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The cinnamon we eat in the US today is a cheap substitute of the one that was popular in the US prior to the Vietnam war. From USA Today:

In the 1950s, most of the cinnamon Americans consumed was the Saigon variety from Vietnam. Saigon cinnamon – the peeled and ground inner bark of an evergreen tree native to mainland Southeast Asia – has a rich and slightly spicy flavor thanks to high levels of essential oils and a flavonoid called cinnemaldehyde. When the U.S. government imposed a trade embargo on Vietnam beginning in 1964, Saigon cinnamon became almost impossible to import, and spice sellers were forced to find another way to fill American cupboards.

They chose and Indonesian variety, Korintje, that is more bitter and has less depth. Even though the trade embargo has ended, the store-brand cinnamon we use has not recovered.

Commercially available ground cinnamon – almost always the Indonesian Korintje variety – is often mixed with fillers. Scientists at the Indian Institute of Spices Research used a process called DNA barcoding to test market samples. They found that 70% contained powdered beechnut husk, ground hazelnut or almond shell dust, dyed and aromatized using cinnamaldehyde and marketed as cinnamon.

Found via Hayden Higgins.

New to me, although maybe it shouldn’t be. Old Christmas is a relic of the Julian calendar, celebrated in rural parts of West Virginia until relatively recently on January 6th. From West Virginia Public Broadcasting:

In the late 1500s, Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar to match the solar cycle more closely. To do so, the Julian Calendar had to be reduced from 376 to 365 days, eliminating 11 full days. Some countries, though, resisted the change and kept the old Julian Calendar. It took nearly 200 years for England and Scotland to come around. Both countries adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1752.

About this time, many of these English and Scots were emigrating to the Americas and settling in Appalachia. Some didn’t know about the change or refused to adopt the new Gregorian Calendar and kept the extra 11 days in their calendars. This meant that for them, Christmas fell on January 6 rather than December 25.

https://twitter.com/ag_guy04/status/1611023399509266432

From Why Not Mars by Maciej Cegłowski

"At this point, it is hard to not find life on Earth. Microbes have been discovered living in cloud tops[28], inside nuclear reactor cores[29], and in aerosols high in the stratosphere[30]. Bacteria not only stay viable for years on the space station hull, but sometimes do better out there[31] than inside the spacecraft. Environments long thought to be sterile, like anoxic brines at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea[32], are in fact as rich in microbial life as a gas station hot dog. Even microbes trapped for millions of years in salt crystals[33] or Antarctic ice[34] have shown they can wake up and get back to metabolizing[35] without so much as a cup of coffee."

As Ceglowski points out, this should make us pretty confident that microbial life already exists on Mars, if only from a stray asteroid.

As of 2020, the average undergraduate GPA at Harvard is 2020. From Aden Barton in The Crimson via Orin Kerr.

“If grade inflation continues at its 2021-2022 pace, for example, the average GPA of the Class of 2028 would be over 4.0.”