Hi!

Near the top of every Now I Know email is a small link that says “Read Online.” If you click that link, you’ll get the version of this newsletter stored on my website. Unfortunately, that’s been an issue for me for years — and I’m now trying to fix it.

The quick backstory: Now I Know’s archives are hosted on WordPress, a content management system that is common for blogs and similar sites. And it works well … until it doesn’t. A few years ago my WordPress site was infected by malware, and I spent a good amount of money to fix it. I also migrated from a temporary domain name to the permanent NowIKnow.com one, but the way I set up the temporary domain caused a lot of problems, and for some reason, Now I Know articles rarely show in Google search results. I added some ads, which for a while were displaying nicely, but something has gone wrong over the years and I can’t get them to display where I want. And because of some cascading redirects, I can’t update the site design regardless without breaking things. In short, it’s a mess.

So this week, I quietly made a change. The “Read Online” links now go to the web version hosted by beehiiv, the service I use to send out the emails. It’s cleaner looking and hopefully, over time, I can build a design I really like and even move over the domain name.

But for now, things may break. If they do, please let me know — I can’t fix it if I don’t know it’s broken!

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: MLK Day. Took it off.

Tuesday: Fan Mail for the Spam King?: A creative way to get revenge on an email spammer.

Wednesday: The Fake Illness That Saved Lives: Syndrome K wasn’t real. But it helped prevent systemic murder. (When I sent this Wednesday, the email was cut off; I fixed it on this link.)

Thursday: China’s City of Ice: It’s huge. Cold, though.

Long Reads and Other Things

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “The Myth of Drug Expiration Dates” (ProPublica, 12 minutes, July 2017). The subhead: “Hospitals and pharmacies are required to toss expired drugs, no matter how expensive or vital. Meanwhile the FDA has long known that many remain safe and potent for years longer.”

2) “Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?” (New Yorker, 27 minutes, January 2025). Inspiration versus copying is often a thin line, as the subhead notes: “Tracy Wolff, the author of the ‘Crave’ series, is being sued for copyright infringement. But romantasy’s reliance on standardized tropes makes proving plot theft tricky.”

3) “The Online Sports Gambling Experiment Has Failed” (Don’t Worry About the Vase, 13 minutes, November 2024). I read this when it first came out and I’ve gone back and forth about whether to share it; it’s slightly political and I try to shy away from that. But I’ve been thinking about it so much since I read it, I decided I should share.

Have a great weekend!

Dan