Since World War II, most countries in the world, including China, have been working to reduce tariffs. Why are they trying to reduce tariffs? Because we all learned in Economics 01 that trade is good, that if somebody else can make something cheaper and better than you can, you let them make that, and you make something else that you can do better or cheaper. And on that basis, we’ve had this period of essentially unparalleled prosperity since World War II, and trade has played a meaningful role in that.

Another example, more recently, is the fact that we had so little inflation from the great financial crisis until Covid because the price of goods, which are the things that can more easily move across an international barrier, were coming down in price or at least not going up in price. […]

I think he may have gone into some time warp or something and ended up in a 19th-century class on economics, because back then they taught you what we call mercantilism, that countries’ goal was to accumulate gold. They all wanted more gold, and so therefore, you wanted to have trade surpluses, and therefore tariffs were high, and trade barriers were high. […]

First of all, even if other countries stop sending us their clothes, their furniture, their iPhones, whatever, we can’t make that stuff here. We do not, any longer, have the physical infrastructure to make it. You’d have to go out and build lots and lots of factories in order to replace that. Businesses are not going to do that, because they don’t believe in their heart that these tariffs are permanent. They believe that everyone will realize how bad they are and maybe after the next presidential election or whenever, they’ll get removed. And so it can’t work. It won’t work. But simply what this is going to mean is that you’re going to pay 20 percent more for your iPhone or something like that the next time you go to buy one.

{ Steven Rattner | NY Times | Continue reading }

They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years

L.A. man stabbed, shot and pushed off cliff lives to testify about alleged cartel hit

Trump Tariffs Hit Antarctic Islands Inhabited by Zero Humans and Many Penguins

Trump spares pharmaceuticals from reciprocal tariffs

Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is intent on creating a one-million-person colony on Mars. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk also seems content to break anything that stands in his way—including potentially a Cold War era treaty that has kept humanity safe for over 50 years, the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Musk’s rejection of international governance could have lasting implications for life on earth, and could augur a new era of geopolitical conflict.

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Personality trait similarity among ordinary relatives is surprisingly low, with parent–offspring and sibling–sibling correlations usually r ≤ .15. […] we found that parent–offspring and sibling correlations were about one third higher than typically shown (r ≈ .20). […] Life satisfaction was as heritable as personality traits, sharing about 80% of its genetic variance with neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness. […] we provide further evidence that growing up together does not make people more similar

Research has found a substantial gender gap in orgasm, with men reporting reaching an orgasm at significantly higher rates than women […] in the visual pornography industry, women are much less likely than men to be shown reaching orgasm […] sample of more than 300 men and women who regularly watch pornography […] both male and female viewers believe that depictions of female orgasms are the most important feature of pornographic videos

Recent research found that people who were not married were less at risk than married people for dementia

we find that a pet companion increases life satisfaction by 3 to 4 points on a scale of 1 to 7

How Dining Out Differs Across Generations

A man has managed to power his home for eight years with a system using more than 1,000 recycled laptop batteries

The redesigned map of the New York City system, the first to be introduced in nearly half a century, is reminiscent of a version from the 1970s that was reviled by many traditionalists [NY Times]

The Story of the New Swiss Passport

One reason couples get into relationship trouble is, oddly enough, they talk too much.

Sharing a Three-Breath Hug or holding hands are simple ways to recover from an argument or disconnect.

[…] Touching your partner calms your nervous systems and connects you without words. […] intimate non-sexual touch is a beautiful nonverbal way to cultivate connection, calm, and a sense of psychological safety.

{ Psychology Today | Continue reading }

Past research has shown consistent bene ts associated with and resulting from affectionate touch […] benefits were stronger among people with moderate or high relationship satisfaction but observed even for the subset of individuals (approximately one-third of the sample) who rated their relationships as “distressed.”

{ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships | PDF }

Space pirates could hold satellite networks for ransom and threaten to derail globally transmitted live television broadcasts, like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games. However, beyond satellite hijackings, Taylor believes there could even be physical attacks at launch sites and ground control stations. […] in 2023, a team of Italian hackers successfully broke into the US Air Force Moonlighter to win a $50,000 prize

Climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation. The effect of melting polar ice could delay the need for a ‘leap second’ by three years.

