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Insects are incredibly successful reproducers - they don't need our help there.

What they need is more safe connected habitat. Given that, the numbers will rebound to previous levels.

> So is the solution to let native plants grow all over your yard?

Yes, but that doesn't mean you have no discretion or control over what is growing and how. The key is that you want to choose things that require no supplemental watering or nutrients like most non-native lawn grasses do.

Choose native grasses that are well-adapted to your climate. This may mean dormant / brown periods of the year, but this is perfectly natural. There is a mental hurdle to clear about an aesthetic that isn't going to be achieved.

There are many native ground covers that are also available, and many that flower to provide habitat and support for animals. Both these and grasses can be mowed to an acceptable height.

Wherever possible, put in native wildflowers or shrubs/trees. These sustain other life and they look amazing.

I bought one of these earlier this year: https://kaiterra.com/products/laser-egg-2-plus/

They are hard to find and buy in the US, but very popular in China where many cities have major air quality issues. I picked one up on ebay.

Most of these consumer-grade PM2.5 monitors seem to use the same basic laser scatter sensor that measures 0.3um+ particles.

This article focuses excessively on 'violent lyrics', which are only a feature of some small sub-genres in the greater landscape of modern extreme metal. While no one is going to confuse the lyrical content of most metal as being upbeat or positive, there is enormous diversity of musical styling and lyrical subjects across the genre, just like any other. Most lyrics and most extreme metal bands don't focus on subjects like the article discusses (CC in particular). Death Metal (and it's sub-genres) is today more associated with musical and vocal style rather than violent lyrical imagery.

Good evolutionary hypotheses generate testable predictions about the trait being examined. This can lead to other predicted (testable) effects, and so on, building evidence (or lack thereof) for an idea. Just because we can't draw definitive conclusions doesn't mean there is not strong evidence for many evolutionary theories.

> Evolutionary psychology is ... not popular with cogsci depts...

That's a shame. It seems there is a lot to be gained from a comprehensive approach to understanding.

You may have heard the phrase “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (Dobzhansky). Well, this is true for the human brain and psychology, too. We can't correctly address major behavioral issues without a deeper understanding of the evolved functions of our brain.

These disciplines examine behavior from two different angles, one looking at more proximate causes while the other looks at ultimate causes.

You can dismiss evolutionary psychology as irrelevant to other social or neurological cognitive sciences (which I would argue is also wrong), but it doesn't mean interesting and useful research is not being done.

Evolutionary arguments are complementary to work done in other cognitive sciences. Both are important to understand the complete picture of how we behave.

Many evolutionary explanations begin as 'just so' assertions, but so does anything in science, really. Evolutionary arguments can be very difficult to test because our knowledge is incomplete. There are many interacting variables at play and we can't go back in time. It's doesn't mean we can't test hypothesis, though, and there is a huge body of evolutionary behavior research that shows how much we can do.

> our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years.

Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. The point is that evolution of large, complex polygenic adaptations may be slow but adaptive phenotypic change can occur very rapidly and it has likely accelerated in humans over the last 10k or so years.

> A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot.

We can't go back and ask detailed dieting questions of hunter-gatherer humans 200k years ago, but I'd guess the basic mechanisms of eating were similar to us: they ate when they were hungry and when food was available. For some groups, it seems likely that could often be several times per day.

What we do know about pre-agricultural humans is that there is no such thing as a 'typical' diet, and what was eaten and when could vary significantly by geography. Humans have thrived in every region and ecosystem on earth, and our body is highly adaptable and not designed to subsist on a single, perfect diet or eating cycle.

Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. It could very well be that the 'what' and 'when' of our modern eating is less of an issue compared to the high caloric intake and sedentary lifestyle.

The cost of the non-Epipen / generic auto-injectors are still very high. Usually at least $109 for a 2-pack, from what I can tell, and often $200+ in some places. How much will these cost without insurance? Sometimes there are coupons available from the manufacturer, I guess. But why should I need to jump through these hoops? These injectors lose efficacy over time and need to be replaced regularly for those that need to have them available for a severe allergy.

Epinephrine costs maybe $5 for a dosage. It's been sold for over 100 years. It's a WHO essential medicine for anaphylaxis, and is life saving for humans and pets. It's the same thing with other critical hormones like insulin.

The market for this stuff (even with generics) doesn't work. We know how much these drugs cost to manufacture and it's very little. Essential medicines with overwhelming human impact need to have strict pricing regulation that makes them available worldwide at close to the manufacturing cost.

Yeah, this is a relatively important metric for both investing but also affordability. It shows that there is an apples to oranges comparison in housing prices across markets (discounting currency differences).

