The Mind Of A Bee

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-mind-of-a-bee

astralcodexten.substack.com

So for decades, scientists assumed that bees could not differentiate squares and triangles, because in their experimental paradigms where they asked bees to look at squares and triangles, there was no downside. Bees just blitzed the test to get that sweet, sweet sucrose. Once penalties were introduced for mistakes, bees started performing much better and could easily differentiate squares and triangles.

This illuminates one large problem with measuring cognition in vertebrates and invertebrates. If an animal can't do something in one test, it tells you a lot more about that test than the animals' generalised skillset.

Allergies as a modern phenomenon.

How Modernity Made Us Allergic noemamag.com

Allergies - It's a rather curious fact that allergies are a modern phenomenon. Few people had allergies before the 1950's and they're going up everywhere. 

‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Everywhere. What Are They Doing to Us? - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/magazine/pfas-toxic-chemicals.html

'Forever Chemicals' Are Everywhere. What Are They Doing to Us? nytimes.com

"I've heard some people say, 'Well, if everybody is exposed to PFAS, how come we aren't all dead?'" Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, told me. In fact, she says, "People actually are dying." DeWitt cited a report in The Lancet that calculated that about nine million people each year die from chronic diseases caused by environmental pollutants of all kinds. "We need prevention," DeWitt says. "And that means acknowledging that environmental exposures lead to diseases."