Week of October 20, 2025
Mice have five digits on each forelimb. I learned this when five small digits—and the mouse to which they were attached—appeared behind the paint cans in my basement last week. I doubt the mouse perceives the broader arc of our relationship, which now falls somewhere between Caddyshack and Moby Dick. But when mice turn up their noses (essentially giving me the middle of their five fingers) at the tiny charcuterie of organic peanut butter, artisanal cheese, and homemade sourdough lovingly arranged in "humane" live-capture traps (the Motel Mouse in festive translucent green), my mind drifts to darker solutions. Harpoons and explosives remain off the table (for now), but battery-powered rodent electrocution chambers on Amazon seem increasingly appealing.
Is electrocution more compassionate than glue traps? Probably.
https://a.co/d/2XwqC4B
Related: I found this 2022 New Yorker article exploring the historical, philosophical, and ethical dimensions of mouse traps:
https://smry.ai/https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-endless-quest-for-a-better-mousetrap
There is some serious Joseph Conrad/Heart of Darkness energy in the article. There is no truly humane way to evict a mouse, and all traps exist on a spectrum of quickness and kindness. Ultimately, the drive for a "better" mousetrap is less about technical inadequacy and more about the quest to solve a problem without becoming monsters.
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P.S. - I had time to write over the weekend. However, I am traveling again next weekend, expect the next issue on 11/3/25.
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Listen to a Google Notebook LM A.I.-generated podcast of the newsletter with two virtual "hosts."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15mpAknQf6gTtjimQpG_je68EWZHDMqJJ/view
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Science and Technology Trends
I continue to see a flurry of articles discussing the impressive and wide-ranging benefits of the GLP-1 medications (Ozempic, Zepbound, and related brand names). JAMA published a recent editorial overview of the this class of medicines - including the list of current disease states GLP1s are either being used or investigated for use: Type 2 Diabetes, Obesity, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Chronic Kidney Disease, Cardiovascular Disease, Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatohepatitis, Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction, Atherosclerotic Heart Disease, Peripheral Artery Disease, Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Psoriatic Arthritis, Alzheimer Disease, Parkinson Disease, Dementia, Migraine, Intracranial Hypertension, Alcohol Use Disorder, Tobacco Use Disorder, Substance Use Disorders, Depression, Schizophrenia, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Type 1 Diabetes, Psoriasis, Hidradenitis Suppurativa, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Cancer Prevention.
Article: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2838996
AI Summary: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/0532cc4c-d393-4de4-98c5-8d7ad6d3d8b1
Since these medications dampen the brain's biochemical reward system (dopamine), it is not surprising that some patients note a change in libido (which is reversible). Medscape offered a good overview:
https://www.medscape.com/s/viewarticle/glp-1s-and-libido-effect-may-fly-under-radar-2025a1000rbd
I did not appreciate the Venn-diagram intersection of selective breeding, human taste, and apples. Nor had I ever considered the rags-to-riches transformation of the Honeycrisp apple (for both the apple and the apple growers).
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/honeycrisp-apples-farmers-grow-fuji-gala-8914927a?st=R9ND5m&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I found this article fascinating. "Policing and public health calls for service in Philadelphia" (from 2021) discusses the 80% success (or 20% failure) rate of 911 operators in Philadelphia successfully classifying events at the time of the initial call. This misclassification could result in the operator sending the wrong emergency response. Either way, the article contains numerous useful infographics. While the study is observational, based on about 1 million 911 calls in 2019, Figure 1 in the article was a fascinating snapshot of urban American life. Some of the categories piqued my curiosity, as I cannot recall experiencing a "highway fight." Such disturbances accounted for a reasonable plurality of traffic and quality-of-life-related calls in 2019. And, one's imagination flourishes in the possible stories behind events labeled "Person Screaming," "Local People Trapped," and "short dumping." I wonder if the operators had predetermined categories programmed into their software or if the authors were amalgamating a broader data set.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40163-021-00141-0/figures/1
from
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40163-021-00141-0
Anti-Science Articles of Note
Unbiased Science offered a thoughtful blog post on the anti-vaccination movement and some of the authors who continue to generate low-quality, frequently cited articles (discussing the dangers of aluminum vaccine preservatives and other familiar antivaccine tropes). The blog delineates the anti-vax tactics that employ numerous logical fallacies, including:
- Confusing correlation/causation
- Inferring individual risk from population data (ecological fallacy)
- Cherry-picking data (ignoring larger, more robust studies)
- Pooling inconsistent data (combining data across countries to mask variability)
- Misrepresenting plausibility (ignoring dose/exposure context)
- Misusing temporality (confusing correlation in time with causality)
The review is an excellent analysis of how those who espouse ideas like "aluminum causes autism" misapply epidemiologic guidelines, like Bradford Hill criteria.
https://theunbiasedscipod.substack.com/p/dying-on-bradfords-hill-the-anti
Related:
From the Wall Street Journal - "The surge in autism cases [over the last 30+ years] primarily reflects expanding definitions, increased awareness, better screening, diagnostic substitution, and growing access to services, not an actual increase in incidence."
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/autism-diagnosis-history-changes-charts-c9db7075?st=rTQozE&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Living with AI.
