1 Week, 7 Stories #66
Whether we are talking about bombs, satellites, or rockets, what goes up, must come down.
Every edition features 7 stories from the past week. I’ll draw on my background in media, journalism, agriculture, biotech, and renewable energy to come up with an interesting selection and to offer some context.
We are facing a deluge of information and news. Conflicts, tariffs, environmental scares, shock at the rising cost of groceries, and global political upheavals. I am not quite ready to turn off the news, but we all need to find a way to cope and that’s where we will start this edition of 1 Week, 7 Stories.
TechCrunch is not where I would expect to find some advice on how to avoid doomscrolling because the sites thrives on addictive tech, but this week they have some tips to helps us all “stop staring into the all-consuming abyss”. One thing we need to understand is that unless you have managed to find a world of sunshine and lollipops, your newsfeeds can have a real effect on your well-being says Harvard Health. TechCrunch says that isn’t your fault. Technology is purpose built to get you hooked, because without your constant attention many of these companies would not be profitable. Like some sort of dystopian science fiction world, we are at the mercy of corporations.
As with many addiction recovery programs, admitting you have a problem is the first step to kicking the habit. As my weekly screen time crept up and I was finding it harder to work on my short story fiction, I started to cut back. Since the beginning of the year, I have cut my screen time between 10 and 13 minutes every week. Not even close to where I want to go, but screen time is dropping. TechCrunch says one way to stop the scroll is just do something else. Read a book, play a word games, go for a walk, or go to the gym (and workout without your phone in front of you).
Getting hooked on news headlines can lead to a “feeling of learned helplessness” as we are overloaded with bad news we cannot change. It began during the pandemic and has not let up since. We all need to step back from social media as well. Apart from the firehose of information, just trying to sort out what is true, what is false, and navigating the area in between is exhausting.
Since I started writing fiction, I had to deal with information overload and simply alternating this newsletter between news and short stories has made a difference.
Forbes magazine says many of us are stressed and afraid and that we can’t be our best at anything if we are overwhelmed. The article suggests a few reasons why it is happening and how to deal with it. Give it a go – who knows what you might discover in the process.
Sometimes the Government of Alberta gives me a gift when it comes to preparing a new edition of 1 Week, 7 Stories, and on Thursday I received this gift from Todd Loewen, Alberta’s Minister of Forestry and Parks, when he said in a CBC Radio interview:
“… anything we can do to improve the opportunity for hunters to aim and take game in a safe and responsible manner is something we should be doing…”
In a media release, the proposed amendments to the Wildlife Act outlined in Bill 41 are dressed up as improving wildlife management and even suggest it is also about accessibility for hunters with disabilities. In reality it is about exactly what the minister alluded to in his interview. Shoot and kill.
For instance, the permitted use of laser aiming devices have been expanded. In that CBC interview when asked about laser sights, Minister Loewen said:
“they are purely an aiming device, it does nothing else other than helping the person aim”.
Does he seem to think that we imagined engaging in Star Wars level laser killing devices? The statement made little sense other than to highlight the use of laser sights for one thing and one thing only. Shoot and kill.
The new amendments also allow children as young as age 12 to shoot and kill without adult supervision. Of course, they too must have a legal hunting permit which is hardly reassuring.
In the media release and in the CBC Radio interview the minister talks about how we lived in Alberta 500 to 1,000 years ago and relied on hunting, fishing, and trapping. He went on to say, highways and high rises are the unnatural state of things, and appeared to be suggesting that these regulations would restore us to those days of yore when we shouldered our high-powered rifles with laser scopes, hopped onto our ATV and bravely scratched out a living from the land.
A living off the land which has been very beneficial for Minister Loewen. Until he became the minister he was listed as one of the owners of Red Willow Outfitters. He disclosed that conflict of interest and the company is now owned and run by family members, including his wife. Every decision he makes around hunting regulations affects the family business whether he is on the masthead or not. The ‘stakeholders’ he often refers to when he justifies expanding hunting and trapping include his family business and very likely the business associates he came into contact with before getting his current portfolio.
The argument being made over the last several months to loosen regulations and increase wildlife kills are becoming increasingly weak given his connection to the very industry he regulates. Unless you are someone who makes a living in the hunting and guiding business.
In its regular feature on federal lobbying in Canada, iPolitics noted that the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) had taken on a consultant to help the organization advocate for additional support and investment for libraries because they are essential parts of the social infrastructure of communities.
Even with the uncertainty around when there will be a federal election and which party will emerge on top, many organizations, including the CFLA have prepared their pre-budget 2025 submissions. In its submission, the CFLA is recommending more funding for libraries as an essential part of communities, more investment for accessible reading services, and increased support for Indigenous libraries and Indigenous library workers. There are over 3,350 libraries in Canada and according to the submission, for every $1 invested in Canada's urban libraries, $6 is generated in community economic impact.
Somewhere along the way, the simple act of making books available for people to borrow at no cost has become a political issue and as Public Square Magazine suggests, librarians no longer wear the mantel of a benign profession. Now, says an article this month in The Walrus, libraries and librarians are caught in the middle of “quiet and systemic” book banning. The idea of banning books is not new. What is new about removing books from library bookshelves is the role played by well-funded special interest groups and the prevalent role that misinformation and disinformation plays.
In the United States a survey found that about half of Americans did not read a single book in 2023. About half of all Canadian either read print books or listen to audiobooks in their leisure time and only 6% of Canadians read no books at all.
Libraries and librarians are there to provide books. All books, not just those deemed to be in the public interest. Canadians visit libraries more than one million times every year. How much impact federal funding can have on ensuring library users can find the book they want to read without political influence might be open for debate. Keeping them open and a viable part of their community should be a given.
What goes up, must come down even when you send it into space.
