Featured Links - April 22, 2026

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

Boats at the marina waiting for summer

• Game of drones. "As the federal government spends billions on military modernization, Canadian drone innovators are vying to meet the moment in the sky, on land and in the water." Good coverage of a new industry with lots of photos. 
• Power imbalance. "James S.A. Corey on The Captives War, The Book of Daniel, and how the only way to survive an alien invasion might be appeasement." A fascinating interview with the authors of the wonderfu Expanse series. 
• What Discoveries Might Be Hiding in the Artemis 2 Images and Data? "NASA’s Artemis 2 mission produced a wealth of data that experts will be analyzing for years to come."
• They Are Killing Our People. "This past week, the Mikisew Cree First Nation of Alberta released a report on the massive cancer rates in their community. The Alberta government withheld key medical statistics, and the federal government dragged their feet. The Feds promised to fund a study that would take 10 years to complete. And so, the community paid for their own research." This is what happens when you live downstream from the biggest polluter in Canada. 
• 'For All Mankind' alternative timeline vs reality: How Apple TV's sci-fi show diverges from history.. "How do "For All Mankind"'s six decades of space exploration "history" compare with the real thing?" Spoiler warning for those who haven't watched the show,
• Why Medieval Bread Was A Superfood While Your Modern Bread Makes You Sick (YouTube). "There's a significant issue with the bread we consume today. While bread was once a fundamental part of civilizations, sustaining families and armies, modern bread often causes gut issues, blood sugar spikes, and leaves us feeling unsatisfied. This food history explores how the bread industry has changed, contrasting today's offerings with the traditional bread that nourished our ancestors. We conduct a food industry case study, examining how the history of bread, including ancient grains and sourdough, shows a stark difference from what we find on shelves now."
• The Making of Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool".  A long essay on one of the true classics of 20th century music. 
• Facebook and Instagram Tighten Censorship Rules for Saying “Antifa”. 'Meta’s new rules let it ban users or suppress comments that include the word “antifa” alongside “content-level threat signals.”'
• How two mathematicians created an equation that quietly runs the planet. "The Diffie-Hellman key exchange secures everything from your text messages to government secrets." This article has the best explanation I've seen ofhow public key cryptography works. 
• Winner of top Sony World Photography Awards $25,000 prize revealed. "With nearly half a million entries, the judges must have had a tough job choosing the winners of this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. The competition is now in its 19th edition, and the overall Photographer of the Year 2026 title has been named as Citlali Fabián with the series ‘Bilha, Stories of My Sisters’."
• Inside the stunning fall of the Maple Leafs: Chaos, dysfunction and AI. For the (probably few) hockey fans reading this blog, a deep dive into the latest pathetic season of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I was in high school the last time this team won the Stanley Cup. The way they are playing, I may not live long enough to see them win one.
• How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war. "Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones."

Featured Links - April 8, 2026

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

A choppy bay

• The Next Coup Attempt. "And How to Stop It." An unsettling post from historian Timothy Snyder. 
• The Artemis Earth photo is incredible – but the one thing that nobody is telling you about it will blow your mind. 'The famous "Hello, World" photo by astronaut Reid Wiseman isn’t quite what you think.' I didn't figure it out until I read the article.
• How to Find Thunderbird Profile Location in Windows 11, 10, 8, 8.1, 7. I needed to figure this out because Thunderbird moved the profile folder on my wife's laptop and my backup program couldn't find it. This is a useful article for anyone using Thunderbird on Windows.
• The Lancet: Long COVID and Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Disease. "A recent study (see PLoS Med.: Association Between COVID-19 Vaccination and Sudden Death in Apparently Healthy Younger Individuals) found no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of sudden cardiac death in young healthy adults, but they did find a strong link between recent COVID infection and an increased risk of sudden cardiac death." 
• Data Centres Are on Track to Wreck the Planet. Can We Stop Them? "They will guzzle more water and power than the world can afford—for an AI video of your cat as an astronaut."
• Any USB drive or cable you plug in might be a silent killer. "As if we didn’t already have enough malware to worry about, malicious hackers and state-sponsored cybercrime teams are turning ordinary-looking USB drives and cables into weapons that can infect or fry — within a single second — any computer or electronic component you plug them into."
• Experiments refute dark matter claim. "The results of her analysis, which have excluded the dark matter explanation with greater confidence, were published in Physics Review Letters ...". 
• Canadian couple shows how a $40 weekly food budget is possible. "Michelle Nijdam, 31, has been gaining a following online after she started sharing how she sticks to a strict $160 monthly budget (or $40 weekly budget) while living in Vancouver — one of the most expensive cities in Canada. On her YouTube channel, @MichellesHomemaking, she talks about the ups and downs of having a tight budget while sharing some handy tips."
• Gambling on War and Death. "Polymarket allows anonymous accounts to bet on everything — but with increasing attention to war. Will a tanker be seized? When will the next drone strike occur? Gamblers can even look at maps of Ukrainian villages and play the odds on which neighbourhood of innocent civilians will be hit. It is literally about making a killing on killing. And it is also about manipulating the market in frightening ways."
• The 51st State Fantasy Is Over: How King Charles and Mark Carney Put An End To Trump's Desire To Invade Canada. "How Trump’s annexation campaign collapsed against 200 years of history, one king, and a prime minister who played the long game."
• Art UK. "Connecting you to art. Art UK is a unique digital experience that connects everyone with the UK's public art collections. We digitally unite one million artworks from 3,500 institutions – museums, libraries, town halls, hospitals – as well as public art in our streets such as sculptures and murals."
• Why U.S. Gatling Guns Are Not Stopping Iran’s Shahed Drones. "In any discussion of drone defense, Gatling-type guns are often presented as a trump card. These rapid-fire weapons, originally developed to defend U.S. warships against sea-skimming missiles, can easily down bigger and faster threats than a 120 mph Shahed drone. On paper they look devastatingly effective, and news reports speak enthusiastically of their “shredding Iranian drones.” But they are not a magic wand to make all drones disappear, and some Shaheds are getting through."
• America forgot how to make a classified nuclear warhead ingredient. "The U.S. government forgot how to make a classified component of its own nuclear warheads, then spent $92 million figuring it out again. The material is called Fogbank, and almost everything about it is classified — its composition, its purpose, and how it's manufactured." Just think of all the money they could have saved if they'd had a documentation library,

