Good Things Friday (265) and Link Love
March 22, 2024
1. JB and Smol Acrobat had a marathon playdate day on Sunday.
Good for them. Less good for me. Took me 4 days to feel close to recovered.
Can Vaccinations Save Your Brain?
Recall on Trader Joe’s cashews
We learned about the Yurok tribe and their stewardship at the Cal Academy: California tribe that lost 90% of land during Gold Rush to get site to serve as gateway to redwoods
What’s the Price of a Childhood Turned Into Content? This isn’t surprising but it IS sickening: Vanessa will never get back the childhood that she gave up for the family business—not getting any of the money she helped earn is just another disappointment, even if it was entirely unsurprising. “My mom never led me to think there would be anything. She would continually remind me that the money she was getting from the blog or sponsorships was going toward us anyway through basic needs and that should be enough.”
Median: A professional caregiver’s commute takes an unsettling detour when car trouble forces her to pull over on the highway, where she begins receiving distressing phone calls from strangers… (fiction)
Mystery in Japan as dangerous streptococcal infections soar to record levels
In Cleveland, mushrooms digest entire houses: How fungi can be used to clean up pollution. Fungi have been observed breaking down pollutants such as petroleum, “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, herbicides, and pesticides. By sequestering and immobilising contaminants like heavy metals in their tissues, fungi can even help eliminate lead.
This is really neat but then what happens to the fungal tissues that now contain heavy metals? I wonder if it breaks them down enough that they’re no longer damaging to the environment when the fungi die and return to the soil.
A funeral home worker tracked down a family — and uncovered a decades-old secret
I’m glad that RDJ made it to, and stayed in, recovery. It’s a hard and terrible thing, addiction. I didn’t know he could sing:
I am sorry to say that no, fungus doesn’t break down metals, it just accumulates it conveniently for later disposal.
Drat! I hoped but suspected that would be a “too good to be true” thing. Is there an actual safe way to dispose of heavy metals that isn’t just contaminating something else?
I mean in theory the metals could be purified back out but in practice I think they aren’t. At least all heavy metals are naturally occurring?
Jenny F Scientist recently posted…One Chicken Too Many