the conversation
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Sleep Tight Knowing There Are 20 Quadrillion Ants on Earth and They Weigh More Than All the Birds and Mammals Combined
Have you ever wondered exactly how many ants live on Earth? Possibly not, but it’s certainly a question we’ve asked ourselves. Our research published today provides an approximate answer. We conservatively estimate our planet harbours about 20 quadrillion ants. That’s 20 thousand million millions, or in numerical form, 20,000,000,000,000,000 (20 with 15 zeroes). We further…
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Scuttlebutt Is a Social Media Platform That Aims to Put People Before Profit, for Once
Last week, the US government released six principles for reforming Big Tech. It’s the latest example of growing efforts to regulate the handful of companies with enormous influence over the internet. But while there’s a growing appetite for a new, better kind of internet, it’s hard to imagine what that might look like. We’ve just…
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The Surprising History of How Electric Vehicles Have Played the Long Game And Won
Electric vehicles, we are often told, are the future. A whole range of carmakers and nations have plans to go electric. The largest US manufacturer, General Motors, says it will phase out fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035. Norway has set a goal to end sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2025, the UK by…
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Those Potentially Exposed to ‘Mad Cow Disease’ Will Now Be Able to Donate Blood in Australia Again
From today, eligible people who were in the United Kingdom in the 80s and 90s will be able to donate blood in Australia again. That’s because the risk of acquiring variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) from blood transfusions in Australia is incredibly tiny. We calculated that risk was about one in 1.4 billion, publishing our research…