When calculating the affordability of a home, the total monthly cash flow requirements (housing costs as a percentage of income) are critical. I live in an area where the rates are 10x that of Auckland. A $600k home valuation requires a ~$250 weekly rate commitment vs only about $27 in Auckland - a significant difference. It's still an expensive home by any metric, but considerably more affordable.

From a speculation perspective, an investor in Auckland can sit on a very expensive property with almost no cash flow burden, reducing the need to even rent.

I had not seen this paper, so thanks for sharing. The primary conclusion is that more males are victims of sexual crimes and more females are abusers than is generally thought. I'm sure this is the case, but this shouldn't be mistaken for women being equal abusers.

First, the referenced source data (NCVS and NSVRC [1]) explicitly point out that 9% of victims of all rape and sexual assault are male. This is not insignificant, but it still means that > 90% of all sexual crime victims are female. 99% of female victims have male abusers [2]. Another recent study out of Germany found that women were 10-20x more likely to be victims across all age groups, and men were 50-100x more likely to be the abusers [3].

I think these new looks at the data do highlight a serious lack of knowledge about male victimization and female abuse, which will help us have a better picture of what's really going on. Unfortunately, the study referenced by Vice makes many politically-motivated statements about gender stereotypes, and then attempts to fit the data to that narrative. It suggests that we should adjust our national discussion about these issues from a more gender-neutral approach, which is a very palatable idea.

Modern ideas about sexual abuse that are rooted in evolutionary psychology actually attempt to discuss ultimate causes about why this kind of behavior occurs, using well-understood ideas about the evolution of human behavior and countless examples from other animals. It should come as no surprise that men and women differ significantly in their sexual behavior, both intuitively and factually. This is a controversial idea in the social sciences (which are more widely discussed in the media), but not in biology.

[1] https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications_nsvrc... .

[2] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1097184X08322632 .

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4791564/ .

The female-in-power is less likely to abuse precisely because of fundamental biological differences. Men and woman differ significantly in their sexual behavior and sexual strategies because they have evolved through millions of years of sexual selection producing significant sexual dimorphism. We can easily observe the same behavior in other animals species, who lack any culture and gender roles.

Kind of.

Sexual crimes are more likely to be about sex, not power. The reason why men are overwhelmingly more likely to commit sexual assault is because of basic biology of sexual selection - men (in general) desire many and varied partners compared to women. Positions of power make it easier to perpetrate sexual crimes without repercussions, but this is still skewed heavily in favor of men.

Women clearly do get caught up as perpetuators, but it's surprising and comparatively rare because of the polygynous basis of our species (and most other animals).

This is a controversial idea because of the public narrative, but evolutionarily-informed ideas about sexual coercion can be surprising when applied to humans, while the same behavior in other animals is not questioned.

This may be the current assessment for mammals, but there is insufficient evidence about the endocrine effects on non-mammals. I know the original link and discussion is in relation to humans, but it's worth noting.

All animals with a nervous system have hormone-secreting structures, analogous to the endocrine system of mammals. Several studies have highlighted serious sub-lethal neurological impacts of glyphosate (not as a formulation) on agriculturally-important arthropods. I'm not aware of any conclusive research, but it seems reasonable to anticipate some of these effects may be related to endocrine signaling. Either way, the toxicity is clearly more severe for non-mammals, and their disease burden has direct and indirect costs to us.

Recycling of some plastics may be more of a 'feel good' activity, at this point, then of real utility. There is no guarantee that these will be recycled, either. Consumers are used to dumping disposable, one-use cups in the trash. Even plastics that are recycled often find their way to the landfill. Plastics that are recycled can usually not be reused for the same purpose, and eventually do end up in the landfill. The new sippy cup lid is made of polypropylene, which is recyclable but expensive to do as it requires separating. Not all cities accept PP plastics for recyling. It typically needs to be combined with mostly virgin plastic to make new products, which are often less recyclable.

Is this better than the straws? Seems like it. But it would be a whole lot better to actually reduce the quantity of plastic.

This is not true at all. First, many insects can fly very fast. Even honeybees, which are notoriously poor fliers in the insect world, can reach up to 20mph, carrying a load of pollen or nectar. Dragonflies can reach over 60mph, and some flies may be able to reach upwards of 80-90mph. Second, many of these insects have excellent visual collision avoidance mechanisms and the strongest fliers have exquisite control over their flight. There is a lot of literature on this topic.

> None of the pages on the NSF site ever seemed to be intended for someone that's not contributing to the 'public access repository'.

I had this issue, too, but there is a simple search engine at this URL: https://par.nsf.gov

This is true, but with a couple huge caveats. NIH-funded papers published before April 7, 2008 are not applicable to the public access requirements. Research published using NSF grant proposals submitted before Jan 25, 2016 is also exempt. This encompasses the vast majority of all existing NIH and NSF-funded work, and includes many yet-to-be-published NSF papers. In addition, NSF-funded research does not need to be made public access until a full 12 months after initial journal publication.

