Featured Links - March 3, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A model train layout at the Ganarska Railway Modellers show

• Europe’s New AI Weather Model Is Faster, Smarter, and Free—Here’s What to Know. "The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has debuted its own forecast AI model on the heels of a cutting-edge Google model released in December."
• Serenity meow! "With the right love and understanding, cats and humans can live more happily together. New research is upending long-held behavioural theories about how to achieve that."
• Profound Architecture and Multidimensional Depth: Jorma Kaukonen on Phil Lesh. I'm reading Kaukonen's autobiography, Been So Long, now. I found it interesting that in the article he says the first time they played together was at the Grateful Dead's 11/20/1970 concert in Rochester, which was my first Grateful Dead concert. 
• Trump Is Letting Russell Vought Go Wild. "Vought's Project 2025 unitary executive theory has us headed toward a constitutional cliff." This is one of the scariest articles about the current situation that I've read recently, and I've read too many. Gilead rising, indeed. 
• Europe: Is the Force Awakening? "A potential superpower realizes that it can’t rely on America." I'm beginning to wonder if Canada should be seeking membership in the EU. We do have a common border with Denmark, after all. 
• Virology Mini-Review: Pandemic Risk Stemming From the Bovine H5N1 Outbreak: An account of the Knowns and Unknowns. "This is a lengthy, and well-written review and I highly recommend that you read it in its entirety.  While cattle-centric, it touches on other aspects, including spillover into cats, pigs, humans, and other species."
• Surgery implants tooth into eyeball to help blind patients see again. This souns completely bonkers but it works for certain types of corneal blindness.
• Now Introduced Right to Repair Legislation. "The legislation hasn't yet passed everywhere, but all 50 states introducing some form of right to repair legislation is a "tipping point” for the right to repair movement." This is good news.
• The biggest data breaches of 2025 — so far. "We’re barely a couple of months into 2025, but this year has already seen several data breaches affecting the personal information of millions of individuals, including everything from student records to phone data to sensitive health information."
• We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Was So Durable. "The ancient Romans were masters of building and engineering, perhaps most famously represented by the aqueducts. And those still functional marvels rely on a unique construction material: pozzolanic concrete, a spectacularly durable concrete that gave Roman structures their incredible strength."
• Carl Zimmer: Air-Borne and the Big Miss With Covid. "One of the top science journalists of our time discusses his new book."
  
• Massive Supereruptions Might Not Trigger the Apocalypse, Just Decades of Chaos. "An ultra-powerful eruption 79,500 years ago may not have disrupted the climate as badly as feared, according to Earth scientists."