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Rated: 18+ · Book · Opinion · #2336646

Items to fit into your overhead compartment


Carrion Luggage

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Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.

This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.

It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.

It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."

I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
March 11, 2026 at 9:46am
March 11, 2026 at 9:46am
#1110382
This NPR article is a few months old, so don't panic.
Oh. Apparently, we weren't supposed to panic when it came out, either.

A Consumer Reports investigation has found what it calls "concerning" levels of lead in roughly two dozen popular protein powder brands — but says that's not necessarily cause for tossing them.

Of course not. After all, lead is known to cause cognitive decline, and cognitive decline in consumers is great for producers.

The nonprofit organization tested multiple samples of 23 protein powders and ready-to-drink shakes from a range of stores and online retailers over a three-month period beginning last November.

Also, it was a little late, even then.

The results, published on Tuesday, show that more than two-thirds of the products contain more lead in a single serving than Consumer Reports' experts say is safe to consume in an entire day.

"Tuesday" was last October.

Also, insofar as I understand these things, there's no safe level of lead.

The Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group representing the dietary supplement industry, released a statement on Wednesday urging caution in interpreting the study's results. It says that modern testing methods are sensitive enough to identify trace amounts of naturally occurring heavy metals, and that alone does not equate to a health hazard.

But lead is natural.

Consumer Report's study adds to a growing body of research into heavy metals in a variety of everyday products, from cinnamon to tampons.

Two items that probably should not be combined, regardless of lead levels.

The nonprofit Clean Label Project tested 160 products from 70 brands earlier this year and found that 47% of them exceeded California Proposition 65 safety thresholds for toxic metals.

Yeah, well, it doesn't matter there because in California, everything gives you cancer.

There is no known safe level of exposure to lead, which is present in many of the environments in which food is grown, raised and processed.

That's what I thought. Still, I imagine it's not possible to eliminate it entirely. If nothing else, decades of lead-additive gasoline spread the stuff all over everything via the atmosphere.

There's a lot more at the link, including questioning why they're pushing protein powders so hard in the first place. I'm not discussing this because of the specific product—I don't use protein powders, so it doesn't directly affect me—but for the larger insight into how they handle product contamination issues.

Unrelated: Tomorrow will mark one year of daily entries in this blog. My daily blogging streak is a lot longer than that, but I switched books last month, on the 13th. Will I look at another article, or do a personal update? I'll decide tomorrow.
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