tyu100

Yep, we are in a sustained global economic and technological boom that's been going on for decades. If it bleeds it leads is true of almost all news media, it's up to you to find good sources of information. The business news is actually a great source to prioritize as making accurate bets about the world is the most important thing to its readership.

Puerto Rico, a territory that has nationalized every major aspect of its economy and was running massive deficits as part of vote-buying schemes, as an exemplar for 'disaster capitalism' is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.

It's up there with Venezuela and Nicaragua as a self-inflicted victim of the South/Central American 'pink wave' that has caused so much economic devastation in the last decade.

Spot on. We all know this from a mile away but I still went to check out their website.

The International Energy Association does forecasts of global demand, which are as good as anything. They see oil demand peaking at around 100 MMb/day at 2030 last I checked (we are at around 90 now).

We are in a historical paradise for consumers of selection and low prices, I think we are doing alright. If Amazon doesn't deliver (pun intended) we will go somewhere else. There is no shortage of competition in the retail space.

This isn't true in the slightest.

McDonalds (brewed) coffee always wins the blind taste tests that Canadian newspapers put on between the big chains.

Yes, this was a ridiculous article. In addition, the FDA actually has fast-track approval for drugs in areas with no good treatment and any drug showing exceptional efficacy will make it through the approval process very quickly.

Not at commercial scale, but it helps. You can try it yourself in your lawn or garden by planting clover.

Yeah, I would skip this and read Cryptonomicon again.

The OG of true crime hacking books.

North American agriculture universities are the unsung heroes of the modern age. Endless quiet innovations in crop yields that have fed the exploding world population in the post world-war era.

Same in Ontario, Canada. They heavily subsidized green energy sources and then laid the debt on the publicly owned power utility which passed on the cost to ratepayers, leading to the highest power rates in North America and a utility that is still heavily dependent on legacy nuclear and hydro to provide grid stability.

It's common belief that Huawei's network technology was bootstrapped with stolen technology from Nortel in Canada.

Yes, another article from the Times complaining that they don't get to make up neighbourhood names anymore ("newspapers used to disseminate new names") but Google does.

Rincon was almost certainly a real estate marketing name a hundred years ago.

This is less of a moral cliff than it was a few years ago, given how many restrictions the EU is placing on Google right now, between right-to-be-forgotten and hate speech laws.

Consumer Reports, Sweethome, Wirecutter. Usually ignore customer reviews and go with Amazon Prime picks for the rest.

There is tons of cobalt in the world (pun intended). In Canada alone there are at least a dozen junior miners with prospects looking for capital (there's even a town called Cobalt in Ontario from a previous mining era). It's just not economic to mine at current prices. This is a non-issue and I'm disappointed Nature published this dumb article.

This is a really great article outlining the current state of research in the field. It'd be nice to pin canonical articles like this every time a disease is discussed.

This is covered in the article: these rare chidhood neurologial diseases are considered multi-factorial and antibiotics may or may not work in some cases, at some stage of disease onset.

I would be extremely wary of self-reported miracle cures for chronic diseases as well. 'Liberation treatment' for MS had many fantastic reports of patients throwing away their crutches and the like but of course turned out to be totally ineffective.

Amazon is a small miracle. They stock everything, it comes right to your door, the prices are competitive in general and with Subscribe and Save you are doing even better. E-books are also incredible and with Prime you get Instant Video thrown in for free.

I'm sure bad experiences happen but compared to driving to the big box suburban wasteland to browse through a limited selection, Amazon is a godesend.

Bought my tv from Best Buy (in Canada) last year. Better selection than Amazon for electronics plus free delivery and wall mount and a store in my city in case of service issues. For small electronics I can also just drive there instead of waiting two days for delivery.

I like Amazon a lot but Best Buy is doing well for themselves in the new retail era (so far). In some ways, I think Walmart may be a bigger issue for Best Buy because they have a huge selection and a bigger physical footprint.

Yes, the nicest neighbourhoods in the world, in my opinion, are medium density, with a mix of mid-rise density that allows sunlight in while still getting a critical mass of people for services and transit, with some SFH that is nice for families and gets lots of green space in the neighbourhood.

Vancouver has done nothing but massively build new housing, one of the most prolific metros in North America. There were just lots of greenfield and brownfield areas to build on first, rather than up-zoning existing residential areas. (Olympic Village, now NE False Creek). The transit and other systems can barely handle the existing density as it is.

It doesn't matter how much you upzone SFH areas when you have tens of thousands of new people coming to your metro every year, it will never be enough.

Stephen Pinker often talks about life in present day Papau New Guinea where tribal societies exist that are likely very similar to those that existed in all hunter-gatherer societies. Life mostly sucks and if you meet someone in a different tribe you spend most of your time deciding whether or not to kill that person.

Very little. As described in the research (and this is not novel), cheap natural gas from fracking has hugely displaced coal as a domestic power source.

A great novel with furniture fraud at its core is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

No. The beta amyloid protein is the primary 'cause' of Alzheimer's. It builds up in the brain and kills neurons and synapses. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent developing drugs to reduce the amount of amyloid in the brain to try and combat Alzheimer's, none of which has led to an effective treatment.

This newer theory is that the cause of the amyloid build-up is an immune response to the herpes virus increasingly infiltrating the brain (as you get older the blood/brain barrier that protects your brain from infections weakens) so a possible treatment is to try and reduce the levels of herpes infection rather than attacking the amyloid protein which is your body's immune response to the herpes infection.

The APOE4 gene is infamous for increasing amyloid production and being a major risk factor for early-onset Alzheimers and so carriers of the gene are often used in studies to see the effect of treatments. (@subcosmos below has a good explanation of what this gene actually does)

Great links, thank you.