The Nerds and the Bees

Are Bees Back? Plus, the Abortion Election.

Are we in the middle of a bee colony collapse or is there an unprecedented beesurgence? It turns out it's not as easy as you'd think to get the latest buzz on bees. We're either in a honey bear market or an epic drone show. The numbers are driven by several factors, including tax policies, and they're up. We think. At least some people do. Ironically, when it comes to bees, there's no hive mentality. "After almost two decades of relentless colony collapse coverage and years of grieving suspiciously clean windshields, we were stunned to run the numbers on the new Census of Agriculture (otherwise known as that wonderful time every five years where the government counts all the llamas): America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high ... This prompted so many questions. Does this mean the insect apocalypse is over? Are pollinators saved? Did we unravel the web of maladies known as colony collapse disorder?" WaPo (Gift Article): Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees? Even if you're not into insects, math, or data collection methods, this story is a pretty sweet read. It's April Fools' Day, but I swear, I'm not pollen your leg.

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Prime the Pump

"A new, high-tech approach called ECPR can restart more hearts and save more lives. Why aren’t more hospitals embracing it?" The NYT Mag (Gift Article) with an interesting look at a new form of CPR that seems to be a game changer for saving lives—if your local health service provider has bought in to it. The Race to Reinvent CPR. We're not talking about the kind of CPR you can perform in an emergency. This kind takes equipment. "Once the cannulas were in place — one in the vein and one in the artery — tubes that looked like garden hoses connected them to a machine that began sucking out Sauer’s blood. Inside that device, the blood passed through a membrane that functioned like an artificial lung, and then it was pumped, freshly oxygenated, back into Sauer’s artery to perfuse his body — and most important, his brain."

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Veni, Vidi, Procreato

Years ago, my wife and I traveled to Venice with our son when he was only a few months old, and during our time there, I'd estimate that 98-99% of the Italians we encountered squeezed his cheeks. At one point I wondered, "Don't these people have any babies of their own?" It turns out that the answer to that is, "Maybe not." Like many countries, Italy is facing the demographic challenges associated with an aging society. But one region has managed to reverse the trend. Do they offer a model for other places around the world with a serious need for più bambini. NYT (Gift Article): What Happened When This Italian Province Invested in Babies. "Full houses have increasingly become history in Italy, which has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe and where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, as well as Pope Francis, has warned that Italians are in danger of disappearing. But the Alto Adige-South Tyrol area and its capital, Bolzano, more than any other part of the country, bucked the trend and emerged as a parallel procreation universe for Italy, with its birthrate holding steady over decades. The reason, experts say, is that the provincial government has over time developed a thick network of family-friendly benefits, going far beyond the one-off bonuses for babies that the national government offers." I'm glad they're figuring it out, because the bambino I brought over is now headed to college. (Still has the cute cheeks, though.)

4

This is So Lit

"The popularity of the term testifies to a widespread hunger to name a certain kind of harm. But what are the implications of diagnosing it everywhere? When I put out a call on X (formerly known as Twitter) for experiences of gaslighting, I immediately received a flood of responses, Leah’s among them. The stories offered proof of the term’s broad resonance, but they also suggested the ways in which it has effectively become an umbrella that shelters a wide variety of experiences under the same name." The New Yorker: So You Think You’ve Been Gaslit. "What happens when a niche clinical concept becomes a ubiquitous cultural diagnosis." (Too bad being trumped already has a definition, because it's a better fit for how people use gaslighting these days.)

5

Extra, Extra

App Year: "College admissions has always been filled with uncertainty, especially at schools like Duke where applications are plentiful and seats scarce. But when Guttentag started as dean three decades ago, the process was more forgiving: Duke accepted some 28 percent of applicants, and about 41 percent of them attended — the university’s yield rate. Since the turn of this century, the number of applications to the 67 most selective colleges in the nation, which includes Duke, has tripled — to nearly 2 million a year. That has translated into more stress and longer odds for a lot of applicants, and a much more complicated set of considerations for colleges, in terms of who to admit and when to admit them." NY Mag Inside the Craziest College-Admissions Season Ever. (At least until next season...)

+ Abortion on the Ballot: "The Florida Supreme Court upheld Florida’s existing 15-week ban on abortions, which means the state’s six-week ban will soon become law. The Florida Supreme Court also approved the wording of a proposed state constitutional amendment protecting the right to an abortion in Florida, clearing it to go on the ballot this November as Amendment Four."

+ Havana Bone to Pick: "A senior Defense Department official who attended last year’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, had symptoms similar to those reported by U.S. officials who have experienced 'Havana syndrome,' the Pentagon confirmed Monday." Investigators have tried to brush off Havana syndrome reports. A 60 Minutes says not so fast. Havana Syndrome mystery continues as a lead military investigator says bar for proof was set impossibly high.

+ One Sided: "As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency. Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump. We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents in our lifetimes, but Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is. He is unique among all American presidents for his efforts to keep power at any cost." Chris Quinn, Editor of Cleveland's Plain Dealer, explains something to his readers that should also be required reading across journalism. Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts.

+ Public Enemy: Trump's new publicly traded entity took a plunge on Monday after investors began to realize it's garbage. Unsurprisingly, most of the company's expenses are tied to interest on debt. That's Trump's whole business model: Borrow.

+ Bibi Guns for Iran: "Iran has vowed revenge after Israeli war planes destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing at least seven people, including a senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds force." While Iran is outraged, this will probably be viewed as one of the more popular moves Bibi has made of late. Mass anti-Netanyahu protests return in Israel.

+ Elon Way From the Top: Twitter's value has dropped more than 70% since Elon Musk's takeover. And now it looks like Musk's terrible behavior on that platform is (finally) starting to impact Tesla sales as well. MoJo put together a short, explainer video on how Musk is using his platform to bring back centuries-old racist pseudo-science.

+ Five Star Witness: "Christopher Kinahan Sr is the head of the notorious Kinahan Organised Crime Group, which originated in Ireland and is otherwise known as the Kinahan Cartel. Irish police believe the gang has amassed profits of over $1 billion through the trade of illegal narcotics, arms trafficking and money laundering over the years." And if Kinahan gets caught, it will likely be because of his habit of posting online reviews. Wanted Narco Boss Exposes Whereabouts by Posting Google Reviews.

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Bottom of the News

I'm not a big fan of April Fools' jokes, partly because they're not funny and partly because the last thing America needs right now is more information intended to fool people. What we need is a break from stories that are too crazy to be true. But I'm mostly not a fan because the whole tradition should have been dropped once George Plimpton wrote his epic Sports Illustrated piece: The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. The clue was right there in the subhead, but man did this story fly around my school when I was a kid. "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga—and his future in baseball."