Jailbreaking LLMs: A Comprehensive Guide (With Examples)

Kink and LGBT dating apps exposed 1.5m private user images online

The ideal age for a chimney sweep to begin working was said to be 6 years old, but sometimes they were used beginning at age 4. Those less fortunate would simply suffocate and die in the chimney forcing others to remove the bricks in order to dislodge the body.

Babysitter checking for monsters finds man hiding under child’s bed

Winnipeg woman run over after dispute about empty spot in parking lot

Adults engaging in sexual activity with children in virtual reality now illegal in Utah […] law makes it illegal for adults using avatars to make their avatar have sex with avatars being used by children

Most people dislike being gossiped about—except narcissistic men, who welcome even negative gossip

Whether humans inherently view themselves more positively than others underpins a fundamental question in psychology that has eluded scientific consensus for decades. […] Cross-cultural comparisons then revealed self-deprecation tendencies in trait-based self-evaluation in specific Eastern languages, contrasting with Western patterns. However, affective self-positivity—the tendency to associate the self with generally positive rather than negative words—was universally observed across 11 languages.

By the end of the six weeks, both the LSD and placebo groups had shown significant reductions in ADHD symptoms […] 80% of participants—whether they had taken LSD or placebo—guessed they had received LSD. Those who believed they had taken LSD tended to report greater symptom improvement, regardless of what they had actually received.

H&M is working directly with models and their agencies to create digital replicas of 30 different models this year that it will be able to use in AI-generated images for purposes such as social-media posts and marketing campaigns.

Sunday at the Village Vanguard is a live album by jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans and his Trio consisting of Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro, and drummer Paul Motian. It was recorded on June 25, 1961, at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Released in 1961, the album is routinely ranked as one of the best live jazz recordings of all time. Scott LaFaro died 10 days after this recording.

The best-known member of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters.

{ Reuters | Continue reading }

Life in the state of nature was less violent than you might think. Most of our ancestors avoided conflict. But this made them vulnerable to a few psychopaths.

{ Works in progress | Continue reading }

related { … Hegseth. He has released information that could have directly led to the death of an American fighter pilot. […] “he’s doing performative activities. He’s not yet demonstrated that he’s running the department.” | NY Times | It is an uncomfortable episode for the new defense secretary, who has vowed to hold senior military leaders accountable for mistakes. | Washington Post }

Same-sex love triangles in female monkeys

Mistakes are valuable learning opportunities, yet in uncertain environments, whether a lack of reward is due to poor performance or bad luck can be hard to tell. […] Participants consistently displayed a self-attribution bias, crediting successes to their own ability while blaming failures on randomness

Paralysed man stands again after receiving ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells

Wooden Rods aren’t often used as placebos these days, you’re much more likely to receive some kind of oral placebo (like sugar pills), a topical placebo (such as a cream containing no active ingredients), or an intra-articular placebo (injected directly into the joints). However, this presents a tricky dilemma - what do we do about the fact that different types of placebo can have different effect sizes? […] An intra-articular placebo is more effective at relieving pain than topical placebos, and topical placebos are more effective than oral placebos. […] characteristics of the physician administering the placebo can also make a difference […] Characteristics of the patient can also make a difference to how effective a placebo is - children are more receptive than adults.

Asked whether “scaling up” current AI approaches could lead to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), or a general purpose AI that matches or surpasses human cognition, an overwhelming 76 percent of respondents [475 AI researchers] said it was “unlikely” or “very unlikely” to succeed.

How Scammers Launder Money and Get Away With It [NY Times]

Consistent workouts can be a powerful way to fight chronic inflammation. […] the less chronically inflamed we are, the healthier we are. […] Chronic inflammation can also be linked to diet, stress, smoking, obesity, sleep quality and your level of physical activity. And it increases as you age […] Research suggests that consistent, moderate exercise can fight inflammation by tamping down on the release of inflammatory chemicals, and ramping up the release of chemicals that fight it, she said. Exercise can also lower inflammation indirectly, for example, by improving sleep quality and lowering stress. […] If you’re breathing harder than usual to keep up the pace, and you feel like you’re putting in moderate effort, she said, you’re probably fighting inflammation. [NY Times]

seasonal clock changes help align human activity with the sunrise, but the practice is associated with numerous health risks

Why Are So Many Young Women Convinced They’re Balding?

