DL Open Thread Sunday Magazine: May 24, 2026

In Praise Of–Miller Lite?:

One of the many humiliations that arrive in your 30s is the grudging recognition that a parent was right about something. For some people, their parents were right about a financial decision they recommended, or a romantic relationship they disapproved of. My dad was right about a 96-calorie American lager produced in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“It’s hard to get in trouble drinking Miller Lite,” was my father’s advice, dispensed repeatedly throughout my young adulthood—usually after he’d spied me carefully tipping an over-hopped beer out of a florid can and into a stupidly shaped glass. For years, I wrote off his wisdom as the curmudgeonly philosophy of a man too stubborn to join the Craft Beer Revolution. Why would anyone still drink mass-produced piss water when you could stock your fridge with $21 four-packs made with love and genius by regional artisans? It was like watching a black-and-white boob tube in the age of 4K flatscreens.

In my 20s, I turned enjoying craft beer—and booze in general—into a minor hobby. I stood in long lines to buy limited releases from various “gypsy brewers.” I nursed recurring obsessions with Monastrell wines from Jumilla. I hunted down vintage bourbon; National Distillers–era Old Grand-Dad was a particular fixation.

In retrospect, I can see that this was something of a defense mechanism. After growing up working-class, I went to college and then graduate school at fancy private institutions, which put me in constant contact with people who had family money, or were simply from hipper places than I am. You may have a trust fund and come from a stock of people who “summer,” I reasoned, but I’ll be damned if you know more about food or alcohol than I do. I viewed drinking decent tipple as part of what it meant to be civilized. To some extent, I still believe that. But now I also believe that most of the time, it’s Miller Time.

The conversion happened slowly. It began with a search for a beer that I could drink while watching Monday Night Football, but that also wouldn’t leave me feeling grimy when I woke up to teach my 8 a.m. class. As I entered my third decade of life, I’d found that microbrews, with their high alcohol content, made me feel a bit suboptimal the next day, even when I consumed only one or two. Before long, my Miller Mondays made me realize that this 4.2 percent ABV “macro-lager” had many applications I had not previously considered: It was a treat for mowing the lawn. It prevented me from getting too drunk at weddings. It could be reliably consumed during a hot-afternoon cookout without requiring me to take a nap. This small pleasure was even cheap! At my local bottle shop, a sixer of tall boys rings out at $7.49.

I’m not sure, but I don’t know if I’ve ever downed a Miller Lite.  Their commercials, though?:

Are You A Science Obsessive?  Does This Bother You?  I’m not, and it doesn’t.  But YMMV:

On the advice of my teenage son, I recently went to the cinema to see Project Hail Mary. The film has science in it. I am a science writer and so he was convinced I would like it.

Imagine my surprise partway through, however, when I found myself seething so hard I thought I would combust. Ryland Grace – the main character and a molecular biologist who should have known better – had just put two plastic tubes into a centrifuge NEXT to each other!

To state the glaring obvious, this is not cool. Just think of the strain on the central spindle! Even the most junior lab technician knows that the correct way to load a centrifuge is by balancing the samples symmetrically. Two tubes? Place them on opposite sides of the finely tuned machinery. What are we? Luddites?

Let me be clear what rattles my cage here. While many bemoan the lack of scientific accuracy in films, my complaint is more niche. I don’t mind when directors ride roughshod over the laws of physics or stretch the limits of scientific credibility, as long as it furthers the narrative. But when they make small, sloppy, seemingly inconsequential scientific mistakes, it makes me want to chuck my popcorn at the screen.

In a similar vein, I don’t wince when the Millennium Falcon disregards Einstein’s theory of special relativity and travels faster than the speed of light, because Han Solo is a busy guy. He has things to do and places to go. Yet, a small part of me dies when the same starship roars through space, because there is no sound in a vacuum.

The premise of Jurassic Park rests on the assumption that dinosaur DNA can be obtained from fossils. It can’t. The oldest DNA retrieved is 2m years old. Dinosaurs died out 66m years ago, making their “de-extinction” impossible. I’m fine with this misinformation because it drives the plot, but I break out in hives when I see the supposedly blood-sucking mosquito whose belly the scientists extract dino DNA from. The insect’s characteristically downturned proboscis tells me it is a nectar feeder.

I’m not a pedant but minutiae matter. Scientific knowledge, in all of its gloriously geeky detail, is hard won, so please, film-makers, do sweat the small stuff. The centrifuge in Project Hail Mary isn’t just unbalanced, it’s unhinged. When it comes to seemingly trivial specifics, don’t take the easy option just because it looks or sounds good. Get it right instead. If you can’t do that, don’t bother making the movie at all. And if this is the hill I will I die on, so be it. I fall on my pipette with honour.

Yes, Shitty Coffee Is In Your Future.  And that’s even before the zillionaires hoard all the good stuff:

Most people don’t follow what happened to the rains in Brazil and have no idea what arabica futures are. Few people have strong opinions about Vietnamese robusta exports. But almost everyone notices when the bag on the supermarket shelf costs more, or when the café down the street adds another 30 pence to a cappuccino.

That’s exactly what’s happening now. Coffee really has become more expensive, and it’s not because of one single thing. Let’s have a look.

Coffee has become more expensive because the complex system that produces and distributes it is under strain from several directions at once. The hotter climate has made extreme weather more prevalent, which has damaged crops in major producing countries. At the same time, shipping has been costly. Then, the uncertainty in global trade came in like the cherry on a cake.

Taken together, those forces have pushed one of the world’s most familiar commodities into a more fragile, and more expensive era. This has been adding up for years, and it’s seemingly reaching a boiling point.

In 2024, world coffee prices rose 38.8% from the previous year’s average, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Arabica prices were 58% higher than in 2023, while robusta rose 70%. Then, on February 10, 2025, arabica futures in New York hit a record $4.3195 per pound during a burst of panic buying tied to tight supplies and weather worries in Brazil.

Arabica and robusta are the two main species of coffee grown for drinking. Arabica is usually smoother, sweeter, more aromatic, and more sensitive to heat and disease, while robusta is hardier, more bitter, higher in caffeine, and often used in instant coffee and cheaper blends.

Coffee is a fussy crop. Especially arabica, the smoother, more aromatic species used in many higher-end blends. Arabica likes cooler tropical highlands, stable weather, and just enough rain at the right time. It is the botanical equivalent of someone who insists they are “low maintenance” but can only sleep with a specific pillow and a fan on setting two.

When heat lingers too long, when rain comes at the wrong time or not at all, and when dry air pulls moisture out of already stressed plants, yields and quality can fall fast. Climate Central reported in February 2026 that the world’s top five coffee-producing countries experienced an average of 57 extra coffee-harming heat days each year during 2021 through 2025 because of climate change. Brazil alone averaged 70 extra such days annually. All 25 coffee-growing countries in the analysis experienced more coffee-harming heat because of climate change.

There’s lots more in this piece.  Bottom line?  Drink more now so that you can have a surplus when things get more dire.  At least, that’s what I’m doing.  Might even be Ol’ Blue Eyes’ second-favorite beverage: