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Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan
A Quick Thank You and a Quick Reminder
Hi!
Over the past two weeks, I’ve been asking for your financial support for Now I Know. And you all responded fantastically! I had set a goal for the equivalent of 50 new $5/supporters by the end of 2025, and my final tally as of right now comes in at 58. Goal achieved! And more importantly, it feels great to be appreciated.
On another note, a few weeks before that, I put out an offer — if there’s a way I can help you, please reach out and let me know. A few of you have in ways I haven’t expected, and I was happy to do what I could.
I don’t have much else to share today, so let’s hop to the Week in Review.
The Now I Know Week In Review
Monday: Our Anti-Photographic Memories?: I was very happy to get Pee-Wee Herman into this one.
Tuesday: Hackers, Pre-Internet Edition: I guess, in a very narrow sense, this also makes Pippin Took a hacker?
Wednesday: Where the Other Two Musketeers Went: 3 Musketeers, the candy, is only one candy bar. It wasn’t always that way.
Thursday: The $10,000 Blade of Grass: Is it a con? (Yes, probably.) Is it also art?
A Few Dollars = A Big Difference
Now I Know is supported by readers like you. Yes, you! Many of my readers donate a few dollars a month to help Now I Know grow and thrive. And in exchange, they get an ad-free version!
To become a monthly supporter via the newsletter’s Support page, click here. If you do, you’ll get the ad-free version going forward!
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And thanks! — Dan
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Long Reads and Other Things
Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:
1) “One more time” (Aeon, 12 minutes, March 2014), The subhead: “Why do we listen to our favorite music over and over again? Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains.”
2) “One more time” (Aeon, 12 minutes, March 2014), The subhead: “Why do we listen to our favorite music over and over again? Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains.”
3) “How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral” (MIT Technology Review, 17 minutes, September 2025). The subhead: “Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages?”
4) “Charli xcx Enters Her Next Chapter” (Vanity Fair, 23 minutes, September 2025). Okay, I don’t usually share profiles of seemingly random pop stars — they aren’t something I’m usually interested in. But I happened to go to a Charlie xcx concert earlier this year (my daughter and her friends really wanted to go, and I was the chaperone), so I gave this one a click. And it was a lot more interesting than I thought it’d be.
Have a great weekend! (And yes, the repeat above was a joke.)
Dan