63 Chinese Cuisines Guide

When Musk’s envoys show up at agencies that he privately does business with, including NASA, or that regulate his companies, troubling questions are raised. This happened when it was revealed that the Federal Aviation Administration was considering shifting a contract for its communications systems from Verizon to Musk’s Starlink. Questions have also arisen, and not been put to rest, about what Musk’s employees at DOGE might do with their access to a confidential database of drug approvals, given that Neuralink, Musk’s brain implant company, has business before the Food and Drug Administration.

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

related { Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts | NY Times }

more { X sues Lego, Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, Pinterest, Shell International… accusing them of advertising boycott }

and { Elon Musk defends Ketamine use under doctor’s prescription for his mental health: “It helps me, and that helps Tesla” | Ketamine is called a dissociative drug because during a high, which lasts about an hour, people might feel detached from their body, their emotions, or the passage of time. Excessive use of the drug can make anyone feel like they rule the world. }

phone call…

Are you hiring?
No.
Good! Can I have your company’s name?
Why?
I have to tell the Unemployment Department that I am looking for a job.
This is the Unemployment Department. Can I get your name?
(click)

{ Stories from a used book store owner | Continue reading }

web infrastructure provider Cloudflare announced a new feature called “AI Labyrinth” that aims to combat unauthorized AI data scraping by serving fake AI-generated content to bots. The tool will attempt to thwart AI companies that crawl websites without permission to collect training data for large language models that power AI assistants like ChatGPT. […] Instead of simply blocking bots, Cloudflare’s new system lures them into a “maze” of realistic-looking but irrelevant pages, wasting the crawler’s computing resources. The approach is a notable shift from the standard block-and-defend strategy used by most website protection services. Cloudflare says blocking bots sometimes backfires because it alerts the crawler’s operators that they’ve been detected. […] In January, we reported on “Nepenthes,” software that similarly lures AI crawlers into mazes of fake content. Both approaches share the core concept of wasting crawler resources rather than simply blocking them.

5 Chinese satellites practiced ‘dogfighting’ in space […] US “near peer” adversaries are “practicing dogfighting” in space to simulate orbital combat in yet another step up their wide-ranging effort to develop capabilities to deny, disrupt, degrade and/or destroy US space capabilities […] “There are five different objects in space maneuvering in and out around each other, in synchronicity and in control. That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another” […] [Russia and China] have demonstrated ability with two spacecraft moving closely around each other […] but the demonstrations of the ability to synchronize movements of several satellites at once is relatively new […] China has been using several satellites to stalk US government and commercial satellites stationed in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO).

FBI seized this woman’s life savings ($40,200) without telling her why

bowel movement frequency significantly influences physiology and long-term health, with the best outcomes linked with passing stools once or twice a day, study […] bowel movement frequencies were categorized into four groups: constipation (one or two bowel movements per week), low-normal (three to six per week), high-normal (one to three per day), and diarrhea. When stools linger too long in the gut, microbes exhaust the available fiber – which they ferment into beneficial short-chain fatty acids – and instead ferment proteins, producing toxins like p-cresol sulfate and indoxyl sulfate. “What we found is that even in healthy people who are constipated, there is a rise in these toxins in the bloodstream”

Researcher uses AI to make texts that are thousands of years old readable — How should we live when we know we must die? This question is posed by the first work of world literature, the Gilgamesh epic. More than 4,000 years ago, Gilgamesh set out on a quest for immortality. Like all Babylonian literature, the saga has survived only in fragments. Nevertheless, scholars have managed to bring two-thirds of the text into readable condition since it was rediscovered in the 19th century. The Babylonians wrote in cuneiform characters on clay tablets, which have survived in the form of countless fragments. Over centuries, scholars transferred the characters imprinted on the pieces of clay onto paper. Then they would painstakingly compare their transcripts and—in the best case—recognize which fragments belong together and fill in the gaps. The texts were written in the languages Sumerian and Akkadian, which have complicated writing systems.

