California survived record summer heat without blackouts

Battery storage makes a big difference:

During the August heat wave of 2020, the California Independent System Operator, which manages the flow of electricity for most of the state, declared a Stage 3 Emergency and hundreds of thousands of households lost power in rolling outages.

At the time, the system had less than 100 megawatts of battery storage available. Today, it has more than 17,000 megawatts available.

Californians just made it through the hottest August on record without having to endure any rolling power outages….

900 words: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-11/how-california-survived-hottest-august-ever-without-flex-alerts.

Good news from Fix the News:

AI-equipped drones are helping Indigenous rangers clear ghost nets from northern Australia’s coast. AI-equipped drones are now spotting abandoned fishing nets from the air, letting Anindilyakwa and Dhimurru ranger teams remove about 15 nets within the course of a single four-hour flight, up against about three nets a day pre-drone. Abandoned “ghost nets” trap and kill shore life, including an estimated 4,000 to 14,000 turtles a year, and a $25 million commitment will now fund cleanup work with Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, aiming to clear Australian beaches entirely by 2030. Mongabay

Removing a ghost net on an Australian beach. Photo courtesy of Timothy Hillier/Agency Project.

And an image from my collection:

2026 Ig Nobel Prize winners

This is amusing, but what won the LaughLearnLinks Award was the use of “pneumotachometers (instruments to measure volume flow of respired gases)… to determine the velocity, volume, and time scale of blowing through each side of the nose.”

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and “24/7 lectures,” whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words.

This year’s awards go to…

Biomechanics: Matilda Brindle, Catherine Talbot, and Stuart West for devising a more precise definition of kissing—“non-agonistic interactions involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer”—in ants, birds, polar bears, and humans.
Economics: Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper-class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior.
Chemistry: Sanchari Banerjee, Nathan Coussens, François-Xavier Gallat, Nitish Sathyanarayanan, Jandhyam Srikanth, Koichiro Yagi, James Gray, Stephen Tobe, Barbara Stay, Leonard Chavas, and Subramanian Ramaswamy for discovering that milk proteins from viviparous cockroaches pack three times as much energy as milk proteins from cows.
Medicine: The late Tokuji Unno, for the study called “How to Blow the Nose—An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing.”
Biology: João Miguel Alves-Nunes, Adriano Fellone, Selma Maria Almeida-Santos, Carlos Roberto de Medeiros, Ivan Sazima, and Otavio Augusto Vuolo Marques, for gently stepping on various parts of various venomous snakes—repeatedly, at various temperatures at various times of day—to try to learn what does and does not induce a venomous snake to bite a human.
Physics: Randy Hurd, Zhao Pan, Tadd Truscott, Kaveeshan Thurairajah, for theoretical and experimental attempts to design a splash-free urinal. ((Note: I checked the original paper… it has a surprising amount of math.))
Technology: Justin Puma, Zhen Yang, Evan Johnston, Zixin Zhang, Xiaoyi Lan, Lingzhi Zhang, Hongyu Hou, Zixin He, Ali Afify, Megan Creighton, Jianyu Li, and Changhong Cao, for pioneering the use of mosquito proboscises as high-resolution 3D printing nozzles, a process called “Necroprinting.”
Olfaction: Ilona Croy, Tomasz Frackowiak, Thomas Hummel, and Agnieszka Sorokowska, for collecting evidence that babies smell wonderful to their parents but teenagers do not.
Peace: Jaimie Arona Krems, Rebecka Hahnel-Peeters, Laureon Merrie, Keelah Williams, and Daniel Sznycer, for documenting that we value friends who are vicious to people we dislike.
Soil science: Franz Bender, Marcel van der Heijden, Atlant Bieri, and Pia Viviani, for burying 1,000 identical pairs of underpants in more than 25 countries and then digging them up after two months.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/meet-the-2026-ig-nobel-prize-winners. 3,100 words.

Good news from Fix the News:

The pancreatic cancer pill that got a standing ovation now has full FDA approval. In Edition 341 we told you about daraxonrasib, a pill that doubles median survival for deadly pancreatic cancer, with some patients living for years. Now the FDA has approved it, compressing a process that normally takes months into weeks because the benefit was so large, and the need so urgent. “We can now envisage a future with no chemotherapy needed.” NYT

And an image from my collection. Well, it makes at least as much sense as anti-vaxxers:

Climate change and your lungs

We didn’t evolve to deal with today’s levels of CO2 in the air… and it’s not good for us:

During the early rise of Homo sapiens, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere measured a consistent 280 parts per million (ppm). Those conditions prevailed until roughly the middle of the 18th century when the Industrial Revolution began pouring greenhouse gasses into the air from factory smokestacks. By 1900, CO2 levels had risen to nearly 300 ppm; by 1980, that figure had jumped to nearly 330 ppm. Since then the numbers have exploded, standing at 425 ppm today….