Google and Yale have been developing a novel foundational AI model dedicated to intracellular signaling, Cell2Sentence-Scale 27B (C2S-Scale). This recent blog post and article describe how the model successfully generated and experimentally validated a new hypothesis for cancer immunotherapy. In conjunction with human prompting, C2s-Scale identified silmitasertib (CX-4945) as a molecule that could enhance the expression of cancer cell surface proteins when combined with low-dose interferon, potentially converting immunologically hard-to-find ("cold") cancer cells into cells much more visible to the immune system. The authors then validated this hypothesis with benchtop research, demonstrating that the AI's hypothesis was correct. This work is a landmark achievement demonstrating that scaled AI models can generate experimentally verifiable, novel biological hypotheses rather than simply reproducing known information.
Blog
https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-gemma-ai-cancer-therapy-discovery/
BioRxIV article:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.14.648850v2
AI Summary:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/94f84649-648a-476a-8cfc-9790e2bd78d0
Infographics
I love recursive infographics, a.k.a. infographics about how to display data visually. https://www.data-to-viz.com/ offers a fantastic interactive website illustrating how to display different types of data.
Things I learned this week
The first time I encountered a pay toilet was in Italy. I remember feeling visceral injustice (amongst other sensations) while trying to find a 0.5 Euro coin. (I note my more recent transactions at European pay toilets permit Apple Pay and credit cards.) This week, I learned that until the early 1980s, the U.S. had pay toilets, too. However, a group of students in the 1970s (through their organization, The Committee to End Pay Toilets in America - CEPTIA) managed to subvert typical U.S. a la carte and transactional capitalism, putting pay toilet manufacturers out of business. Moreover, it is a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons - free toilets meant no toilets when the costs of maintenance and cleaning made them untenable for most communities.
https://psmag.com/economics/dont-pay-toilets-america-bathroom-restroom-free-market-90683/
AI summary and analysis:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/10b88d5e-6f98-4d4b-a89d-11c4cf5c22a5
Related correlation (read the anti-science article above before delving into this paragraph): Is the decline of bookstores in the same time frame as the decline in pay toilets related? A magazine published an essay detailing the Marino Aoki Phenomenon (the urge to poop when entering bookstores) in 1985. Without public toilets, one can clearly see how the disincentive to frequent bookstores would cause a decline in bookstore prevalence (starting in the 1990s). I am just "asking questions"—is the failure to read, a more 'ill-informed populace,' and the potential fall of democracy all related to the loss of pay toilets? CEPTIA may be the real enemy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariko_Aoki_phenomenon
Men's Health magazine offered some physiological explanation for this phenomenon in 2021:
https://www.menshealth.com/health/a35767860/bookstores-poop-mariko-aoki-phenomenon-doctor-explains/
Related X post that showed up in my feed the day after I wrote about the non-causal relationship between the loss of pay toilets and the decline in bookstores.
https://x.com/IntegralAnswers/status/1979714923002523740
Parents' weekend for our younger son exposed us to several ongoing projects marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, including a screening and Q&A with Ken Burns and a brief talk by Karin Wulf, the historian who leads the John Carter Brown Library. She mentioned an article (linked below) from this month's Atlantic that highlighted how the start of the American Revolution did not receive the most prominent press coverage in 1776. In fact, in July 1776, a magazine published the Declaration amongst articles on scurvy treatments and the dangers of pairing metal hairpins and silk stockings ("...[ladies who wear this combination] prepare their bodies in the same manner, and according to the same principles, as electricians prepare their conductors for attracting the fire of lightning.") Amusing and illustrative of how mundane world-changing events can seem when one is "in the moment."
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/11/editors-note/684312/?gift=wRB5v0WyIdmVLiiSUSDcYT9dx97OREmH6xWaTRxIYJA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
The Ken Burns documentary we got to see parts of:
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-american-revolution/
AI art of the week
A visual mashup of topics from the newsletter.
I use ChatGPT to summarize the newsletter, suggest prompts, and generate images with several LLMs.
"A grand allegorical painting in the sentimental neoclassical style of Angelica Kauffman's obscure contemporary, Johann Zoffany, depicting a congress of mice signing a Declaration of Independence from the human household. The composition echoes 18th-century history paintings—velvet drapes, marble columns, quills, parchment—with ironic solemnity and faint humor."
Gemini won this week.
Perplexity: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ddLuGu9eqaKe07oTIolsWuyk3H5EggkE/view?usp=sharing
ChatGPT:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vRA3WpV_8N-QjC1tc0QrcXcwvqDJTQ4g/view?usp=sharing
Gemini:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dVln5u4W32xzsIC_N1kB4i3lQPENWxiP/view?usp=sharing
Grok:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oZZ17T5PAiO1okg8XYCJSe1EHd7HBf9y/view?usp=sharing
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The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) utilizes wastewater viral RNA levels to forecast four-week predictions of COVID-19 rates.
https://pmc19.com/data/
based upon https://biobot.io/data/
Wastewater Scan offers a multi-organism wastewater dashboard with an excellent visual display of individual treatment plant-level data.
https://data.wastewaterscan.org/
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Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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