#65: My problematic fave
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Good morning!
Today, some musings on my problematic fave.
23 & especially me
On a recent sunny afternoon, my family and I sat quietly around a corner booth at Bemelmans, an old piano bar tucked in the lobby of The Carlyle Hotel. Bemelmans is dark, candle-lit, and wallpapered in whimsical illustrations by its namesake, Ludwig Bemelmans, the guy who made Madeline. It’s the perfect spot to convince your parents you’re thriving, or invest in a martini so strong you forget about the Delta variant. In other words it’s good for special occasions, which is why we should have spent our time there gazing dreamily at the historic artwork, or at least whispering about how W*ody Al*en used to play his clarinet there, but instead we were hunched over our phones like gargoyles, comparing our DNA.
I was of course to blame. Every year or so, I remember that my brother, parents, and I had our genomes sequenced for $99 in 2014, and then force us to reappraise the results. If you’re unfamiliar, 23&me is a service that mails you a tube to spit in, and in return tells you everything from what you probably look like to where your ancestors lived. I remind us of this so we can all remember what we’ve forgotten since the last time we remembered, like who has freckles or attached earlobes, or who inherited the genetic variant for Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t matter that we already know the former and can do nothing about the latter—it matters that we can feel special, however briefly, and also blame things on our parents. You’d be surprised by how healing this can be during otherwise dark or dull times. It’s like a balm for narcissism, in that it nurses your narcissism back to full health.
Do I believe 23&me will one day sell all our spit to Jeff Bezos so he can execute a morally reprehensible vanity project on Mars? Yes. Would I do the test today? Probably not. Do I want to brag that, according to the app, I have the muscle composition of “elite power athletes”? Absolutely. It’s the only proof I have.
Bemelmans was unusually empty save for a pair of sophisticated-looking Upper East Side women, who were probably wondering what could possibly be so interesting on our phones. Unfortunately, it was the probability of whether each of us has dimples (66% chance I don’t). “There’s a 56% chance I have dandruff,” I read on excitedly, because I do. “A 94% chance I do not have red hair!” Every time one of us read a new statistic, the others would echo their own. This kind of exchange follows very simple rules: Either the prediction is correct, in which case science is a marvel, or the information is incorrect, in which case we’ve miraculously “beat the odds.” It’s very Karen-Smith-says-there’s-a-30-percent-chance-it’s-already-raining, and it’s more fun than it sounds.
Scrolling through the “Wellness” section, we shared whether we were predisposed to flush in reaction to alcohol, weigh more or less than average, have lactose intolerance. When I shared that my DNA indicates I’m “likely to be a deep sleeper” (true), my brother and mom, both insomniacs, proudly announced their DNA indicates they’re “less likely to be deep sleepers.” We all clapped. Do you know that your spit contains such riveting information as whether your ring finger is longer than your index finger (mine is), whether your hair gets light in the sun (mine does), whether you like cilantro (I don’t), or whether you have wet, sticky earwax (I’m devastated to share that I do)? I’m also less likely to consume caffeine, which I could have told you myself, but it’s more special that my spit can, don’t you think? I do realize I’m just describing DNA.
When I first got my results, I was most excited to see my ancestry. I learned I’m a whopping 70% Irish (my ancestors hail from a county I’m proud to share is called Mayo) and 23% Ashkenazi Jewish (shout out to Plonsk, Poland). Apparently I have 81% more Neanderthal DNA than all users on 23&me, which I do consider a brag. My full last name is Nachmanovich—it was changed at Ellis Island for my great grandfather Hyman—but I didn’t learn that from 23&me, that’s just a fun fact. Hyman™️ was a bald, five-foot-tall tailor, if you’re curious, and he married a woman named Rae in the Bronx in 1923. His relatives were mostly taken in the Holocaust, but his brother made it over in 1930, although I’m sorry to say his name was Adolph. I didn’t learn that from the app either, but I did learn that I have 63 DNA relatives in New York City, when here I thought I only had one. Is your name Rebecca Schwartzman and were you born in 1990? If so you might be my 4th cousin! If you happened to be named Sanford Rozinksy, we share 0.66% of our DNA, which doesn’t mean much, to be fair.
I’ll admit I haven’t done much with any of this information. For most of us it’s an indulgence—non-essential to the core. But occasionally it proves itself. The last time my family remembered we sold our DNA, my mom started poking around the family tree section and found out she had four siblings instead of three, and that I have an Uncle Steve who lives in Texas. He was born when my mom was seven to a woman who was not my grandmother, and was raised by adoptive parents. He looks just like all my other uncles, which is amazing. My mom told all of us over FaceTime last year—we screamed—and when travel became safer, she met him.
