"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I feel like humans in general work fairly well when story or myth is tied to an explanation, but can understand that's not for everyone. I'm reminded of oral histories that humans make in order to warn about tsunamis. Her linking her brother's ailments with the state of the planet drew me in and I learned a few things that I can look into myself. For example, The Great Unconformity I'm sure I can look up a bit about (and sources are provided in the article) and similarly for the possibilities of things that might give us insight into that time period (also referenced and sourced in the article). My experience is that Nautlius in general has this type of lyrical prose and doesn't really pose itself as a peer-reviewed journal or anything. All that to say that to minimize the story as about "some writers day" feels disingenuous to me.

I agree. All topics I read about on news aggregation sites are for the topic themselves. I don’t want to spend eight paragraphs of “my mother tends to get pensive and quiet around Christmas now, eight years after my father passed” in order to figure out that the article is about the new iPad.

So for me it’s not a good style.

You’re not alone

Merry Christmas Eve, hope you're spreading lots of love and holiday joy to all this year!