282: Brain-Washing Machine

Hi everyone, we're back after our summer break, a warm welcome to the roughly five thousand of you who've joined us in the last four weeks. I'd normally say happy new year, but I'm not entirely sure how appropriate that feels; even by its usual, brain-rotting standards, the news in 2025 has been extra-apocalyptic. I've written down some thoughts about it all further on. First though - the news!

This week's top stories

Indonesia kicks off free meals for children, pregnant women
The new government has launched its ambitious, multi-billion dollar project to fight malnutrition by feeding nearly 90 million children and pregnant women. That's around a third of one of the most populated countries on Earth. On the first day it reached 570,000 school children and pregnant women across 20 provinces - and will expand to feed three million children and women by March. Al Jazeera

Hope for an Ebola-free future in Sierra Leone
In 2014, Sierra Leone was one of three countries ravaged by the Ebola epidemic. With no approved vaccines available, researchers raced to develop the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, which has since demonstrated near-perfect efficacy. Now Sierra Leone is embarking on a nationwide mass vaccination campaign, targeting 20,000 frontline healthcare workers across 16 districts with the single-dose vaccine. Gavi

Good news for the environment in America
Congress recently passed (with bipartisan support) the U.S. Foundation for International Conservation Act, which would provide up to $100 million USD each year to support local and Indigenous communities in managing protected lands worldwide. Also passed was the WILD Act, which supports wildlife conservation within the United States as well as for global priority species.

The surprising recovery of sea turtles
How's this for some good news? Recent studies show that sea turtle populations are booming worldwide. Loggerhead nests off the northwest African coast have jumped to 35,000 in 2020 from 500 in 2008. Kemp’s ridley nests have grown to 17,000 in 2022 from 702 in 1985, and a 2023 survey discovered 150,000 green turtle nests in New Caledonia. The surprising reason: reduced consumption by humans. Bloomberg

A snapshot of where things are at with the global energy transition.

There's plenty more. If you're feeling hopeless, read it.

Sleep is for washing your brain
You might think science had figured out why we sleep a long time ago, but we're actually still not sure. About a decade ago, Dutch researcher Maiken Nedergaard proposed that your brain gets washed, quite literally, while you sleep, by cerebral spinal fluid. Now new research by her team gives more detail into how this actually occurs. If they turn out to be right, they'll get a Nobel Prize for this. Science/Erik Hoel

Wildlife returns to Britain's depleted North Sea
Once-vanished species are making a comeback in the North Sea, with bottlenose dolphins calving off Yorkshire for the first time in decades and grey seal populations hitting record numbers in Norfolk. The recovery follows increased marine protections and fishing controls, offering hope for one of the world's most heavily exploited marine ecosystems. The Guardian

2024 was a remarkable year for public health in Nepal
The WHO has compiled a list of ten public health accomplishments that occurred in Nepal last year, ranging from nationwide measles-rubella and polio vaccination campaigns that protected millions, the opening of Nepal’s first-ever hospital mental health outpatient unit, and the rapid response to the Jajarkot Earthquake which helped restore and sustain essential health services in affected areas. WHO

New observatory in Chile set to unlock the cosmos
Located on a mountaintop in northern Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will use a car-size 3,200-megapixel digital camera—the largest ever built – to produce a new map of the entire night sky every three days. Generating 20 terabytes of data per night, Rubin will capture fine details about the solar system and the Milky Way and catalogue around 20 billion previously unknown galaxies. Its first scientific images are expected later this year. MIT

Two new, massive national monuments in California
In his final week in office, President Biden has designated the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands National Monuments, which total nearly 3,500 km². The Chuckwalla National Monument also creates a continuous protected corridor of more than 70,000 km², the largest in the lower 48 states. The two monuments will preserve critical habitats as well as protect tribal lands.

Legal wins for climate in Montana and New York
A group of youth plaintiffs in Montana has won a landmark legal case against the state for failing to adequately consider greenhouse gas emissions during environmental reviews of fossil fuel projects, and New York has passed a 'polluter pays' law aiming to recover $75 billion from major oil and gas companies over 25 years to fund climate mitigation and resilience projects.

