I haven’t seen confirmation that this is real rather than staged… but it seems real enough. I *want* it to be real.
May 192022
May 192022
Y’all may have noticed that over the years I get kinda twerked when I hear about a local cat that has been abused by a human. A lot of this is of course because I like cats and cannot countenance abusing them; and a lot of it is that abuse of a cat is a damn big sign that abuse of humans is coming. And well what do you know, it turns out that the Buffalo mass shooter, a left-wing white supremacist nutter, did horrible things to a cat. What’s more, he published reports of this online. Given that he was on law enforcement radar, this *should* have been picked up on.
Buffalo mass shooting suspect wore hazmat suit to school once in-person learning resumed
The hazmat suit thing, I dunno. It may have been that the governments efforts to create fear among the public worked especially well on this kid. Or it may be that he was having a laugh. I could believe either. But later the story relates that on March 25 he described repeatedly stabbing, beating and eventually beheading a feral cat that had attacked his pet cat. I get being irritated that a feral cat has attacked your pet. But the description of his response to this is wholly bugnuts. It was the sort of thing that should have gotten him a nice little visit from the sort of people who should pay nice little visits to kids who are demonstrably wacko.
And on the subject of mass shootings, here’s one from a few days ago that received virtually none of the media traction that the Buffalo shooting did. There are a few important differences:
- The Milwaukee incident resulted in 21 injuries, but no deaths.
- The Milwaukee incident had at least 11 arrests.
One might argue that the Milwaukee incident is less important than Buffalo because there were fewer deaths. But I would argue that incompetent marksmanship is no reason to not pay attention to the attempt. I would argue that a mass shooting involving perhaps a dozen or more shooters is more important than one lone wacko. Lone wackos are… well, alone. But groups? That’s *bad* on a whole other level.
May 182022
What fresh hell has 2022 done brung us? Monkeypox.
First case this year of mysterious monkeypox virus reported in US
And…
UK confirms more cases of monkeypox
And…
Portugal finds 5 monkeypox cases in men as outbreak spreads
And…
Monkeypox alert in Spain after 23 people show symptoms
Monkeypox is a relative of smallpox, but less utterly horrifying (one straight is 10% fatal, the other is 1% fatal). At least in its current form. What a future mutation will bring… shrug.
How serious is monkeypox and what are the symptoms?
It can be transmitted through the air, riding on respiratory droplets, but it seems like a lot of the current cases were transmitted the old fashioned way: bangin’. Under normal circumstances, this disease would be fairly straightforward to stop transmitting… but given that the bulk of the people who have been determined to have caught the disease caught it via male-to-male bangin’… well, I’m old enough to remember the 80’s, and how telling people to Stop Doing That wasn’t even allowed *then,* and *that* disease was 100% fatal. Time from infection to display of chickenpox-like symptoms – fever, lesions, etc. – is about ten days, so a bit of self control would go far in shutting this one down.
May 182022
Washington gas stations run out of gas, add extra digit in anticipation of $10 dollar prices
Neat.
And then:
Dow drops more than 1,100 points, retailers’ profits crushed by inflation
Everything is going to be vastly more expensive at the same time that people will have less money. *AND* at the same time that large numbers of “migrants” are being allowed in, while anyone who complains about it – or even *notices* it – will be tarred as a racist/white supremacist/conspiracy theorist/domestic terrorist.
May 182022
Expert hired to run DHS’ newly created disinformation board resigns
Always remember: this Administration decided that the best person to helm a “board” designed to fight “disinformation” fought hard to support disinformation in order to protect this Administration.
Didn’t last as long as CNN+. There is still hope to be found in the world.
May 172022
Its cool and all, but to be really practical the suit would need some sort of powered exoskeleton and an intelligent control system. As currently built it requires the pilot to have considerable upper body and arm strength. I would suspect that mountain rescue services might make use of something like this, but mostly for scouting; the actual medical services would probably come in the form of some sort of smallish VTOL vehicle, something that can carry a medical professional up and carry the victim down (a second unmanned VTOL, or the same one after the patient delivery, can retrieve the paramedic).
