A New Woodpile Report Is Out

You can find it here. Lots of good articles, but just a couple that in particular caught my interest:

• "The Surprisingly Solid Mathematical Case of the Tin Foil Hat Gun Prepper"--Medium. The author does a risk analysis (similar to flood risk assessments that he does in his real life job) and notes that "we see a 37% chance that any American of average life expectancy will experience at least one nationwide violent revolution." And that is considering how peaceful the United States has been for the last 200+ years. If we were like Germany or France, the risk would be much higher.
• "Over our heads: a brief history of panspermia"--Cosmos Magazine. Panspermia is the theory that life evolved elsewhere and was introduced to earth; and some supporters of the theory believe that we continue to be influenced by viruses or bacteria from space. The article notes:

        A recent journal paper argues that life did not originate on our planet, but arrived within comets and meteorites falling to earth.

        This life comes from a cosmic biosphere encompassing multiple galaxies. While this seems like science fiction, the paper, written by 33 authors led by immunologist Edward Steele of the C.Y.O'Connor ERADE Village Foundation in Piara Waters, Western Australia, is actually a revival of the notion of panspermia (meaning ‘seeds everywhere’), the belief that life came to Earth from space.

        Far from being a fringe theory, it has been a central feature of the scientific debate over the origin of life.