“From short-term studies at moderately elevated CO2 (the sort of levels common in poorly ventilated rooms), that means headache, tiredness, and declines in concentration and decision-making. Over longer periods, animal studies raise the possibility of oxidative stress, inflammation, tissue calcification in the kidneys and arteries, and effects on bone.”…

Most projections call for atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reach 500-plus PPM by mid-century, a level that will exceed tolerable carbon dioxide levels in the blood.

930 words: https://time.com/article/2026/08/19/climate-change-impacting-blood-carbon-dioxide-levels/

And related good news from Fix the News:

Children’s lungs in London are getting healthier thanks to its low emissions zone. A Lancet Public Health study followed 3,400 children aged six to nine, comparing central London to Luton, which has no clean-air zone. The lungs of London’s children had been developing more slowly than Luton’s, but within four years they had caught up, and the share with impaired lung function fell from 14% to 9%. Euronews

And an image from my collection:

“Murder capital of Europe” down 56%

Between 2003-2005, the city Glasgow had the highest murder rate of any in Europe. The United Nations declared Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with Scots almost three times as likely to be assaulted as Americans. Newspapers were routinely filled with reports of gruesome murders and bloody gang fights.

Over the following decade, the homicide rate would fall by 56% in Glasgow and 38% in Scotland more widely….

How did a nation once beleaguered by knives, gangs and slayings make such a decisive change?

In short, it changed the way it saw violence as a problem – shifting it from being solely a criminal justice issue to one that was also about public health.

A project to reduce violence in Chicago led to a project to reduce violence in Cincinnati, which was adapted for local use. Doctors started referring violence victims to sources of help (including dentists, who informed patients while they were still in the dentist’s chair), schools excluded far fewer students, peer support groups were organized, and a Violence Reduction Unit was created in the police department.

2,400 words: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260626-how-scotland-changed-the-way-it-tackled-violence.

Good news from Fix the News:

Malaria prevalence in Zanzibar has fallen from 40% in mid-2001 to 0.04% today. AI-guided drones are now mapping standing water in a few hours, a process that used to take health teams days. Once identified, these mosquito breeding habitats are mapped by GPS and targeted for immediate treatment with insecticide. Thus far, there have been no malaria deaths in Zanzibar in 2026, and the island is on the brink of eliminating the disease entirely. Streamline Feed

And on the funny side… You may remember a song Hocus Pocus from a band called Focus, way back in 1971. Genius.com describes it thus: “An iconic and unusual song, “Hocus Pocus” consists of a guitar riff, broken up by varied interludes of yodeling, organs, accordions, and even more.” I was particularly taken by the lyrics:

[Interlude 1]
Ôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô poPÔ
Yôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô
PoPÔ
Aaaah aaah aaah aaah
Uuuh oooh oooh ooooooooh

[Interlude 2]
Ôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô poPÔ
Yôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô
BoumPÔ
Aaaah aaah aaah aaah
Uuuh oooh oooh ooooooooh

…etc. Click here to listen to the song on YouTube, 6 minutes 42 seconds.

What Happened to al-Qaeda?

Twenty-five years after 9/11, analysts can’t decide if the terrorist organization is all but defunct or more threatening than ever…

The group yearned to attack America again after 9/11 and had considered several schemes, but only on three occasions before Pensacola had it actually tried to execute an operation. All three plots had failed. ((Pensacola: “On December 6, 2019, in Pensacola, Florida, a 21-year-old Royal Saudi Air Force officer took out a legally acquired Glock pistol and killed three U.S. sailors at a naval air base.”))

A 2021 Brown University report put the cost of the War on Terror at more than $8 trillion. This unfathomable investment succeeded in removing al‑Qaeda from the little camps it once controlled in Afghanistan. But these havens have been replaced by large ones elsewhere, including in parts of the Horn of Africa, Yemen, and the Sahel, the arid region of West Africa just south of the Sahara. The al‑Qaeda franchises in those places are ruthless and rich. The East African branch fields a force that has been estimated at 10,000 men and pulls in about $100 million in revenue annually through taxation, smuggling, and outright theft.

On the other hand, these franchises are not attacking the US.

Bin Laden left 6,000 pages of notes about his actions and plans, and apparently believed that the 9/11 attacks would make the US completely withdraw from the Middle East:

For good or ill, American Middle East policy during this period was roughly the opposite of what bin Laden expected and intended. Rather than withdrawing, U.S. forces surged into the region. The United States has troops, and friends, in Syria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates… Privately, bin Laden bemoaned his network’s impotence, lack of money, and inability to mount even small operations.

