your science briefing for 03.06.2025

Age of empires and plunder is back and climate change is poised to make it worse, how an antibiotic created a superbug, the pitfalls of AI marketing, and more...

After almost 70 years of relative stability, it seems that empires, land grabs, and wars of conquest are coming back, driven by unhinged autocrats with tenuous claims to a former colony, or neighbor whose existence they refuse to accept. And as we feel the brunt of climate change in the coming decades, it’s going to get worse as these wars of imperial conquest become wars of survival… (Foreign Affairs)

Depending on the country, between one percent and half of adults have at least one tattoo, myself included. And as long as tattoos have been around in the modern era, there have been concerns that they can cause infections, allergies, and other health concerns. Continuing the trend, a recent study from Denmark argues that since the ink can accumulate in lymph nodes in trace amounts, tattoos can raise your risks of developing lymphoma, although your absolute risk is still low… (SDU)

Have you noticed doctors getting awfully stingy with antibiotics lately? Over half a century of showering patients with them have created a global crisis we need major resources and complex AI models to even have a chance of solving. One example is playing out with an antibiotic called rifaximin. Despite its minimal side effects, being given to so many patients so freely created a superbug that can even repel attacks from our treatments of last resort… (SciTechDaily)

People like AI in the background, helping us out, fixing our typos, suggesting how to word boring work missives, and giving us suggestions. They do not like it shoved in their faces while being told they’re about to be obsolesced by it. This is why a study tracking how people perceive brands which use virtual influencers and AI generated graphics in their marketing says that their target market sees them in a harsher light, and judge the brand more negatively when seeing a bad ad… (Northeastern U)

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to ours, and is part of a three star system which constantly perturbs a cloud of asteroids and comets around it. While you’d think that being four light years, or 38 trillion kilometers, apart would mean that any interaction between our solar systems would be extremely rare, it turns out it’s not. As many as a million asteroids from Proxima and Alpha Centauri swarm around us, and more are on their way as the three star system gets closer to ours on its flyby… (Space.com)