A new study of cows has discovered that an old Gary Larson cartoon actually depicts real life. Yes, cow tools are real. CC-licensed photo by Fred Davis on Flickr.
You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
A selection of 10 links for you. A Hoover? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Ozempic is reshaping the fast food industry • philippdubach.com
Philipp Dubach:
»
Something strange is happening in the food industry. New US dietary guidelines call for more protein and less sugar. Greggs, the UK bakery chain, just warned of “flatlining profits” in the food-to-go market. Food companies are racing to overhaul their brands, ditching artificial dyes and packing protein into products. Earnings calls across the sector blame “inflation” and “subdued consumer confidence.” Nobody mentions the elephant in the room: GLP-1 medications.
New research from Cornell finally puts numbers to what the food industry doesn’t want to discuss. Using transaction data from 150,000 households linked to survey responses on medication adoption, Sylvia Hristakeva, Jūra Liaukonytė, and Leo Feler tracked exactly how Ozempic and Wegovy users change their spending. The results deserve attention from anyone holding food stocks.
The headline: households with a GLP-1 user cut grocery spending by 5.3% within six months. For high-income households, that figure jumps to 8.2%. Fast food takes an even harder hit, with spending at limited-service restaurants falling 8.0%. These aren’t people switching brands or trading down. They’re simply eating less.
The category-level data tells the real story. Savoury snacks see the largest decline at 10.1%. Sweets, baked goods, cookies, all down. Even staples like meat, eggs, and bread decline. In the entire grocery basket, only one category shows a statistically significant increase: yogurt. Fresh fruit and nutrition bars trend up slightly, but yogurt is the lone winner with statistical confidence.
As of July 2024, 16.3% of U.S. households have at least one GLP-1 user. The adoption curve is steepening. Nearly half of adopters report taking the medication specifically for weight loss rather than diabetes management. These weight-loss users tend to be younger, higher income, and more willing to pay out of pocket. They’re also the most profitable customers for fast food chains, the ones who don’t flinch at price increases.
«
I’ll offer one alternative for why people might be spending less at fast-food outlets: cost. Budgets are squeezed, and those things are rising in price. It seems odd if a single GLP-1 user could affect an entire household’s consumption in that way, and I really don’t think there are so many GLP-1 users in the UK in the Greggs-buying demographic that they’d hit its profits.
Rather like job layoffs being blamed on rapid AI adoption when it’s actually just job cuts in a tricky economy, suggesting the fast food industry’s troubles are all down to GLP-1 seems like overstating things to me. Sure, GLP-1 households with no kids might cut their food bill. But it’s really also just a displacement – that money is instead going on the drugs.
unique link to this extract
This five-foot lamp is a supersized tribute to the world’s most iconic pen • The Verge
Andrew Liszewski:
»
Seletti, an Italian design brand known for everything from furniture to tableware, has debuted an unusual tribute to an icon of design: the Bic Cristal pen. To celebrate its 75th anniversary, Seletti has supersized the pen and replaced its ink cartridge with a long LED-filled tube to illuminate your living room, office, or that closet where they keep all the stationery at work.
The Bic Lamp, as it’s simply called, was introduced at the 2026 Maison&Objet show in Paris — think CES, but for interior designers. Seletti says it was created at a 12:1 scale, which makes it just shy of six feet long given the Bic Cristal pen typically measures around 5.8 inches with its cap. Aside from its larger dimensions and the LED tube producing up 2,400 lumens of light, the Bic Lamp is a near identical clone, in red, black, and blue colour options.
«
Looks quite fun: it really is a giant Bic pen. Price: £330 in the UK, $350 in the US. Though it doesn’t seem to be freestanding for floor mounting – you’d need to figure out a base. Also, it would certainly make your office feel extremely office-like. And you perhaps like someone from Land of the Giants.
unique link to this extract
Up in smoke: publisher pulls vaping paper nearly two years after complaint • Retraction Watch
»
MDPI has retracted a study about vaping that one expert said seemed “like a joke” almost two years after the publisher received a complaint about the flawed work.
The paper, published in Neurology International in 2022, reported e-cigarette users had a higher risk of early stroke than traditional tobacco users. It has been cited 22 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, and was covered in the media, featured in a public campaign against vaping and included in a contestedmeta-analysis.
