"Ancillary Materials"

By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA

Over the past few weeks, I feel as though I have spent a significant amount of time thinking about, reading about, and writing about cell culture. So, to balance that out, here’s a bit of non-cell-related culture for the benefit of your brain (and mine).

• I was almost an art history major in college, so I’m a sucker for deep dives into paintings. As someone who also loves to go overboard (have you read my C&G-themed sonnets?), I was drawn to this NYT interactive feature entitled “A Madonna Who Shows The Beauty In Going Overboard.” It walks us through Parmigianino’s bizarrely styled painting, Madonna With The Long Neck. I loved the wonky proportions of this painting so much (particularly her stretched out, “bubble-gum-like” neck), that I painted a replica of it for an elementary school art project. I’m pretty sure it’s still hanging in my school’s hallway today. 
• For Netflix enthusiasts, might I direct you to Nestflix, a fictional streaming platform full of weirdly named (and/or renamed famous) films. Hello, Scratchtasia; Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime; and Fast Animals, Slow Children.  
• In Soviet Russia, music records were forbidden. So, folks had to take matters into their own hands/bones. They made bootlegged records out of used x-ray films. Enter bone music a.k.a jazz on ribs. The photos of some of these records are stunning.  
• Raindrops on…. Rawlins, Wyoming? This hypnotic little tool will take you on the journey of a single raindrop from river to river to its final lake/oceanic destination. Turns out, a raindrop in Rawlins will travel up to 2,600 miles and end up in the Gulf of Mexico.  
• As the daughter of a dentist, this story about antique apple scoops was fascinating. Often carved out of sheep bones, these tools were a godsend for the working class who couldn’t afford gold/ivory dentures, and/or didn’t want to or couldn’t afford to pay someone to be a living tooth donor…  
• Have you thought about turning to WhatsApp to source your hardest-to-get raw materials? The app has turned out to be the most reliable method of attaining the prized but impossible to get Pakistani mango in the U.S. This long-form, (fabulously titled) article on Eater, “Inside the Secret, Semi-Illicit, High-Stakes World of WhatsApp Mango Importing,” delves into the history and current supply chain difficulties of the Pakistani mango. Well worth the read.   

If you love engineering — which I know some of you do — check out these trees that have been grown using the ancient Japanese horticulture technique, daisugi.