Big Potato, Security Through Obscurity, and Women of a Certain Age
Quotes from recent reads, four for everyone and another four for paid AG supporters.
Women of a Certain Age
Whereas the two 18th century examples I’ve quoted are neutral or even slightly positive about middle-aged men, in the 21st century these men tend to be presented as faintly comical or a bit pathetic—out-of-touch old buffers, or in the throes of an embarrassing midlife crisis. Applied to women, by contrast, “of a certain age” seems historically to have had two main meanings, which are not only different from the ones I’ve just described for men, but also quite different from each other—though as usual, what they do have in common is that they conceptualize women primarily in sexual terms.
Did Big Potato Collude to Keep Tater Tots Expensive?
This is how the scheme went down, Redner’s alleges: the potato processors saw their costs shoot up in 2021, so they rose prices, but in 2022 when their costs started coming down, they all agreed to keep their prices high and pocket the wider margin.
Car Tires Shed a Quarter of All Microplastics in the Environment
Every year, billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated 6 million tonnes of tyre fragments. These tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food. Researchers in South China recently found tyre-derived chemicals in most human urine samples.
These tyre particles are a significant but often-overlooked contributor to microplastic pollution. They account for 28% of microplastics entering the environment globally.
‘Security Through Obscurity’: The Swedish Cabin on the Frontline of a Possible Hybrid War
The site offers few clues to the geopolitical drama that has gripped Scandinavia in recent months, driven by accusations of infrastructure sabotage. But in fact the cabin houses a key cog in Europe’s digital connectivity, and a point of vulnerability in a potential hybrid war: a datacentre that amplifies the signal from a 1,615-mile fibre-optic cable running from northern Sweden to Berlin.
