Wednesday Links (6/4/25)
Snake bites, crypto torture, & more
1. A guy in Wisconsin let 200 deadly snakes bite him and injected himself with 650 doses of snake venom, and now his blood may help scientists discover a universal antivenom. This story is wild on so many levels, but the upshot is that this self-described “nondegree scientist” may end up saving tens of thousands of lives every year.
2. Wealthy crypto investors are increasingly taking their digital wallets offline to prevent theft by hacking, enabling theft by torture. One guy “was hung off a roof ledge, shocked with electrical wires and attacked with a chainsaw as his attackers demanded he reveal his Bitcoin wallet password.” There have also been severed fingers, pistol whippings, and attempted kidnappings.
3. The murder rate surged in 2020, and it surged in pretty much every part of the country. Now it looks possible that 2025 could feature the lowest U.S. murder rate ever recorded (2014 was the previous record). Here in Baltimore, for instance, there were 54 homicides through May, beating the previous low of 65 through the first five months of 1977 (admittedly, the city had a lot more people in ’77).
4. Researchers at UPenn estimate that humanity is already below the replacement fertility rate. If this trend holds, global population will peak around 2055. All else aside, this has massive implications for how we fund government services, specifically with regards to supporting retirees.
5. Lego “currently produces more than 25 billion new bricks a year. Crucially, every single one of them has to fit with the existing stock of ~1 trillion bricks produced over the past 60 years.” This overview of Lego’s manufacturing precision is interesting throughout.
6. Airlines were charging solo passengers higher fares than groups of two or more because business flyers are usually willing to pay more. This is called price discrimination. Economists generally like it, while the public hates it so much that Delta and United stopped doing it due to backlash. Sure, charging solo flyers more sounds bad, but charging seniors less for a movie ticket or drinkers less for a beer during Happy Hour makes a lot of sense.
7. Most people think it’s okay to pay money for someone else’s hair, but (almost) no one thinks it’s okay to pay for someone else’s heart. Blood plasma and kidneys fall somewhere in the middle. The morality of trading stuff for money is a complicated, but very interesting, subject.
8. Related note: the recently reintroduced End Kidney Deaths Act, which would provide a $50,000 tax credit (over five years) to living kidney donors is a great policy. This would 1) save the lives of a lot of the 100,000 Americans currently waiting for a kidney and 2) save taxpayers billions of dollars because medical care for someone who needs a kidney is really expensive.
9. Another related note: The U.S. accounts for 4.2% of the world’s population but supplies around 70% of the world’s blood plasma. It’s no coincidence that we’re one of the few countries that allows plasma donors to be compensated. Here’s more on the incredible growth of the U.S. plasma industry.
10. This aerial video of the (potentially) $500 billion Stargate data center project should give you goosebumps. Seriously, this is straight out of a sci fi or fantasy book. We’re spending the GDP of Norway to build the infrastructure required to commune with man-made super intelligences.
11. One of the four strains of the flu has not been identified since 2020 and may have gone extinct during COVID.
12. I’m on the record predicting that women will close the gender wage gap over the next few decades. Whether or not I’m right, (I am), a majority of doctors and lawyers will be female in the not too distant future, so men need to get comfortable with the idea of earning less than their wives. Timothy Lee—a tech writer married to a doctor who pulled back from his career when they had kids—with a long-form essay on that.
13. College towns have spurred strong growth in the surrounding areas over the past few decades, but that’s about to change (at least for colleges without a big brand name). U.S. births peaked in 2007, meaning that the number of U.S. high school graduates will peak in 2026, the Trump administration is slashing funding, and cultural trends have already caused enrollment to decline. This is going to be bad, bordering on brutal, for many small and midsize towns (WSJ story, gift link that will work for at least some of you).
14. In The underrated power of not doing things, Matt Yglesias argues we’d be better off if politicians settled for doing less (or put another way, prioritizing better). I find this pretty compelling. If nothing else, it would save a lot of money (this article is behind a paywall, but you can read it with a free trial).
What’s Next
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