A weekly collection of links to interesting things curated by Colin Wright.
The End of Roadside Attractions
It did not take us long to realize we liked eating and traveling more than we liked what we’d studied, so as card-carrying contrarians with a car and a few bucks in our pockets, we decided that simple American food needed a champion. We spent the next three years on the road, scouting out these places. We drove two hundred miles a day and ate (on average) ten meals a day. When we weren’t driving or eating, our attention was drawn to weird things by the side of the road.
Why Do We Call a Dollar a “Buck”?
The precise etymology of buck as currency—specifically a dollar—is unclear, but there are theories. Because deer were known as bucks, their hides were called “buckskin,” which was a form of currency in the 18th century. According to Huffington Post, a mention of buck in this context can be found in a 1748 journal entry in which Pennsylvania Dutch pioneer Conrad Weiser values whiskey at “5 bucks.”
Need a Knee Replacement? You Can Get It at the Mall
In early 2023, seven months after her appointment, she learned a miscommunication at the surgeon’s office in Calgary had meant she’d never made it to the wait list in the first place. She was reassured again that she would be booked for surgery. Again, she held out hope that her phone might ring with a date. Months passed and she heard nothing.
Eventually, she stumbled on John Antoniou, a surgeon who works at a private surgical centre in Westmount, a tony area of Montreal. He could do both knees for just over $32,000. Additional costs, including travel, a hotel stay, and medication, would be around $8,000. She found this option appealing: it was more affordable than getting the surgery done in the US.
Why Big Pharma Wants You to Eat More Meat
As startups like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods rose to prominence, Simmons attacked veggie burgers and meat-free chicken as highly processed foods that “won’t do” in the effort to feed a growing population. (Even though experts widely acknowledge that plant-based meat would, in fact, better help feed a growing population, as it requires less land and water and generates far less greenhouse gas emissions than animal meat.)
But take a closer look at Elanco, and Simmons’s opposition isn’t all that surprising. The company he runs, which spun off from pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly in 2019, is a world leader in developing and marketing pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics and vaccines — for both pets and livestock.
The New Space Race Is Raining More Garbage From the Sky
In the early morning hours of February 19, 2025, a bright object streaked through the skies above western Europe. The mysterious, flaming hunk of metal traveled for several hours before smashing into a warehouse in the Polish village of Komorniki.
“I felt surprised but also a little scared,” Adam Borucki, the warehouse’s owner, told the BBC in an interview. “But ultimately, I’m glad no one was hurt.” After inspection by local authorities and the Polish space agency, officials determined the object’s identity: a piece of debris from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had re-entered the atmosphere.
Russia Seeds Chatbots With Lies. Any Bad Actor Could Game AI the Same Way
Moscow’s propaganda inroads highlight a fundamental weakness of the AI industry: Chatbot answers depend on the data fed into them. A guiding principle is that the more the chatbots read, the more informed their answers will be, which is why the industry is ravenous for content. But mass quantities of well-aimed chaff can skew the answers on specific topics. For Russia, that is the war in Ukraine. But for a politician, it could be an opponent; for a commercial firm, it could be a competitor.
Rogue Communication Devices Found in Chinese Solar Power Inverters
While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.
However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said.
Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said.