Wildlife conservation for most people generally focuses on large animals we can more relate to, particularly other mammals. Humans generally regard insects and many other invertebrates in their urban environments as pests, or something to fear. It's no surprise that an invertebrate armageddon is occurring with so little fanfare, outside of problems with one economically important species of bee.

The largest clearly-identified issues leading to these declines are loss of habitat and pesticides, both urban and agricultural. There are simple things anyone can do to help. This organization in the US has a lot of great information: https://xerces.org/bringbackthepollinators/

As others have noted, the depreciation and savings analysis is very misleading.

Bottom line is that without the cars, he spends about $390 / month on Uber, and likely that average may have increased given the extreme low summer outlier months. In some areas where parking or insurance is expensive, this could mean large savings. In my area (Austin, TX), the all-in cost of owning a car with insurance is minimally more than this figure. You could lease one brand new, moderately priced car + average petrol costs for about the same amount. You could buy a cheap car and depreciation + maintenance would be even less.

First, wild honeybees were not eradicated by Varroa. There are many papers written and researchers who have studied substantial wild honeybee populations for decades, and chronicled their decline and resurgence to pre-Varroa numbers. What has happened over the last few decades is that wild North American bees have adapted and are thriving, while 'babied' commercial bees are struggling.

Second, the number of commercial bee colonies for pollination services is not declining because beekeepers can choose to focus on making more when they need to. A reliably-consistent number of colonies can exist whether 5% die out every year or 50% (although at different cost). Having said that, what IS declining is the annual survival rate of colonies, which is linked to many factors, of which pesticides likely play a part. This is a not-so-subtle difference. Just because it doesn't immediately threaten commercial pollination doesn't mean there is no issue.

Having more or bigger 'things' will not make you happier. Focus more on relationships and family, and less on the means to consume more.

I still remember where I was when I first time I saw the piano partitas (BWV 825-830) performed. Gould playing the one in C minor moves me about as much as any music, along with some of the others you mentioned.

Bach's compositions are unquestionably beautiful and technically brilliant, but not all of his music was written to stir an audience. He composed in a different time and for different reasons than the classical composers that came after him.

You are technically correct, the problem being that the IRS does not define what a "reasonable wage" is.

However, the intention of the law is that true income is taxed as income and not as distributions. When one individual provides 100% of the services of a business, is not reinvesting profits or paying employees, and is the sole full-time worker, they should be treated as an employee and taxed accordingly. Many people abuse the vagueness of this but that doesn't mean the IRS will agree if you choose to pay your Uber earnings as distributions not subject to employment taxes.

You can read a summary of some of the established case law on this topic here: https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2011/aug/nitti-aug2011....

No. An individual who is the sole director, sole shareholder, and provides all of the services in an S-Corp will have any distributions classified as compensation subject to payroll taxes. There is a lot of established law on this subject.

The ability of a non-scientist to understand a paper at a useful level varies greatly based on the area of study and the reader's knowledge of the topic. 'Basic scientific literacy' may not be enough, but there are many more individuals with an amateur level of advanced understanding or interest in a given area who benefit greatly. I personally have no institutional access but I read a lot of papers that I can understand with an undergrad level of science background and a keen interest in a specific subject. I'm sure there are many others like this.

There are plenty of plant-based fertilizers, as well. If humans primarily farmed animals for manure-based fertilizer, many vegans would be pretty thrilled, whether it meets the textbook definition of vegan, or not.

Water filtration may be mostly unnecessary, but water purification (elimination of gut-crunching pathogens) is another story. If you're in a true survival situation, taking a chance on drinking water that could have dangerous pathogens is probably not worth the risk. Every water source is different and carries a different risk profile (how far upstream, where the water is sourced, etc).

You don't need to buy anything to purify water. Oddly this article did not discuss the simplest method of all - just boil it. A steel, non-insulated water bottle works fine.

Detroit is shifting fast in this regard. It still has problems, but it's not the city it was 10 years ago, which is what I think a lot of the perception still is.

The Detroit bid put together by Dan Gilbert and team highlighted the fact that almost 50 million people live within a 5 hour drive of the city, with a huge collection of major research universities. Another big push or two like Amazon HQ2 can provide, and I think the city and metro area become highly attractive as an economic destination like Chicago dominates today in the same region.

I thought the Detroit bid was compelling because it had all of the things you listed, including the Canada connection. They were proposing a campus that stretched across the river into Windsor, with full cooperation and subsidies from the Ontario government.