‘Summer is prime for dog-friendly outdoor adventures, from hiking scenic trails to spending evenings along the river. But warmer weather also brings with it a less adorable companion: mosquitoes. Just like humans need bug spray before heading out into skeeter country, our furry friends can also benefit from using insect repellent.

Itchy bites aside, these pesky insects also pose a threat to dogs by transmitting heartworm disease—a potentially serious, even deadly, condition….

“Never apply human insect repellent products like DEET on your dogs; these products can be toxic if ingested, and it’s no secret that most dogs like to lick their fur and paws,” Montgomery said…’ (Madison Dapcevich via Outside)

‘Long before smartphones or even the printing press, our cognitive architecture was shaped by a single problem: stay alive long enough to reproduce. Our ancestors whose attention drifted past the rustle in the grass left fewer descendants than those who froze, looked and listened.

The brain that paid attention to threats was the brain that survived.

This is the foundation of what psychologists call the negativity bias, one of the most replicated findings in cognitive science. Across decades of research, the human mind has been shown to weigh negative information more heavily than positive, attend to it faster and remember it longer.

A predator nearby mattered more than a beautiful sunset. The cost of missing a real threat was death, while the cost of overreacting was a few minutes of wasted vigilance. The asymmetry made this bias adaptive.

Here is the problem: the human brain has not changed since then. We are the same species as we were thousands of years ago. What’s changed is the size of the world it’s asked to scan for threats….’ (Ali Jasemi via The Conversation)

‘The Senate adopted a resolution on Tuesday directing the president to remove military forces from the conflict with Iran, a significant rebuke to Donald Trump and a strong message that the war lacks support in Congress….’ (Morgan Rimmer via CNN)

‘In an extremely odd case, a single 79-year-old patient was granted early access to Eli Lilly’s powerful, still-experimental obesity drug retatrutide through the Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” program—raising immediate questions if that sole patient is President Donald Trump, according to a report by Stat News.

Lilly’s retatrutide is a highly anticipated next-generation obesity drug that targets GIP and glucagon hormones in addition to GLP-1. It is currently in late-stage trials to treat obesity, diabetes, sleep apnea, and other conditions. Data from a Phase 3 trial that Lilly released in May indicates that patients with obesity (but without diabetes) who took the drug for 80 weeks lost 28 percent of their weight, an amount comparable to bariatric surgery….’ (Beth Mole via Ars Technica)

‘Andreas Schellenberg and Suryansh Agnivanshi of Everything Explainer compiled a rather chilling list of effective propaganda tricks used to keep people in line and quell resistance. Included in this sadly familiar list are fear, dehumanization, scapegoating, whataboutism, name-calling, emotional appeal, and glittering generalities….’ (Lori Dorn via Laughing Squid)