Guida

@southernphd Lovely story

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him. In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over. Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed. When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye. She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession. As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him. Rest in peace, professor.

@SketchesbyBoze @JeremyWingert79 Excellent suggestions

@JeremyWingert79 Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend or Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell.

I need a recommendation! Give me a meaningful, riveting book I can read aloud to my 9yo and 7yo. We've enjoyed Charlotte's Web, Anne of Green Gables, The Wild Robot, Little House on the Prairie, The Wizard of Oz, Summer of the Monkeys, & the first Narnia book, to name a few.

@VisionaryVoid @HHelenakhl Pearl Buck’s daughter also died of PKU

The Mother Who Smelled Something Wrong. In the spring of 1934, a Norwegian woman named Borgny Egeland walked into Oslo University Hospital with a question that no doctor in the country had been able to answer. Her two children, Liv, age six, and Dag, age four, had been born normal and then stopped developing. They could not speak. Dag could not sit without support. She had taken them to doctor after doctor for years. None of them could tell her why. What none of them had noticed, or asked about, was the smell. Borgny had been noticing it for years: a sharp, musty odor in her children's urine. She mentioned it to a physician colleague of her husband, who happened to know of an unusual doctor at the university hospital. His name was Asbjørn Følling, and before becoming a medical doctor he had trained as a chemical engineer. He agreed to see the children mainly, as he later admitted, "because I did not want to be hostile to the mother." Følling ran the standard battery of urine tests in his improvised attic laboratory. All came back normal. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added a few drops of ferric chloride, a routine reagent used to detect diabetic ketones. The solution was supposed to turn purple. It turned a vivid, unprecedented green. He checked the medical literature. No one had ever recorded this reaction before. He checked both children's samples again a week later. Green again. Over the next six weeks, working mostly alone, Følling processed twenty-two liters of the Egeland children's urine under an inert nitrogen atmosphere, filtering, isolating, purifying, until he identified the unknown compound: phenylpyruvic acid, a substance never previously found in a living human body. He then screened 420 intellectually disabled patients at institutions across Oslo. Eight more tested positive, including two siblings. Five months after Borgny first walked through his door, Følling published his paper identifying a previously unknown inherited metabolic disease. He called it oligophrenia phenylpyruvica. The world would rename it phenylketonuria, PKU. Today, every baby born in the developed world is tested for it in the first days of life, and a simple dietary adjustment begun at birth prevents the intellectual disability entirely. Untreated, the condition destroys the developing brain. Caught in time, children with PKU grow up without any impairment at all. Asbjørn Følling received the Fridtjof Nansen Prize, the Anders Jahres Award, and the Kennedy Foundation Award. He received honorary degrees and state honors across Europe. He did not receive the Nobel Prize. In the words of his field, he is "by many considered the most important medical scientist never to receive the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine." He found the answer in the smell no one else had asked about.

@PaulCollider @VisionaryVoid @grok There is a treatment now.

@VisionaryVoid Hey @grok, what is the dietary change needed for PKU?

@YesterdaysBrit1 Just finished watching it (again)

I've seen this film about 20 times. Made in 1962, it's bursting with history and a star-studded cast, including Wayne, Mitchum, Burton, Fonda, Connery and many more. Still watchable years later. Cinema at its best!

🎯

@OxidizedIron33 @policylaila Got it

@guidafaceguida @policylaila The IDF killed all the Israeli's who died on that day.

I posted about Tilly because her mother is connected to families at my children’s school. Some called it a “dog whistle.” Some called me a racist. Some demanded to know why I cared. A child is missing. Her parents are in agony. But this is the discourse we have built. Everything sorted by race. Every story slotted into a side. Care about this child and you must be against that one. Compassion itself has been made tribal. A missing child should unite us. Worry, prayer, hope she comes home. Nothing more complicated than that. We used to know how to do this.

@OxidizedIron33 @policylaila You forgot Israel

@policylaila While at the same time ignoring the mothers and girls of Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Don't pretend you're a real person.

@afneil Happy birthday

On This Day: Happy birthday Andrew Neil cityam.com/on-this-day-ha…

@London_W4 What an awful awful experience. But you’re alive and that’s all that matters.