Book scanning robot preparing food for his LLM brethren

French Army Trains Eagles To Take Down Enemy Drones

U.S. military on Monday deployed robotic dogs—or robodogs—in joint drills with South Korean forces, simulating assaults on North Korea’s “secret” underground tunnel networks

The results indicate that water fountains can be a source of atmospheric air contamination with potentially pathogenic E. coli and A. hydrophila bacteria. […] some E. coli and A. hydrophila strains isolated from air samples exhibited multidrug resistance [2023]

Italian newspaper says it has published world’s first AI-generated edition

Blindspots in LLMs I’ve noticed while AI coding

The Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional,” said former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, 80, whose private information was included in the release. […] More than 60,000 pages related to the 1963 assassination were released this week by the Trump administration. Many of the pages had been previously disclosed, but with redactions. Many, but not all, redactions have been removed. […] “Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s absolutely a Privacy Act violation.” Many whose Social Security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, researchers in the intelligence world, State Department workers and prominent lawyers. [Washington Post]

More: The previously-redacted pages spell out specific instructions for CIA operatives on how to wiretap, including the use of certain chemicals to create markings on telephone devices that could only be seen by other spies under UV light. […] “Seven of ten JFK files held by the Archives and sought by JFK researchers are now in the public record. These long-secret records shed new light on JFK’s mistrust of the CIA, the Castro assassination plots, the surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City, and CIA propaganda operations involving Oswald,” Morley posted. “The release does not include two thirds of the promised files nor any of 500-plus IRS record, nor any of the 2,400 recently discovered FBI files.“ […] One document from August 1966 recommends a “certificate of distinction” for a CIA official who led the spy agency’s technical division. Previous releases of the same document contained redactions striking sentences that described how this individual led a team that “conceived and developed” the use of “fluoroscopic scanning” and X-rays, which allowed the CIA to “detect hidden technical listening devices” for the first time. [ABC]

Depression manifests in distinct ways across the life course. Recent research emphasizes how depression impedes development during emerging adulthood. However, our study suggests a more complex narrative. Increasing experience with cycles of depression can also catalyze (a) mature perspectives and coping mechanisms that protect against depression’s lowest lows; (b) deeper self-knowledge and direction, which in turn promoted a coherent personal identity; and (c) emergence of a life purpose, which fostered attainment of adult roles, skill development, greater life satisfaction, and enriched identity. Our synthesis reveals how depression during emerging adulthood can function at once as toxin, potential antidote, and nutritional supplement fostering healthy development.

This book has been made almost entirely from recycled used copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

What if you could listen to music or a podcast without headphones or earbuds and without disturbing anyone around you? Or have a private conversation in public without other people hearing you? […] research introduces a way to create audible enclaves – localized pockets of sound that are isolated from their surroundings. […]

We found a new way to send sound to one specific listener: through self-bending ultrasound beams and a concept called nonlinear acoustics.

Ultrasound refers to sound waves with frequencies above the human hearing range, or above 20 kHz. These waves travel through the air like normal sound waves but are inaudible to people. Because ultrasound can penetrate through many materials and interact with objects in unique ways, it’s widely used for medical imaging and many industrial applications.

In our work, we used ultrasound as a carrier for audible sound. It can transport sound through space silently – becoming audible only when desired.

{ The Conversation | Continue reading }

Eyelashes have evolved as a protective feature for the eyes, offering defense against external dangers such as contamination, excessive evaporation, and shear stress from airflow. They may also serve as indicators of an individual’s health, since various diseases, both congenital and non-congenital, can influence eyelash length. […]

this research primarily focused on the attractiveness of eyelash length […] investigating perceptions of health and sexual receptivity as functions of eyelash length, hypothesizing that while long eyelashes may be rated as less attractive, they could be perceived as signals of sexual receptivity. […]

results showed that eyelash length is positively associated with perceived sexual receptivity, suggesting that longer eyelashes might signal openness to casual relationships, despite lower attractiveness and health ratings at lengths beyond the optimal one-third ratio

{ Archives of Sexual Behavior | Continue reading }

A human adult sheds about 1000 skin cells per cm2 per hour, causing billions of cells to be released from the body every day. This happens through epidermal desquamation, which is a continuous process that constitutes the final active step in the keratinocytes’ differentiation program. Desquamation causes a spontaneous detachment of dead skin cells known as corneocytes. The average size of these skin particles is smaller than the pores of typical clothing fabrics, allowing them to pass through and become aerosolized. Varying levels of DNA may be retained within corneocytes; enough to yield detectable profiles. DNA can be released in the air not only through skin cells but also in other forms. Dandruff constitutes part of bioaerosol material shed by humans, with a single particle containing between 0.8 and 16.6 ng of DNA. […] human DNA is present in indoor dust in sufficient quantity and quality to produce allele calls in STR analysis. […]