Featured Links - March 11, 2026

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

Lactose-free cat

• The Corporate Miscreants Driving the Affordability Crisis. "These 20 firms all have something in common: Their CEOs get paid millions, their workers are being pushed onto public assistance, and voters are fed up with them."
• We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI. The irony of being forced to dumb down an essay about a story warning against the forced suppression of excellence was not lost on me. Or on my kid, who spent a frustrating afternoon removing words and testing sentences one at a time, trying to figure out what invisible tripwire the algorithm had set. The lesson the kid absorbed was clear: write less creatively, use simpler vocabulary, and don’t sound too good, because sounding good is now suspicious."
• NASA’s DART Mission Did More Than Just Nudge an Asteroid, Study Says. "With these new findings, researchers are closer than ever to validating a key planetary defense technique."
• Managing phone media. "Dealing with photos, screenshots, and videos created by your phone isn’t simply a matter of deleting them. In this article, I’ll describe how to move media off your phone and onto your computer, remove media from the cloud, and disable automatic synchronization of media (which is usually the default)."
• Whiteouts, Ice Roads, and Wolverines: What Working at a Diamond Mine in the Far North Is Like. "In minus forty, even a twisted ankle can turn deadly if no one knows where to find you."
• The bombshell results that demand a new theory of the universe (archive link). "Last year, our most detailed map of the universe yet suggested our understanding of dark energy has been wrong for decades. The shock result is reigniting the search for a better cosmic story." This is one of the best articles on the subject of dark matter and dark energy that I have read. 
• The Myth That Wind Farms Are a Guillotine for Birds Is Being Debunked by Hard Data. "The harm caused by wind turbines isn't nearly as bad as you think."
  
• Meat Without The Animals. "Meat cultivated from cells — with no need to raise and slaughter an animal — is now a reality. But can it be made cheaply enough to displace animal agriculture?" 
• Mozilla Partners with Anthropic to Better Secure Firefox. "As Mozilla explains, this isn’t a one-off: Unlike the previous AI-assisted bug reports it’s received, which included false positives that required unnecessary work on its part, the Anthropic bug reports were different. They focused on the Firefox JavaScript engine. And each included minimal test cases to help Mozilla quickly verify and reproduce each issue."
• ‘We’re no longer attracting top talent’: the brain drain killing American science. "As Trump slashes science funding, young researchers flee abroad. Without solid innovation, the US could cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world."

The US versus Canada 10

It's time for links to a few more articles about the continuing contretemps between Canada and the US. There are no signs that the situation is improving and I don't expect it to as long as the Trump administration remains in power.

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 17, 2020

Trump’s Attacks on the Climate Are an Opportunity for Canada. "The US was never really a clean energy leader. Can Ottawa step in?" Unfortunately, Carney seems to be paying only lip service to greenhouse gas reduction goals. 

Alberta Separatists Say Trump Regime Offered Them $500,000,000 “Loan” To Break Up Canada. 'Alberta’s separatist circuit is bragging about a half-billion-dollar “transition loan” they say was discussed with Trumpworld in Washington. Seditious if true...' I've seen other articles describing links between Alberta separtists and the US extreme right. 

U.S. orange juice shipments plummet as Canadians find Florida OJ hard to swallow. "Tropicana might cost $13.99 but Canada-processed brands are typically half that." Canadian apple juice is a good alternative. 

Canada on Notice: The Attack on International Law Is an Attack on Canada. "It is notable that Trump has lifted sanctions on Russian kleptocrats but is imposing them on the International Criminal Court. And a Canadian judge. He backs it up with the leg-breaking threat to "take whatever steps are necessary" to get his way. We are in the age of gangsters. Canada has been put on notice."

A Canadian Whisky Brand May Move Bottling to the U.S. A Union Blames Trump. "Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, appeared at a news conference this week at a factory in Kitchener, Ontario, with an unusual prop: a crown-shaped bottle of whisky." You would think a Canadian brand would know better.

