Bill Melugin on Twitter - "Senior Center. Come join us. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. ocial distance. Stay safe *raging fire*"
"An incredible photo that encapsulates California in 2020 perfectly. Photo credit: @noahberger3884"
What's a Narwhal's Tusk For? - Scientific American - "Biologists have long debated the purpose of male narwhals’ tusks. The tusk, like those of elephants, are actually elongated teeth. And since narwhals are usually below the sea ice, it’s tough to see how they use their tusk... The top tusks thus appear to be like a billboard that shouts, “Look at me. I’m the biggest.” After all, only the strongest, best fed individuals can afford to produce such an ostentatious ornament. Of course, tusks can do more than just say, “Hey, how you doin’?”“But the fact that these narwhals always have these scars on them makes us think that it’s likely a communication structure that also functions as a weapon.”For Graham, there’s also a larger issue: some evolutionary biologists have recently proposed a hypothesis that groups of animals with elaborate sexual signals are more likely to speciate and diversify than those without."
How COVID-19 Decreases Weather Forecast Accuracy - Scientific American - "Meteorologists take advantage of weather data collected by commercial jetliners at different altitudes and locations. Fewer flights mean less data."
Old Art Offers Agriculture Info - Scientific American - "Pieter Bruegel’s iconic 1565 painting The Harvesters hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The work depicts peasants cutting stalks of wheat nearly as tall as they are.“Nowadays, if you walk through a wheat field, you basically see that wheat is about knee-height. The short stature is essentially a consequence of breeding from the second half of the 20th century.”... their interest in plants in artwork began with a visit to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia—where they noticed an odd-looking watermelon in an early-17th-century painting by Flemish artist Frans Snyders.“So if you think of a watermelon, you cut it through, it should be dark red on the inside. But that one appeared to be pale and white.”Biologist De Smet assumed the painter had done a poor job. But art historian Vergauwen had a different idea.“He says, ‘No, this is one of the best painters ever from that era. So if he paints it like that, that’s the way it must have looked like.’”Other paintings revealed that both red and white watermelons were cultivated during the 17th century. The color is determined by a gene that controls the pigment lycopene... carrots first started to be depicted as orange only in the 16th century, thanks to selective breeding for the beta-carotene pigment. And until the 18th century, European strawberries appear tiny in paintings—they then grew in size with the advent of crossbreeding with North American varieties... the team hopes to create an online research database of historical plant artwork. They seek the contributions of art enthusiasts around the world via the social media hashtag #artgenetics. But, they caution, the source paintings need to be realistic.“If you're going to use, for example, Picasso to try and understand how a pear looked in the early 20th century, you might be misled.”"
YouPorn Bans Starbucks After Starbucks Bans Porn On Its Free Wi-Fi
UberFacts on Twitter - "At George Washington's 1787 farewell party, attendees consumed 60 bottles of claret, 54 bottles of Madiera, 22 bottles of porter, 8 bottles of whiskey, 8 bottles of hard cider and 7 bowls of alcoholic punch. Only 55 people were at the party."
A History Of The Bible: Who Wrote It And When? - HistoryExtra - "‘The term the Old Testament is kind of problematic. How is that the case?’
‘Well, it's, in modern times, some people have said, some Jews and some Christians also have said that to call it the Old Testament implies that it's been superseded by the New Testament. It’s old and therefore superannuated. And so there have been various attempts to find ways of avoiding using the term, of which the main one is to call it the Hebrew Bible or the Hebrew Scriptures. And Hebrew Bible is probably established itself as the main term that is used in the academic world, within the church, and among people who aren't biblical scholars, the term Old Testament is still normal. And in the book, I tend to use it quite a bit, thinking that isn't necessarily a pejorative term, but just the standard term for these books that people will recognize. But to be more careful about it, one needs to say the Hebrew Bible. The problem about the term the Hebrew Bible is that some of the Hebrew Bible is actually in Aramaic, not in Hebrew at all. And the Bible for the early Christians was the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek. So in a sense, that's also got its misleading aspects...
