Back pain is such a problem that the subreddit /r/backpain is one of the top 3% communities on Reddit. I could be a member; I’ve been suffering from severe sciatic pain ever since my first pregnancy almost fifteen years ago (!). Although it’s not as bad as the time I had a bulging disc, it’s consistent and virtually nothing helps. I’ve tried.
It doesn’t surprise me that the CEO shooter known by some as The Adjuster may have been radicalized by his back pain. (Scientific American)
Mangione was reportedly not taking any medication for his back pain. But he had posted in spondylolisthesis-related Reddit threads and talked on the site Goodreads about reading books on back pain, according to CNN. He told a friend in Honolulu, where he had been living the year before the shooting, that he needed back surgery. In the summer of 2023, his friend texted him to ask how the surgery went, and Mangione sent back x-ray scans of his spine. The friend told CNN that the images “looked heinous” and that he fell out of touch with Mangione after that.
It’s not clear if or how Mangione’s back condition or surgery may have been connected to the UHC CEO’s shooting death on a street in Manhattan last week. When police arrested Mangione, he was reportedly carrying a handwritten manifesto that mentioned UHC and accused health insurance companies of “[abusing] our country for immense profit.”
Reading about this is reminding me of how cold and judgmental the dude who worked on my back was. He was so smug that I gave myself a bulging disc by doing good mornings without a sufficiently strong posterior chain. It was so upsetting. Medicine in America is so upsetting.
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Some generally interesting scientific news without commentary:
E-tattoos could make mobile EEGs a reality (Ars Technica)
For Orcas, Dead Salmon Hats Are Back in Fashion (Scientific American)
These Endangered Wolves Have a Sweet Tooth—and It Might Make Them Rare Carnivorous Pollinators (Smithsonian Mag)
Living without mental imagery may shield against trauma’s impact (Psyche)
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I’m homeschooling my 14yo. Usually we’re doing age-appropriate math or reading literature, but sometimes I print off articles to share. This was the latest:
All Life on Earth Today Descended From a Single Cell. Meet LUCA. (Quanta Magazine)
LUCA does not represent the origin of life, the instance whereby some chemical alchemy snapped molecules into a form that allowed self-replication and all the mechanisms of evolution. Rather, it’s the moment when life as we know it took off. LUCA is the furthest point in evolutionary history that we can glimpse by working backward from what’s alive today. It’s the most recent ancestor shared by all modern life‚ our collective lineage traced back to a single ancient cellular population or organism.
“It’s not the first cell, it’s not the first microbe, it’s not the first anything, really,” said Greg Fournier (opens a new tab), an evolutionary biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “In a way, it is the end of the story of the origin of life.”
The main takeaway we got from this article is that LUCA coexisted with viruses; LUCA needed to have a rudimentary immune system.
I’ve been thinking a lot about LUCA since we read it. There were other cells around at the time that didn’t result in the life we know now. It makes me reflect on the different human species that no longer distinctively exist, like Neanderthal and the Denisovans.
There are so many paths untaken throughout history, mostly by total happenstance.
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Some entertainment news without commentary~
The Power of Positive Fandoms: A Reminder That Not Everything Is Terrible (tsfka Tor dot com)
‘Watson’ First Look Explores What Happens to the Sidekick After Sherlock Holmes’ Death (Variety)
A Must-Read Sapphic Take on COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (Bookriot)
The queen of suspense: how Ann Radcliffe inspired Dickens and Austen – then got written out of the canon (The Guardian)
