http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2023-06-05T17:30:37Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com http://ranprieur.com/#dc0989e05bc69209f96837c74bb996a4a24c2845 2023-06-05T17:30:37Z June 5. Good news links. Emissions are no longer following the worst case scenario

A paywalled article about Mississippi schools. Through a set of reforms, they've gone from worst in the nation to above average.

Two PubMed science articles. Ariadne is a non-hallucinogenic analog in the phenylalkylamine chemical class of psychedelics, so it has the therapeutic effects of a good psychedelic, but you don't trip. Personally, I'd rather get the therapeutic effects and also trip.

A Simple Exercise to Eliminate Gastroesophageal Reflux: practice swallowing upside down.

And a thread from Ask Old People, What's a food that was common when you were growing up but you see rarely if ever nowadays? Some of these are good, but most of them are terrible: chicken ala king, jello with marshmallows, chop suey, salisbury steak tv dinners. So this is one way the world is getting better.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#a9654d1379be5f88c70b13b379df42429e944e4d 2023-06-01T13:50:18Z June 1. Stray links, starting with doom. Microplastics are falling from the sky. "The predicted downpour will range between 40 and 48 kilograms (88 and 106 pounds) of free-floating plastic bits blanketing greater Paris every 24 hours." Inevitably something will evolve to eat this, but it may take a million years without our help. The sci-fi scenario is that we bioengineer something to eat microplastics and it also eats plastics that we like.

'Farming good, factory bad', a belief that George Monbiot disagrees with, arguing that "storybook farming" cannot feed the world without terrible ecological destruction. Permaculturists would surely argue that super-intensive farming would still work, but Monbiot's solution might be more realistic: "a shift from farming multicellular organisms (plants and animals) to farming unicellular creatures (microbes)."

Good news on urban design, Federal Zoning Bill Would Preempt Local Parking Mandates, and another article on the same subject, This little-known rule shapes parking in America. The rule is that new construction has to have a certain amount of parking. Killing that rule is something both the right and left can get behind, the right because then property owners can do whatever they want, and the left because what they usually want is less parking, which leads to denser and more walkable neighborhoods.

Something fun for the weekend, The Most Underrated Sci-Fi Movies of the 1970s, where underrated means not Star Wars. I've seen more than half of these movies, and this article is right on about how interesting they are, despite their flaws or because of their flaws.

And a ridiculous goal by my favorite footballer, Morgan Weaver. The bigger the moment, the better she performs, and she'll eventually be a key player on the national team.

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