Indeed, this seems like less than a nuisance fine for a company that reported more than 13 billion Euro in earnings last year, on over $50 billion Euro in sales. Bayer press release. I wonder what the cost of cancer treatment was for all the people in New York that wouldn’t have gotten cancer but for the sale of Roundup.
Then again, the $10.9 billion settlement in 2020 seems more meaningful. The Guardian
I hadn’t thought about it this way, and I definitely agree. Similar communities on the same topic may evolve to offer a different vibe or different focus. The more a user interacts with the communities, the more differences they would discover (and appreciate??!?). Or people might just get frustrated and give up. Who knows. We are all humans, I suppose.
I’m really not sure how to solve for 1. So much of modern white collar work is patently pointless (or counterproductive). Definitely hard to stay engaged, especially when few of the benefits of increased productivity actually accrue to the folks doing the work. The disingenuous messaging of bullet 2 often highlights the difference in priorities between those who benefit from from increased productivity and those who just, you know, end up having to work more.
OP links to a 2014 study, but recent research as of 2022 continues to show promise. Pretty cool.
https://www.salk.edu/news-release/salk-researchers-find-a-new-route-for-regulating-blood-sugar-levels-independent-of-insulin/
“Previously, the lab showed that injecting FGF1 dramatically lowered blood glucose in mice and that chronic FGF1 treatment relieved insulin resistance. But how it worked remained a mystery.
In the current work, the team investigated the mechanisms behind these phenomena and how they were linked. First, they showed that FGF1 suppresses lipolysis, as insulin does. Then they showed that FGF1 regulates the production of glucose in the liver, as insulin does. These similarities led the group to wonder if FGF1 and insulin use the same signaling (communication) pathways to regulate blood glucose.”