Ken Dryden’s Warning: A Powerful Last Testament From a Great Canadian. "Dryden used the game to write less about hockey and more about the nature of politics in the age of gangsters. He wrote a devastating critique of the failure of leaders to stand up to Trump, hence paving his way for anti-democratic behaviour."

 Las Vegas Mayor Called a Press Conference Begging Canadians to "Come Back" Yesterday. Yeah, No... Ten reasons why Canadians aren't travelling to the US. 

Featured Links - July 29, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. This post is (mostly) politics-free.

A farm north of Oshawa

• I started using NotebookLM with Microsoft Word and I’m not going back. I could have used this in my last job. 
• The Painter of the Right. "Thomas Kinkade’s paintings show conservatives a world they have already won." Unfortunately, the documentary mentioned in the article doesn't appear to be available for streaming. 
• Remembering Descent, the once-popular, fully 3D 6DOF shooter. "Descent is a big part of gaming history, but not many people talk about it." 
• The death of the projection booth. "As movie theatres adapt new technology for screenings, the art of feeding film through a projector is fading to black."
• 12 Fresh Tomato Pasta Recipes We Can’t Stop Making. Our garden looks like it will produce a bumper crop of tomatoes this year, so I'm looking forward to trying some of these recipes.
• I took my e-book library back from Amazon with this self-hosted app. "BookLore turns ebook chaos into a modern, streamlined library you control completely." I might try this. I'm finding the Kindle app on my iPad Mini almost unusable for managing my books because the Collections view won't show a collection's contents in a list format. 
• Social media is dead – here’s what comes next. "A new information ecosystem is on the rise, featuring closer connections, cosy media and worker-owned websites, writes Annalee Newitz."
• Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97. "A mathematician by training, he acquired a devoted following with songs that set sardonic lyrics to music that was often maddeningly cheerful." Noted with sadness. 

Featured Links - July 7, 2025

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

A hydrangea in our backyard

• 745 km from civilization: Exploring North America's most isolated road. "Quebec's Trans-Taiga Road ends at a point so remote that a broken tire might require an emergency plane landing to deliver a replacement." This definitely not a trip I will be making. 
• The Anti-Autocracy Handbook: A Scholars' Guide to Navigating Democratic Backsliding. "The Anti-Autocracy Handbook is a call to action, resilience, and collective defence of democracy, truth, and academic freedom in the face of mounting authoritarianism. It tries to provide guidance to scholars navigating the growing global trend of democratic backsliding and autocratization, in particular in the U.S." This may be useful to more than scholars. 
• “This Plane Just Did the Impossible”: Historic Supersonic Flight Silences the Sky with Zero Sonic Boom for First Time Ever. "The aviation industry witnessed a monumental breakthrough on February 10, 2025, as Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 aircraft accomplished what many experts deemed impossible. Flying over the Mojave Desert at speeds exceeding the sound barrier, the aircraft achieved something unprecedented in aviation history: supersonic flight without generating a sonic boom. This revolutionary achievement has opened new possibilities for the future of air travel." 
• A London Dentist Just Cracked a Geometric Code in Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. "A hidden triangle in the vitruvian man could finally explain one of da Vinci's greatest works."
• A Runestone That May Be North America’s Oldest Turns Up in a Canada Forest. "Researchers spent years quietly studying a stone carved with 255 runes and the image of a boat found in Ontario. Now, revealing the stone’s existence, they’re asking the public for help."
• Bogged down (gift link). "Ireland’s peat trade fuels conflict with Europe over climate and conservation." Excellent and well illustrated article. 
• Why Pasta Tastes Better at Restaurants, According to a Former Line Cook. "No need to reach for more salt or even fat to achieve restaurant-quality pasta at home; instead, follow these simple yet effective steps for perfect pasta." I have yet to cook the perfect pasta meal, but I will keep trying.
• Britain’s Three Week Failure to Fix Stranded F-35 in India Provides an Opportunity For Russia’s Su-57 Stealth Fighter. I think it would be a very good thing if Canada scrapped plans to buy any F-35s, 

Featured Links - June 23, 2025

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

Flowers in our backyard

The MAGA Debt Bomb. "How Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Turns America’s Fiscal Crisis Into a Weapon for Authoritarian Looting." The adults in the financial world are getting worried.

FEMA is unprepared for the next Hurricane Katrina, disaster experts warn. "Cuts, chaos, and climate change are converging to leave Americans more vulnerable to disaster than they were in 2005." 

How the Grateful Dead built the internet. "Before the the internet took over the world, psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead were among the first – and most influential – forces at the dawn of online communication." Fascinating history showing how music an culture intersected with the early digital revolution, focusing mostly on The Well. I was never on The Well but made extensive use of rec.music.gdead on Usenet once I got onto the real internet in the early 90s. 

'They quit after a few hours': Farmers admit they can't find American workers. "In a deep dive focusing on one farmer who voted for Trump, 36-year-old J.J. Ficke of Kirk, Colorado, the Washington Post is reporting that he along with other farmers are facing possible ruination now that the round-up of immigrants have begun in earnest and promised helpis uncertain."