May 162022
This is all I’ve seen of Current Year Looney Tunes. It looks like they decided to hire the folks behind Ren & Stimpy.
May 162022
The first part of the headline reads:
Vladimir Putin is ‘quite seriously ill’
From that, most people will probably go “woo.” But then they read the rest of the headline:
…says former spy who wrote Trump Russia dossier
And the story is promptly buried under a mountain of well-deserved skepticism.
May 162022
Emphasis on *may:*
830-million-year-old microorganisms in primary fluid inclusions in halite
In short, bacteria, algae and other simple organisms were trapped in brine which eventually was encases within halite (“rock salt”) in Australia 830 million years ago, back when a few algal cells clumping together was the height of complexity. These simple organisms are of course dried out… but that drying may (*MAY*) have preserved them stably enough that some might (*MGHT*) be revivable.
It is a valid question: “Ummm… should we be reviving critters what been dead nearly a billion years?” One argument would be “sure, what the hell,” because we’ve had 830 million years to evolve way past any threat they might pose. The other point of view is “Have you never watched any science fiction?!?!” and assume that 830 million years may well have evolved us so far away from them that there’s essentially no link, and no remaining understanding of how to combat them.
Quoting the paper:
Are microorganisms in Browne Formation halite alive? Some halophilic microorganisms, such as Dunaliella algae, shrink and greatly reduce biological activity when host waters become too saline; these algal cells may be revived during later flooding events (Oren, 2005). Survival of bacteria and archaea in primary fluid inclusions in 97 and 150 ka halite have been described (Mormile et al., 2003; Lowenstein et al., 2011). The oldest known halite from which living prokaryotes have been extracted and cultured is Permian (ca. 250 Ma; Vreeland et al., 2000). Therefore, it is plausible that microorganisms from the Neoproterozoic Browne Formation are extant.
Possible survival of microorganisms over geologic time scales is not fully understood. It has been suggested that radiation would destroy organic matter over long time periods, yet Nicastro et al. (2002) found that buried 250 Ma halite was exposed to only negligible amounts of radiation. Additionally, microorganisms may survive in fluid inclusions by metabolic changes, including starvation survival and cyst stages, and coexistence with organic compounds or dead cells that could serve as nutrient sources (e.g., McGenity et al., 2000; Schubert et al., 2009a, 2010; Stan-Lotter and Fendrihan, 2015). One such organic compound, glycerol, produced by the cellular breakdown of some algae, may provide energy for longevity of coexisting prokaryotes (Schubert et al., 2010; Lowenstein et al., 2011). Furthermore, both non–spore-forming and spore-forming prokaryotes may have advantages for long-term survival in fluid inclusions. Non–spore-forming prokaryotes are continually, but minimally, metabolically active, so they are able to repair DNA should it be necessary (Johnson et al., 2007). Alternately, spores formed by prokaryotes may provide another way of longterm survival in a dormant state (Vreeland et al., 2000; Lowenstein et al., 2011).
Personally, I fully support an effort to revive these critters and study them. They’d be a fascinating look into the incredibly ancient past and at how life evolved. Of course, the best place for this research would be in the underground Wildfire facility a few miles west of Clavius Base.
May 162022
One of the “lesser” news incidents in the last day or two was the mass shooting at the Laguna Woods church, lesser because the shooting was not carried out by a politically exploitable person based on a politically exploitable ideology. Still, it appears that this was a political act, which surprised me… I figured based on minimal initial evidence that this was a case of someone disgruntled at either his church or family or something. But it seems to be more interesting: the church was filled with Taiwanese people, while the shooter was an import from Communist China, and reporting now is that he was P.O.ed at the Taiwanese for political reasons and had no links to this church… he chose them simply because they were Taiwanese. Was the shooter a good and faithful Commie? Was he annoyed that Taiwan refuses to knuckle under to the CCP? If so… expect this little detail to vanish like a fart in the wind. A trivial number of “far right” extremists, why, that’s a threat to national security of the highest order, while *millions* of actual communists? Pah. Piffle. Nothing to see here, move along.