A decade ago, automated telephone menus were what everyone hated. It was common to press 0 or yell 'Agent' at the phone because you knew that after inputting everything it wanted, when you got to an agent they were going to ask you for everything all over again.

Today, you probably ignore the chat window that opens up on a website, especially if you think it is a bot. A Verizon bot is going to be able to help you with nothing, so going back to find your account number, which means closing the chat window, is a waste of time, when the real agent who replies will ask for it all over again(1)

A short time ago, the National Institutes of Health 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee held its second public meeting to discuss recommended changes. It was very authoritative, they said they were concerned about cancer and chemicals and obesity and they assured us they were looking at all of the new literature. The panel signaled it wants to go after Frappuccinos and aspartame. The problem is that none of those issues are why they were created.

An organ donor waiting list is not just who has been waiting the longest, an equation ranks patients based on age, waiting time, and other checklist. Yet the 'other factors may' mean a secret sauce that leads to disparity the same way EPA panels refusing to disclose data in studies its epidemiologists choose to use leads to erosions in public trust.

Transplant centers may be ignoring such secret sauce determinations. A new analysis of 11 centers between 2015 and 2019 found that 78 percent of kidneys offered to these centers were not placed with candidates at the top of the list of around 6,000 transplant candidates - which meant 4,700 transplants. 

A new op-ed in Nature argues that countries which have air conditioning owe the world up to $298 trillion. And counting.

That figure is virtual money. Like virtual water, or virtual pregnancy, it isn't a real thing, it is a computer model by activist economists who love to use terms like "reparations" because the modern world doesn't have people routinely freezing to death.

In the early days of changes in laws to products like alcohol, some people below the new legal threshold were still able to get it. It was impossible to arrest everyone selling illegally, and there was a certain freedom argument many made, i.e. why can I shoot a Nazi in Europe but not buy a beer in the US?

Calories cause obesity and while everyone wants a magic solution to eating too much for a prolonged period of time, those with the means can make it reality in the form of surgery.

COVID-19 set off a panic in much of culture. Schools were closed, people were ostracized if they didn't think flipping masks up and down between sips of water was clinically valid, but decisions were being made in real-time so a lot of things that once again seem silly in hindsight were the Precautionary Principle in all its glorious flawed reasoning.