A weekly collection of links to interesting things curated by Colin Wright.
Moral Progress Is Annoying
It’s not that you don’t care about animal suffering. In other contexts, you actually care quite a bit – you would definitely do something if you thought a neighbour was mistreating their dog. You’re a good person – an animal lover even! But it’s hard to care that much about the ethics of meat-eating when these vegan types are just so preachy and annoying.
This is, we suspect, a very common experience. When we’re told that something we see as ordinary – like eating meat – is actually wrong, our first reaction is to get irritated and dismissive. If it’s not about bacon, it’s about plastic straws. Or a phrase we’ve been using for years but is now considered offensive. Or having to share your pronouns.
Do Americans Drink Too Much? Alcohol Is Driving a Debate in Washington
Their research has led a half-dozen countries to recommend that less alcohol is best. The Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction advised health officials in 2023 that people should have two drinks or fewer a week to lower health risks. Canada had previously said 15 drinks a week for men and 10 drinks a week for women presented a low health risk.
The WHO said last year that no amount of alcohol is safe, largely based on evidence that it causes cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, classifies alcohol as a carcinogen with a risk profile similar to that of asbestos, radiation and tobacco.
The Pain Gap
The concept of reducing these shades of pain to a single number dates back to the 1970s. But the zero-to-10 scale is ubiquitous today because of what was called a “pain revolution” in the ’90s, when intense new attention to addressing pain—primarily with opioids—was framed as progress. Doctors today have a fuller understanding that they can (and should) think about treating pain, as well as the terrible consequences of prescribing opioids so readily. What they are learning only now is how to better measure pain and treat its many forms.
There’s Something About Mount Shasta
There’s a well-known legend that says that somewhere deep beneath Northern California’s 14,179-foot-tall Mount Shasta is a complex of tunnels and a hidden city called Telos, the ancient “City of Light” for the Lemurians. They were the residents of the mythical lost continent of Lemuria, which met its demise under the waves of the Pacific (or the Indian Ocean, depending on who you ask) thousands of years ago. Lemurians believed to have survived the catastrophe are said to have settled in Telos, and over the years their offspring have been sporadically reported wandering around the area: seven-feet-tall, with long flowy hair, often clad in sandals and white robes.
15 Trees Every Outdoor Lover Should Learn to Identify
There are more than fifty species of ash worldwide, and most are tall and straight growing, creating excellent timber and lumber for specialty work. Ash trees are opposite branching (like maple), but they have compound leaves that look more like hickory leaves. The seeds are held in small papery strips, resembling small straight maple seed pods.
The Brain Makes a Lot of Waste. Now Scientists Think They Know Where It Goes
The papers, all published in the journal Nature, suggest that during sleep, slow electrical waves push the fluid around cells from deep in the brain to its surface. There, a sophisticated interface allows the waste products in that fluid to be absorbed into the bloodstream, which takes them to the liver and kidneys to be removed from the body.
One of the waste products carried away is amyloid, the substance that forms sticky plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.
I Tried to Finish a Dead Man’s Novel
There are numerous drafts. Some parts are written in pencil, some in pen, some on a typewriter, and some on a computer. Several pages were printed on old-timey paper attached to each other along a perforated edge, unfurling like a scroll, and some were saved on a 3.5-inch floppy that can now be retrieved only as a file of randomized numbers, like code in the Matrix.