What I'm Reading (Oct. 31)

By Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA — Oct 31, 2024
In the spirit of Halloween, let's indulge in bite-sized everything – the week’s best brain candy. Beginning with the culinary heresy of full-sized Halloween bars and ending with RNA finally getting the spotlight (move over, DNA). The FTC’s giving us a treat by targeting those “never-ending subscriptions.” Throw in some fast-food receipts and political dining drama, and we’ve got a reading list.
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Given the title, I was initially opposed to the thesis, but I must admit the author won me over.

“As a descriptor, bite-size is both accurate and soulless. Though mostly a marketing term, fun-size is the right way to think about Halloween candy from a gastronomic perspective.”

A timely holiday piece from The Atlantic, Big Candy Bars Have No Place on Halloween. It could be about diversity or portion control. 


It is time to give RNA, DNA’s “little brother,” its props. While it enjoyed a moment during the Pandemic before it became a pinata for the anti-vax crowd, RNA has much to teach us. 

“There is one way RNA can survive outside a cell unscathed: in a tiny, protective bubble. For decades, researchers have noticed cells releasing these bubbles of cell membrane, called extracellular vesicles (EVs…Then, in the early 2000s, experiments … revealed that the RNA inside some EVs didn’t look like trash. The cocktail of RNA sequences was considerably different from those found inside the cell, and these sequences were intact and functional [and] the human cells take in the RNA messages and “read” them to create functional proteins they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to make.”

From Quanta, Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA.  For those interested in how language changes, the metaphor for communication is now text messages.

 

As the election draws near, more and more efforts are being made to differentiate the Dems from the Republicans. For example,

“To find out where Washington’s Democrats and Republicans eat, reporters “scoured” campaign reports for food-related receipts wherever they could find them. Establishing a $5,000 minimum for approximately 500 restaurants, they found 21,000 receipts that were worth $13 million.”

You can find the results at EconLife, Connecting Where We Eat To How We Vote. It is hard to say who has better taste, but the Republicans love fast food.

 

You would think that canceling a subscription is easy; of course, you know that this is untrue. Enter the FTC’s Click to Cancel regulation. However, the regulation, set to go into effect in six months, is only the latest salvo in the ongoing war. You have to know it is headed to the Courts.

“The FTC didn’t explicitly say what they were going to do early enough, thus there wasn’t enough time to comment. Etc., etc., mostly repeating what the various trade association lobbyists said. The idea is to leave a breadcrumb trail for the courts. If it goes in front of the right judge, then the regulation becomes “arbitrary and capricious” on process, and judges can use this to strike down these rules without taking on an unpopular policy position.”

From Matt Stoller’s Big, Lina Khan vs Planet Fitness

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