Jodi Ettenberg

One of the most difficult aspects of having your life change overnight is how to reckon with the loss of identity. For a decade, I lived and breathed food and travel, & I loved the life I had built. Suddenly, I could barely stand up. About spinal CSF leak and loss of identity:

I was so very excited to be the lead author on a recent paper about barriers to care in spinal CSF leak, and my friend surprised me with with the best gift: she had the abstract printed on a mug and sent it my way. SO THOUGHTFUL 😭

NOPE.

WHERE IS THE PIGEON EMOJI

A tale as old as time. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

I got my Canadian census this week, and it turns out that Stats Canada made a series of themed soundtracks we can play while filling it out. Love it. www.statcan.gc.ca/en/census/ce...

what.

I wrote this just before British Columbia announced it would be adopting DST permanently. BAD IDEA. Bad for the immune system; bad for our health. If we stop shifting time, we should be adopt permanent STANDARD time, not DST. All about why it matters: www.patreon.com/posts/rant-a...

Someone posted my deep dive about cross-contact vs. cross-contamination in food to reddit. SORRY I LIKE TO WRITE ABOUT ETYMOLOGY SUE ME. www.legalnomads.com/cross-contac... (The piece does have citations, but I know you can't please everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. At least I learned a lot writing it)

Another paper about how Covid affects sperm count, yet antivaxxers are still going on and on about the vaccines being what causes it. Nope, like much else, it's the virus itself: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... (More on how vaccines don't affect fertility: www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/lar...)

That first amendment is really coming in clutch these days

We paid for it, we even hired US workers to help build it, and we lose out because it’s jointly owned. But sure, we’re the bad guy.

The CDC says it's fine to resume normal activities 24 hrs after Covid symptoms are improving. A new, large prospective study with digital tracking shows recovery takes much longer than that www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

The idea that Covid could damage the brain appeared very early in the pandemic. Society can pretend all it wants that it's "not a big deal" to get infected, but the brain remembers (and not in a good way).

As someone living in that interstitial space, this hits: "We tend to understand illness as something you either die from, or recover from. Those of us who are chronically ill live in the awkward inbetween space. Not dying, but not getting better either. Not an emergency,not something fully resolved"

This a hard year, a compounded boulder of heath issues and other challenges. I haven't done a year-end recap in eons but it's a good reminder (to me, mostly!) that even in tiny increments, even if they're painful, you can still create something exciting. www.legalnomads.com/2025-year-end/

Amazing that this review paper from 2021 just became my most cited paper of my 30+ yr career. I am honored to have been the lead first co-corresponding author with @ChiaWang8. COVID is indeed airborne--as are most other respiratory viruses. @ucsandiego.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Meanwhile in Ottawa part deux: ottawacitizen.com/news/uber-to... a very cute story

Meanwhile, here in Ottawa… toronto.citynews.ca/2025/12/19/o...

"As a physician, I empathize with the lack of familiarity; doctors only know what they know, and headache, after all, is a common complaint. But as a patient, I can’t help feeling angry. It seems that many doctors simply do not believe spinal CSF leak patients."

This is one of those times when all of the bad news just sucks the air out of your lungs.

The ages match Rob and his wife. 💔 Man, this year has been utterly exhausting in so many ways.

The anti-Semitic mass shooting in Australia will cause a national conversation and policy change. We know this because the 1996 Port Arthur massacre led to significant restrictions on guns. The shooting at Brown will do nothing. We know this because it occurred on the anniversary of Sandy Hook.

Obsessively good list of gift suggestions for the curious child courtesy of @tksst.bsky.social. Bookmarked many items in here! thekidshouldseethis.com/giftguide (via @kottke.org's gift guide roundup)

Some not terrible news for a change: “A wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk for the first time since beavers were hunted to extinction in England at the beginning of the 16th century.”

This week, thanks to this @defector piece, I learned that saying something is a gong show to indicate it’s a chaotic mess is classic Canadiana. I thought this was an expression in the US too until I read it.

Depressing field study in Milan of 138 metro rides found that 67% of passengers offered their seat to a pregnant woman when a person dressed as Batman was on the train, vs 38% without Batman. It also says of the 67%, 44% of them “didn’t notice Batman” so it’s a subconscious conscience. ?!?!

1) a clear definition of UPFs, including infographics that are easy to share 2) making less processed foods more affordable, since often UPFs are what is cheapest 3) making healthier food available earlier - vending machines, school meals, etc www.cbc.ca/news/health/...

In the chaos of this month, I forgot to share CAE 56! Some incredible reads in here this month, about the venus fly trap (it's from North Carolina — I had no idea!), ethical collapse, the strangest letter of the alphabet (also had no idea!), the physics behind ocean waves, & much more.