Just asks the folks over at Elon Musk’s company Starlink.
According to a story in TRTWorld, in January alone, 120 satellites re-entered the earth’s atmosphere and burned up. Most of them belonged to Starlink. The lifespan of a Starlink low earth orbit satellite is about 5 years and with 7,086 satellites in orbit today there are lots coming down and replacements going up. (I recommend this Space.com link for info on Starlink satellites) If the company reaches its goal of 42,000 orbiting satellites, there will be no shortage of satellite fireballs in the sky and each of those fireballs are releasing metallic fumes into the atmosphere. The Meteored website calls it a gigantic, uncontrolled experiment in atmospheric chemistry. According to a study published in June of 2024 the main byproduct of these burn ups is aluminum oxide which is a catalyst for ozone depletion. The study found a typical 250 kg (550 lbs) satellite produced around 30 kg (66 lbs) of aluminum oxide nanoparticles on burn up which can hang around in the atmosphere for decades. The result is ozone depletion – a 1970s and 80s problem we thought we had dealt with as MIT News noted last week. Ozone is an important part of our atmosphere. It absorbs a portion of the radiation from the sun in particular the UV portion which has been proven to damage crops and lead to higher skin cancer rates. The Royal Aeronautical Society says the potential damage from satellites burning up could “trigger climate change 2.0”.
And as we are talking about burn up, I should point out another source of atmospheric pollution. SpaceX’s latest Starship test flight ended in another explosion last week which grounded flights at Orlando International Airport.
What goes does indeed come down. Sometimes in a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
As we mark the 5-year anniversary of COVID and the subsequent lockdown I came across a gem buried in in the research around the effects of COVID that is worth noting as we get closer to hockey playoff season.
There is an advantage to playing before a home crowd.
Scenes of sports teams playing in empty stadiums with cardboard cutout fans gave researchers the chance to study real life natural experiments. There was already plenty of evidence that the home team had an advantage over the away team but take out the fan factor in lockdown era games and home field advantage dropped by up to 64% according to a paper in Journal of Sport Economics. The research was based on European soccer games, but are likely transferable to North America. Another study in the Journal of Physical Education and Sport looked at Euro League basketball and found that Home Audience Advantage (HAA) resulted in home teams winning significantly more games with an audience in comparison to away teams. However, they lost that edge when there was no audience because of the lockdown.
Researchers seem to love these natural experiments so there is more.
Back to the Journal of Sports Economics which compared results across the professional soccer tiers. In the lower tiers where teams were more likely to play before smaller crowds, teams were better able to weather the lack of a home audience because the fan factor was less dramatic.
In March of 2020 the NBA hit pause on its season because of COVID before coming up with an alternative to have some sort of end to its season. Starting with exhibition games in July, 22 teams played in a “bio-secure bubble” at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. With no travel and no fans a report in Nature said there was a natural experiment where the “impact of travel and home-court advantage could be systematically examined”. Those researchers concluded that it was likely that travel disruptions were responsible for the away team’s reduced performance during regular season, non lockdown games. It all comes down it seems, to “circadian disruption”.
As they used to sing during the 7th inning stretch more than a hundred years ago:
“Let me root, root, root for the home team” because it turns out that it may just help them win.
Last week, commuters in France had a surprise when traffic was stopped because of a 500 kg (1100 lbs) bomb. No, it was not a terrorist threat - it was an unexploded WWII bomb containing 200 kg (440 lbs) of explosives. Even 80 years after the war, Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) are found regularly on construction projects in the UK and Europe sometimes resulting in injury and death. In Okinawa this week, Japanese troops detonated 24 WWII U.S. shells which was the third disposal this month. (You can read more in Stars & Stripes but you may need to register) Even here in Canada, the Okanagan Indian Band said in early March that there are still large swaths of its land that are off limits because of the danger of UXOs left over from live-fire training years ago.
Apart from the immediate danger from old bombs and shells exploding, there is a toxic side to UXOs as well. A paper published in February in the journal Chemosphere says the south-western Baltic Sea has about 3,000 kilograms of dissolved toxic chemicals released from UXOs. The levels were below health risk thresholds, but the authors say it highlights the need for clearing UXOs around the world because the current levels in this one area could last another 800 years. In some parts of the world, oysters have become the “canary in the coalmine” when they are tested for residues from UXOs.
The Government of Canada lists about 800 “confirmed or potential UXO legacy sites” waiting for us when we are out for a walk.
That just might scare you into staying on the couch instead of enjoying the warmer weather.
Megalodon.
The very name sounds ominous. It has been portrayed in fact and in movies as an enormous prehistoric great white shark.
New research published in Palaeontologia Electronica however says the perception is all wrong though I still doubt you would want to encounter one. The prehistoric predator was more comparable in shape to a lemon shark and weighed about the same as a blue whale. According to a media release from University of California, Riverside, that puts it at about 24 metres in length (80 feet) and weighing about 94 tons.
The oldest fossil of Otodus megalodon dates back 20 million years and it is believed to have become extinct 3.6 million years ago. When the climate of our planet started to change the megalodon was not able to adapt. It needed close to 1,000 kgs (2,000 pounds) of food every day and as their food sources moved away the apex predator was left without enough prey.
There are no complete skeletons to measure, so its size and shape were best guesses based on tooth size. The latest research added in studies of the vertebral column and comparing it to living and extinct shark species. The new body size and shape is believed to create a more accurate picture of how it hunted as well. The previous image was conducive to short bursts of speed while the new profile is more efficient and able to cruise at moderate speeds for longer periods of time.
Despite the new research conclusions, megalodon was still a force to be reckoned with. A newborn megalodon pup was nearly 4 metres (13 feet) long and was “taking down marine mammals shortly after being born”.
Cue the music from Jaws!
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