By now the rhythm of terrorism analysis should be familiar: For every piece of evidence that makes al‑Qaeda’s leaders look like evil geniuses, there is counterevidence that makes them look like hopeless bumblers.

It’s complicated, and even the experts hesitate to make predictions. 6,700 words: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/09/al-qaeda-25-years-post-9-11/687965/. If this is paywalled, send me a note.

Good news from Fix the News:

Türkiye votes in favour of amnesty to end its 40-year war. On Monday this week, Türkiye’s Parliament passed a law (with almost 80% support) offering conditional amnesty offering conditional pardons and legal protections to thousands of rank-and-file members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, in return for full disarmament. This builds on the ceasefire that saw the group lay down its arms last year. The insurgency, one of the world’s longest, has killed tens of thousands across Turkey, Iraq and Syria since 1984. Bloomberg / WSWS

And an image from my collection:

Pirates vs metric system

In 1793, the brand new United States of America needed a standard measuring system because the states were using a hodgepodge of systems.

“For example, in New York, they were using Dutch systems, and in New England, they were using English systems,” says Keith Martin, of the research library at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

This made interstate commerce difficult.

Briefly, Thomas Jefferson asked his friends in France for help. They sent a scientist with a one-kilogram standard weight to the new USA… but his ship was blown to the Caribbean by a storm, and was then captured by pirates…

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system. 725 words.

Good news from Fix the News:

HIV infections and AIDS deaths down to their lowest level in 30 years. UNAIDS counted 1.2 million new infections last year, down from a peak of 3.3 million in the 1990s. There were an estimated 570,000 deaths in 2025, down from roughly 2.1 million in 2004. New forms of prevention are coming – lenacapavir gives people almost perfect protection, and researchers believe mRNA is close to delivering a working HIV vaccine. Everyone is worried about money though: international funding fell 18% last year. UNAIDS / Vox

And an image from my collection:

Wear your seat belt

I’ve been a paramedic for almost two decades. As much as it makes me sound jaded, I have seen a lot, and it’s hard to make me break down these days. Oddly enough, the one that makes me break down the most is one where everyone turned out completely fine...

The lady who called us is the passenger. She’s hysterical, moving and screaming because her legs are trapped by the crumpled dashboard. She’s got glass cuts all over her hands, face, and chest, but nothing is bleeding profusely. I breathe a sigh of relief; it’s not always a sure thing, and she could definitely have internal injuries, but we love to find a patient awake and alert. We prod at her legs, and she can feel everything; she’s just really stuck. She is crying that she can’t wake up her husband and she can’t turn in her seat to see her kids or dog. She says her baby was crying before and isn’t anymore, and she can’t hear her four-year-old at all.

Happy ending: Everyone survived with almost no injuries (although there are some bits that are frightening): https://notalwaysright.com/moments-like-this-make-the-horrible-ones-worth-it/306563. 1,600 words but easy reading, except for the topic. Also check the comments, people have many stories of being saved by their seat belt.

Remember: “There are only two kinds of paranoia: Total… and insufficient.” Always wear your seat belt.

Good news from Fix the News:

Hungarian state television stopped broadcasting, and then apologised for lying. On the 8th of July 2026, M1 and the Kossuth radio station suspended news output as the government began dismantling the propaganda apparatus that Viktor Orbán built over 16 years. The screen carried a plain white-on-black message:

Public media must not lie. We apologise for having done exactly that for many years! Public media is now being transformed so that in future it will be independent and credible. News service is temporarily suspended. Stay with us!

And an image from my collection:

How to safely lower your body temperature in extreme heat

Given recent record high temps all over the world, and the likelihood that these will continue due to global warming, here are some ideas that may help:

Who is at risk for heat exhaustion?
How can you safely lower your body heat?
Which drink is best for staying hydrated in extreme heat? ((Water))
What should I eat if I have heat exhaustion?
Should I avoid pain relievers when overheated?

https://time.com/article/2026/06/25/how-to-safely-lower-body-heat. Under 800 words.

Good news from Fix the News:

United States: murder fell 18% in 2025, the sharpest drop since 1937.
Mexico: daily homicides down 48% since September 2024, 12-year low.
Brazil: just hit lowest homicide rate in its recorded history.
Argentina: 3.6 murders per 100,000 in 2025, lowest rate ever recorded.
Ecuador: homicides down 28% in March after a security crackdown.
Across Latin America and the Caribbean, murders fell over 5% in 2025.
England and Wales: homicides down to their lowest level since 1977.
Ireland: homicides down 25%, mostly fewer fatal road crashes.
France, Germany, Italy, Spain: murder down 30-50% since late 1990s.
Iraq: overall crime down 18% year-on-year.
South Africa: murders down 20%, helped by load-shedding’s end.
Philippines: focus crimes fell 34% in April from a year earlier.
China: police crime cases fell 13% in 2025, lowest this century.
Vietnam: social-order crimes fell 13% nationwide year-on-year.
Thailand: scam offences fell nearly 60% during a national crackdown.
Malaysia: index crime fell 6.4% amid stepped-up security operations.