There are many cases in police investigations that require identification of individuals from crime scenes […] the most difficult cases involve organized crime and terrorism, where the participants may be forensically aware, hence the detection of conventional DNA and fingerprints may be difficult to achieve. […]

The high sensitivity of DNA technology makes it possible to obtain results from very low levels of biological materials (just a few cells) […]

We have used the building of our institute as the test-bed for the investigation; the experiments were conducted in 14 offices, two meeting rooms and five laboratory areas which are accessed by corridors. […]

Positive results were obtained from 93 out of 96 dust samples for one or more office occupants, resulting in a success rate of φ1 = 0.97. Only 22 of the same samples matched with a known non-occupant, giving a non-occupant success rate of φ2 = 22/96 = 0.23.

{ Nature | Continue reading }

related { DNA-based prediction of Nietzsche’s voice | PDF }

Does a woman’s cognitive performance change throughout her menstrual cycle? […] the body of research in this meta-analysis does not support myths that women’s cognitive abilities change across the menstrual cycle.

results show that there is a different investment behavior—more extreme in men, more stable in women—and, consequently, men get higher levels of gross profit but also of losses than women

Sugary drinks linked to greater oral cancer risk, study

Ultra-processed babies: are toddler snacks one of the great food scandals of our time

1kg of compost contains up to 16,000 microplastic particles

Zuckerberg’s subordinates are letting him win at the board game the Settlers of Catan. (Another time, when she beats him, he accuses her of cheating.) […] During the delivery of her second daughter, Wynn-Williams nearly dies of an amniotic fluid embolism, goes into a coma and wakes up on life support. […] on her first day back, she got an impromptu performance review from her supervisor Joel Kaplan that criticized her for not being “responsive enough” while she was gone. [NY Times]

The fact that the two biggest crypto exchanges, FTX and Binance, failed and their founders were criminally charged and went to prison, should be proof enough of how rancid this ecosystem is. […] Like all financial operations characterized by irrational exuberance, the value of $TRUMP soon plummeted. Indeed, over 800,000 investor accounts lost a total of $2 billion. […] Trump is also staffing the Securities and Exchange Commission with crypto loyalists who have already begun to deconstruct the oversight of the crypto sector. […] For the time being, the two reserves (one for Bitcoin, the second for other digital assets) will contain only crypto seized in criminal or civil forfeitures. The crypto industry was disappointed that Trump didn’t mandate federal purchases of the currencies. But that will probably happen in the future. The new initiative calls on federal agencies to come up with strategies to buy more Bitcoin. And there’s now a bill in Congress calling on the government to buy a million Bitcoin. Previously: Texas museum removes Trump wax figure after visitors repeatedly punched and scratched it

See You Next Wednesday is a recurring gag in most of the films directed by John Landis, usually referring to a fictional film that is rarely seen and never in its entirety. Each instance of See You Next Wednesday in Landis’s films seems to be a completely different film. Landis got the title See You Next Wednesday from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is the last line spoken by Frank Poole’s father during Poole’s video letter from his parents. […] In An American Werewolf in London (1981), See You Next Wednesday is a porn film being shown in a seedy London pornographic theater. […] In the Michael Jackson music video Thriller (1983), the phrase is spoken by a deputy in the werewolf film that Michael and his girlfriend are watching. It is also visible as a poster on the outside of the cinema as they leave.

In nearly half of the world’s bird species, young birds learn by imitating the songs of adults. As birds learn songs from one another, mistakes inevitably happen, leading to variation in songs between populations of the same species, similar to the formation of dialects in human languages. […] However, scientists don’t yet fully understand what happens to these song differences when birds move between populations. Imagine you’re a local bird, and a newcomer arrives singing a foreign song. What’s to stop you from learning this new song? […] But birds tend to only learn songs from their own species, even when they are exposed to the birdsong of other species. This suggests that birds have genetic predispositions guiding them to learn only “appropriate” songs.

Male octopus injects female with venom during sex to avoid being eaten

Why straight women watch lesbian porn

Is our universe trapped inside a black hole?

