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.
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).
This is all I’ve seen of Current Year Looney Tunes. It looks like they decided to hire the folks behind Ren & Stimpy.
The first part of the headline reads:
From that, most people will probably go “woo.” But then they read the rest of the headline:
And the story is promptly buried under a mountain of well-deserved skepticism.
Emphasis on *may:*
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.
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.
“Playmobil” toys aren’t my thing, not even waaaaaaay back when I was the target demographic. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the effort that went into the Playmobil Enterprise, not least because they went with the *real* Enterprise, not one of the nutrek Fakeprises. Makes sense: the JJprise has largely faded from the public conscience, and the STD/SNW Enterprise has, at least so far, virtually no traction, and has a *lot* of negativity to overcome. Go with the Enterprise that people actually *like.*
That said: at nearly $400, (note: it originally came out at about $500; Amazon lists it at about $380 on their site, but it seems to be $340 on the link below, a discrepancy I can’t explain) it’s a safe bet that this “toy” isn’t going to be given to too many five-year-olds, who likely aren’t going to be all that familiar with NCC-1701 anyway.
They’re selling off all their assets in Russia, and will “de-Arch” all their sites, meaning that under international law the McDonalds logos and whatnot will not be allowed to be used for any business in Russia. Given Russia’s dubious relationship with intellectual property and copyright laws, I kinda expect McDonalds to *seem* to still be in business, many of the existing locations being bought out and re-opened by some Kremlin-crony using the existing hardware and much of the staff. I *assume* that the bulk of their food ingredients were sourced from Russian providers; I would imagine that producing virtually identical menu items to what they made as McDonalds should be fairly straightforward.
It should prove interesting to see how McDonalds iconography gets mutated into Russian propaganda.
It’s in basic human nature to hold contradictory views from time to time. But where politics are concerned, this cognitive dissonance can be taken to a high degree of professionalism. Witness:
Much of this NPR interview with a New York Times reporter who penned a hit piece on Tucker Carlson focuses on Tucker’s repeated discussion of the “Great Replacement.” This is the notion that Democrats are importing large numbers of third worlders in order to change American demographics, as immigrants from the third world are much more likely to vote for free goodies, i.e. for Democrats. (This NPR piece aired a few days *before* the Buffalo mass shooting, so expect them to revisit it in light of their new opportunity to dance on graves.)
The reporter several times refers to “Great Replacement” as a “conspiracy theory” and “factually wrong.” And yet…
“…it harkens back to an earlier era, Carlson’s childhood and mine, when America was not just majority white but disproportionately and overwhelmingly composed of white citizens.”
“Disproportionately.” How can a nations natural population be “disproportionate?” Is Japan disproportionately Japanese? Is Quebec disproportionately packed with French speakers? No. The fact that the author believes that it was wrong for the US to have once had the demographics that it did – and now no longer does – does in fact point to a belief on the authors part that replacing, to some degree or another, the existing population with another one is a good thing.
As with virtually every other PC media piece that mentions “Great Replacement,” it is called racist… but it’s never explained *how* it’s racist, or explained why the facts about it are wrong. And how can they, when they gloat that, regardless of the motive, the end result is exactly what the “Great Replacement” theory says it would be? This “Replacement is a conspiracy theory, and it’s wonderful” ranks up there with “the Holocaust never happened, and it was a great thing” often touted by actual neo-Nazis.
… ordered by intensity. You didn’t know you needed this. But you do.