And an image from my collection:

The U.S. will pay for the chain reaction Trump set off in NATO

An excellent overview of significant changes to NATO and the NATO/US relationship as a result of the President’s actions:

Even people who dislike Donald Trump tend to give him credit for one thing: getting NATO to pay its fair share. American presidents have long grumbled about burden sharing…. Non-American NATO countries collectively spent 1.4 percent of their combined gross domestic product on defense in 2014; in 2025, it was close to 2.3 percent.

The usual assumption is that if Europe spends more, the United States will spend less. This is demonstrably wrong. European defense spending is at its highest level in decades, yet Trump has proposed a staggering $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2027….

As Europe’s spending increases, the continent will become less dependent on the U.S., and less deferential to it… Then there is the issue of weapons. One of the hidden benefits of American leadership in NATO has been that Europeans buy American arms. They have bought F-35s, HIMARS, Patriots, P-8 aircraft and many other systems not simply because they are good but because they bind Europe to the United States. Common equipment makes joint operations easier. It also reassures frontline states that American troops will remain engaged.

But European officials now speak openly of the need to reduce dependence on U.S. hardware. They fear that the Trump administration could in the future withhold software upgrades, spare parts or operational support. When Denmark has to worry about an American president threatening Greenland, it will think thrice before buying its next generation of weapons from the United States. For American defense companies, this could be a major loss….

We have set off a chain reaction. Over time, Americans will come to miss the old NATO — not because it was fair, but because it was the most successful security system the world has ever known, with America at its center.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/07/10/trump-got-nato-pay-up-america-may-regret-it/. About 840 well-written words.

Good news from Fix the News:

A veteran car reviewer’s verdict: EVs have improved more in two years than petrol cars did in a decade. Mack Hogan tallies the gains: fast-charging times down from about 18 minutes to 11, the number of 300-mile models rising from 21 in 2023 to more than 60 this year, and the Lucid Air’s 516-mile range now $10,000 cheaper, while a $25,000 electric pickup nears launch. Petrol engines, he argues, are near the end of their development road. InsideEVs

And an image from my collection:

Mel Brooks at 100

People sometimes call Gogol the father of Russian realism, yet in Dead Souls, especially, he explores the human condition with the unmistakable verve of a comedian—seizing on preposterousnesses hiding in plain sight, piling absurdities atop one another until the tension cannot hold, generally dazzling (and, yes, sometimes confounding) the reader with his originality and playfulness…

Tolkin happens to be the mentor who said of Brooks: “Half of Mel’s creativity comes out of fear and anger. He doesn’t perform, he screams.” This was an era in which a still-unknown Brooks would show up late to the writer’s room—a habit that drove his colleagues nuts—and then get the biggest laughs out of them anyway. He was outrageously funny, and had unbelievable range. One minute he’d be doing an impression of a rabbi, and the next he was writhing around on the floor pretending to be a harpooned whale (a Melville reference, naturally). The playwright Neil Simon, also a writer on the show, called Brooks “the most uniquely funny man I’ve ever met.”…

Mel Brooks gave us, among other comedic gifts, The Producers; Blazing Saddles; Young Frankenstein; Silent Movie; High Anxiety; Spaceballs; History of the World, Part I; and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. You could have been born at any point in time, but here you are, alive when ice cream, antibiotics, and indoor plumbing have all been invented, and Mel Brooks is turning 100. If that isn’t extraordinarily good luck, I don’t know what is.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/06/long-live-mel-brooks/687730. 3,450 words.

Good news from Fix the News:

Brazil has made spectacular progress on one of its most stubborn public health problems.

In 1996, almost 656,000 adolescent girls gave birth; by 2025, that had fallen to around 276,000, a 58% drop driven by three decades of free contraception. The latest shift came in 2025, when a three-year contraceptive implant called Implanon became universally free nationwide for women aged 14 to 49.

This has made a big difference. Without government assistance the implant costs around $200, almost two-thirds of the monthly minimum wage — and that’s before the doctor’s fee. Some cities, including Campinas in São Paulo, Pinhais in Paraná and Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará, have gone even further, offering implants to girls as young as 11. Despite the howls of protests from traditionalists it’s worked; between 2010 and 2024, births among girls under 14 in Fortaleza fell by more than half.

And an image from my collection: