Why Is It So Hot?
Hello, folks. My ulnar nerves are entrapped and my eyes still need surgery. But look on the bright side for me: By the time I’m 60, it’ll finally be my turn to laugh at my friends.
Welcome to the August edition of The Zaleski Minute. As always, if this takes you longer than 60 seconds, complain to management.
What I Was Writing:
For Popular Science: It is hotter than all the circles of Dante’s hell-world combined. But a plucky California startup has a solution to cool buildings, even in the dead of summer, using a quirk of physics called radiative cooling.
For Popular Mechanics: You might recall Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros who died in 2018. There are only two female northern white rhinos left. It’s a foregone conclusion then, yes? The white northern rhino will die out soon — but not if these bioengineers manage to pull off the (near) impossible.
For New Scientist: The gas the world needs to worry about isn’t carbon dioxide; it’s nitrogen. Now an international consortium of scientists is trying to squeeze what some call “the godfather of pollution” out of our ecosystems before fish die, seas turn red, and drinking water loses all potability.
For CityLab: In his new book, public health scholar Lawrence Brown plumbs the question of black Americans’ relationship to the physical world: where they are, and are not, allowed to go; where they can, and cannot, live in cities; and what, ultimately, it all means.
See ya next time, whenever that might be.