If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)
Chronic pain eased by a common sleep supplement (Bronwyn Thompson, July 01, 2026, Refractor)
Essentially, the results were on par with how opioids, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and paracetamol scored in trials. […]
“For many patients, pain doesn’t exist in isolation and is closely tied to poor sleep,” Wu says.
Simple sleep hygiene will render the same results.
Bravery (and Humility) is Needed to do Proper Medical Science: Hundreds of thousands of knee arthroscopic meniscus repairs are done. At a cost of $10,000 per surgery. Now let me tell you about the FIDELITY trial follow-up at 10 years. (John Mandrola, May 04, 2026, Sensible Medicine)
First was a diagnostic arthroscopy. Then randomization. Active arm surgery included removal of all loose, weak fragments as well as unstable meniscus with preservation of as much of the meniscus as possible.
For the sham surgery, a standard arthroscopic partial meniscectomy was simulated. To mimic the sensations and sounds of a true arthroscopic partial meniscectomy, the surgeon asked for all instruments, manipulated the knee as if an arthroscopic partial meniscectomy was being performed, pushed a mechanized shaver (without the blade) firmly against the patella (outside the knee), and used suction. The patient was also kept in the operating room for the amount of time required to perform an actual arthroscopic partial meniscectomy.
Outcomes were three pain scores. Their names aren’t critical. But all three were not statistically different. Critically, patients could not identify their treatment arm; blinding had worked.
In the 10-year radiological assessment. 81% of the patients in the operative arm had progressed to have arthritis vs 70% in the placebo arm. This barely missed statistical significance. More patients in the placebo arm reported satisfaction (84% vs 75%). More patients in the surgery arm progressed to high tibial osteotomy or total knee replacement (12% vs 4%).
The first thing that pops in my head is: what if these researchers (and patients) were not so bold. An ineffective procedure would have remained popular, with costs into the billions, and if the trends in this study are true, increasing numbers of people would progress to knee replacement. AKA: harm.
New humanoid robot built for companionship with 90% accuracy in recognizing emotions (Jijo Malayil, Jul 01, 2026, Interesting Engineering)
The full-size humanoid features 88 degrees of freedom and a dual-pivot biomimetic cervical spine that enables it to reproduce up to 90 percent of fundamental human movements. It is powered by what UBTech describes as the world’s first emotion-aware LLM for long-term companionship, capable of identifying more than 20 fine-grained emotional states with over 90 percent accuracy.
…there’s no way there are that many emotions.
The Revolution Continues: The American Revolution is still going on—not because we ourselves are wise and good but because it embodies an idea that reaches everybody and will never lose its force. (Bruce Catton, June 1976, American Heritage)
The bell is old and it is badly cracked and it has not been rung for years, nor will it ever be rung again. But although it is quite useless from a practical standpoint, it is perhaps the most prized possession we have. It carries words about proclaiming liberty to all the people, and when it spoke it set off long echoes that have never stopped reverberating. The Liberty Bell announced that the American people were in fact making a revolution and not just demonstrating for a redress of grievances, and few announcements in the history of the human race have been more momentous.
Constitutional-Democratic Man (Thomas D. Howes, May 2026, Civitas)
One thing that stands out about the American founding generation, which makes it distinct from prior attempts at republican government, is the almost unprecedented literacy of its populace. Prior to the Reformation, the highest literacy rates in even the most advanced cultures were around 20 percent, but they were usually much lower. With the invention of the printing press and the educational reforms of Protestant reformers (teaching everyone to read the Bible), followed by the Counter-Reformation reforms of the Jesuits, the literacy rate in Western Europe rose to unprecedented levels in the 1500s. England and the American colonies were particularly affected by this trend, with literacy rates in the American colonies, in some places such as New England, perhaps the highest in the world or in all history at that point (though the Netherlands also had a very high literacy rate).
Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich emphasizes in his discussion of the “WEIRD” psychology of Westerners how literacy has changed the way our brains process information. He notes that literate people are more prone to perceive things analytically, breaking them down into smaller parts, and have better verbal memory. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan (followed by Neil Postman) saw specifically in the rise of book literacy a new kind of man, a “Literate Man.” For both McLuhan and Postman, the Literate Man was more prone to individualism, that is, to transcend his tribe and adopt a cosmopolitan vision.