Links for August 2025

New Substack to watch, on diverse and outlier science: Reinvent Science

And here’s an example of what they’re talking about: Lay research on turtles, and the evolution of scholarly journals (see also the comments!)

We get a shout-out in The Antimeme Haunting Western Philosophy. A question we’ve pondered for some time:

Today I apply this insight to Western philosophy, in service of a question which I’ve been trying to answer for years on this blog: why does no one talk about cybernetics anymore?

Also: How do we live with each other?

How does the phthalates get into the beef? Some findings here: We tested Radius beef for plastic chemicals

“Last week, I had an unusually vivid dream about writing a book review for ACX. When I woke up, I remembered the review almost word-for-word. In some sense this is a best case scenario – write posts in my sleep, and spend my waking hours relaxing on the beach – but unfortunately the book I was reviewing doesn’t exist and most of what I say about it doesn’t make sense. Still, I’m posting the review here as a subscriber-only feature.” Dream Book Review: The Deal With Trauma (paywalled)

What Does It Mean To Be Thirsty? (h/t MY)

Satiety Graphed & The Horsemen of Obesity

High salt recruits aversive taste pathways

As late as 1813, people were saying that eating potatoes causes leprosy (h/t Adam Mastroianni)

A Time-Series Analysis of my Girlfriends Mood Swings, Behavioral Conditioning Methods to Stop my Boyfriend from Playing The Witcher 3, and The Bark Defense: A 99.999% Successful Method for Keeping Emily Safe from Strangers and Garbage Trucks — all these and more curiosities from the Journal of Astrological Big Data Ecology, the “premium source for made up science”.

One thought on “Links for August 2025

  1. Ada P's avatar Ada P says:

    Re: Radius beef

    The reason why there may be more phthalates in supermarket vs butcher bought beef may have to do with more than just packaging: conveyor belts.

    If a larger facility moves beef around on PVC conveyor belts for further processing & packing, those are phthalate ladden and will contaminate the beef. The more cut-up the beef, the more contaminated. Also the fattier the cut-up pieces – more contaminats it picks up. Supermerket ground fatty beef should be the most contaminated.

    For more speculation on what processing contaminates what and how – see r/PlasticObesity (Stop Eating Plasticisers posts).

    Great that a food seller is interested in this testing!

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