I know you like to keep abreast of my adventures so today I have excelled myself. I’ve come to Woodbridge in Suffolk to spend a few days on my sailing boat that I bought a few weeks ago. Packed loads of stuff. Bought a secondhand dinghy from the local boat sales place here, rowed out to my boat and the dinghy started sinking. Slowly at first and then boom, it was gone and me and all of my stuff were in the water. I had my very heavy backpack on. The duvet managed to wrap itself around my left arm and body and was pulling me down. At this point I thought I was going to drown. I managed to somehow free myself from it and swim to my sailing boat and reach up and cling on. Anyone who knows boats however, knows that you cannot pull yourself up out of the water. So there I was clinging on to my boat, backpack still on and wondering how long it would be before my arms gave way and things got even worse. Well, the world’s most wonderful bloke in a rib saw me and sped over. He got my backpack off and I got into his boat. He saved my life. Back on dry land and I assessed the damage. My Fujifilm xpro3 is deceased. Totally filled with water. Various other electronic items are destroyed. That involuntary swim has cost me thousands of pounds and no, there is no insurance I can claim from. I’ve lost it. The dinghy should never have been sold. If I’d had more experience I’d probably have realised that before getting in it. At least he’s refunded me the purchase price! So I’m sat in soaking wet clothes in the sunshine outside a pub now. I’ve booked a hotel and I’m going to have a glass of wine. Or two. Or three and reflect on an exciting Thursday. Just not exciting in the way I’d hoped. P.s. I’m sure there are those who will wonder whether I made parts of this story up. Well I didn’t. It’s exactly as I’ve told it. It was actually worse than I’ve told it. So I’m poorer and somewhat fed up about that. Anyway, cheers 🥂

@SNSDLovelyz Looks like dishydrotic eczema (aka pompholyx).

ทุกคนนน ช่วยแนะนำหน่อย 😭 นิ้วมือมีตุ่มน้ำใส ๆ ขึ้นเป็นกลุ่ม เป็นมานานไม่หาย แถมคันมาก คล้ายๆ ในรูป แบบนี้ควรทำยังไงดีอะ

@London_W4 Lovely

After a most pleasant day in London where I actually achieved the jobs I’d planned, it’s time for bed and tonight I’ll leave you with this photo I took some time ago on Primrose Hill. One of my favourite places in London. Walking here one night and I just loved the simplicity of the scene. A lamppost and a bench. That’s it. Unedited and taken on a borrowed Leica compact camera which produced the gorgeous green tones. Nighty night boys and girls. Sweet dreams

@DianeLBW @MrLeeCain @RoundLike @Conservatives @KemiBadenoch @ConHome I hope so. I certainly think that must be the way forward.

@guidafaceguida @MrLeeCain @RoundLike @Conservatives @KemiBadenoch @ConHome But they will be have to sign up to Kemi's policy offering. All are up for re-assessment prior to the next GE, Kemi has made that clear. It is quite likely that they will not get selected.

Most people in the @Conservatives are not yet willing to admit this publicly but it is time to face reality - @KemiBadenoch is failing as leader. The party is in a worse position than when she took over and there are no signs of recovery. My piece for @ConHome on why it is time the Tories followed Labour and confronted its own failing leadership. 🔗 conservativehome.com/2026/05/18/lee…

@Poppy_yyyyyyyy Swallows have returned to nest in my stables.

Has anyone spotted any swallows, swifts or house martins yet this year? They’re normally everywhere around me by now but I haven’t spotted a single one yet.

@laskoi @Mattisamazing33 Spray in July, August Sept,October, very specific 5 day windows. If you last spray between 10-15 October, no caterpillars survive to overwinter. Xentari or TopBuxus. Essential vigilance during these 4 periods means no caterpillars!

@Mattisamazing33 There was an article the other day about them....apparently it has been the perfect conditions for them this year....

My boxwood bush is being killed by boxtree caterpillars!! I found one. And the whole thing is covered in like web stuff. And it’s dying. Hmph

@Danjsalt Not so long ago, Judah wrote an exculpatory piece about giving away the Chagos Islands.

Gosh it was only a few weeks ago that Judah was trying to reinvent himself as a serious analyst not a one sided political wibbler obsessed with the EU #Echobox=1778340490" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…

@anon_opin That’s good. The CS has increased by 25% since 2016. Radical pruning required.

Civil servant here. If Farage wins the next GE, he'll call us all back to the office 5 days a week. The CS will then be on the verge of collapse, as thousands of people will either retire immediately or quit, due to the removal of WFH. Cheap optics will meet reality.

@Barbara69320065 @DPJHodges And that was also a stupid move

@DPJHodges You really are a nasty bastard. You seem to have forgotten (because you're not really very good) that Sunak went even further and appointed David Cameron as Foreign Secretary. Brown is an unpaid appt and he will not be in the Lords.

Cabinet Minister: "I'm now waiting for the ghost of Barbara Castle to appear on the steps of Downing Street".

@DPJHodges @wastingmytime59 That would be an improvement at least.