Editor’s note

Please enjoy!

Unrelated-but-interesting

What is our responsibility towards pigeons? This is a question for the urban dwellers among us. Did you know the pigeons we consider as pests today once were exchanging messages between kings? As the means of communication have improved thanks to technology, we have neglected them. Through selective breeding, we made them our companions, and now that we do not need them anymore, they are to fend off by themselves. Let us adopt pigeons? — medium.com

There are new ways of discerning cardiovascular disease, but they are not widely used. This is not great because cardiovascular disease (CVD) kills about 33% of people yearly. Even though new imaging capabilities are being developed, notably thanks to AI, and new drugs are coming to reduce cholesterol even further, detection protocols are mostly unchanged. We could measure blood inflammation markers such as high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (you can get this test done). We could also make a retina photo or OCT, which can be done in any eye clinic, which would be helpful to detect subclinical coronary artery atherosclerosis. This is bound to change soon — erictopol.substack.com

Microplastics are detected more readily in human tissue. I enjoy choosing heart-rate boosting pieces of information for your morning. Indeed, the little devils have been detected in our blood, lungs, placentas, brains, and breast milk. The problem is that people with chronic illnesses have a concentration of microplastics. So while “this does not explain that”, it is something to look out for. The governments of Western countries took some time to act regarding lead and PFAS. There are steps we could take today to reduce exposure (no plastic clothes!) — ibbi.io

AI & software

Will writing remain essential in an AI-driven world? Why yes, of course! To properly answer this question, we need to ask ourselves what is writing. Writing exists beyond the mere transactional function it occupies in a corporate or work setting i.e exchanging information. Of course, writing an email seems like a waste of time if a robot can do it in your stead. 
Writing is the process by which you figure out what you want to say. It requires compressing an idea to the pure insight while removing the junk. AIs will write like governments and consultants. The product will be one of common ideas, verbose communication and mind-numbing jargon. Everyone will be able to write, but fewer and fewer people will be able to write well. My guess is that the latter will be even more handsomely rewarded — fs.blog

Resorting to Nietzsche is insufficient in the fight between AI and human relevance. I have seen this discourse pop up in different places throughout the last few weeks. Nietzsche's will to power and such are remparts against nihilism. No my friends! Back then, industrialization made self-reliance somehow more viable. Today, the structure of society itself, nudged by algorithms, is outside of our individual grasp. Time for new philosophers — acm.org

Techmeme turns 20. This is probably a boring news for most of you, dear readers. But one of the most influential tech news website, Techmeme, celebrated its 20th birthday back in September. This website is read daily by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella or Sundar Pichai, as well as top-tier investors. Why? Because it does something almost no one else does: it aggregates and ranks the news from different sources in a highly usable and scannable format. It is quite frankly the best way to learn about today's tech news. Here's to 20 more years! — crazystupidtech.com

Loose ends

Heavy drinking correlated with higher incidence of dementia. While light drinking seems relatively protective — bmj.com

In favor of native JavaScript date pickers. Do not code your own (if you can resist) — dbushell.com

Automated prompt improvement framework. From Salesforce — github.com