Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)(smithsonianmag.com)

149 points by downbad_ 3 months ago | 95 comments

Who wrote Elizabeth I's most scathing letters?(smithsonianmag.com)

43 points by benbreen 27 days ago | 21 comments

Smithsonian magazine article on research suggesting Elizabeth I's male secretaries revised and intensified emotion in her letters to figures like Mary, Queen of Scots.

Sick Workers Connected to 41 Percent of Food Poisoning Outbreaks, CDC Reports(smithsonianmag.com)

172 points by _delirium 3 years ago | 141 comments

Lab-grown salmon hits the menu(smithsonianmag.com)

132 points by bookmtn 1 year ago | 210 comments

3M executives convinced a scientist forever chemicals in human blood were safe(propublica.org)

336 points by whereistimbo 2 years ago | 190 comments

ProPublica investigation into how 3M executives persuaded a company scientist that the PFAS forever chemicals she found in human blood were safe.

Bumblebee queens breathe underwater to survive drowning(smithsonianmag.com)

179 points by 1659447091 7 months ago | 40 comments

Scientist treated her own cancer with viruses she grew in the lab(nature.com)

570 points by dataminer 1 year ago | 198 comments

Nature news article about virologist Beata Halassy, who treated her own breast cancer with lab-grown oncolytic viruses, and researchers' warnings against copying her.

Human brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world(news.ucsc.edu)

414 points by XzetaU8 11 months ago | 284 comments

UC Santa Cruz news article reporting research suggesting early developing human brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world.

The t-test was invented at the Guinness brewery(scientificamerican.com)

355 points by rmason 2 years ago | 116 comments

Scientific American opinion piece explaining how the Student's t-test, a common test of statistical significance, originated at the Guinness brewery and how it works.

Free Software Is a Failure(paritybit.ca)

7 points by gum_wobble 1 day ago | 6 comments

Blog essay by Jake Bauer arguing that the copyleft Free Software movement and the GPL fail at their stated goals and harm the broader FOSS ecosystem.

Ideas aren't getting harder to find (2022)(experimental-history.com)

127 points by rafaelc 16 days ago | 56 comments

Adam Mastroianni's Experimental History essay arguing against the claim that new ideas are getting harder to find, saying discovery is still possible.

TODOs aren't for doing(sophiebits.com)

380 points by todsacerdoti 1 year ago | 218 comments

A blog post by Sophie Alpert arguing that TODO comments are valuable as documentation of known issues even if never acted on, and shouldn't be auto-deleted or tracked.