• David C. Krakauer for Nautilus: What Makes Humans Stupid. The answer: misapplied intelligence. “A person who does not know the answer to a question is merely ignorant. A person who constructs an ingenious hundred-page argument for the wrong answer is stupid.” Who said DOGE?
• Anna Louie Sussman for The NYT: Is Kidmaxxing the Ultimate Status Symbol for Ultimate Wealth?. It shouldn’t be. But the ultra-wealthy rubbing it in to people who would may want to have more kids but think they can’t afford it is not helping the situation below.
• Andy Hall: AI is the Democratic Party’s Next Villain. The title should have started with “AI and billionaires are…” but that is not as snappy. Tyler Cowen flippantly called it billionaire derangement syndrome. How they got their billions aside, why would it be deranged to feel threatened by the increasing coupling of money with political power? We have seen this story many times and it ultimately doesn’t end well for the few greedy ones who covet both wealth and power.
• Tess Joosse for Science Adviser: How do wombats poop cubes? Scientists get to the bottom of the mystery. An A+ headline and a fascinating photo of a wombat poop cube.
• Josephine Riesman on Bluesky: John Oliver’s three-day stint/stunt as a corporate villain on legendary soap opera “General Hospital” appears to be going… fucking brilliantly??. No notes.

Saw my first solitary ball of tumbleweed today, rolling accros the appropriately named Prairie Center Parkway. Reminded me of this CGP Gray video about them.

After 16 years of successfully avoiding Epic*, tomorrow is the day: my provider** training begins. Let’s see how it compares to Cerner, Allscripts et al.

• Fairly certain text behind the link is partially AI-generated, but the illustrations are good!

** Hate hate hate that term.

Today I learned of Subsoccer and it is both preposterous and something I would in fact like to have. American spirit of invention chugs along even at 250.

Every dickover is infuriating, but the worst ones by far are on the websites I’m already paying to access. Go to hell, Gray Lady; what you’re selling doesn’t need an app.

Two middle-aged doctors, two grade schoolers, a teenager, an infant and a very loud cat: say hello to the Miljković family flying circus, coming to Denver this very evening.

• Tristan Manalac for Biospace: Amgen’s Tavneos troubles continue as NEJM retracts pivotal publication. First came FDA questions about data integrity. Now the academic authors are confirming the data tampering, though per the now retracted study they did “vouch for the completeness and accuracy of the data, the complete reporting of adverse events, and the adherence of the trial to the protocol. All the authors participated with the sponsor in the design of the trial, the analysis of the data, and the writing of the manuscript.” I wonder if people who sold this rotten pile of garbage to Amgen will offer a refund. So it goes…
• Carl Zimmer and Marco Hernandez for The NYT: This Cell Feeds, Grows and Reproduces. And It’s Manmade. “Dr. Adamala named her creation SpudCell, after its potato-like appearance. Rather than patent it, she and Dr. Endy are organizing a community of scientists to focus on making SpudCells more fully alive and adapting them to new kinds of experiments.” Bravo! Maybe science isn’t a complete lost cause.
• M Auerbach, MY Lim, GM Rodgers, and T DeLoughery for Sensible Medicine: When Normal Isn’t Normal: Non-anemic Iron Deficiency. A very academic group of authors makes a very good case for treating low iron levels in the absence of overt anemia. This is in response to an earlier text which poo-pooed the practice as “overmedicalizing normality”. Adam Cifu from Sensible Medicine proposes randomized controlled trials, though if symptoms of low iron are as diverse as restless leg syndrome, “brain fog” and craving for ice it would be a challenging endpoint to establish. Boy, isn’t medicine hard.
• Titotal (pseud): The best cause will disappoint you: An intro to the optimisers curse. ⊕ [Note: ᔥAndrew Gelman ] Mathematical demonstration of why effective altruists are, at the end of the day, a bunch of bozos. And not just them: America is the land of hyperoptimizers and if Taleb’s Incerto wasn’t a convincing enough case for why that doesn’t end up well in the long run, well, here is a much shorter Substack post that shows one facet of the problem.
• Ed Conway: The Apple-Banana Paradox. On the incredible flattening of banana prices in the last 25 years, and the incoming threat of another fungal infection that could wipe out the current Cavendish banana monoculture. On the other, could this be an opening for a Honeycrisp of bananas? One can hope.

Stress-free moves don’t exist. But for less stress, get professional movers from a reputable company, if you can afford it. Yes, packing too. Especially packing.

Yes, we have started the move today, Day 1 of who knows how many.