New study suggests Long COVID is now most common childhood chronic health problem. "In a summary of the study's findings geared to the general public and published on the JAMA Pediatrics Patient Page, three of the authors of the longer study state that Long COVID is common, and, based on the larger study's finding, estimate that up to 10 to 20 percent of children who have had COVID-19 — even "mild" or asymptomatic initial infections — develop Long COVID. This translates to about six million children with Long COVID, which, the authors explain, "is higher than the number of children with asthma, the most common chronic health problem in children."'

1 psychedelic psilocybin dose eases depression for years, study reveals. "Half a decade after receiving a psychedelic treatment for depression, two-thirds of patients in a new study remained in remission."

New theory proposes time has three dimensions, with space as a secondary effect. "Time, not space plus time, might be the single fundamental property in which all physical phenomena occur, according to a new theory by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist. The theory also argues that time comes in three dimensions rather than just the single one we experience as continual forward progression. Space emerges as a secondary manifestation."

Interview: Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, and the iPad’s Essence. As a new iPad user, I found this quite fascinating. 

How should we respond to people “doing their own research?”. "It’s become a punchline—but it points to something broken in how we share health information."

Narrative Theory for Science Communication by author Mary Robinette Kowal. "In this workshop, we learn how to use the foundations of storytelling to help you be more successful with science communication. Pretty much every story, fictional or nonfictional, can be explained through a fairly simple organizational theory. Together, we learn how to use these tools to connect more effectively with your audiences."

Featured Links - June 3, 2025

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

Springtime at the marina

• What are ultra-processed foods, really? "We dug into the research and answered your questions."
• The MAHA Report Is a Health Hoax: RFK Jr. Just Cited Studies That Don’t Exist. "America’s top health official tabled a report filled with fake science, dead links, and ChatGPT hallucinations. This isn’t policy—it’s malpractice by executive order."
• Predicting and Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease. "With all the advances in both the science of aging and artificial intelligence (AI), we are in a propitious position to accurately and precisely determine who is at high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease years before signs of even mild cognitive deficit."
• 5,000-Year-Old Bread Recipe Recreated in Turkey—and Locals Can’t Get Enough. "A bread made from ancient grains is rising again in Turkey, and it's a big hit." Not only does it taste good, but it's made from drought-resistant plants.
• HellCaptcha: Accessibility Theater at Its Worst. "hCaptcha's "Accessibility" Mode Is a Fucking Cookie. And it's wrapped in a maze of broken promises, bad design, and outright user hostility."
• Massive security blunder: Russian nuclear site blueprints exposed in public procurement database. "Russia is modernizing its nuclear weapon sites, including underground missile silos and support infrastructure. Data, including building plans, diagrams, equipment, and other schematics, is accessible to anyone in the public procurement database."
• Changing of the guard and Best laid plans. "What does a change in ownership for the genre's legacy short fiction magazines mean for the SF/F community?" The science fiction magazines, especially Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, were my gateway into the genre.
• The Radical Development of an Entirely New Painkiller. "The opioid crisis has made it even more urgent to come up with novel approaches to treating suffering." Finally there’s something effective." This article gives real insight into the complexity of developing a new drug.
• ‘My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six’: Alan Alda on childhood, marriage and 60 years of stardom. "Best known as Hawkeye in the TV series M*A*S*H, the 89-year-old actor, director and writer has another hit on his hands with a revamp of his 1981 movie The Four Seasons. He talks about his Parkinson’s disease, Woody Allen – and what he really thinks of Donald Trump."

We're Toast 60

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

A wall mural in Toronto's East Chinatown

• Running blind: The silencing and censoring of environmental threats to US national security. "Immediately after the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2025, his administration began purging these reports from the public record: removing environmental security studies from government websites or disabling those pages, cutting funding for environmental security studies, and requiring military and intelligence communities to suppress and censor references to climate change." Those who bury their heads in the sand will drown when the oceans rise.
• Trump Torched Decades of Science in Just 100 Days—and the Fallout Is Global. "In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has slashed federal agencies, canceled national reports, and yanked funding from universities. The shockwaves will be felt worldwide."
• Is This the Year We Doom Civilization? "We may be losing our last, best chance to limit climate change."
• Scientists flag disturbing trends emerging among large mammals: 'Animals are increasingly compelled ...' "These patterns highlight the role of climate as a significant regulator of movement ecology, influencing high-altitude habitat use," the authors wrote. "However, human-induced barriers, such as roads and settlements, present additional threats to these seasonal migrations." 
• It’s Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System. "Thanks to a new breed of chatbots, American stupidity is escalating at an advanced pace." Increasing stupidity is not a good evolutionary strategy. 
• Going Out With A Bang. "The legacy of Balthus' clients attitude that they 'know the world is doomed, so may as well go out with a bang' and the unsustainable AI bubble will be a massive overbuild of data centers, most of which will be incapable of hosting Nvidia's top-of-the-line racks. If the current cryptocurrency-friendly administration succeeds in pumping Bitcoin back these data centers will likely revert to mining. Either way, the Scope 3 emissions from building and equipping and the Scope 1 and 2 emissions from powering them with natural gas and coal, will put megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere, hastening the point where it is unlikely that 'us in the North, we're fine'." A long, rambling, well researched, and grim look at how AI's power demands are going to increase global warming and why the tech billionaires don't care. 
• Cancer-Causing Arsenic Is Building Up in the World’s Rice. "Rice feeds more than half of the world’s population. Climate change is loading the beloved grain with arsenic, creating a “scary” health burden."
• Polar Melt Down. "The Arctic’s ice cover has dropped to a record low this winter. It was 1.31 million square kilometers (506,000 square miles) below the 1981–2010 average. Arctic sea ice has permanently shrunk by over 60% and continues to decline year on year. The same thing is happening in Antarctica."
• How to deny climate change using the IPCC report. "The new Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, claims that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there has been no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts – but Wright is wrong."

