Why are some animals considered ‘pests’?

It comes down to culture and convenience

Elan Abrell, Wesleyan University

Turkey pecking at his reflection in the back of my car.
Photo by Will Collette

After wild turkeys attacked an 83-year-old woman in May 2026, sending her to the emergency room for stitches, police warned residents of Alameda, California, to avoid interacting with the animals. 

Wild turkeys can be particularly aggressive during mating season. They can also damage property: digging up gardens, staining decks with their droppings and occasionally attacking cars and windows when they mistake their own reflections for rival turkeys.

Turkeys may be a nuisance to Alameda’s human residents, but they have also been highly valued by multiple cultures throughout the history of North America. Given these threats to human safety and property, is it fair to call this quintessentially American bird a pest?

As an anthropologist who studies human-animal interactions, I have found that the idea of a “pest” is a flexible concept that changes over time and across cultures. Just as one person’s weed can be another’s wildflower, the category of pest is a subjective one that depends on social, aesthetic and economic values within a particular culture.

If Turkeys decorate American dinner tables and are pardoned by presidents, are they still pests?

Labeling an animal a pest typically justifies the use of harmful or deadly methods to remove undesirable species from human spaces. But these methods can lead to costs that far outweigh their benefits, causing unnecessary suffering for not only the so-called pests, but also for humans, other animals and entire ecosystems.

Understanding why people label certain animals pests can help society respond to potential conflicts while minimizing harm to both humans and animals.

Colorectal cancer warning signs younger adults (actually, no one) should never ignore

Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death among people under 50

American College of Surgeons

Colorectal cancer has become the leading cause of cancer related death among people younger than 50. 

Although routine screening generally begins at age 45 for adults at average risk, warning signs can appear earlier and should be discussed with a health care provider at any age.

To help people recognize possible symptoms and speak with their doctors sooner, the American College of Surgeons (ACS) has introduced free public education resources and a checklist designed for use before primary care appointments.

Why AI’s environmental footprint won’t disappear into orbit

What could possibly go wrong?

Peter Howson, Northumbria University, Newcastle

AI companies increasingly want to move their operations into space. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has applied to launch over a million AI data centre satellites and ultimately build them on the moon.

Jeff Bezos, Google, OpenAI and others have similar plans. The idea is to harness 24/7 solar energy and, in Bezos’s vision at least, to move all polluting industries off-world, re-zoning Earth for humans and nature.

It’s an intriguing plan. But once you factor in the whole life cycle, from water and rocket fuel used to launch these satellites into space, to keeping them cool and eventually disposing of old satellites, the environmental case becomes less clear.

Outer space, out of mind

Off-worlding polluting industries is not a new idea. In the 1970s, when the last Iranian oil crisis caused rocketing fuel prices, Nasa kicked off a plan to build huge solar plants in space. The idea flopped when the oil began to flow again.

Nasa also explored the prospect of storing nuclear materials on the moon and blasting hazardous waste at the sun. These plans may have been feasible from an engineering perspective but were politically impossible due to the risk of radioactive particles eventually falling back to earth.

A concept image from Nasa’s 1978 proposal for a
10km-wide ‘satellite power system’. The space-based
solar farm is visible top right, while the energy would
be beamed down to a ‘rectenna farm’ on earth,
in the center of the image.
Nasa / US DoE / Satellite Power System (SPS)
Concept Development and Evaluation Program Plan, 1978.

Since data centers need so much energy, much of it for AI, such astronomical ideas are back on the table. Regular Earth-based data centers were responsible for around 5% of all electricity used in the US last year, for instance, mostly using fossil fuels. Their share of US power demand will likely triple by 2028.

The fragile frontier

That’s why the cold vacuum of space, with its endless supply of solar energy, is being pitched as a more sustainable alternative to big, noisy, hot data centers in our back yards.

Meanwhile, a recent petition from environmental law charity Earthjustice, is calling for a comprehensive review. They argue these proposals fail to acknowledge any environmental impact. “This is not just poor planning and a missed opportunity”, the petition states, “it violates federal law”.

