You may have heard about 'ocean acidification' and filed it under 'things that scientists warn about and that sound a bit scary but that I don't understand'.
So let's sort that out...
We've pumped a huge massive load of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and forests and stuff in general, but mostly fossil fuels.
That in itself is a problem because the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere acts like a sheet of glass on a greenhouse, letting heat in and letting less heat out.
You may or may not have seen a couple of the recent news stories about a potential remedy for *some* back pain triggered by infection.
Most of the articles have been absolutely awful at explaining what is going on, so let me have a quick go.
First off, the bacteria they reckon are responsible for some of the infections and some of the back pain are really common.
Cutibacterium acnes.
They're all over your skin. In your hair. Up your nose. In your mouth.
When they stay there, they're not normally a problem (although they can cause acne - the clue is in the name).
You might look at Trump's cabinet and the surrounding entourage and think that they're laughable and incompetent grifters, alcoholics, misogynists, racists, rejects, losers, and failures, and that because of that, they can't cause much harm.
Let me describe to you another group of incompetent grifters, alcoholics, misogynists, racists, rejects, losers, and failures.
Let's also look at a couple of other little details on this data...
Here's that data in a different format.
Rather than the line, we've got a bar chart - so you don't see the trends quite so clearly, but you do see the individual spikes of data.
I'm indebted to @GrayD001 and @karamballes for pointing out something astonishingly profound in this image.
I think this is *phenomenally important*...
I think this may be one of the most important threads I've ever written.
So I had kind of noticed it from the other way round... but then they both said something that flipped the whole thing on its head.
I've written a couple of threads about these rates of absence for students in England, and there are other important things to get from the image... but look at 2020/2021.
That's the school year that runs from September 2020 to July 2021.
Can you spot the odd-one-out detail.
Look carefully.
It's quite important.
And really tragic.
Seen it?
The combined authorised and unauthorised absence isn't any higher in Primary and Secondary schools hasn't risen yet in 2020/2021 (September 2020 to July 2021).