I visited a once-dangerous island, and my friends made brilliant things.

Hello!

This week, I visited Gruinard Island, the famous "anthrax island" that was once contaminated. And in the archives while I was researching, I found a story that I don't think anyone's told before.

Other interesting things I've found this week:

• hbomberguy's Vaccines: A Measured Response video is a feature-length takedown that features callbacks, jokes, and some genuinely astonishing things that he's had checked by lawyers. Recommended.
• qntm's short story Lena, written as a fictional Wikipedia article, is a genuinely unnerving conversation-starter on the perils of mind uploading and human simulation.
• "How Road Barriers Stopped Killing Drivers": fifteen minutes on how crash barriers used to be much more lethal, and why they aren't any more.
• And related to that, Los Angeles speed limits keep creeping upwards thanks to a strange law.
• US soldiers exposed nuclear secrets... by putting them on public flashcard-learning apps. Opsec is difficult.

Oh, and one more thing! Apparently a few people left YouTube comments last week that were like "hello newsletter subscribers"? Please don't do that! It just seems like spam to the people receiving them. If you're going to leave a comment, try to leave something that's pleasant or relevant, not junk. And if you see someone else leaving junk comments, please just quietly give it a thumb-down and move on so they don't get picked up by the Algorithms. Thanks!

And speaking of Algorithms: thanks for sticking with me as I continue to tweak this newsletter and figure out the best way to do it. I'm still not launching this to a large audience yet; if you've got feedback, please do hit reply and let me know.

Cheers!

— Tom