Featured Links - March 31, 2025

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

The hydro marsh

• Gee whiz, Gboard! An invaluable new Android typing upgrade. An Undo button. Finally!
• When ‘tranq’ takes its toll. "Xylazine is for animals, but chances are that it’s laced into the street drugs where you live – and it can cost users their memories, limbs and lives. How did it come to Canada, and what’s being done about it?"
• In the ashes. "After wildfires burned houses and brush alike in Los Angeles, researchers have mobilized to understand the health risks posed by urban conflagrations."
• Bookish and world woes. "I am returning to Canada from the International Conference of the Fantastic and the Arts held in Florida. It was my first time there and although I was happy to reconnect with friends and meet scholars, my visit was marred by melancholy." By Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
• Why the ‘iPhone of smartwatches’ remains so elusive. "The wrist might be the best spot for a transformative wearable gadget. But Apple continues to resist giving third-party watchmakers a level playing field."
• ‘Something was wrong with my brain’: How covid leaves its mark on cognition. (Gift link) "Five years after the pandemic began, the neurocognitive effects of long covid are numerous and troubling. And some of these cognitive losses may extend to people who quickly recovered."
• 75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving. "More than 1,600 readers answered our poll; many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada."
• Discover These 15 Enchanting Libraries Sure to Thrill Any Book Lover. "Wall-to-wall books tell an interior design story without saying a word."
• Assault at Antarctic base could be a warning for future travellers to Mars. "Conflict among people living in extreme isolation and confined quarters is a concern for Mars Mission planners."
• Our Diet and Healthy Aging. "A very large prospective study assessed dietary patterns and healthy aging." Interesting and worth reading.
  
• Donald Trump is seeking to erase the United States as we know it. "What we are currently living through is nothing less than an erasure of the building blocks of our republic – a distortion of what it means to be American." It's wakeup time, sheeple. 
• Tales of Merlin and King Arthur Resurface After 750 Years, Hidden in a Bookbinding. "500 years ago, someone decided to use parts of a now-rare manuscript to bind together property records." How advanced imaging technology is helping historians discover the past. 

Cutting Back on Meat in Your Diet

Cutting back on meat, especially red meat, in your diet is both good for your health and the health of the planet. This article has links to many good recipes that you can use to replace meat in your diet with healthier alternatives. (Paywall free gift link). 

The biggest change most people would have to make is eating some more legumes, nuts and whole grains.

That’s according to a team of medical researchers, environmental scientists and policy experts who crafted a loose set of food guidelines they call the “Planetary Health Diet.” If everyone ate this way, scientists say it would shave about 5 percent off global greenhouse emissions and prevent more than 7 million premature deaths per year from illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes.

“If consumers were to adjust their diet … that would have huge implications on carbon emissions and climate change,” said Klaus Hubacek, a Dutch environmental scientist who was not involved in designing the Planetary Health Diet, but published a paper estimating food-related emissions would fall by a sixth if people followed it.

Here’s how you can work these guidelines into your weekly meal plan — and a round up of recipes that can help you get started.

Over the last couple of years Nancy and I have tried to cut back on red meat and now only have it a couple of times a week. And it hasn't damaged our taste buds at all.

Featured Links - September 9, 2024

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

Family home - for a family of foxes

• A new era in hurricane tracking begins. "Inside the dangerous mission that could revolutionize how we hunt nature’s most terrifying storms."
• Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanation for the Wow! Signal. "We hypothesize that the Wow! Signal was caused by sudden brightening from stimulated emission of the hydrogen line due to a strong transient radiation source, such as a magnetar flare or a soft gamma repeater (SGR). These are very rare events that depend on special conditions and alignments, where these clouds might become much brighter for seconds to minutes. The original source or the cloud might not be detectable, depending on the sensitivity of the telescope." Another LGM contact bites the dust. 
• NARA recovers famed 1982 Grace Hopper lecture recorded on obsolete media format. An important piece of computing history has been preserved.
• Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free. "What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn’t bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library? You’d probably think they were delusional. Yet that argument has now carried the day in putting a knife into the back of the extremely useful Open Library from the Internet Archive."
• After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship. "It's no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. The records retention! The security! So government workers occasionally take IT into their own hands with creative but, err, unauthorized solutions."
• A Word, Please: Coffee-shop prompt stirs ChatGPT to brew up bland copy. "A short article about a new coffee place prompted grammar expert June Casagrande to check her work against AI. The latter created tepid copy that included weak sentences and left out relevant details."
• Russia Bought the Right. "The cost was around $10 million so far, but this might just be the first of many bombshells." 
• Meet the right-wing Canadian influencers accused of collaborating with an alleged Russian propaganda scheme. "Tenet Media founder Lauren Chen allegedly took funds from pro-Moscow outlet." The Canadian connection to the previous story. 
• Are Some Ultraprocessed Foods Worse Than Others? (gift link) "A new study may offer the biggest clues yet."
• A window into the body: New technique makes skin invisible. "Researchers have developed a new way to see organs within a body by rendering overlying tissues transparent to visible light. The counterintuitive process—a topical application of food-safe dye—was reversible in tests with animal subjects, and may ultimately apply to a wide range of medical diagnostics, from locating injuries to monitoring digestive disorders to identifying cancers."
• Tonga eruption that poured 150 metric tons of water vapor into the stratosphere affected the atmosphere for years. "A new study builds on previous research into the underwater volcano's effects on the climate."

A Mediterranean Salad Recipe

Here's a recipe to try if you like salads and are a fan of the Mediterranean diet. We used the recipe from the 30-Minute Mediterranean Diet cookbook that I got in a Humble Bundle recently, but this one is basically the same. 

We mixed all the ingredients together instead of keeping them separate on a plate. I increased the quantities a bit because our can of chickpeas was larger and we have enough leftover for lunch tomorrow. 

For the dressing, we didn't use any garlic, water, or salt and made an infusion of the oregano in the oil by heating them for a few minutes as suggested in the cookbook. 

If you don't want to make your own dressing, Kraft's Greek with Feta and Oregano dressing would go well with it. 

Featured Links - March 25, 2024

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

Colourful sunset

• We’re finally working out why the Mediterranean diet is so good for us (archive.ph link). "We have known for decades that the Mediterranean diet lowers the risk of heart attack and other conditions – now we are starting to understand how certain components of the diet work their magic."
• How to Convert Images to Editable Text in Microsoft Word. "Want to extract text from an image in Microsoft Word? Here's how to convert images into editable text within Word." It's a bit round about but as long since Word doesn't have a native way of doing it. 
• Media Matters publishes useful guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda that "represents a threat to democracy, civil rights, the climate, and more". "We need to talk more about Project 2025, the terrifyingly right-wing blueprint crafted by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation that is meant to guide the next Republican administration. If you aren't very familiar with Project 2025, it's time to school yourself and start spreading the word."
• The Publicly-Traded Presidential Candidate. From Jay Kuo: "One final note. The media needs to do a much better job warning about the dangers of such a publicly-traded candidacy and possible presidency. This is a man who has always been up for sale to the highest bidder, and who will now abuse the meme stock frenzy to achieve shocking personal financial gain while exposing our nation’s highest office to massive financial leverage. The American people need to be warned of the dangers inherent in this, far beyond the probable dispiriting headlines next week that Trump really will have become a billionaire, at least on meme stock paper."
• Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion (gift link). "Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence." 
• There is a Royal Order of Adjectives, and you follow it without knowing what it is. "There is a Royal Order of Adjectives, and you follow it without knowing what it is—a particular sequence to use when more than one adjective precedes a noun. There are exceptions, of course, because English is three languages in a trenchcoat." I never thought about it much when I was working as a technical writer because I didn't use many adjectives in my documentation.
• Blocking Burning Man and Vandalizing Van Gogh: Climate Activists Are Done Playing Nice. "Disruptive protests capture clicks. But in a movement that cites mass mobilization as the goal, can activists turn eyeballs into bodies?"
• The evidence is clear: A liquid-only diet before a colonoscopy is unnecessary. "It is true that diet matters for colon cleansing. Certain foods can greatly obscure our views of the colon: corn, nuts, seeds, and many kinds of vegetables. But that leaves many solid foods that people can eat and digest without affecting the quality of their colonoscopy. A low-residue diet, one that is heavy on starch and protein and free of vegetables, is just as effective, and much less difficult to endure, than a diet restricted to clear liquids all day." The article source, StatNews, is a reputable site. 
• EVs Are Much Lower-Emitting Than Combustion Cars. "Electric vehicles’ lifecycle emissions can be 70% lower than gasoline and diesel vehicles, BNEF finds in a new analysis."

Featured Links - March 18, 2024

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

Light on the bay

• US Citizens Are Strikingly Bad At Sorting Facts From Opinions. "There’s a huge amount of research on misinformation. But what we found is that, even before we get to the stage of labeling something misinformation, people often have trouble discerning the difference between statements of fact and opinion." This is worrisome, though I am not at all surprised. 
• Kate Middleton’s Story Is About So Much More Than Kate Middleton (gift link). "But the frenzy around Catherine, Princess of Wales, raises important questions that go well beyond the usual concerns of royal watchers. Those questions stem from the extreme deference with which Catherine has previously been treated, in Britain at least, compared with the thrashing bestowed on her sister-in-law, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex." The Royal Family and the British Press do not come off well. 
• AI is growing in the food-service industry — and nothing will stop it. "These technologies are spreading fast, despite breaches of privacy and the biases baked into software."
  
• Covid, 4 years on. "As we recently hit—March 11, 2020—the 4-year anniversary of when WHO finally declared Covid a global pandemic, and today, March 13th, when the US declared it a national emergency, we’re still learning every day about SARS-CoV-2’s impact, its evolution, protection from vaccination, and more. Here’s a quick summary of what I think is worth reviewing."
• America's Cheyenne Mountain Complex Can Withstand A 30-Megaton Nuclear Bomb. "693,000 tons of granite were blasted out of the mountain to make the bunker at the height of the Cold War." I've been in the NORAD SAGE base in North Bay, a similar facility, now decommissioned. 
• Climate Change Is Bad for Your Health, Wherever You Are. "Rising temperatures are a threat regardless of where you live on the planet—they’re just dangerous in different ways."
• Why Does This One Couch From West Elm Suck So Much? "Comparing notes with other unsatisfied owners of the Peggy sofa." Modern furniture isn't what it used to be. 
• Las Vegas Sphere has 4,000TB SSD storage delivering 400GB/s throughput — World's only 16K display requires some exquisite technology to keep it going. "

Featured Links - March 4, 2023

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

Sparkles on the bay

• Two giant US telescopes threatened by funding cap. "Thirty Meter Telescope and Giant Magellan Telescope might need to compete for survival in face of federal spending limit."
• Look for these 9 red flags to identify food that is ultra-processed. "Free yourself from the grip of ultra-processed food by looking for these signs on the package label."
• Fiber optic cables transport petabytes of data every second around the world — scientists say they could also save lives by detecting tsunamis early. "Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have discovered a novel technique that can turn undersea power and telecom cables into arrays of environmental sensors, opening the door to extensive ocean monitoring."
• DOJ quietly removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses. "Feds once again fix up compromised retail routers under court order." 
• The invisible campaign to censor the internet. "There’s an enormous and largely invisible campaign to use fraudulent notices under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove critical articles from the internet. We don’t know who is running the campaign, but we do know it’s facilitated by Google’s amazingly trustworthy approach to DMCA complaints made by companies that don’t exist."
• How Embedded Linux is used in spacecraft. "George Emad kicks off a series of posts to see how Embedded Linux is used in outer space. The Linux OS has gain some popularity in the space domain in applications including spacecraft, nano satellites, and astrophotography."
• Behind F1's Velvet Curtain. "If you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the p"addock of a Formula 1 race. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever."

 

Featured Links - January 29, 2023

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

Old and new

• 500,000 years ago was 15 times bigger than record-breaking Tonga eruption. "A 500-foot-thick layer of pumice rock on the Mediterranean seabed indicates Santorini volcano ejected 15 times more material than Hunga-Tonga during a previously unknown eruption." It was even bigger than the eruption that led to the collapse of the Minoan civilization. 
• Are induction stoves that much safer than gas? We tested them. "Scientists’ best answer, at the moment, to whether you should ditch your gas stove is: We’re not sure yet." I would get one if it didn't mean replacing most of our cookware. 
• The Oxygen Bottleneck: Astronomers Find Huge New Problem For Alien Civilizations. "Some aliens may be cursed with intelligence, but unable to progress technologically." This is the first time I've heard of this idea and it's rather upsetting me. 
• How to Use Google’s Fact Check Explorer to Verify Claims on the Web. "True? False? Somewhere in between? Google's online tool will tell you."
• What would the late heavy bombardment have done to the Earth’s surface? "Early in Earth's history, bombardment by enormous asteroids was common." Geologists have been able to find traces of impacts as far back as 3.5 billion years. 
• Welcome to Reactor! Here’s Where Everything Went and How to Use It. Reactor is the rebranded website of Tor.com, the pre-eminent online publisher of science fiction and fantasy. 
• We Need Your Email Address. 404 Media are asking people to provide their email address before they can read articles on their site. Why? Because they are being ripped off by AI bots cloning their site. The article explains what is happening and it's horrifying. 

More About Disinformation

Sadly, it's time to post more links to articles about disinformation and misinformation. It's clear that it's not going away any time soon; indeed, with the US election campaigns in full swing and two major wars, it's going to be a banner year. 

• The Murky Campaign to Discredit Lab-Grown Meat. "A new ad campaign is targeting the cultivated meat industry on TV and online. Industry supporters criticize it as unscientific." It appears to be sponsored by the food and drink industry. 
• Why weird ads about Sophie Trudeau, Howie Mandel — and Mary Berg — mean we're in trouble online. (archive,ph link) "They show how easy it is to borrow name recognition of news companies and celebrities and feed false information into the void."
• Since 2023, right-wing organizations, backed by Republican state attorneys general, have argued that banks are discriminating against them on religious and political grounds. But the attack on banks stuck among MAGA Republicans, especially as other financial platforms like PayPal, Venmo, and GoFundMe have declined to accept business from right-wing figures who spout hate speech, thus cutting off their ability to raise money from their followers. The attempt to create distrust of large financial institutions is part of a larger attempt to destabilize the institutions of democracy. Trump is the figurehead for that attempt, but it is larger than him, and it will outlast him."
• Interview with Jonathan Howard, author of We Want Them Infected. "A physician diligently tracked physician and researcher propagated misinformation during the pandemic."
• Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone. 'Civil rights lawyers and Democrats are sounding alarms about Mr. Musk’s claims about voting. The Biden campaign called his posts “profoundly irresponsible.”'
• A new kind of climate change denialism has taken hold on YouTube, says research group. "Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says the center's new report shows that climate misinformation has evolved in ways that make it possible for a lot of it to evade YouTube’s advertising ban on content that denies climate change while generating millions of dollars of revenue in the process." (podcast link)
• Deepfake Dirty Tricks Descend on New Hampshire Ahead of Primary. "Long-time fears about AI-driven misinformation are now a reality with robocalls from AI Biden."
• MAGA grifters cash in selling fake cures to imaginary disease. "This time around, the grifters are telling their suckers that Hillary Clinton and the round-earthers have cooked up a diabolical pathogen called "Disease X" to rid the planet of "excess population," "install a corporate world government," and "enslave humanity." If you don't want your body to get covered in festering boils and carbuncles the size of chicken eggs, you need to buy a "medical contagion kit" with vials of life-saving ivermectin manufactured right here in God's most favorite country in the whole universe." Of course, "Disease X" is just a placeholder used by the WHO to indicate that there will someday be another pandemic.

Featured Links - December 4, 2023

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

A faded burning bush

• Towards an Optimal Diet. "In aggregate, several recent publications, two very popular books, and a new, large $189 million NIH clinical trial, may help to provide an objective basis for what we should eat to be and stay healthy."
• Google Rolls Out New Accessibility Features to Make Daily Tasks Easier. "New features in Maps, Search and Chrome are aimed at helping users with disabilities navigate their devices more easily."
• How ‘Skeuomorphism’ Is Making U.S. Roads More Deadly. "After you read this, you'll never look at a "frunk" the same way again." Trucks of that size should only be available for commercial use.
• Spirals inspire walking aids for people with disabilities. "Engineers design a special shoe that may improve gait and a skateboard that rocks and rolls." 
• The real AI fight. "Effective Accelerationists and Effective Altruists are both in vigorous agreement about something genuinely stupid."
• The Secret Language of Ships. "Signs and symbols on the sides of ships tell stories about an industry few outsiders understand."
• Our fragile moment: how lessons from Earth’s past can help us survive the climate crisis. "In this sweeping work of science and history, the renowned climate scientist and author of The New Climate War shows us the conditions on Earth that allowed humans not only to exist but thrive, and how they are imperiled if we veer off course."
• 'What I want are recovery narratives': CBC Radio host Gill Deacon on life with long COVID. "CBC Here & Now host is among the 10-15% of people who will get long COVID, research suggests." After suffering for months with long COVID symptoms, she had a blood test to confirm that she had had COVID-19 because her case was completely asymptomatic. 

Featured Links - November 27. 2023

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

Swans on the bay

• The most powerful cosmic ray since the Oh-My-God particle puzzles scientists. "Scientists spot a particle of intense energy, but explaining where it came from might require some new physics." The particle had an energy of 240 exa-electron volts. I was curious what its mass would have been so I asked Windows Copilot. It gave me an answer of 4.27 x 10^-16 kg, which is roughly 2.5 x 10^11 protons. I was impressed with the answer and the included explanation. 
• See the photos that made National Geographic’s ‘Pictures of the Year’. The photos are the main reason I read National Geographic. 
• Something Unexpectedly Cool Happens When You Use Banana Peel as an Ingredient. "... a study last year found that if banana peels are blanched, dried, and ground into a flour, they can be turned into baked goods that taste just as nice, if not better than wheat-based products."
• Study examines how massive 2022 eruption changed stratosphere chemistry and dynamics. "When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted on January 15, 2022 in the South Pacific, it produced a shock wave felt around the world and triggered tsunamis in Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Japan, Chile, Peru and the United States. It also changed the chemistry and dynamics of the stratosphere in the year following the eruption, leading to unprecedented losses in the ozone layer of up to 7% over large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the University of Maryland."
• There’s trouble below at Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Why am I not surprised. 
• AI finds formula on how to predict monster waves. "Using 700 years' worth of wave data from more than a billion waves, scientists have used artificial intelligence to find a formula for how to predict the occurrence of these maritime monsters. Long considered myth, freakishly large rogue waves are very real and can split apart ships and even damage oil rigs."
• Aliens Are Out There — But They Probably Don’t Care About Us. "Science and astronomy are more and more pointing to the fact that there is other life out there. Here's why we haven't seen it yet."
• Philip Glass’s Piano Etudes: A Diary of an Influential Life. "Begun to improve his own technique, piano exercises that Glass wrote over decades are the subject this month of a new book, a concert and dances."