Orcas & Explainers
A little something for everyone!
Hello, darling Dames Nationals! We hope you’re having a lovely weekend, or at least a weekend free from playful orcas bent on making your sea vessel unusable!
The moment I started seeing tweets about a small but distinctive trend among a small group of orcas near the Mediterranean, I knew it was only a matter of time until I’d need to dust off and spruce up my orca rant from 2022. (← definitely a sentence I’d like my loved ones to include in my hopefully decades-in-the-future eulogy, as I feel it captures something essential about my whole deal.)
Full points for these elegant synchronized dives, gold medals all around for Team Cetacean
Orcas are fascinating, dangerous creatures who are once again in the media spotlight, this time for *checks notes* repeatedly and efficiently disabling yachts and other boats off the coasts of Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. Because orcas are very social and teach their children well, efficient rudder-destroying skills have spread throughout the orcas of that region and now it’s not just a funny news story, but a full-blown fad among orcas. And lest the humans feel left out, don’t worry, there are memes.
By now, we all know better than to mess around with orcas, right? It’s cruel and dangerous to keep them in captivity. I’m a very indoorsy and physically risk-averse person and even I know this. Their abilities to communicate and hunt are disrupted when humans subject them to the noise of sonar and underwater explosions. They have complex and deep emotional bonds with other orcas in their pods. They are brilliantly creative hunters. Neko Case wrote a very bleak, very catchy song about them. They’re beautiful wild creatures, and we should have a very healthy, respectful fear of them and stay out of their way, because they are metal as hell. They are apex predators who we now know for a fact hunt, kill, and eat blue whales. These comparatively little scrappy kings of the sea are out there taking down the largest creature that has ever existed on this planet. This report in the NYTimes – which is so breathlessly impressed with orcas that my friend Craig suggested perhaps it was in fact written by a particularly PR-focused orca – informs us that:
The water ran red with the blood of the massive creature, and chunks of its flesh were floating all around. The scientists observed one orca force its way into the blue whale’s mouth and feast on its tongue.
I’m trying not to anthropomorphize here, but this is baroque violence. John Woo at his peak could never. I should probably limit myself to saying it’s logical and efficient. The tongue of a blue whale probably has high nutrient value for the orca, and swimming right into the whale’s mouth to get at it is just good common sense. Regardless, I’m going to continue to give these dapper-looking oceanic murderers as wide a berth as possible. And so should all boat-users!
Some Current Favorite Instagram Follows: Engaging Explainers Edition
Since Twitter is but a shadow – a withered husk, even! – of its former self, and I have yet to develop the habit of checking & posting on Bluesky, I find myself relying more on Instagram for real-time commentary on matters of personal and world import. Here’s a little grab bag of some of my current favorites, all under the umbrella of Good Explainers. Per usj, I am very interested in the content and people you find fascinating, so please do leave a comment if you feel like sharing.
Kevin James Thornton (@kevinjamesthornton) is hilarious (see: his cats & melatonin song) and insightful (see: a recent video on how figuring out how to be himself has led him to shed a lot of the fears he carried with him for decades), a winning combination every time. I love that he approaches his personal history as a self-described repressed homosexual raised in a super-fundamentalist church (🎶 when it was the nine-tiiiiiieeees 🎶) from so many angles. He recently recorded his first comedy special, and will be out on tour again this summer, too!
Miriam Ezagui (@miriam.ezagui) is a labor & delivery nurse, mother of four, and an Orthodox Jew whose videos give followers extended glimpses of her life in all of those domains. She has a massive following on IG & TikTok, and small wonder: she’s very engaging and as open as one can be in the context of brief video creation, she’s funny and sincere and thoughtful and winning. I think her status as an Orthodox Jew — she covers her hair, wears very modest clothing, and often observes Shabbat and other holidays within Brooklyn’s vibrant Lubavitcher Chasidic community — is part of the appeal as well, providing a compelling combination of exoticism and relatability for her many non-Jewish followers. I have mixed feelings about that, but I also watch every video she posts, so.
Charlotte Palermino (@charlotteparler) is the co-founder of Dieux Cosmetics and is so good at explaining the science and (often racist, wheeeeee!) history of skincare. She’s also got deep roots in France and her videos of the food, wine, scenery, and pharmacies she visits there are transporting, informative delights. Plus! Charlotte was the guest on this week’s episode of Who What Wear.
Landon Bryant (@landontalks) is here to explain Southern idiosyncrasies of language, culture, dress, and food. He’s basically a very funny and erudite folklorist, and would be a great audiobook narrator. If his Instagram videos only leave you wanting more, he’s got a YouTube channel for more longform talking.