Brief – Others 2026-10-22

Worth Noting

A landmark reef report puts a number on coral collapse. Nearly all of the world’s shallow coral reefs are now critically endangered, with scientists projecting 96 percent of shallow reef ecosystems could collapse within 50 years if warming continues at its current pace, including parts of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a harder, more systemic number than the touch-healing and bleaching-recovery findings covered earlier this week, underscoring that even promising interventions are racing against a much larger structural trend.

Google is paying people to use less electricity so it can keep building data centers. The company is funding one of the nation’s largest “virtual power plants,” compensating homes and businesses for cutting usage during grid stress. It’s a telling admission that AI’s power appetite has outrun supply, and a preview of how utilities and tech firms will try to paper over the gap without building new plants.

Earth and Mars may not have formed the same way after all. New chemical clues and simulations suggest the two rocky planets have distinct origin stories, challenging the assumption that rocky planets in the same system all assemble from similar material in similar ways — a finding with implications for how we judge the habitability of exoplanets.

Does the shape of your skull shape your dementia risk? Researchers are cautiously exploring whether brain geometry influences Alzheimer’s risk, a provocative but still preliminary line of inquiry in a field desperate for new angles after decades of failed amyloid-focused drugs.

Rabies cases are climbing in several states, and officials aren’t sure why. A surge in animal infections has prompted a federal warning about rising human exposure risk, a reminder that a nearly-always-fatal disease most Americans consider a solved problem hasn’t gone anywhere.

Ultraprocessed food’s health risks may have nothing to do with “processing.” New research reviewed by Scientific American argues scientists still don’t know what actually makes ultraprocessed foods unhealthy, with some studies pointing instead at additives, fiber loss, or eating speed — complicating a decade of public-health messaging built around the “processed” label itself.

One Thing Worth Reading Deeply

The Proponents of “Dark Nutrition” Think Everything You Know About Food Is Wrong profiles the growing movement of Americans rejecting mainstream nutritional science entirely — embracing raw meat, rejecting fiber and vegetables, and building online communities around the idea that decades of dietary guidance were not just wrong but actively harmful. It’s a sharp, unsettling look at how distrust in institutions metastasizes into lifestyle, and how easily health advice curdles into identity. Worth the full read for anyone trying to understand why wellness and misinformation have become so hard to separate.