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The inner life of insects

2023-08-18

Do Insects Feel Joy and Pain?

A couple of excerpts:

Bees actively seek out drugs such as nicotine and caffeine when given the choice and even self-medicate with nicotine when sick. Male fruit flies stressed by being deprived of mating opportunities prefer food containing alcohol (naturally present in fermenting fruit), and bees even show withdrawal symptoms when weaned off an alcohol-rich diet.

Recently we confirmed this hunch experimentally. We connected a bumblebee colony to an arena equipped with mobile balls on one side, immobile balls on the other, and an unobstructed path through the middle that led to a feeding station containing freely available sugar solution and pollen. Bees went out of their way to return again and again to a “play area” where they rolled the mobile balls in all directions and often for extended periods without a sugar reward, even though plenty of food was provided nearby.

A delightful read, via The Browser

Charles II: the world's largest landowner

2023-08-11

via the Madison Trust. The full list is at the link, but the top 3 are the English Crown, the Catholic Church, and the Inuit People of Nunavut via an agreement with the Canadian government. Lots of Australian individuals represented as well.

What is neglected by media but will be studied by history?

2023-07-26

This is a Twitter thread by George Mack:

The ones that stood out to me most:

  • The fall of mental hospital and the rise of prisons populations. Link
  • Overdoes are the leading cause of death in the US for people under 45 Link
  • The boom in homeschooling, from thousands of kids in the 1970s to 2.5 million in 2019, rising again to 5 million in 2021 (likely due to the pandemic school closures). Hard not to believe that this one won't have ripple effects, for better or worse. Link
  • 1 in 5 teens report being almost constantly on YouTube. Somehow, YouTube continues to be underrated. Link
  • Japan has virtually eliminated homelessness Link

I think the frame of "what will seem consequential to us in hindsight" is an interesting one!

Invention of the telephone

2023-07-26

If Alexander Graham Bell had not secured the patent for inventing the telephone, Elisha Gray would have gotten it because they both applied for the telephone patent on the same day (Feb 14, 1876).

That is via Noahpinion in his interview with Kevin Kelley. Kelley's point is that invention is an emergent property of society (what he calls the technium), rather than an individual act.

HIV in Australia

2023-07-26

HIV transmission in Sydney has plunged more than 88% from the 2008-2012 average to just 11 cases per year.

It seems it will be possible to greatly reduce or even eliminate HIV transmission.

Via Tyler Cowen.