Arachnophobes: skip this one.

1. Rabid orcas. While no instances of rabies in marine mammals have been (to my knowledge) documented so far, all mammals are hypothetically susceptible to the virus; orcas are the most likely whale species for such a scenario, since they are predatory and have been known to eat land-going animals. The chain of transmission here would have to be something like “rabid polar bear bites seal, which escapes from the bear alive but is later eaten by an orca.” As per Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy’s Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus (2012), it is possible to contract rabies from consuming saliva or brain tissue from an infected animal, although it’s much easier to get it from a bite.

2. Orcas hunting white sharks exclusively to eat their livers.

3. While I’m at it: whale prion diseases. I don’t have any good links for this one, either, because as far as I know it too is entirely hypothetical; that said, it is possible for land-mammal prions causing spongiform encephalopathy to be transmitted to fish, so I don’t think transmission to marine mammals is entirely impossible. (Squid prion diseases are, for obvious reasons, also a concern.)

4. The existence of a subterranean interspecies spider metropolis. I look forward to the eventual Jeff VanderMeer novel about this.

5. The existence of the sort of person who looks at a hole in the ground that smells powerfully of rotting eggs and requires a treacherous crossing through chest-high water to reach, and thinks, I’d better go see what’s in there. Further: the fact that these people are also delighted to find that said hole in the ground contains more than 111,000 spiders. And that some of them are willing to poke the world’s largest spiderweb with their bare hands, and cut off pieces of it with what appear, in the video included in the above link, to be scientific embroidery scissors. I am grateful that people like this exist, because if they didn’t, I would have substantially less material for this column; I am also awed and frightened by their sheer zeal and fortitude.

6. Saludadores. Yes, I’m still worried about historical phenomena, this time in Early Modern Spain. These people claimed to be blessed with two powers: (1) to cure rabies, and (2) to detect witches. Fatal consequences on either front were not unusual.

7. The impossibility of changing the default type size in ATLAS.ti. Always and ever, the software will offer up nine-point Segoe UI. (One wonders if they receive kickbacks from EyeBuyDirect and Zenni, as a consequence of this otherwise mystifying design choice.) I do not, fortunately, have any call to use this software myself; my good friend the Rudderless Gudgeon, however, does. I am grateful to him for bringing this one to my attention, and share in his bafflement on the subject.

8. The equal impossibility, so the Rudderless Gudgeon further informs me, of changing the default “highlighter” colors in ATLAS.ti. Of the nine default hues, only three actually render as transparent enough to read the text through them. Everyone involved in creating the default text settings for this software should be embarrassed. I’m embarrassed on their behalf.

9. Come to think of it: default typefaces in general. In Docs, where I’m composing this, it’s Arial (clean, respectable, accessible—it’s just that I harbor a personal antipathy toward sans-serifs). In Word, it’s (shudder) Aptos, formerly (greater shudder) Calibri. Scrivener also defaults to Calibri on PC, though I’m willing to give them some points back for selecting Palatino for the Mac edition, which I’d consider using as my composition typeface if I weren’t so wedded to Georgia.

10. The difficulty of reconciling a personal and political commitment to the descriptivist approach to lexicography with an inveterate snobbishness about the precise uses of the words font and typeface. Typeface, as anyone who has ever been forced to talk to me for more than five minutes is likely aware, refers to the name of the type design, e.g., Arial, and font to the style in which that design is rendered, e.g., bold.) I care a lot about this, for no good reason, and I imagine it’s one of the reasons I am not often invited to parties.

(Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash)