Do you get bigger by absorbing air (thereby increasing your buoyancy) or by absorbing water (with the opposite effect)?

Who picked the name “Vultr” for a hosting provider?

For perspective, this author’s previous article was Do Childhood Vaccines Cause Tornadoes? It hasn’t been ruled out.

He seems obsessed with making the rather pedantic point that researchers should never state that anything is impossible based on absence of evidence.

Yeah, but these are cops we’re talking about—they’re conditioned to escalate at the first sign of noncompliance.

Can you really picture a cop physically intervening, being pushed aside, and saying “ok, never mind”?

It’s almost as if Democratic voters are selecting their candidates based on some other criterion entirely.

One of Kemp’s central arguments—that some early societies were relatively democratic, and that hierarchical rule is not humanity’s default setting—closely echoes the theory advanced by David Graeber and David Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. That book, published in 2021, generated heated debate about the origins of inequality and the reliability of the archaeological record, and it was ultimately admired more for the force of its argument than for its account of the earliest societies.

Is that really the consensus opinion on Dawn of Everything?

The original usage was to carry out (a command). In that original sense it was the sentence, rather than the prisoner, who was executed; but the meaning got transferred over time.

Unionized mitochondria.

Even regular laws should have a trial period, and only get confirmed after demonstrating that they have the intended effect.

Secretary of Health.

Not a movie yet (AFAIK), but Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower is downright uncanny.

Wikipedia’s current events portal covers current events and conflicts with links to plenty of background info.

How will we pay each other for our thoughts?

We queried the TriNetX Global Research Network for adults ≥ 18 years with an insomnia diagnosis (ICD-10 F51.0). The exposed cohort required ≥ 1 melatonin prescription and ≥ 365 exposure-days; controls had no melatonin exposure.

I interpret that to mean that both the study and control cohorts had insomnia diagnoses, but the cohorts weren’t randomized and no other variables were controlled for.

I had a really good pizza topped with stinging nettle once. (It doesn’t sting after cooking.)

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What I’ve got in my pocket.

To paraphrase Keynes—in the long run no one survives.

But the difference in life expectancy based on income will continue to widen.

Tang-era Sogdian dance music.

Beijing is actively cooperating with the international community. The Chinese authorities have confirmed their readiness to engage with all relevant parties to maintain the credibility of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

I assume this is a response to Trump’s decision to re-institute testing?