I made several posts with numbers on crime, suicide, and poverty. The U.S. is a violent, unequal country. I’ve talked about these issues a lot, so far without any noticeable effect on our political class. So I’ve picked some other things below.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Chemicals, they’re everywhere! And there were 20,000 accidents with them in 2022 that caused injuries, accidents, or death. Some are useful, some are risky, and some are both. We could do a better job handling and transporting them, we could get rid of the truly useless and dangerous ones, and we could work harder on finding substitutes for the useful but dangerous ones. And we could get rid of a corrupt political system where chemical companies pay the cost of running for office and then reward candidates who say and do what they are told.

Most hopeful story: There has been some progress on phages, viruses intentionally designed to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Also, anti-aging pills may be around the corner.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I had heard the story of the Google engineer who was fired for publicly releasing a conversation with LaMDA, a Google AI. But I hadn’t read the conversation. Well, here it is.