aylmao

A peer-reviewed paper published last year in the journal Bioethics by two professors at Western Michigan University School of Medicine argues that it is "morally obligatory" to genetically engineer ticks to spread alpha-gal syndrome, a permanent condition that makes you violently allergic to red meat. The paper is called "Beneficial Bloodsucking." Their argument: if eating meat is morally wrong, then preventing the spread of a disease that forces people to stop eating meat is also morally wrong. Scientists should gene-edit lone star ticks to enhance their ability to carry alpha-gal syndrome and expand their range into urban environments to infect more people. They call this a "moral bioenhancer." They frame releasing genetically modified disease-carrying ticks as a "vaccination" that only "infringes" on your bodily autonomy rather than "violating" it. The distinction, apparently, is that a tick bit you instead of a government official holding you down. Alpha-gal syndrome is not mild. The CDC estimates up to 450,000 Americans are already affected. Cases have surged 100-fold in the last decade. Symptoms include anaphylaxis. There is no cure. Alpha-gal cases are exploding across the United States. The lone star tick's range is expanding far beyond its historical territory. And two academics at a medical school published a paper arguing this is a good thing that should be accelerated. At what point do we stop treating papers like this as fringe academic exercises and start asking whether anyone is already acting on them?

Just a friendly warning. We don’t even make $200k per year in Congress despite working nearly 140 days. If we aren’t properly compensated, a lot of us will go to the private sector and you will be left with some real idiots in Congress.

This is what it sounds like living next to a data center. The video below was recorded at midnight, and the data center is situated next to 100s of residential homes.

Switzerland is turning the unused space between train tracks into solar power plants. A startup called Sun-Ways is piloting removable solar panels that roll out like a carpet between the rails. No new land needed, easy to maintain, and they feed clean energy straight into the grid. If the US scaled something similar across its massive rail network, it could generate enough clean, homegrown electricity to power millions of homes. This is the kind of smart, low-impact idea that gets more clean energy online without paving over more fields or wild spaces. Innovations like this show we can produce the power we need while leaving more room for wildlife and nature. Pretty cool engineering with a big upside if you ask me.