Notes for August 16, 2026

Does vitriol make you feel special? — Harvard Gazette

Jackson and his colleagues analyzed more than 2 billion comments from 2,150 Reddit communities and found that both threads and communities became more negative over time, and that semantic differentiation drove that trend — that is, negative comments were more semantically unique from what had already been said. They then replicated their observational findings with an experiment that showed that social media users who were primed to be unique posted more negative comments than users who were primed to conform.

Facebook and Reddit both capitalize on rage bait. It's social networking 101. But even if they didn't, we just can't help being negative because it naturally drives engagement and gives us something new and edgy to say. Humans are just kinda shitty 🤷

Quitting alcohol changes the brain and can increase the risk of compulsive drinking – new research in mice

Well I guess I'll have to continue drinking exactly the right amount every day so I don't quit and risk becoming an alcoholic.

UCSF cannabis study finds unexpected heart rhythm results

There's no denying alcohol is terrible for you. Weed, on the other hand...

This study set out to find potentially harmful side effects of cannabis use and found nothing bad to say:

“As far as cannabis is concerned, we did not find evidence of harm in this study. And the possibility that there could be something helpful deserves future research.”

They gave ~100 different stoners a Fitbit to track glucose, heart activity, and sleep, and they found on the days they smoked, they actually showed less signs of what they call a "premature heartbeat" — an early sign of atrial fibrillation.

I've been smoking weed as long as I can remember. Maybe that's a negative in itself, but the only other drawbacks aside from short term memory loss are the munchies and being couch-locked all day. Oh, and short term memory loss.

How "blowing smoke up your ass" was a medical procedure in 1700s

I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. Unless you want me to, you know, for medical purposes 👉👈

Chinese animated movie branded “worse than AI” goes viral after just 200 people see it - Dexerto

According to Shanghai Daily, some viewers said it was worse than AI-generated clips. Meanwhile, other X user claimed that it still holds more value than something made by AI. One user wrote: “I will respect the most dog a** animation done by humans than the most polished animation done by AI.”

Right? At least it's human-made 😆 big Xavier: Renegade Angel meets Seaman vibes.