Hi there, friend.

Britney is free.

Onto the 6 for this week:

A week and a day past Daylight Savings Time ending, I don’t think my body has fully adjusted yet. Getting old sucks.

The vast majority of Americans support stopping changing the clock twice a year. Even if we theoretically agreed never to change the clock again, there remains the question: should we keep Daylight Savings forever or keep “standard” time forever?

This isn’t a straightforward answer. Depending on your location, you’re likely to have an opinion one way or another.

The Daylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool helps you determine the most optimal time for where you live.

For what it’s worth, I’m in the “make Daylight Savings Time permanent” camp.

There’s a group of scientists leveraging advanced machine-learning models to interpret whale sounds, with the potential of being able to communicate back to them.

From Hakai Magazine:

What should the first words to whales be?

With two new therapeutics against COVID-19 hopefully coming online soon (the Merck and Pfizer pills, specifically), an effective, fast-acting COVID-19 testing regime will be more critical than ever. Both medications (assuming approval) show remarkable efficacy against hospitalization and death from COVID, but they require starting the drug very close to symptom onset.

Unfortunately, although trillions of dollars in funds were passed & spent to fight COVID-19, our testing infrastructure barely improved since Summer 2020. Specifically, the United States has favored accuracy over immediacy by relying upon PCR tests over rapid (antigen) tests. The result is that only 3 FDA-approved over-the-counter rapid tests are available to the public. The US’s approach to testing stands in stark contrast to other Western nations. From the New York Times:

PCR tests have their use, but given a virus so prone to spread, speed trumps accuracy almost every time. There’s still a chance to change our current path. Get it together, FDA!

Check out the full article below and let me know what you think.

For those still hesitant about the COVID vaccines, watch this video for the best explainer of how the mRNA vaccines work.

The goal of the vaccine is simple: stimulate your body to create a protein. That’s it. I hope there is clarity in that simplicity.

The Cold War must have been terrifying.

Hydrogen bomb number AN602 (aka ‘Tsar Bomba’) was the largest bomb detonated in history. Originally designed to be 100 megatons, the Soviet blast was scaled back to just 50 megatons at the last minute. Despite the size reduction, it’s still the largest explosion ever created: twice the size of the next largest nuke, and “over 1,570 times more powerful…than the combined two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

From the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

If you’re interested in Cold War history, read the full piece below.

Finally, a somewhat funny story out of Turkey. From the BBC:

I feel like this could have been a subplot in The Hangover.

That’s it for this week. If you found anything useful or fun, let me know! And if you have any suggestions, shoot them my way. 😊 See you next week!