your science briefing for 03.11.2025

Where have all the EF5 tornadoes gone, how morning people are making the world less safe, the fantastical land of MAGA algorithms, and more...

According to climate data, the intensity of tornadoes has not let up one bit, and their frequency has actually increased. And yet, it’s been close to a dozen years since the U.S. was hit with an EF5 monster with sustained winds over 200 miles per hour. Why aren’t there at least a handful of other tornadoes just as bad? Are we just lucky? No, not exactly. Since tornado ratings are determined by doing a post-disaster damage assessment, we’ve had devastating storms, but categorizing them has become way more stringent and complicated… (USA Today)

You have microplastics in your brain. This isn’t a warning or sensationalism. It’s just a fact. And those levels increased by 50% over the past eight years. Even worse, a new study found that dementia patients had a concentration of microplastics three to five times higher in their brain tissue than those who didn’t. While we don’t know if this is a side-effect or a causative mechanism, we do suspect that those sharp microscopic shards can tear up our organs, causing inflammation and stress… (Earth.com)

Morning people have taken over the world while the rest of us were trying to get a bit of shuteye, and now we’re all paying for it with lost productivity, health, and yes, even lives. Millions of us struggle with sleep deprivation leading to sluggishness, mistakes, stress, short tempers, and immune stress. To fix it, the early birds need to just go get their worm quietly and let us get some goddamn sleep… (The Conversation)

Content matching algorithms are great when you want to see puppies, kittens, jokes, and memes. They’re a lot less great when they decide that your political affiliation is with a party that has transformed into a Second World cult of personality where Dear Leader is always right, the sun is always shining, disagreement is treason, those who even momentarily doubt all this are plotting against you, your friends, your family, and your dog, and yes, we have always been at war with Eastcanada… (Slate)

Sharks are, in fact, older than trees, swimming in oceans 450 million years ago while the first trees took another 70 million years to grow, longer than the time between the last T. rex and us. The biggest shark ever was the megalodon, and while researching fossilized remains often revises a giant animal’s bulk downward, scientists are seeing the opposite with these creatures. They may have actually grown up to 80 feet, or 24 plus meters, a fifth larger than expected… (LiveScience)