🔗 Articles: Sunday 14.Apr.2024
NYT: She Was Kidnapped a Decade Ago With 275 Girls. Finally, She Escaped.
Saratu Dauda had been kidnapped. It was 2014, she was 16, and she was in a truck packed with her classmates heading into the bush in northeastern Nigeria, a member of the terrorist group Boko Haram at the wheel. The girls’ boarding school in Chibok, miles behind them, had been set on fire.
Then she noticed that some girls were jumping off the back of the truck, she said, some alone, others in pairs, holding hands. They ran and hid in the scrub as the truck trundled on.
Guardian: Torsten Bell: We don’t do our best work just before lunch, and it’s not much better afterwards
But new research reassures me that “postprandial somnolence” (the food coma) is real. A study in India investigated how the test scores of 4,600 students were swayed by their satiation. A lot is the answer. Those who’d eaten within an hour of their exam scored 17% lower in some subjects. The more complex the task, the more pronounced the decline in cognitive performance: reading comprehension declined by only 4% for individual words, but a whopping 18% for paragraphs.
This is problematic because, well, we do need to eat. Being “hangry” and needing a break brings its own troubles. Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who died last month, helped popularise a study he’d edited, showing that judges were not neutral decision-making machines of legal theory. The probability of them granting parole dropped towards zero just before lunch, before jumping back up (to about 65%) immediately after.
CBC: Sask. forecasts $250M deficit, $1.3B worse than original budget projection
27.Nov.2024
Saskatchewan’s latest mid-year financial update projects a $250-million deficit, an outcome that would be $1.3-billion worse than the $1-billion surplus predicted in the annual budget.
Finance Minister Donna Harpauer said the swing is due in part to drought that resulted in crop insurance payouts, along with lower potash prices and sales than expected.
“Two large factors outside of the government’s control play into this forecast. The drought was unforeseen, reducing projected crop production by 20 per cent in 2023, when compared to 2022,” Harpauer said.
If you don’t like the cost of carbon reduction, you’re going to hate the costs of climate change.
*via What On Earth on the CBC Radio podcast*
CBC: Sask. premier says change in federal government the only way to solve carbon tax dispute
28.Mar.2024
Moe and six other premiers have called for a halt to the planned increase to Ottawa’s carbon pricing plan — to $80 per tonne from $65 — scheduled for April 1.
Just Have a Think (YouTube): Ocean Electricity Grid. How do they do that?
Pylons are ugly and nobody likes them! Filling up our countryside with thousands more of them to facilitate a massive electricity grid expansion is proving to be a very tricky challenge with lots of local opposition. But what if you could build your electricity grid out at sea and just bring cables to shore where they’re needed?
Interesting discussion of the issues around creating an offshore electrical grid for Britain.
Atlantic: Tupperware Is in Trouble
For the first several decades of my life, most of the meals I ate involved at least one piece of Tupperware. My mom’s pieces were mostly the greens and yellows of a 1970s kitchen, purchased from co-workers or neighbors who circulated catalogs around the office or slipped them into mailboxes in our suburban subdivision. Many of her containers were acquired before my brother and I were born and remained in regular use well after I flew the nest for college in the mid-2000s. To this day, the birthday cake that my mom makes for my visits gets stored on her kitchen counter in a classic Tupperware cake saver–a flat gold base with a tall, milky-white lid made of semi-rigid plastic. Somewhere deep in her cabinets, the matching gold carrying strap is probably still hiding, in case a cake is on the go.
Daring Fireball: The Masters VisionOS App
Link: The Masters VisionOS App on the AppStore
It’s Sunday at Augusta, the leaderboard is tight at the top, and Augusta National has a pretty damn good VisionOS apps. Some cool VR features like tabletop-style VR maps of the holes, with 3D shot-tracking. All free of charge, too, from one of the only major sporting events in the entire world with a restrained approach to advertising and sponsorships.
Health Digest: Eating Sourdough Bread Has An Unexpected Effect On Your Heart
According to a 2021 article in Microorganisms, sourdough bread is healthier than you think with its vitamins and minerals that regulate metabolism and boost your energy. Sourdough can also keep tabs on your blood sugar, and the natural prebiotics are good for your gut health. The antioxidants and other nutrients found in sourdough bread can also protect your heart from disease.
The fermentation process used to make sourdough bread not only makes it more digestible than other breads, but also improves its antioxidant, antihypertensive, and anti-inflammatory properties, according to a 2023 article in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. For example, sourdough bread made from fermented spelt has more phenols and flavonoids compared to non-fermented spelt. These phenols and flavonoids are antioxidants that combat oxidative stress that’s often linked to heart disease and cancer. Beta-glucans in sourdough bind with cholesterol so it doesn’t get absorbed in your bloodstream.
Last Updated: 14.Apr.2024 22:33 EDT