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Selena Gomez Oreos trapping possums
In New Zealand, opossums are an invasive species. Selena Gomez Oreos are helping locals trap the critters.
“We wanted to try something that we could do in the field that mimicked the effect of a psychoactive drug,” Hickling explains. “And that’s when I came across this psychological paper which suggested that a combination of fat and sugar was quite addictive.” That finding, combined with a US study on rats that used Oreo cookies, sent Hickling down to the local New World. “It just so happened that they had these Selena Gomez Oreos, which I hadn’t even heard of. They had both cinnamon and chocolate, which possums like, and they were on sale.”
Hickling estimates he bought 20 packets of Selena Gomez Oreos for the trial, and soon was out in the field in Leeston attaching the cookies along the planks that lead up to the possum traps. “One of the things that’s nice about an Oreo is that you can just drill a little hole through it and just tap it on with a flathead nail,” he says. “People have tried to use Tim Tams in the past, but they are really expensive. Oreos are quite a bit cheaper, and they actually stand up to the rain quite well too, which is a little disconcerting.”
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A case for making standard time permanent
When we change the clocks, we always complain about how it disrupts our lives. Most people prefer daylight savings time – more sunshine to do more things. However, the science behind circadian rhythms suggest that standard time is when our bodies prefer.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), in its formal position statement, has been explicit that permanent DST is not the answer. Harvard sleep medicine researcher Elizabeth Klerman argues similarly that making daylight saving time permanent “is a horrible idea that puts us forever on the wrong time zone.” And there are many others.
The reality appears to be that the biological clock simply does not catch up with DST, and the misalignment accumulates rather than resolving. While it doesn’t ‘feel’ as acute as when we have actual jet lag (as in, we don’t have the deep disorientation that we get following a long flight across many time zones), the misalignment operates via the same underlying mechanism. And it quietly stacks up, month over month.
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Enshittification explained and personified
The Norwegian Consumer Council created a video that encapsulated our modern dystopia, explaining it and also personifying it–enshittification.
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Billionaires funding elections at extraordinary rates
Due to the Citizens United decision, we know that money is speech. We’ve also known for a while that the extremely wealthy are funding elections to an extraordinary degree and reaping the benefits.
The extraordinary spending in Montana is part of a new era of political power for the rapidly growing number of billionaires minted over the past eight years. The Times analysis found that 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion — 19 percent of all contributions — in federal elections in 2024, either directly or through political action committees.
Five presidential elections ago, before the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that lifted many remaining campaign finance restrictions, the share of billionaire spending was almost zero — 0.3 percent, to be precise.
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Recent music recommendations
here’s a list of recent albums. I’ve enjoyed so far this year.
- deathcrash – Somersaults: chill, mellow indie rock that makes you want to sit on the porch with a good drink and watch the trees sway in the wind
- cootie catcher – something we all got: catchy melodies, jangly guitars, good harmonies
- Joyce Manor – I Used to Go to this Bar: 20 minutes of punk bliss
- Willow – petal rock black: eclectic, jazzy, avant garde rock
- Geologist- Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights: electronic post rock, probably good for driving n a highway at night
- The Gorrilaz – The Mountain: a deep, immersive soundscape with eastern music/ Indian instrumentation
- Shaking Hand – Shaking Hand: a throwback to the early days of 90s emo when the focus was on earnest lyrics & instrumentation instead of screaming and nasally vocals
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Maybe Ozempic can fight addictions
There is growing research that Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs may help fight addiction.
People struggling with many addictions, ranging from opioids to gambling, are reporting similar experiences in clinics, on social media and around dinner tables. None of them started these drugs to quit. This pattern of people losing their cravings across a broad range of addictive substances has no precedent in medicine.
But my patients were giving me an important clue. People taking GLP-1 drugs often talk about “food noise” vanishing: the constant mental chatter about food that dominated their days simply goes quiet. But my patients were reporting that it wasn’t just food: They were noticing that the preoccupation with smoking, drinking and using drugs that drives people back despite their best intentions to stop was going quiet too.
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A prototype of an offshore wind farm data center
With the world’s growing for data centers, and the growing resistance to having them in communities, companies are looking for other ways to not only build the data centers but power them. Enter the offshore wind farm data center.
Aikido’s design builds on many iterations tested by the growing floating wind industry. When Norwegian energy giant Equinor finished construction on the world’s first floating wind farm in 2017, it kept the turbines upright with ballasted steel columns extending 78 meters into the water—a design called a spar platform. This gave it a dense mass like the keel of a boat. Since then, the floating wind industry has largely coalesced around a semisubmersible design based on oil and gas platforms. Semisubmersibles don’t go as deep as spar platforms; instead, they extend buoyancy horizontally. Anchors, chains, and ropes keep the platform floating within a certain radius.
Aikido is taking the semisubmersible approach. Its football-field-size platform holds the turbine in the center, and three legs extend tripod-like outward, like a Christmas-tree stand. At the end of each leg is a ballast that reaches 20 meters deep. This holds tanks largely filled with fresh water to maintain the platform’s buoyancy in the salty ocean.
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US automakers at risk of becoming niche manufacturers
Auto experts say old-line companies risk becoming obsolete if they don’t learn how to make appealing, profitable electric vehicles, which most executives expect to eventually replace cars that run on gasoline despite the Trump’s administration efforts to promote fossil fuels. Improvements in electric vehicle technology mean that, within a few years, they will be cheaper to buy and will charge in 15 minutes or less.
One of the biggest problems established manufacturers have is that many of the electric models they sell have fared poorly against cars from Tesla and other newer companies.
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Light exposure affects heart disease chances
A study that came out last year: light exposure affects heart disease chances.
Question Is personal light exposure at night associated with cardiovascular disease incidence?
Findings In this cohort study of 88 905 adults aged older than 40 years, exposure to brighter light at night was associated with higher risks of coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and stroke, independent of established cardiovascular risk factors.
