19 Comments

It's interesting, actually– Ancient Egyptians used mouldy bread to treat infections millenia before Fleming’s discovery. Curious, isn’t it, how a great culture which lends so much of itself to modernity (through perfecting preservation) used the mouldy bread so differently to us? Only to save: lives, history, memory– we preserve not for survival, but because we refuse to let things die, because we’re afraid of the natural processes unfurling into ugliness, and because we believe happy accidents should be a creature of the past, something that has no place in civilised society. There’s a great irony here, I think: that beneath a well-preserved body is a rot. And we’re (still) afraid to rot.

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That’s true though. What other kind of accidental discoveries could we make if we let things “go bad” every once and a while?

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I love this. Rotting is a sign of death. We mostly accrue death as the final stage in a life cycle. However, with the given example of penicillin, rot can also be a solution in order to heal. Some times in life, we need to let some things die off in order to begin to heal. Death isn’t the final stage. Sometimes, it’s just the beginning to a brighter future.

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We must break the mold then! Unexpected usually only happens, if we dare to tread outside the lines. We have Alzheimers, the Forgetting Disease. The cure is still elusive. Maybe the key to conquering the forgetting is in remembering, whatever that means.

Great post.

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So true. So pathetic. Involution of mankind towards our own self-staged extinction.

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Just found your substack after following on threads. This is such an interesting and eye-opening take, reading after the pandemic - I can’t to hear more of your voice, grammatically incorrect or not! Thanks for sharing!

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That's a fascinating way to look at things. Incidentally I was just looking into the movie Radioactive, about Marie Curie, who died for the priceless and deadly element she discovered.

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Hello. I saw that in your Instagram you have nothing against using the pronoun "they" in relation to you. As I understand it, are you either queer or non-binary? Thank you in advance.

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Science is nothing but a game of...experimentation, repeat, minor yet possible catastrophic changes to a formula, repeat... science. great post.

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But I think there is still always hope, if haven't you could commit suicide.

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Well, we have a saying in my language: "To vyhnije," meaning that if you let things just rot (develop some mold), they tend to solve themselves. (accidentaly or if you want: naturally...)

If you don´t know the solution, to vyhnije, and well....

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Wow great this is very interesting. Thank u very much for sharing with us.

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Great piece of writing, thank you for sharing

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Seems like everybody's gotten too afraid to let things mold. I mean, why would you? If you have the solution for it, why not fix it straight away... or maybe we're just too overly confident in the resources we have now to believe that molding things will not produce fruitful results.... but what would I know, I'm just trying to channel my boredom into something other than scrolling.

Post some poetry!!

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True true... we aren't doing much in Africa either. Its sickening

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We r all bread molds!

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