Indeed, SpaceX’s planning applications come with assurances of no meaningful environmental impact. “It’s always sunny in space,” according to Musk, who says orbital data centers are “obviously the only way to scale”.

Yet data centers in space would be even more prone to overheating than those on earth. That’s because, like a Thermos flask, space keeps things hot. There’s no water or air to carry excess heat away. Instead, keeping powerful AI chips cool in orbit requires massive ammonia-filled radiators that let heat escape as infrared radiation. This isn’t very efficient and those radiators are much larger than the computers they cool. Lifting these huge structures to orbit would require a lot of rocket fuel.

Why Trump screws Rhode Island any time he has the chance

Trump Admin Targeted Democrats by Canceling Clean Energy Grants

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

Donald Trump’s administration has admitted in court that it chose to cancel certain grants for clean energy projects because they were set to benefit Democratic-voting states.

The New York Times reported that attorneys representing the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged in court documents filed earlier this month that decisions about canceling grants were based “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”

The Times described this as a “stunning admission” that “offered an unvarnished glimpse into the way President Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing, and infrastructure aid in his second term.”

According to the Times, the DOE last year recommended canceling more than 600 grants awarded for energy projects under former President Joe Biden’s administration.

However, the White House Office of Management and Budget only made 284 of the recommended cuts while leaving the rest of the grants in place.

Trump solves inflation

August 1 fundraiser in Narragansett for Gabe Amo

Seaweeds are not plants – and six other surprising facts about aquatic flora

Crucial to life on earth

Alexander Bowles, University of Oxford

Hidden beneath the water’s surface is a botanical world that is among nature’s most innovative and ecologically important.

As I highlighted in a recent paper, an extraordinary range of adaptations have evolved in aquatic plants for life beneath the water’s surface. Some flower underwater, others capture animals in ingenious traps. Here are seven facts that show how these remarkable organisms challenge our assumptions about what plants are and how they survive.

Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories. This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

1. Plants can’t stop returning to water

When we think of plants, we often picture life on land: forests, grasslands and meadows. Yet throughout their evolutionary history, plants have repeatedly returned to the water, where they first evolved. Around 500 million years ago, plants moved from water onto land. Since then, many have moved back. Scientists estimate that the aquatic lifestyle has evolved independently more than 100 times across different plant groups.

Water lilies float their leaves on the surface, duckweeds drift freely and seagrasses live entirely submerged in the ocean. Some of these groups made their return over 100 million years ago. The repeated evolution of aquatic plants is one of nature’s most striking examples of convergent evolution.

Save kids' lives

Flu shots prevent 80% of death in kids

Mary Van Beusekom, MS

During eight respiratory illness seasons, estimated influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) against death in US children was 80% overall, 77% in those who had underlying medical conditions, and 87% among those without such conditions, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers report today in Pediatrics. 

The team used data from the US Influenza Associated Pediatric Mortality Surveillance System and survey data to estimate VE against death and assess vaccination status in children aged 6 months to 17 years who died of their infections from August 2016 through July 2025. The study excluded the 2020-21 flu season.

“Seasonal influenza vaccination has been shown to reduce the risk of influenza and severe complications among children aged 6 months and older,” the study authors noted. “Since 2010, reported numbers of influenza-associated pediatric deaths among children younger than 18 years have ranged from 37 during the 2011 to 2012 season to 289 during the 2024 to 2025 season.” 

Over half of flu deaths were in otherwise healthy children

In total, 1,234 children aged 6 months to 17 years died of flu. Overall, 48% of pediatric deaths occurred in children with one or more underlying medical conditions and 52% in those without such conditions. 

Of deaths in children with at least one high-risk condition, the greatest proportion of flu vaccination was in those with non-asthma lung disorders (35%), followed by immune-weakening conditions (33%) and genetic and mitochondrial disorders (29%) and was lowest among those with obesity (18%), diabetes (11%), and hemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell disease (8%).

Among 1,086 deaths with flu vaccination data, only 23% of 530 children with chronic conditions and 13% of 556 children without these conditions were fully vaccinated against flu. By season, the proportion of flu deaths in children vaccinated in the current year ranged from 26% in 2018-19 to 9% in 2024-25. 