Water droplets create “microlightning” when they split, producing electrical discharges without any external power source. These tiny electrical sparks can transform simple gases into complex organic molecules—including amino acids and RNA components—in just microseconds. […] this phenomenon may have been a major contributor to creating life’s building blocks on early Earth

Bryan Johnson — the investor and founder behind the Don’t Die movement — wants to start “foodome” sequencing. “We’re going to sequence the U.S. ‘foodome,’ which means test 20% of foods that constitute 80% of the American diet based on stuff we eat everyday” […] he’s obsessed with finding ways to extend his lifespan and preaching that gospel to others. He has taken extreme measures, including transfusing his blood with that of his 17-year-old son and undergoing shock therapy treatment to get more nighttime erections, which he says directly correlates to health.

Results consistently show that positive experiences are more likely to come to mind when they think about how karma influences their own life, but negative experiences are more likely when thinking about other’s karma, although this difference was weaker in Singapore and India than in the United States

no one can seem to agree on what an AI agent is, exactly

Scammers exploit Google redirect URLs to send phishing links

As late as the 1980s it was widely believed that babies do not feel pain. […] Babies were thought to be lower-evolved beings whose brains were not yet developed enough to feel pain, at least not in the way that older children and adults feel pain. Crying and pain avoidance were dismissed as simply reflexive. […] Most disturbingly, the theory that babies don’t feel pain wasn’t just an error of science or philosophy—it shaped medical practice. It was routine for babies undergoing medical procedures to be medically paralyzed but not anesthetized

Hannah Arendt, who fled Germany in 1933, later wrote that long before Jews, Roma, gays, Communists and others could be herded into death camps, they had to be “denationalized” — excluded from the society that guaranteed their legal rights. Enlightenment thinkers had posited that just by virtue of existing, each person has inalienable rights. Arendt, however, observed that the “right to have rights” could be guaranteed only by a political community. Without a state to claim them as their own, people have no laws, no courts and no political mechanisms for protecting rights. As a stateless person, [Arendt] experienced that loss of rights — unable to get papers, hiding from the police, interned as an “enemy alien” in France — before making it to the United States. [NY Times]

It’s illegal to mispronounce Joliet.

What happens to attachment bonds when relationships end? […] for the average person, attachment bonds are gradually (4.18 years as a mid-point) relinquished after relationship termination: People’s former partners simply become someone they used to know. […]

even if the typical person does eventually “get over” their former partner, for some people, remnants of those bonds continue and never fully fade away.

{ Social Psychological and Personality Science | Continue reading }

Three GLP-1 drugs are approved for weight loss in the United States […] cost about $1000/month and are rarely covered by insurance, putting them out of reach for most Americans. […] For the past three years, there’s been a shortage of these drugs. FDA regulations say that during a shortage, it’s semi-legal for compounding pharmacies to provide medications without getting the patent-holders’ permission. In practice, that means they get cheap peptides from China, do some minimal safety testing in house, and sell them online. So for the past three years, telehealth startups working with compounding pharmacies have sold these drugs for about $200/month. Over two million Americans have made use of this loophole to get weight loss drugs for cheap. [But] what happens when the shortage ends? Many people have to stay on GLP-1 drugs permanently, or else they risk regaining their lost weight. But many can’t afford $1000/month. What happens to them? Now we’ll find out. At the end of last year, the FDA declared the shortage over. The compounding pharmacies appealed the decision, but the FDA recently confirmed its decision is final. As of March 19 (for tirzepatide) and April 22 (for semaglutide), compounding pharmacies can no longer sell cheap GLP-1 drugs.

Just 5 Days of Junk Food Can Trigger Obesity’s Hold on Your Brain

Musk’s layoffs shrink workforce needed to realize Trump’s energy agenda

What It’s Like to Build a Sauna Kit in My Backyard

Emily Dickinson used envelopes and seals to turn letters into poetry, layering hidden messages and playful forms

Previous research has found that mothers are more likely to ascribe paternal resemblance to newborns. Moreover, studies have found that fathers who perceive that their children resemble them invest more in those children. In this study, we aimed to examine if maternal claims of paternal resemblance exist even with very limited visual information by asking parents whom they believed the fetus looked like during an ultrasound. We found that mothers, but not fathers, were more likely to say that the fetus resembled the father.

{ Evolution and Human Behavior | Continue reading }