‘Fundamentalist Christians are often great Christians, and I don't want to knock them but I don't think they're right in the sense that they think that the Bible is a kind of sacred monolith. That's my perception anyway of what they think and any part of it can illuminate any other part. And you can go to it for your marching orders for the day as it were, in a rather direct way. I know that's a rather attractive idea in some ways, because it means you've got an infallible book you can always turn to. It doesn't do justice to the enormous variety and the length of composition time and so on that lie behind this book. So I don't think fundamentals are correct. I don't think they're stupid because they, very often they're very sophisticated thinkers. And in fact, in order to try and show that the whole Bible is consistent, for example, you have to expand vast efforts of intellect. Because it isn't consistent. But I continue to think it isn't and that fundamentalism is wrong.’"
Avoiding offence is a fool's game, because offence can always be taken
The French Army Is Building Renaissance-Style Fortresses In Africa - "An engineering detachment from the French Armed Forces recently completed work on an unusual star-shaped camp at Labbézanga in northern Mali. It’s not the first of the country’s military construction projects in Africa that owe more to the era of the European renaissance period than the 21st-century... the bastions at the corners of the fort eliminate blind spots and permit defensive fire from protected positions. They are also fairly easy to construct using only limited building materials — primarily simple walls filled in with sand and earth, offering good protection against direct fire."
Sainsbury's removing Roald Dahl ‘hit her’ mug from sale after criticism from domestic abuse campaigners - "Sainsbury's is removing a mug from sale that features the words “hit her” following calls from domestic abuse campaigners.The blue and white mug, which costs £5.50, is printed with a quote from Roald Dahl's 1988 book Matilda.The full quote from the children's story is: “When at last the germ of a brilliant idea hit her, she began to expand on it and lay her plans with the same kind of care the Duke of Wellington had done before the Battle of Waterloo.” However, the quote that is printed on the mug is shortened and split up on different lines and in different fonts, so without context it can be read as: “A brilliant idea. Hit her.”"
Feminists have awful comprehension skills
German Turks still rooted in the east: study - "A study from the Center for Turkish Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany has found that most of the 3 million people with Turkish roots living Germany feel more strongly connected to Turkey than to Germany...
19.6 percent were strongly interested in German politics, 47 percent had little interest.
33.9 percent were strongly interested in Turkish politics, 30.7 percent weren't very interested."
Facebook - "Logic, Empathy, Honesty: The same media outlets that labelled questions about Hillary Clinton's health in 2016 as a "far right conspiracy" are now desperately jumping on "old man carefully walks down ramp" as if it's a serious news story."
The Simple Economics of Saving the Amazon Rain Forest (Ep. 428) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "DAILY: leaders in Costa Rica decided to put a price on rain forest.
That was in 1996.
DAILY: And it was basically the first time that was done in policy and finance. And what they launched was a payment system, the first ever at a country scale where they said if you protect or restore rain forest on your property, we’ll pay you. And the payments were pretty low, but it was amazing. They were about, I think, $50 per hectare or roughly $20 per acre per year. And that payment was enough to really slow and actually reverse deforestation rates."
Tomi Lahren blasts California governor for giving aid to illegal immigrants, while threatening first responders - "Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren didn't take kindly to California Gov. Gavin Newsom's suggestion that first responders will suffer if his state does not receive a federal government bailout, even as the Golden State gives unprecedented taxpayer-funded relief to illegal immigrants... Newsom doubled-down, suggesting that opponents of a bailout for the states are hypocrites... "I'm pretty dang sure Newsom would never actually cut worker pay and [anger] union bosses. No way," she continued. "That's who funds his political career, hence why we have trillions in unfunded liabilities in the state of California.""No," she concluded, "this is all an emotional ploy to pit President Trump and Republicans as the bad guys, the heartless ones who don't care about workers."When ... it is abundantly clear Newsom and other governors just like him are using coronavirus and public health to cover for decades of mismanagement.""
Yeyo on Twitter - @Kate_Kelly_Esq: "Rape did not exist among native nations prior to white contact."
"Prior to his first contact with the white man Gengis Khan always practiced enthusiastic consent."
