Dispatches from the Empire

Plastic chemical phthalate causes DNA breakage and chromosome defects in sex cells, new study finds

Benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP) is a chemical that makes plastic more flexible and durable, and is found in many consumer products, including food packaging, personal care products and children’s toys. Previous studies have shown that BBP interferes with the body’s hormones and affects human reproduction and development, but the details of how it impacts reproduction have been unclear.

In the new study, researchers tested a range of doses of BBP on the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and looked for abnormal changes in egg cells. They saw that at levels similar to those detected in humans, BBP interferes with how newly copied chromosomes are distributed into the sex cells. Specifically, BBP causes oxidative stress and breaks in the DNA strands, which lead to cell death and egg cells with the wrong number of chromosomes.

Based on these findings, the researchers propose that BBP exposure alters gene expression in ways that cause significant damage to the DNA, ultimately leading to lower quality egg cells with abnormal chromosomes. The study also showed that C. elegans metabolizes BBP in the same way as mammals, and is impacted at similar BBP levels that occur in humans, suggesting that C. elegans is an effective model for studying the impacts on people. Overall, the study underscores the toxic nature of this very common plastic ingredient and the damage it causes to animal reproduction.

If I had to theorize, I would suspect that plastic is behind many of the things we find so perplexing about our modern times: plummeting fertility rates, increased rates of autism, shockingly high cancer rates in ever-younger populations, unexplainable neurological disorders in the Boomer generation.

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis 📚

This was the most influential book of my last year.

Auditory illusions with examples from Daft Punk

Headed Into the Abyss by Brian T. Watson 📚

I just finished, laying here in my bed, the dogs and cat asleep beside me. Crickets chirp out my window. In the distance a train’s whistle breaks and rolls over the valley.

More than anything, I prize seeing things clearly. Nothing fills me with that particular and precious joie de vivre — that electric sizzle — quite like close proximity to the truth. But most people don’t like the truth. We’ll do anything to avoid it, if we know it at all. So it’s a rare thrill to read something so transgressive in its honesty, so clear-eyed.

Credit to Brian T. Watson for his courage to accept the inevitable, and then to write it. May his acceptance be an inspiration.

AI plus MRI yields the ability to recognize what the mind is hearing.

Today, researchers announced a new bit of mind reading that’s impressive in its scope. By combining fMRI brain imaging with a system that’s somewhat like the predictive text of cell phones, they’ve worked out the gist of the sentences a person is hearing in near real time. While the system doesn’t get the exact words right and makes a fair number of mistakes, it’s also flexible enough that it can reconstruct an imaginary monologue that goes on entirely within someone’s head.

The hardest part of the AI revolution will be the discovery of empirical evidence that free will is a myth.