Guy Fieri is the key to a healthier America
Plus: What is the point of blockchain video games?
Guy Fieri is, in a lot of respects, a man’s man. Kind, loyal, unpretentious, gregarious. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, but he takes his work seriously.
One thing Guy Fieri is not is a mascot for health. His string of successful, long-running cable shows on Food Network are covered in cheese and grease — and are all the better viewing for it.
But the host of “Triple D” (the nickname he gives his Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives show) could help American men take a critical step toward health.
Guy holds the keys to a hot rod. Guy also holds the key to changing minds in men who think they don’t need to get a Covid-19 vaccine.
That’s the subject of a new story in this edition of Inverse Daily. Read more on that topic and more by scrolling through this daily dispatch. I’m Nick Lucchesi, editor-in-chief at Inverse. Thank you for being here this Friday with us.
This is an adapted version of the Inverse Daily newsletter for April 30, 2021. Subscribe for free and earn rewards for reading every day in your inbox.
If you could travel to the ocean floor, near tectonic plate boundaries, you might see the glow of lava spewing from an erupting deep-sea volcano.
Energy from deep-sea volcanoes could power the continental U.S. — New research suggests one deep-sea eruption could create a megaplume with enough power to juice the continental United States for the duration of the eruption, writes Hannah Seo:
If you could travel to the ocean floor, near tectonic plate boundaries, you might see the glow of lava spewing from an erupting deep-sea volcano. It would be the only light source around, illuminating cracks in the ocean floor and huge ejections of hot fluid with billowing clouds of volcanic rock fragments.
Those ejections are called megaplumes — massive columns of hot, chemical-rich water with volumes that can exceed 40 million Olympic swimming pools. And they are powerful. New research, published in Nature Communications, suggests one deep-sea eruption could create a megaplume with enough power to juice the continental United States for the duration of the eruption.
Related stories:
- Life may have been forged in violent underwater volcanoes
- What would happen if a supervolcano erupted?
- How volcano scientists are teaming up to stop the next big disaster
The Food Network strategy can convince men to get vaccinated — Conversations over how healthy traditional masculinity is aside, there are ways it can be used to the advantage of public health, writes Katie MacBride:
As of this week, roughly 29 percent of adults in the United States are fully vaccinated against Covid-19. But women are much more likely to be vaccinated than men. This is especially troubling because Covid-19 death rates in men are more than two times what they are in women.
“In the ‘90s, the Food Network was all Rachel Ray and lots of perfectly cooked food,” says Dan Cassino, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies masculinity. “That fits with the traditional notion of cooking, projecting a more feminine gender role than masculine. But in the late ‘90s and early aughts, you got competition cooking shows like Iron Chef.”
“There’s risk, there’s fire; there’s super spicy stuff. There's mastery of display, mastery of cooking,” Cassino says.
Even the hosts on the Food Network shifted from women to men, introducing now-celebrities like Gordon Ramsay and Bobby Flay.
Related stories:
- Jason Kander quit a mayoral election because of PTSD. More men can follow his lead.
- A basic fact of male biology may be responsible for men's short lifespans
- It's time for men to start talking about male infertility. I'll go first.
What is the point of blockchain video games? — An industry analyst and a founder of a blockchain studio discuss what blockchain could mean for the future of interactive entertainment. Mo Mozuch explores this emerging world with a new feature story:
About 6,000 years ago in a sweltering Sumerian stockyard that stunk like sheep shit, someone invented blockchain.
Well, the blockchain of 6,000 years ago — cuneiform. It was, as scholars have shown, a newfangled transaction recording system that applied innovative cryptography to existing technology. Replace the wedge-shaped codes on clay tablets with algorithmically encrypted data on a computer network and, baby, you’ve got a stew going. Cuneiform, like blockchain, was invented out of the desire to create a secure, transparent exchange. Nobody likes to get screwed, be it in sheep or Dogecoin.
Blockchain is most famously associated with Bitcoin and Ethereum, which use the technology to create secure currencies with real-world value backed by the time and energy spent encrypting them. It’s easier to clone a sheep than to counterfeit a cryptocurrency. The growing ubiquity of multi-million dollar NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and cryptocurrencies has pushed blockchain into the mainstream. And, unless you’ve been stuck in a Sumerian stockyard, you know that mainstream in the 21st century means gaming.
Related stories:
- Will Dogecoin reach 1 dollar in 2021? Here's what you need to know
- Will Ethereum overtake Bitcoin in 2021? Here's what you need to know
- Bitcoin: Tesla finally explains why it bought the cryptocurrency
Medicinal mushrooms aren't really magic.
Mushroom supplements: Four Sigmatic and four more options — Do mushroom supplements work? Sophie Putka tried five of the most popular mushroom supplements so you don't have to:
For someone who spends a lot of time writing about nutrition and fitness, I’m a crotchety skeptic of all wellness-tinged products that promise to “boost,” “elevate,” or “uplift” my body or my mind in any way. Sorry, but I will not touch that “energy-charged” turmeric shot unless it tastes really, really good. The same goes for bone broth, Bulletproof Coffee, and activated charcoal water.
I am a little more open-minded about medicinal mushrooms, however. There’s just something simultaneously alluring and repelling about them. From Alice’s run-in with a dual-purpose ’shroom which grows and shrinks her, to the Mario franchise’s alternately helpful and mischievous fungal interlopers, mushrooms represent both health and harm.
Related stories:
- How an expert psilocybin tester chooses award-winning mushrooms
- Magic mushroom therapy: Is the drug better than antidepressants?
- How an expert psilocybin tester chooses award-winning mushrooms
This baby mantis shrimp has zero chill.
Baby mantis shrimp pack a serious punch — Mantis shrimp are known for their blazing fast punches, and now researchers have discovered how soon after hatching they're able to unleash them, reports Bryan Lawver:
Mantis shrimp are some of nature’s most deceptive predators. Despite their size, the crustaceans punch above their weight with a strike that can kill prey in a single blow. They’re known for punches fast enough to break glass and boil the water around them through pressure.
While the adult mantis shrimp has been well-documented, scientists didn’t know as much about baby mantis shrimps’ abilities — until recently.
See the images to get the full story.
Related links:
- 5 scientific reasons why being in nature is good for the brain
- Life may have been forged in violent underwater volcanoes
- How we can save the Earth from the worst of climate change in the next 10 years
Let me know what you think of this daily dispatch by emailing newsletter@inverse.com. You can follow me on Twitter at @nicklucchesi, where I share some of my favorite stories from Inverse every day.
