Afternoon Tea 4.3.24 - Silver Tsunami
German Pot, Cartel Reviews, and our Mitochondria gets a promotion
One week until Eid, two weeks until Tax Day, and we’re 1/4 of the way through the year. If you already got your tax refund, think about spending a bit of it on ad-free, bias-aware reporting! Paid subscribers get multiple additional emails a week, including more poetry, art, and podcasts! I’m also building a “What I’m Into” format that will include the music I’m listening to, books I’m reading, shows/movies I’m watching, and games I’m playing.
Germans celebrate as recreational cannabis use becomes legal (CNN) & Cannabidiol (CBD) Products for Pain: Ineffective, Expensive, and With Potential Harms (Journal of Pain) Germany joins Malta and Luxembourg in fully legalizing cannabis. While it is decriminalized in Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy, Germany did it as Germany does anything, fully committing and dispensing with pilot programs or studies. If Germany takes the cannabis tourism crown from the Netherlands, I can’t wait to read about how cool Frankfurt or Munich is, in TimeOut five years from now.
Another ‘Great Retirement’ Wave Hits the US After Stocks Rally (Bloomberg) Almost 6 million “excess retirees” have left the workforce since the pandemic. This “Silver Tsunami” is being framed as some issue with workers or free cash flow for businesses. Is anyone else hoping they left the jobs Gen X & Millennials have been waiting to be promoted into?
AI bots hallucinate software packages and devs download them (The Register) My favorite story of the week, a hacker named Bar Lanyado realized that AI systems were hallucinating the name/address of a software package. In response, they created a fake malware package with that name, location, and got it downloaded over 15,000 times. This security researcher could have destroyed thousands of businesses. Instead? They were nice enough to simply educate developers who didn’t check their work.
Corporate Profit Bonanza (Popular Info) Once again, anyone talking about inflation that doesn’t mention corporate profits in the same breath…is bought and paid for. Full stop.
Kinahan Cartel: Wanted Narco Boss Exposes Whereabouts by Posting Google Reviews (Bellingcat) Like how the US/UK were able to track ISIS converts using their iPhone locations, when you’re a drug lord, don’t post Google Reviews.
Dems who censured Rep. Tlaib over Palestine comments largely silent on GOP Rep's call for nukes (The Handbasket) GOP Congresscritter calls for Gaza to be nuked, cue handwaving about it from the Democrats, as he clearly couldn’t mean that right? But, that same Democrat party told Rashida Tlaib what she meant back in October. Censure for the only Palestinian in Congress, but not for GOP member calling for the obliteration of the entire region?
Republicans Attempt to Invalidate Democratic Policy Because It’s Democratic & Will Voters Hear About Donald Trump’s Deranged Health Care Agenda? (The American Prospect) Ryan Cooper and David Dayen over at The American prospect are doing everything they can to deliver sanity-strengthening writing about 2024. Trump’s 2016 campaign was treated like Baby’s First Election and 2024 looks eerily similar. So they’re probably must-reads for people who don’t want to moonwalk back into fascism-with-bronzer.
The Future of Media Is Journalist-Run (The Nation) Defector, Aftermath, Flaming Hydra, Hell Gate NYC, and the newsletter you’re currently reading all have something in common. They’re worker-owned & journalist-run. With 50,000 media & journalism jobs gone since 2020, no one is trying to work for the next Vice, Messenger, or BuzzFeed. They’re going to build their own, to deliver value to you, the reader, not the shareholder or private equity pig who “owns” their work.
Your Mitochondria on Psychedelics (The Trip Report) & Martin Picard: Exploring the Mind-Mitochondria Connection (Columbia University - Full Text) Damaged mitochondria contribute a ton of oxidative stress to the development of depression and dementia. This happens because mitochondria ramp up energy production during fight or flight stress responses, also giving out more exhaust or waste products while producing that energy. And those waste products, known as “reactive oxygen species” can cause mtDNA mutations. What can help repair mitochondria? Psychedelics!
Last year, Patrick Fissler, a Swiss researcher at Medical University Salzburg and colleagues published Effects of serotonergic psychedelics on mitochondria: Transdiagnostic implications for mitochondria-related pathologies which presents a novel, mitochondrial-centric perspective on the transdiagnostic benefits of these substances across a wide range of pathologies.
The paper lays out the effect of psychedelic compounds on mitochondrial biogenesis and function according to preliminary animal studies, as well as puts forward a model for understanding the transdiagnostic effects of psychedelics through the lens of mitochondria.
If you miss the quote, poem, and track of the week, subscribe! We’re more than halfway to the subscriber count needed to launch the Factual Dispatch Discord! You know you want to see the shitposts & memes that don’t make it into the newsletter, so drop the NYT and pick up FD.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Factual Dispatch to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.