Collective Intelligence: ants vs humans
Humans and ants are the only two animals capable of transporting an object so large it can only be moved by cooperating. So, who does it better? Researchers designed an experiment in which individuals and groups of both species had to move a T-shaped object through different obstacles. The result: When it came to individual trials, humans bested the bug but in group experiments the ants excelled, exhibiting an 'emergent' collective memory. Ars Technica

Lichtenstein and Thailand celebrate same-sex marriage legalisation 
Liechtenstein has officially extended marriage rights to same-sex couples, the last predominantly German-speaking country to do so, and on the 22nd January Thailand will become the first country in Southeast Asia to allow gay marriage, with thousands of couples expected to officially register their marriages at various locations across the country.

Zimbabwe abolishes death penalty with immediate effect
The approximately 60 people remaining on death row will be re-sentenced, with judges reviewing the nature of their crime and their personal circumstances. Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi described the decision as "a statement of our commitment to justice and humanity" while Amnesty called it a "beacon of hope for the abolitionist movement in the region." BBC

Global inflation has mostly returned to normal
Global inflation has come and gone - on track to hit 3.5% by the end of 2025, below the 2000-2020 average global rate, prices are stabilising, post-COVID job market recovery has driven global unemployment rates to their lowest level since 1991, and remittances to low and middle income countries reached their highest level ever in 2024.

Media wrong on crime again: British edition
A heart-pounding heist story hit the headlines in the UK recently but as we’ve consistently reported, this was more media frenzy than reality. According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, crime is now at its lowest level on record, with incidents falling from 19.8 million in 1995 to 4.7 million in 2024, burglary rates 70% lower than in March 2003, and significant drops in domestic violence and car crime as well. The Guardian

Blood test for early cancer detection looks promising
Researchers at Oxford University have unveiled an innovative liquid biopsy test capable of detecting six cancers at an early stage. Powered by AI, the test analysed multiple features of DNA in the blood to identify subtle signs of colorectal, oesophageal, pancreatic, renal, ovarian and breast cancer. The technology could revolutionise early screening and diagnostic practices. Oxford University

EU unemployment reaches lowest in three decades
Remember the European employment crisis of a few years ago, when young people couldn't find a job and were leaving in droves? Unsurprisingly, there hasn't been nearly as much coverage of the fact that unemployment has steadily declined since then, dropping by more than 50% to its lowest point in more than three decades. Our World In Data 

Progress

Countries around the world lifted millions out of poverty in 2024
In India, rural poverty dropped from 25.7% in 2011-12 to 4.86% by March 2024, driven by government support initiatives, Indonesia's poverty rate fell to 8.57% in September, its lowest level ever, lifting 1.84 million people out of poverty since March 2023, and in Vietnam, the multidimensional poverty rate fell to below 1% in 2024, reflecting sustained poverty reduction efforts.

Kenya’s malaria death rate has dropped 93% in eight years 
A new WHO report reveals that malaria fatalities declined from 15,061 in 2015 to just 1,060 in 2023, significantly surpassing the WHO's 63% reduction target. The drop is credited to expanded use of insecticide-treated bed nets and the introduction of the RTS,S malaria vaccine. The Eastleigh Voice

US childhood cancer deaths have fallen six-fold since the 1950s
The reported annual death rate for children under five for all malignant cancers stood at approximately 12 deaths per 100,000 in 1950, falling to two per 100,000 in 2021. One major success story has been in treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia, common among children: researchers identified genetic mutations that caused the disease, enabling targeted chemotherapy drugs that have greatly improved survival. Our World In Data

Free school lunches provided in 30% of Japan’s municipalities 
A government survey of 1,794 municipalities across the country found that 722 of them are now serving completely free school lunches to public elementary and junior high schools, a sevenfold increase compared to a similar survey held in 2017. The vast majority plan to continue offering free meals, primarily to reduce the financial burden on families. Nippon

70 is the new 60 for Britain's baby boomers 
An extensive study has revealed a steady improvement in average health and functional capacity throughout the 20th century. A 68-year-old born in 1950 had a similar capacity to a 62-year-old born in 1940, while those born in 1940 had better functioning than those born ten or 20 years before. The improvements are likely linked to rises in education, nutrition and sanitation, as well as medical advances. Nature

A new era in the battle against Alzheimer's
Scientists are nearing the development of pills to prevent or reduce Alzheimer's effects, which impact 50 million people worldwide. In 2024, lecanemab and donanemab, shown to slow dementia decline by 30%, were approved by several regulators, with 127 more drugs in trials. Though high costs remain a challenge, experts are hopeful that “this learning is going to open the door to new therapies of many types, and those drugs can be exported around the world.” The Guardian