Federal health agencies say they need a big funding bump to prepare for future emergencies

Rebuild our ability to handle public health emergencies

Sarah Boden

Public health decisions are made by this clown

Federal agencies tasked with planning for and responding to public health emergencies say they need a big bump in funding to prepare for future pandemics and antimicrobial resistance, as well as chemical, biological, radiologic, or nuclear threats. 

The multiyear budget, released July 15, proposes an allocation of $53.3 billion over the next three fiscal years: 2027, 2028 and 2029. If funding remains flat, the allocation will be $20 billion, or $33.5 billion less than requested. 

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the federal government's leading health security agency, says the budget is based on agency professional judgment. 

"These investments will strengthen our ability to develop, manufacture, and deliver lifesaving medical countermeasures when they are needed most," said John Knox, ASPR's principal deputy assistant secretary and interim leader, in an ASPR news release. 

The proposed budget comes at a time when many have criticized the federal government's deep cuts to preparedness efforts amid the recent hantavirus outbreak and ongoing Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Trump has a public nervous breakdown on Truth Social

He flaunts his dementia for all to see

By Will Collette

There was a ton of political commentary today about Donald Trump's astounding six-hour posting spree on Truth Social yesterday. As one of my favorite columnists Jeff Tiedrich put it: 

Dear Leader is bugfuck nuts.

we know this. it’s not open to debate. we’ve all seen the erratic behavior. the pants-shittingly infantile tantrums. the utter lack of impulse control. the mood swings. the ever-shifting incoherence he wreaks on the world, as the family of raccoons that live inside his fat, waterlogged head randomly chew through all the wires.

The AI-slopped photo above of Trump and John F. Kennedy in front of the now half-destroyed White House is particularly ironic, given Trump's blasphemous destruction of Jackie's Rose Garden and treatment of the Kennedy Center.

Then there's this:

And this:

And this one featuring Cadet Bonespurs:

And this interpretation of how his endless war with Iran is going:

For Trump, this one is a pretty subtle attack in our renewed war on Canada:

Of course, he tried to make fun of his critics:

This is how the President of the United States spent his Sunday. We are at war with Iran, a war Trump started without cause or plan or exit strategy. Runaway inflation, diseases running rampant, hungry children, unaffordable housing. A world that now either hates us or doesn't trust us. 

When he isn't trying to come up with new things to name after himself or historic treasures he wants to turn into gilded bordellos, he spends his time with this shit.

He's out of control and that spells danger for all of us, MAGA and DSA alike. Since the Republican controlled Congress doesn't have the guts to deal with him, we need to deal with them on November 3. 

July 29 protest

Second finding of West Nile Virus

Important state races crucial September 9 Democratic primary for Charlestown's state Representative

HOW TO VOTE

You can register to vote on the Secretary of State's website! The deadline to register to vote in the September Primary is August 10th. If you would like to vote by mail, you can apply for a mail ballot using this application. This form must be received by your local board of canvassers by 4 p.m. on August 19th. If you don’t want to or cannot vote in person and missed the mail ballot application deadline, you may still request an emergency mail ballot from your local Board of Canvassers. Emergency mail ballot period is August 20th to September 8th. Early voting also starts on August 20th and continues until September 8th. Most cities and towns will host early voting at their local board of canvassers, which is located in your city/town hall. Be sure to check the designated early voting location. Primary Election Day is Wednesday, September 9th. Be sure to confirm your polling location using the polling place lookup tool. Polling places typically open at 7 a.m. and close promptly at 8 p.m. You should also check when your polling place opens on Election Day. You will be asked to show a current and valid photo ID when you vote at your polling place. For a complete list of acceptable photo IDs and to learn about provisional ballots, refer to the FAQ section below or download the informational flyer.

WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE

Across the United States: Nationwide, a whopping 95% of U.S. adults believe the country is in an affordability crisis. (Harris Poll | July 2026) Trump’s total crypto earnings totaled some $1.4 billion during his first year back in office, when he began making liberalized cryptocurrency regulations a cornerstone of his presidency. (NBC News | June 2026) The average household in America has had to spend more than $3,100 extra on goods and services since Trump took office. (Joint Economic Committee | June 2026) Nearly a third of manufacturers and about 45 percent of service firms fully passed along all tariff-induced cost increases by raising their prices. (Liberty Street Economics | June 2025) ACA premiums likely set for another double-digit rise next year; Insurers are proposing a rate hike of about 14%, driven by rising healthcare costs, inflation and the loss of enhanced tax subsidies. (NBC News | July 2026) Two million fewer children are enrolled in Medicaid since Trump took office. (Georgetown | May 2026) In Rhode Island: In Rhode Island, an estimated 33,000 people — including 1,600 children — are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage by the 2028 federal fiscal year. (WPRI | July 2025) As of May 2026, the average household in Rhode Island has had to spend $3,300+ more on goods and services under President Trump.  (Joint Economic Committee | June 2026) President Trump’s war in Iran has cost the average Rhode Island household $235.34 in rising gas prices. (Brown University | July 2026) In Rhode Island, monthly premiums for 2026 ACA health plans doubled, on average, compared with last year; Thousands of Rhode Islanders dropped Affordable Care Act health plans. (Ocean State Media | March 2026) The Northeast region’s Consumer Price Index rose 4.3% over the year to June 2026, with energy prices up 18.7% and food prices up 3.7% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | June 2026)

Don’t Forget that your voice matters! Vote in the primary election on September 9, then make sure to come back and vote in the general election on November 3.

Microplastics Found in 84% of Serious Heart Attack Patients

Plastic pollution may be reaching the heart through the bloodstream

By European Society of Cardiology

In a study published in the European Heart Journal, researchers detected microplastics and nanoplastics in the coronary blood of 84% of patients who had experienced a serious heart attack. That compared with 40% of patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and 32% of those whose coronary arteries appeared normal.

The heart attack group also had a wider variety of plastics in their blood. Polyethylene, one of the world’s most widely used plastics and a common ingredient in packaging and consumer products, was the material found most often.

Although the results do not show that plastic particles trigger heart attacks, they add to concerns that pollution may be connected to cardiovascular disease through inflammation, lung exposure, and damage to blood vessels.

How Microplastics Enter the Human Body

“Micro and nanoplastics are tiny plastic particles that are found virtually everywhere in the environment, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, and many foods we consume,” said first author Dr. Pasquale Paolisso of Sant’Andrea Hospital at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. “In recent years, scientists have begun to detect these particles in human tissues and organs, raising concerns about their potential health effects.”

“However, very little was known about whether these particles are present in the coronary circulation, the blood flowing through the arteries that supply the heart, or whether environmental exposures such as smoking and air pollution might influence their presence.”

Microplastics generally measure less than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches), while nanoplastics can be small enough to interact with cells and biological tissues. Scientists have already reported plastic particles in human blood, lungs, placenta, and breast milk, but their long-term health effects remain uncertain.

How we got to have clam cakes and stuffies

Stanford Scientists Solve a 252-Million-Year-Old Mass Extinction Mystery

By Stanford University

Representative samples of the modern fauna
(left three samples) and the Paleozoic fauna
(right four samples). Credit: Sarah Leibovitz

The shells scattered along modern beaches are clues to an ancient catastrophe. Clams and snails are common today partly because their distant relatives survived the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history, while many of their former rivals nearly vanished.

A new Stanford-led study helps explain why.

About 252 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic extinction event eliminated 96% of marine species and 70% of land animals. Known as the “Great Dying,” it was far more destructive than the later disaster that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs.

Why Some Ocean Animals Vanished

Yet the crisis was not equally deadly for every branch of animal life. Some groups that had dominated the oceans for hundreds of millions of years suffered catastrophic losses, while others endured and eventually took their place.

Brachiopods were among the biggest casualties. These shelled animals resemble clams but belong to a completely different evolutionary group. Before the extinction, they were among the most abundant creatures on the seafloor. Crinoids, or sea lilies, and several other mostly stationary bottom dwellers also declined sharply.