But the study contained critical errors, as we reported in 2024 in a story for Science that investigated paper mill-like businesses dangling quick-and-dirty publications for international medical graduates looking for residency positions in the US.
The corresponding author, Urvish Patel, is the founder and director of one such outfit, the Texas-based Research Update Organization. Several or all of his coauthors were international medical graduates who paid to be part of the program. The paper did not mention this fact, but instead misrepresented Patel as being affiliated with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
At the time of our Science story, Patel defended his publication, telling us it “described very well [the] methodology, data, every single thing.” But experts we consulted were not impressed.
«
As a layman I was not impressed either: it seemed completely illogical to claim that vaping would bring a higher risk of an early stroke than tobacco users, who are breathing combustion products. Good to see this has been retracted, following an investigation – incredibly slowly! – by the publisher. Apparently the authors disagreed with the retraction. Reasons for doubting the paper: “glaring error in the sample size reported in the paper, insufficient stroke observations and a lack of information on whether the strokes occurred before or after vaping began.” Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln… (Via Jukka Kelovuori.)
unique link to this extract
UK study to examine effects of restricting social media for children • The Guardian
Nicola Davis and Kiran Stacey:
»
A pioneering investigation into the impact of restricting social media access for children in the UK has been announced as politicians around the world consider action on the issue.
In December, Australia became the first country to ban under-16s from social media, with governments in other countries, including the, coming under pressure to do the same.
However, while experts say there is evidence that aspects of social media are harmful to most children, there has been no large-scale experimental study exploring the effect of limiting time spent on social media in healthy children as a population. “This study is a world first to try to look at that question,” said Prof Amy Orben, of the University of Cambridge, who is co-lead of the study.
Orben and colleagues plan to study about 4,000 children across 30 secondary schools in Bradford, West Yorkshire, focusing on students in years 8, 9 and 10. All participants would be asked to complete an initial questionnaire on areas including their mental health, sleep and friendships, and to download the research app on their main device.
Each year group in each school would be randomly assigned to one of two conditions: the app would simply record the pupils’ social media use, or it would curtail their social media use by limiting access to the apps for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube and Snapchat to one hour a day, as well as imposing a curfew from 9pm to 7am.
Crucially, the team said, all pupils within a particular year group in a school would experience the same intervention. “We know that if we take away social media for one adolescent, that might have a very different impact than if we take it away for their whole friendship group for a certain period of time,” Orben said.
Access to messaging apps including WhatsApp would not be restricted, the team said, as they were important for family communication.
«
The idea of the one-hour limit is interesting. The first results are expected in summer 2027.
unique link to this extract
What it’s like to be banned from the US for fighting online hate • MIT Technology Review
Eileen Guo:
»
[One of the directors of the German nonprofit HateAid, Josephine] Ballon was the one to tell [co-director Anna Lena] von Hodenberg that both their names were on the list. “We kind of felt a chill in our bones,” von Hodenberg told me when I caught up with the pair in early January.
But she added that they also quickly realized, “Okay, it’s the old playbook to silence us.” So they got to work—starting with challenging the narrative the US government was pushing about them.
Within a few hours, Ballon and von Hodenberg had issued a strongly worded statement refuting the allegations: “We will not be intimidated by a government that uses accusations of censorship to silence those who stand up for human rights and freedom of expression,” they wrote. “We demand a clear signal from the German government and the European Commission that this is unacceptable. Otherwise, no civil society organisation, no politician, no researcher, and certainly no individual will dare to denounce abuses by US tech companies in the future.”
Those signals came swiftly. On X, Johann Wadephul, the German foreign minister, called the entry bans “not acceptable,” adding that “the DSA was democratically adopted by the EU, for the EU—it does not have extraterritorial effect.” Also on X, French president Emmanuel Macron wrote that “these measures amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty.” The European Commission issued a statement that it “strongly condemns” the Trump administration’s actions and reaffirmed its “sovereign right to regulate economic activity in line with our democratic values.”
Ahmed, Melford, Breton, and their respective organizations also made their own statements denouncing the entry bans. Ahmed, the only one of the five based in the United States, also successfully filed suit to preempt any attempts to detain him, which the State Department had indicated it would consider doing.