Environment and Conservation

Wildlife in the 'Serengeti of the South' bounces back
Following a brutal civil war that decimated up to 90% of large wildlife in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, successful restoration efforts have resulted in more animals of all kinds than before the war. Lions - now at 150 individuals - are up from the single digits post-war, poaching has dropped to nearly zero, and exports have even begun to help repopulate other parks. bioGraphic

Making the Amazon green again
Once an epicentre of deforestation and sawmill operators, the Amazonian town of Paragominas is now known as an exemplar of sustainable management. Thanks to the leadership of mayor Adnan Demachki, the town banned slash-and-burn farming and shut down predatory logging. After reducing deforestation by 80%, Paragominas has become a “frontier community that conserved as it grew.” The Guardian

Ecuador to create five new conservation areas
Spanning a total of nearly 2,500 km², the five municipal conservation areas are all located in the coastal province of Manabí and cover eight biodiverse ecosystems threatened by deforestation. The areas include habitats for critically endangered species like the equatorial capuchin monkey as well as land of important cultural and archaeological value. Andes Amazon Fund

Thailand bans imports of plastic waste
The ban came into force this month in Thailand, a leading destination for exports of plastic waste which received more than 1.1 million tonnes of scraps between 2018 and 2021. Imports were often burned instead of recycled, which damages both human health and the environment. The Guardian

Protection efforts in China’s Yellow River Basin are paying off
Since the Yellow River Protection Law took effect in 2023, the river’s water quality has met Grade II standards on a five-tier scale, with Grade I being the highest, for the second consecutive year. Almost 85% of the basin has increased vegetation coverage, afforestation efforts have now covered 17,000 km², and nearly 118 metric tons of trash were cleared. China Daily

Sulphur dioxide emissions in China decline steeply
Thanks to emissions limits on coal plants and desulphurisation technologies, China has reduced SO₂ levels by over two-thirds in the last 15 years. Emissions of SO₂ are primarily generated by coal burning and can cause smog as well as acid rain. Our World in Data

The EPA bans carcinogenic chemicals, and California bans Styrofoam
Underscoring one of President Biden’s key environmental efforts, the EPA has just banned trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, both commonly found in consumer products and are known carcinogens as well as persistent environmental pollutants. Oh, and California just enacted a law that effectively bans polystyrene foam ware, commonly called Styrofoam.

Andean condors in Bolivia gain special protection
The municipality of Yunchará in Bolivia established the Peña Rajada protected area last November, safeguarding more than 200 km² of high altitude ecosystems and designating special habitat protection for Andean condors, which were classified as vulnerable to extinction in 2020. Andes Amazon Fund

Polynesian storm petrels, Siberian cranes, and snow leopards
Drones that removed invasive rats, and solar-powered speakers playing bird calls have brought the endangered Polynesian storm petrels back to Kamaka Island in French Polynesia for the first time in more than a century. Efforts to secure stopover wetlands used by the critically endangered Siberian crane on their epic annual migrations have resulted in the near doubling of their population to 7,000 individuals. And a snow leopard conservation project in Kazakhstan has led to a rebound in their numbers to around 170 individuals, a level not observed since the 1980s.

Climate and Energy

Wind and solar overtake coal in America in 2024
Wind and solar provided a record 17% of US electricity from January to November of 2024, overtaking coal’s 15% share for the first time. Wind and solar produced 90 TWh more electricity compared to the same period last year, enough to power nine million homes. While solar and wind rose 27% and 8% year-on-year respectively, coal fell 5% – continuing its two decades of decline. Ember

More good news from the US - Arctic drilling and methane emissions
For the second time in four years, a US government auction for drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has failed, as oil companies declined to bid, and in another positive development, methane emissions in the Permian Basin—the nation’s largest oil field, dropped by 26% in 2023, thanks to the Biden administration’s strict new methane regulations.

China's Great Solar Wall in the Kubuqi Desert
Described by NASA as “a sea of photovoltaic possibility,” China has embarked on a multi-year initiative to create a gargantuan solar array capable of powering Beijing. The project, expected to be finished in 2030, will be 400 km long, 5 km wide, and achieve a maximum generating capacity of 100 GW. So far, Chinese officials say they have installed about 5.4 GW.

