As we approach the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdowns, there has been ample time to look at what went wrong, and perhaps how we didn't learn much from history.

There are many examples and while politicians ignored it, storytellers have not. In "The Division" game, for example, eco-terrorists spread their pathogen using cash. That made sense. If you are a zealot, disease can do what eugenics and population control efforts did not; get rid of a lot of poor and minority people without controversy, and no one can be blamed because disease is both egalitarian and exculpatory.

Unless it isn't.

The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates about 35 million tons of plastics are generated just in America, and 12.% of that becomes is garbage like plastic containers and bags and even appliances.

Sorry folks, politicians in states like California who insist it's being recycled are lying to you, scientists know better. What really happens to plastic, even if your government is shipping it to China to be "recycled" is landfilling and incineration. A new study finds that measuring how much carbon dioxide a potential chemical looping system would pump out compared to conventional processes to produce synthesis gas could reduce emissions by up to 45.

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed former Congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Though the Trump administration has promised reform, there will be big challenges in that. Though high-profile jobs are appointees, the nuts-and-bolts work of governance is done by career employees, and nearly 90 percent of them are Democrats.

Gym Bro, Curl Gurl, Gym Rat if you choose not to identify as any gender - everyone knows what it means, and it can be pretty intimidating if you walk into a fitness center as a new member. Imagine feeling like you have to get in shape before you can join a gym to get in shape.

Fitness executives don't want that but store managers know not to alienate their best customers for someone who will join on a special deal, go for a month, and then cancel the first time they download RocketMoney and remember they have a gym membership.

When people see labels or menus listing the calories in their food, it doesn't change their consumption in any way beyond what experts call "statistical wobble." About two fewer almonds worth of calories per meal. But two almonds over time can add up to a lot.

That's the conclusion in the data of a systematic review by The Cochrane Collaboration. The team of academics reviewed 25 papers which discussed the impact of calorie labeling on consumption and found a minute reduction in the foods selected - about 11 calories.

Science is always looking for new ways to protect plants and the environment. In Hawaii, for example, when their staple papaya was under attack by aphids that transferred the "papaya ringspot virus" to plants, legacy breeding and pesticides did not work. A gene gun sending in a GMO did.(1) In the Wall Street Journal, I discussed how a non-corporate, free modification by academics could save the American Chestnut from the natural blight that had devastated billions of trees.(2)