But alongside the statements of solidarity, Ballon and von Hodenberg said, they also received more practical advice: Assume the travel ban was just the start and that more consequences could be coming. Service providers might preemptively revoke access to their online accounts; banks might restrict their access to money or the global payment system; they might see malicious attempts to get hold of their personal data or that of their clients. Perhaps, allies told them, they should even consider moving their money into friends’ accounts or keeping cash on hand so that they could pay their team’s salaries—and buy their families’ groceries.
«
A companion to the case linked last year about the ICC judge sanctioned by the US. This is a problem that we need to consider very seriously.
unique link to this extract
Right-wing pundits suddenly hate an AI bill. Are they getting paid to kill it? – Model Republic
Tyler Johnston:
»
Something strange happened on conservative social media in the last few days.
Around a dozen right-wing influencers suddenly launched a barrage of false and misleading attacks on X this week against a bill meant to block American adversaries from getting advanced AI chips. In reviewing these X posts, we found indications that they’re the result of a coordinated effort — potentially funded by big tech companies — similar to previously reported political influence campaigns.
It began on Thursday, when popular conservatives including Laura Loomer, Brad Parscale, and Ryan Fournier suddenly began posting extremely similar criticisms of the AI OVERWATCH Act. The bill had received relatively little public attention since its introduction in December 2025.
The posts shared not just a viewpoint, but linguistic fingerprints: the same metaphors, the same framings, and the same false and misleading narrative about what the bill actually does and where it comes from.
Covert, coordinated influence campaigns are increasingly common on social media. In conservative circles, two recent examples were orchestrated by the same company offering this as a service:
• In March 2025, a wave of conservative influencers were caught posting nearly identical criticism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s initiative to remove soda from SNAP benefits. Journalist Nick Sortor revealed that a PR company called Influenceable had been paying influencers $1,000 or more per post, complete with pre-written talking points and images of Trump drinking Diet Coke.
• In August 2023, the Texas Tribune documented how Influenceable recruited Gen-Z influencers to defend impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and promote the film “Sound of Freedom.” The same company has been linked to promotional campaigns for films like “Nefarious,” “Homestead,” and “Reagan.”The AI OVERWATCH Act campaign looks awfully similar. And the stakes are high: the bill has implications for Nvidia’s ability to sell advanced AI chips to China, a market worth billions of dollars to the company. If someone wanted to kill this legislation before it gained momentum, a coordinated influencer campaign — using conservative figures to pressure the Republicans running Congress — would be one way to do it.
«
The puzzling question is why any legislator would pay any attention to a lot of yakking on social media. If people had to donate a pint of blood in order to lobby a legislator (or for their lobbying to be valid), it might be useful.
unique link to this extract
Scientists discover that cow tools are real • Futurism
Frank Landymore:
»
After more than forty years, a bizarre panel from “The Far Side” comic strip has finally become prophecy. The cartoon depicts a strangely eye-less, bipedal cow standing in front of a bench of oddly-shaped objects, with the caption “Cow tools,” and no further context.
…Larson probably couldn’t predict that “Cow tools” would become a cultish internet meme decades later, serving for those in the know as an endearing icon of anti-humor — with such a heavy emphasis on the “anti” part that it borders on avant-garde art.
Similarly, the storied cartoonist probably never anticipated that “Cow tools” would turn out to be a real phenomenon.
You heard that right. In a new study published in the journal Current Biology, scientists say they’ve documented the first ever verified case of a bovine using a tool, suggesting we’ve been seriously underestimating the intelligence of these gentle creatures.
In footage shared by the researchers, the cow named Veronika holds a lengthy broom handle in her mouth and manipulates it to scratch herself, displaying impressive dexterity as she reaches everywhere on her body from her stomach to her rear end.
The feat is clearly no fluke, and remarkably, Veronika had received no training.
“[Veronika] did not fashion tools like the cow in Gary Larson’s cartoon, but she selected, adjusted, and used one with notable dexterity and flexibility,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Perhaps the real absurdity lies not in imagining a tool-using cow, but in assuming such a thing could never exist.”