But wait, there's more. New offshore solar projects in China
In addition to its desert projects, China is expanding its renewable energy reach offshore. Jiangsu Province, located in eastern China, has unveiled a plan to develop 60 offshore solar projects over the next five years, adding 27.3 GW of capacity to the region’s coastal solar output. Enerdata

California grid in 2024: 100% renewables for nearly 100 days
In 2024 California's grid operated on 100% renewable energy for 98 consecutive days, with no blackouts or cost increases. Solar output increased by 31%, wind power rose by 8%, and battery storage surged by 105% compared to 2023. The result? Cheaper prices. “In a period of rapid renewable energy growth, electricity spot prices fell by over 50% compared to the previous year.” Win-win. Electrek

New coal plants in OECD countries drop to record lows
The number of new coal plants under development in OECD countries has hit record lows, according to Global Energy Monitor’s Global Coal Plant Tracker There are now only five proposals for new coal plants in developed OECD nations, a 96% decrease compared to previous years. This decline is driven not only by environmental commitments but also by economics as renewable energy output grows and costs continue to fall. Carbon Brief

Australia on track for 82% renewable energy target by 2030
Renewable energy accounted for 39% of Australia's electricity in 2024, rising to 44% last month. Tim Buckley argues that despite all the nuclear stupidity from the media, the transition is working. "We are halfway to Bowen's 82% RE target, with six years to go!" Most importantly, there's enough investment coming in now to sustain that progress.

Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland also make progress
Clean energy accounted for 82% of electricity generated in Spain and Portugal in 2024, the Netherlands saw an 11% increase in renewable power generation, in Germany renewables accounted for 62.7% of electricity (emissions from the power sector have halved since 2014), and Poland, the continent's heaviest coal user, has seen coal power fall from 77% in 2018 to 57% last year.

Europe imposes stricter emission caps on car manufacturers
Starting January 1, 2025, new legislation mandates that 22%% of sales must be hybrid and electric vehicles, or else automakers will face hefty fines. This is going to be hugely disruptive - only 13% of all vehicles sold in 2024 in Europe were electric. Expect to see EV sales boom in the next 12 months. Reuters

Science and Technology

Emulating the first microbial dance of life
Evolution was fuelled by endosymbiosis; cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists have replicated this evolutionary choreography in a lab – injecting bacteria into a fungus by using a bike pump to boost the pressure and force the bacteria through the cell wall. Quanta Magazine

OpenAI's new model sets human-level reasoning record
We try not to get caught up in the AI hype, but this one looks like a step change. OpenAI's experimental chatbot o3 has achieved a groundbreaking 87.5% score on a key artificial intelligence reasoning test, far surpassing the previous record of 55.5%. While the achievement doesn't mean human-level AI has arrived, researchers call it a "genuine breakthrough" in machine reasoning capabilities. Nature

NASA mission to 'touch' the Sun completes closest-ever approach
Last month the Parker Solar Probe survived a burning-hot flyby of the sun’s outer atmosphere - 6.1 million kilometres from the solar surface. Moving at up to 692,000 km/h, the spacecraft endured temperatures of 980°C to take measurements that could help scientists solve long-standing mysteries such as the origins of solar wind, and why the sun’s outer atmosphere heats to millions of degrees. BBC

World’s first carbon fibre train
The Cetrovo 1.0 Carbon Star Express has started transporting passengers in China. Unlike typical steel subway cars, the train is constructed from ultra-strong, ultra-light carbon fibre composites, making it much lighter and more energy efficient than traditional trains. In addition to hefty reductions in emissions, the train also boasts intelligent safety features including an anti-collision early warning system. Interesting Engineering

Scientists log longest ever continuous record of climate from ice core
An international team of scientists have drilled through 2.8 kilometres of Antarctic bedrock to reach ice that is dated around 1.2 million years old. Analysis of the ancient ice could help show how earth’s atmosphere and climate have evolved and better inform our understanding of humans’ impact on climate change in the present. AP

The Vesuvius challenge
For centuries the Herculaneum scrolls, charred and preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, were unreadable – until an AI competition led to a major breakthrough last year. Here’s polymath Casey Handmer on his surprising approach to unlocking one of humanity's most ancient puzzles – by simply staring at the texts for hours on end. Freethink

Sludge

We're only halfway through January, and everything is already on fire

The 1.5°C target for global warming has been breached for the first time, Los Angeles has been burning for more than a week, the soon-to-be president of the United States keeps talking about his territorial ambitions for Canada, Greenland and Panama, and the world's richest man has been sharing conspiracy theories about gang rape coverups to his 211 million followers on social media, somehow managing to derail an entire week of British parliamentary debate in the process.

