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So long, 2021. You were 365 days long and that’s all anyone should ask of a year. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
This is the final Thursday Things of 2021. I want to thank all the scores of Happy Subscribers who have checked in each week. I hope you’ve found this little newsletter entertaining, informative, and occasionally enlightening. Thanks for reading!
Make a new resolution to not make resolutions. If you want to make a new start in the new year, but dread making yet another list of New Year’s Resolutions that you know you’ll never keep, author/podcaster Tim Ferriss has a suggestion worth considering — do a “Past Year Review” instead.
Forget New Year’s Resolutions and Conduct a ‘Past Year Review’ Instead (#559)
I have found “past year reviews” (PYR) more informed, valuable, and actionable than half-blindly looking forward with broad resolutions. I did my first PYR after a mentor’s young daughter died of cancer on December 31st, roughly eight years ago, and I’ve done it every year since. It takes 30-60 minutes and looks like this:
Grab a notepad and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.
Go through your calendar from the last year, looking at every week.
For each week, jot down on the pad…
Click the link to get the rest. It’s a very short post and I don’t want to copy the whole thing. There are only five steps. Let me know in the comments if you decide to give this a try.
Viral Ice, Ice Baby. You’d think the experience of a global pandemic caused by a novel virus sweeping through the population would teach scientists to, oh, I don’t know, not thaw out viruses that are “like nothing ever seen” from a 15,000-year-old Tibetan glacier. But you’d be wrong.
Viruses Found In 15,000-Year-Old Tibetan Glacier Ice Are Like Nothing Seen Before
A study of ice from a Tibetan glacier that is nearly 15,000 years old indicates that it could include a lot of viruses we've never seen before. The viruses found so far probably can't infect humans, let alone threaten our health, but we don't yet know what else is lurking there.
So then let’s let sleeping viruses lie, shall we? No such luck!
"These are viruses that would have thrived in extreme environments," said co-author Professor Matthew Sullivan. "These viruses have signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments – just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions. These are not easy signatures to pull out, and the method that Zhi-Ping developed to decontaminate the cores and to study microbes and viruses in ice could help us search for these genetic sequences in other extreme icy environments – Mars, for example, the moon, or closer to home in Earth's Atacama Desert."
Oh, yippee, let’s dig up even more extreme viruses … from Mars? It’s like these people have never even seen a movie.
Read all about it in the latest issue of Microbiome Glacier ice archives nearly 15,000-year-old microbes and phages
What do you do with leftover Christmas trees? At this Berlin zoo, they feed unsold Christmas trees to the animals. Enjoy this video of goats, bison, elephants, and other creatures noshing on delicious trees!
Thank you for reading Thursday Things. I wish every Happy Subscriber a happy, healthy and prosperous 2022.
Again, please click the hearts, comment, and use the share feature to send this issue to a friend who might enjoy it. See you in 2022!!