News

Pickled Justice

A study finds a huge advancement in lung cancer treatment. Also, get out of jail if your friend is a cop, a school district sues big tech, your reality will soon be a bit more mixed, and a good pickle hunts slavers.

Endeavorance

Jun 5, 2023 — 3 min read

Massive breakthrough in lung cancer treatment

A massive years-long study has found that there is a drug which reduces the risk of death from lung cancer by 50% after surgery.

Basically, if you have lung cancer, then get surgery for said lung cancer and follow up with a drug called…osimertinib, your chances of dying drop by "unprecedented" rates.

It does have slight limitations, such as being mostly beneficial for people with a specific genetic mutation, but nearly a quarter of lung cancer patients worldwide have that mutation.

The results of the study are, according to people smarter than I am, "thrilling" and "practice-changing." Here is a very great quote:

Thirty years ago, there was nothing we could do for these patients. Now we have this potent drug.

Get out of jail free (if you're a friend of a cop)

Hey, so remember how I consistently remind you that all cops are bastards and that police unions are state sanctioned gangs?

Well that is because all cops are bastards and police unions are state sanctioned gangs acting on behalf of the owning class.

A NYC cop had a moment of clarity and raised issue with an internal practice he noticed: cops were giving out literal laminated cards to friends and family, and members of their police union were instructed to not mess with people holding those cards.

When this one cop spoke out, he was retaliated against by his superiors, and the police union threatened to expel him from their "protection" if he messed with someone who carried a card.

As a reminder: all cops are bastards, and police unions are state sanctioned gangs acting on behalf of the owning class.

School District vs Big Tech

The Howard County Public School System of Howard County Maryland is suing Big Tech.

They've filed a lawsuit against Meta, Google and TikTok, citing that these companies have worked to produce a tech landscape that preys on teens and causes irreparable psychic damage—oh, sorry psychological harm. Excuse me.

It's a fair point. Kinda. I mean, I think it would be silly to try and fully police what teens do on the internet. That's just gonna be what its gonna be, and if you think teens at large in 2023 care about Meta and Google as social spaces, I dunno what to tell ya. And while I'm not sure a school district is gonna take down Big Tech, I do think these massive tech companies are deeply, deeply under-regulated.

Just how mixed is your reality?

Apple's WWDC event starts today, with the keynote going up shortly after this newsletter goes out.

WWDC is Apple's annual developers conference, and while some years its really just developers-focused, this year it is expected that Apple will be announcing their "mixed reality" (VR) headset. There's a lot of speculation that its gonna be a kinda wacky product that doesn't really fit the original vision they had for it, but given that the VR space is dominated largely by clunky, obtuse headsets, it is genuinely going to be interesting to see what an "Apple take" on a VR headset will be.

Apparently Tim Cook originally wanted just glasses that could display stuff on them, but what they're likely about to drop is some kind of ski-goggle-lookin monstrosity.

On this day…

On this day in 1829, the HMS Pickle (amazing name for a ship, like top 3 tbh) captured an infamous armed slave ship called Voladora off the coast of Cuba.

While there have been several HMS Pickles, this particular Pickle embarked to suppress the slave trade, making it the only pickle that we can say for sure was against slavery.