Some of this apocalyptic tenor is imagined — far too many journalists have taken Trump's dead cat trifecta at face value - but much of it is all too real: The LA fires represent exactly the kind of complex, compound climate catastrophe that scientists have been warning about for decades. What's different now, though, even by the standards of our recent past, is that these events ricochet through our information ecosystem, amplified and distorted by a new death pact between old and new media.

The common message from columnists and media critics is that we're living through an unprecedented age of disinformation. Everyone is talking about "enshittification" — Cory Doctorow's term for the way platforms degrade as they try to extract maximum value from users — and "slop," an increasingly common, endless stream of low-quality, algorithm-optimised online content. But in focusing on the pollution of our information streams, we're missing how the pipes themselves have been recalibrated to carry mostly sewage.

Watching it all go down, what strikes me isn't necessarily the degradation of the semi-mythical 'public sphere' but just how exquisitely sensitive English-speaking media has become to signals of disaster and discord. Our collective antenna for catastrophe has achieved a kind of terrible perfection. Each new crisis now arrives with crystalline reporting, high-resolution imagery, and an endless cascade of social media reactions. The Los Angeles fires have been horrific - and the entire world has been able to follow along in incredible detail, with minute-by-minute updates, real-time maps and progress indicators.

News organisations have spent decades optimising for this kind of reporting. They've long known that it's the negative, highly arousing stories that get the most traffic - research shows that headlines have grown steadily more negative over the last two decades, with the proportion conveying anger and fear nearly tripling since 2013. And social media has supercharged this tendency. A comprehensive study of nearly 100,000 articles and over half a billion social media posts recently found that people are almost twice as likely to share negative news articles on social media.

Jaron Lanier had it right seven years ago when he said that social media was biased, "not to the Left or the Right, but downward." This didn't happen through some dramatic rupture but through a series of seemingly pragmatic choices: Legacy media, desperate for attention, has been producing increasingly negative content because that's what gets clicked on. Social media users, presented with this darker view of the world, share it more readily, which in turn encourages legacy media to produce even more of it. The result is a kind of perpetual motion machine of pessimism, each component feeding off the energy of the other's decline.

You know what's been noticeably absent from the headlines so far in 2025? Indonesia's revolutionary school meals program, global crop yields reaching record highs, two big pieces of bipartisan legislation for conservation in America, historic declines in crime in the United Kingdom, sea turtle populations increasing, emissions plummeting in Europe, pretty much anything related to the expanding global middle class, or record low unemployment figures for young people. Occasional glimpses of light, like the ceasefire in Gaza, barely register before being subsumed by the next crisis.

The irony is that we're living through one of history's great periods of progress, but we've lost the ability to see it because of the sludge of bad news. And that sludge is about to get a lot thicker. An 80 year-old felon and a 53 year-old ketamine addict now have the two biggest megaphones in the world, and the media will dutifully keep reporting their every utterance, no matter how inflammatory or incorrect, because the clicks will keep coming. The biggest danger in the coming months and years will be the exhaustion of our critical faculties, our failure to withstand the noise, and the inevitable retreat into our personal spaces.

If we want to remain sane and engaged, we're going to need to do something about it. The solution isn't complicated, though it requires some effort: Get rid of algorithmic media and switch as much as possible to chronological media. Algorithmic feeds dominate social media and, through A/B headline testing and engagement metrics, most legacy media too. But there are alternatives. Books and newsletters get opened on your schedule, not the algorithm's. Platforms like Bluesky offer chronological feeds that aren't optimised for clickability.

The delivery mechanisms for the sludge may be largely undifferentiated, but our consumption doesn't have to be. The challenge isn't finding better algorithms or more aggressive regulation, though both might help. The challenge is learning to see our information ecosystem for what it has become — a vast apparatus fine-tuned to amplify our darkest impulses — and then having the wisdom to step away from it. It may seem quaint to suggest that emails and books could save us. But in an age where our collective attention has become everyone else's most valuable asset, the simple act of reclaiming when and how we consume information might be the most radical move we have left.

That's it for this edition, thanks for reading. We'll see you next week.

With love,

Gus, Amy and the rest of the FC team