@Kate_Kelly_Esq's bio, as expected: "Human Rights Attorney. Queer. Feminist. Host of @OrdEquality podcast! #ERANow Co-Creator @SacredSpace. She/her. #BlackLivesMatter". Blue tick, of course.
Facebook - I, Hypocrite: "YouTuber Skyrim Grandma announces she is scaling back streams for the sake of her health after receiving onslaught of patronizing comments"
"VG247 I don't know who you are or where you get your ideas from, but there was NO "onslaught" of patronizing comments!!! But yes I am scaling back my videos due to health. Most people on my channel are very nice. I do wish you would delete this so it would go away."
Video game "journalism"
Man arrested following another anti-Asian racist attack in Vancouver
Depending on who the aggressor was, this can be explained as people justly being upset at "gentrification", which is why, we are told, Jews in New York are being attacked by black people
Meme - "Thank you @BernieSanders for refunding my $500 donation."
"Really? How do I do that? Is there an email?"
"You just have to know the right people in his campaign. Thank God, because I am so hard up for money right now.
"Me too. I did a bad thing. I took out $1800 in further student loans to send to Bernie. I was thinking my loans would be erased, so no big deal. But I really need that money back now. My landlord can't be held off much longer. If you wouldn't mind sending me the email?"
Moral hazard doesn't exist, we are told
Answer to What does New Zealand do better than the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland)? - Quora - "There is one thing New Zealand does worlds better than Sweden, and I miss that: When you live in New Zealand, you feel triumphant for living in New Zealand, because there is a firmly entrenched culture of everyone patting themselves and others on the back for it. You really feel, through this constant affirmation you receive, that your life is as good as it can possibly get because now, you’ve made it to New Zealand.That feels awesome.This culture of self celebration also exists in Australia, the US, Paraguay, and Brazil, and it adds hugely to the way you see your life."
A boy's journey: 19 - I sailed around the globe - "It was time to load up with Swedish products for the export trade, but first a visit to a shipyard for the annual check up and bottom painting. The ship yard was near Luleå in the far north of Sweden, surrounded by the immense dark forests of the north. It was midsummer and the sun may have set but it never got dark. Many girls came to visit the ship during our shipyard stay. Some stayed overnight. One girl was determined to make love to the entire crew before she left again. I know for sure that she didn't succeed because I didn't open my cabin door that night... The cold food in the refrigerator would sometimes have tiny footsteps on it. Those pieces you avoided. The cockroaches that slunk into the refrigerator and walked around would ultimately become chilled and sluggish and easy to pick out... Next stop was Bombay in India, Mumbay now... The barber opened his box with tools, went clip, clip, clip and my hair was done, Next a shave around my ears and neck.Then - a swift move with the shaving knife and the sharp edge was against my adamsapple:"Pay now."I did, but my colleagues had lost the taste for a haircut by then.The explanation was simple enough. Had I taken three steps away from the barber's stool, I would have been lost in the crowd.Nowadays, I prefer barbers who are inside a room."
How India's single time zone is hurting its people - "India stretches 3,000km (1,864 miles) from east to west, spanning roughly 30 degrees longitude. This corresponds with a two-hour difference in mean solar times - the passage of time based on the position of the sun in the sky... a single time zone leads to a decline in quality of sleep, especially of poor children. This, he says, ends up reducing the quality of their education... sunset-induced sleep deprivation is more pronounced among the poor, especially in periods when households face severe financial constraints... back of the envelope estimates suggested that India would accrue annual human capital gains of over $4.2bn (0.2% of GDP) if the country switched from the existing single time zone to the proposed two time zone policy... tea gardens in the north-eastern state of Assam have long set their clocks one hour ahead of IST in what functions as an informal time zone of their own... Researchers at the National Physical Laboratory said the single time zone was "badly affecting lives" as the sun rises and sets much earlier than official working hours allow for. Early sunrise, they said, was leading to the loss of many daylight hours as offices, schools and colleges opened too "late" to take full advantage of the sunlight. In winters, the problem was said to be worse as the sun set so early that more electricity was consumed "to keep life active"."
