Specifically, the joy of reading silly and fantastical and escapist things that don’t necessarily serve to educate or elevate, but just to delight. As Dr. Bonilla put it in her opinion piece: “reading for pleasure becomes more than self-care — it becomes a form of defiance, a way to reconnect with imagination, emotion and the fragile work of hope.”

I do not have a great singing voice. (I know, I know, growth mindset etc). But I appreciate (and envy) those who do! Including my cousin Claire, who just released an EP Mother on Friday (check it out!) But I loved this piece on the children who try out for the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus.

For Father’s Day, the New York Times released a list of Dad Texts. I read the piece on the plane, crying and laughing in near equal measure. I spotted a particularly nerdy text, scrolled to the name, and who do I see, but Irene! Day made!

Books

I’m in the middle of four fabulous books.

First, I picked up Outline by Rachel Cusk from Smith & Son (a fabulous English-language bookstore). And AGH, it’s delicious. I’ve been hearing about Rachel Cusk forever, but hadn’t read her books. Her observations astound, and it also just feels so good to cart this lithe book around with me, dipping into her sharp wit. Just to entice you, she has this great section in the opening chapter about the flight attendant miming the safety protocol:

I’m also reading The World for Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy. If you know me well, you know that I am the last person to enjoy a book about commodities trading. I have a disdain for most things finance. But this book is so good (and quite long — only a third of the way through). But it reads as a thriller and a survey of economics over the past century.

I’m reading The Fact Checker by Austin Kelley — a mystery concerning a fact checker in case you haven’t heard of it. The writing is so erudite and pries at the nature of truth while still maintaining a good deal of humor. Pick it up for vacation—you won’t regret it.

Last night, I started Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa — more on that next week when I’ve collected my thoughts.

A book on deck:

A theory behind the serial killers of the Pacific Northwest…could it be environmental toxins? Very excited to read “Murderland” by Caroline Fraser.

I’m going to pause here and save some Paris-specific oddities & curiosities for next week. (Also! My texts won’t come through, please use Whatsapp).

One last note on the solstice and jewish magic (of course). I’ve been enjoying being subscribed to the Jewitches newsletter (subscribe at the bottom of their website). From them, I learned that “In Judaism, the solstices all carry the same superstition: the guards of our water change. Some say these guards are angels while other traditions tell us they are the wives of Jacob: Bilhah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Leah. While the changing of the guards occurs, our water is poisoned - usually by the menstrual blood of Lilith or one of her daughters. To protect ourselves, we use iron (in Hebrew: barzel) in our standing water, or place the water itself in an iron vessel.”

Hoping the solstice brings new guardians into your life and refreshes the waters (of creativity, of joy…you pick the metaphor xoxoxo)

With love & curiosity,

Odessa