«
Larson keeps coming true. Cow tools here; there’s also some people inventing a dog translator. (Larson’s revelation of what dogs are saying when we hear barks: “Hey! Hey! Hey!”) Might have to check if he did anything about Greenland.
unique link to this extract
Analysts say mass Chinese fishing boat formations are maritime militia tactics • Taiwan News
Kelvin Chen:
»
Analysts have expressed concern about two recent instances of Chinese fishing boats gathering in large numbers in the East China Sea.
On Christmas Day, 2,000 Chinese fishing boats sailed to the East China Sea and formed two 466-kilometer-long parallel lines, almost in the shape of “a reverse L shape,” The New York Times reported. This was followed by another incident last Sunday, when approximately 1,400 Chinese fishing boats congregated in the East China Sea to form a 200-mile-long rectangle.
Jason Wang, the chief operating officer of ingeniSPACE, a geospatial intelligence firm, said the operations could be attempts by China to practice obstructing foreign ships or a move to assert territorial claims, per The New York Times. “They’re scaling up, and that scaling indicates their ability to do better command and control of civilian ships,” Wang said.
Large numbers of Chinese fishing boats could hamper US military ships operating in the region, The New York Times cited Lonnie Henley, a former US intelligence officer and non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, as saying. “It does mark an improvement in their ability to marshal and control a large number of militia vessels,” Henley added.
Thomas Shugart, a former US naval officer and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, pointed out that the small boats could also be used “as missile and torpedo decoys, overwhelming radars or drone sensors with too many targets.”
«
I’ve seen some doubts expressed about these reports, from people who suspected that this was GPS spoofing rather than actual fishing boats. You’d hope the US would have some actual images so we could be sure. But you can also see why Taiwan would be jumpy, whether this is spoofing or real.
unique link to this extract
600,000 Trump Mobile phones sold? There’s no proof • The Verge
Dominic Preston:
»
This week, I saw something new in my regular scouring of the web for updates on the Trump phone: a repeated claim that Trump Mobile has secured nearly 600,000 preorders for the phone. With a $100 deposit per device, that would make for a tidy $60 million payday for Trump Mobile already.
It’s curious timing, coming just before yesterday’s open letter to the FTC from Elizabeth Warren and a group of other Democrats, calling on the agency to open an investigation into the company’s alleged “false advertising and deceptive practices.” Not everyone agrees Trump Mobile deserves the Democrats’ attention, in part from the assumption that not that many people are likely to have put money down for the phone in the first place. As one commenter on my story yesterday suggested, “I can’t imagine a lot of folks were dumb enough to fall for this.” But according to these new figures, over half a million people were.
There’s just one problem: I can’t find a shred of evidence that this figure is true. In fact, it seems to trace back to a single viral, anonymous X post and is a microcosm of how the modern media landscape and AI chatbots can combine to give falsities the sheen of respectability.
«
This is surely going to be the white whale of Preston’s (or The Verge’s) life, with about as much chance of being pinned down. But entertaining while it goes.
unique link to this extract
AI in science research boosts speed, but limits scope • IEEE Spectrum
Elie Dolgin:
»
AI is turning scientists into publishing machines—and quietly funneling them into the same crowded corners of research.
That’s the conclusion of an analysis of more than 40 million academic papers, which found that scientists who use AI tools in their research publish more papers, accumulate more citations, and reach leadership roles sooner than peers who don’t.
But there’s a catch. As individual scholars soar through the academic ranks, science as a whole shrinks its curiosity. AI-heavy research covers less topical ground, clusters around the same data-rich problems, and sparks less follow-on engagement between studies.
The findings highlight a tension between personal career advancement and collective scientific progress, as tools such as ChatGPT and AlphaFold seem to reward speed and scale—but not surprise.
“You have this conflict between individual incentives and science as a whole,” says James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago who led the study.
And as more researchers pile onto the same scientific bandwagons, some experts worry about a feedback loop of conformity and declining originality. “This is very problematic,” says Luís Nunes Amaral, a physicist who studies complex systems at Northwestern University. “We are digging the same hole deeper and deeper.”
Evans and his colleagues published the findings January 14 in the journal Nature.
«
| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 