The FDA has been fighting with 23&me for a while. They take issue with the company telling people whether they have genetic variants for certain diseases, because if they do, people interpret it as a diagnosis, which it’s not. (For instance, I have the genetic variant for “age-related macular degeneration,” which means one day I might lose some of my sight, but it’s not a guarantee.) In this piece for Scientific American, Charles Siefe argues that the real problem, however, is that this genome project “is a mechanism meant to be a front end for a massive information-gathering operation against an unwitting public.” Not unlike how Google purports to be a search engine, but is actually sequencing our data to sell us ads. I have no trouble believing this whatsoever, and may one day live to regret my choice to pay to have an app tell me I don’t have a cleft chin. But I have to say, it’s a great way to kill an afternoon.
Why is it thrilling to be told something about yourself that you already know? It’s akin to reading your horoscope, finding a few details that sort-of line up, and going whoa. I for one don’t believe in astrology and actually find the culture surrounding it decently cringe, but whenever I come across something about Leos, I search for truth in it anyway. At some point in my twenties, I paid $9.99 for a 50-page reading of my Myers-Briggs type because I liked what the shorter reading said about me—something about me being a deep thinker blah blah blah. This kind of self-mapping is mostly nonsense if you ask me, but only on a technicality. In the emotional realm, almost anything can be true. Which is why, for me, it only vaguely matters that 23&me is based on actual science; mostly I enjoy it because I know I was born alone and will die alone, and welcome anything that dulls the ache of unrelenting chaos in-between.
1. The Khao Soi Kaa Kai from Thai Diner, which I swear is one of the best things I’ve eaten in New York.
2. “The Strange Appeal of Perverse Actions,” by Paul Bloom for The New Yorker, a great essay about the value of doing the thing you’re not supposed to do. “The desire to exercise your autonomy might motivate you to turn against the expected, the reasonable, and the moral—to show yourself, and perhaps others, that you are free.”
3. The Alice Neel exhibit at The Met, a couple days before it ended. I can tend towards self-consciousness in museums, wondering if I like paintings for the right reasons, or if I’m missing something quintessential about the form having never really studied it or been around it much. But I felt the opposite looking at Alice Neel’s paintings.
4. Lots of Duolingo to brush up on my Spanish, which is filling the void left by teacher validation since I left school ten years ago. I really want to please the app…
5. This TikTok featuring that kid from the movie Up???
6. “Who Actually Gets to Create Black Pop Culture?” a thoughtful piece by Bertrand Cooper for Current Affairs, plus this followup episode of the podcast Bad Faith, where the host Brianna Joy Gray moderates a debate between Cooper and writer Damon Young about some of the points of the piece.
7. Much debate over “the dessert gap,” i.e. the elapsed time between dinner and dessert. If you ask me there’s only one way to do it and that’s to wait at least 20 minutes, if not longer.
8. This “milkshake,” around 1 p.m., while my mom was in town for her birthday. It was the only thing she requested we do on her New York trip. Lol <3
9. “The Weekend vs. Abel Tesfaye,” a profile by Mark Anthony Green for GQ that made me really like The Weeknd (I think).
10. This tweet in honor of Avi, who calls everything and everyone an op:
11. A bunch of film back, including this photo Avi took of me a few weeks ago at an outdoor cafe. We had forced ourselves to leave the apartment in the hopes of coaxing Bug out from hiding so we could give him his medicine, and decided to stop for lunch before we went back in an attempt to cheer up. The second after I refused to smile in this photo it started thundering and pouring rain all over us, and the scenario was so cartoonishly pathetic we finally laughed.
12. 1 Babybel cheese wrapped in red wax, the perfect consumer product.
13. Another message from a sweet person having a bad trip on acid thanking me for writing about my bad acid trip. So funny how often that piece pops back into my life when some random stranger somewhere is tripping and starts panic-googling.
14. Ricky Jay doing a card trick. A perfect video from 1995.
15. Chocolate Babka from Mekelberg’s, still the best I’ve tried.
Thanks for reading, I hope you have a nice week!
Haley
This month a portion of subscriber proceeds will be redistributed to National Bail Out, a collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers, and activists focused on ending pre-trial detention and mass incarceration through community-based advocacy.
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