Notes from the edge of civilization: March 29, 2025

Moo-topia is here; cloud seeding is real, but you're crazy for noticing; multiple nurses at the same hospital get brain cancer.

The milk for your next bowl of cereal might come from a petri dish. A company called Brown Foods — yes, that’s really the name — has officially entered the dairy ‘arms race’ (yes, there is a proverbial arms race) with a product called UnReal Milk, a fully lab-grown, cow-free “complete dairy solution.” If that sentence alone doesn’t make you gag, wait for the kicker: it’s made by growing milk-producing cells in a tank of mystery goo, powered by AI bioprocessing.

(We do wonder, however, whether Brown Foods — unironically run by Indians — blew all their budget on bioreactors and forgot to hire a half-decent copywriter? “UnReal” sounds like an inadvertent admission: This milk is fake as hell and we’re proud of it!)

This is the next brick in the dystopian food wall — where everything is synthetic, nothing is local, and the entire food supply is brought to you by biotech firms with ESG funding and zero tastebuds.

This isn't a quirky Silicon Valley science project. It’s a piece of a much larger puzzle — where you're nudged, herded, and eventually coerced into consuming lab-grown, genetically engineered Frankenfood whether you want it or not. Soon enough, your Beyond Meat™ burger will come with UnReal Milk™ cheese slices and a QR code to prove it contains no trace of cow, soil, or sunlight. Just ‘vibes’ and venture capital.

UnReal is the antithesis to this weekend’s Collapse Life podcast, and very much in line with one of the earliest Collapse Life stories that hinged on the 70s hit film, Soylent Green.

---

Cloud seeding — the decades-old practice of injecting particles like silver iodide into clouds to induce rain — is real, increasingly used worldwide, and poorly regulated. Countries like China deploy it for water security, while the US used it militarily in Vietnam (Operation Popeye). The UN banned hostile weather modification decades ago, but the treaty is limited and not universally signed.

France’s military think tank says the biggest threat from cloud seeding might not be ecological but psychological. In a global trust vacuum, every flood smells like sabotage. Every drought breeds suspicion. And every storm is an act of war if you want it to be.

"If a country learns that its neighbor is changing the weather, it will be tempted to blame the neighbor to explain a drought," according to a research note published this month by Marine de Guglielmo Weber, a researcher at France's Strategic Research Institute at the Paris Military School (IRSEM).

While France’s military researchers are sounding alarms, over at CNN the real problem is you asking questions. In the same breath as calling efforts to ban geoengineering the stuff of conspiracy theorists, CNN says “unproven and off-the-wall theories” are sowing distrust in the government and “could prevent actual scientists and engineers from slowing the breakneck pace of global warming.”

Maybe people wouldn’t be so “conspiratorial” if the people in charge didn’t keep trying to gaslight us. We can look up and see the silver iodide raining down — but we’re not supposed to notice, and definitely not supposed to legislate against it.

---

At Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts, up to 10 nurses working the same operating room have all developed rare, aggressive brain tumors. The odds of this happening by chance? Statistically slim. But don’t worry — officials say it’s definitely not the hospital environment.

"After we became aware of reported brain tumors in individuals who currently or previously had worked in the same area of the hospital, we conducted an extensive investigation in collaboration with the Department of Occupational Health and Safety, Newton-Wellesley Safety Officer, radiation and pharmaceutical safety offices, and external environmental consultants.

The investigation found no environmental risks which could be linked to the development of a brain tumor.”

CBS reports that radiation and air quality tests came back “normal,” and no further investigation is planned. The state health department and hospital leadership are “monitoring the situation.” Translation: doing nothing and hoping you stop paying attention.

One of the nurses, who worked there for 24 years and developed glioblastoma, told her family she “knew it came from that OR.” But hey — trust the experts, ignore the cluster, and keep scrubbing in.

If this were a gas leak in Congress, they'd evacuate the building. But a bunch of nurses with terminal brain cancer? Just a coincidence. Move along.

---