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Enjoy this virtual experience of coughing loudly at a classical concert and annoying everyone in the audience. The more frequently you hit the "cough" button, the more the audience will shuffle around in their seats and whisper "shhhh" at you. — Read the rest
This doll-sized hot-water bottle from 1939 was made to sit on one's face. If you had a toothache, you could rest it on your outer cheek as you lay in bed.
This actually looks super useful, as it can be filled with hot water or crushed ice. — Read the rest
Enlarge / One of the medical clinics suspended by Mexican health authorities in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, on May 19, 2023. (credit: Getty | AFP)
Three more people in the US have died from fungal meningitis in an outbreak linked to tainted surgeries in Mexico, bringing the total deaths to seven, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
The total case count remains unchanged from an update earlier this month, with 34 cases in the US: nine confirmed, 10 probable, and 15 suspected. Health officials are investigating 161 others who may have been exposed.
The outbreak is linked to cosmetic surgeries involving epidural anesthesia at two clinics in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. Mexican and US officials suspect that a component of the anesthetic was contaminated, resulting in the pathogenic fungus Fusarium solani being injected directly into people's spinal cords. The tainted surgeries are thought to have occurred between January 1, 2023, to May 13, 2023, around when the clinics were shut down by local health officials.
Ministers are ultimately responsible for weakening the arts and humanities. They are taking the country backwards
The announcement that the University of East Anglia is to cut 31 arts and humanities posts – out of a total of 36 academic job cuts – has rightly prompted anger as well as dismay. UEA became a literary flagship among the new universities that opened in the 1960s. This year is its 60th birthday, and since 1970 it has been home to one of the most famous creative writing courses in the world: founded by the novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, its students have included Anne Enright, Ian McEwan and the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro.
There is shock, among alumni and observers, that the financial problems of the UK’s higher education sector now threaten such prestigious institutions. Once celebrated for their innovative approaches, 1960s campus universities were where different kinds of courses were developed. Creative writing is one example; media, development and women’s studies are others. In cutting the arts and humanities in these universities, managers and policymakers are turning back the clock – at a time when, arguably, there has never been a greater need for courageous innovation. Any idea that the risks are limited to the post-1992 universities should be junked.
Continue reading...Most university students supporting themselves say it is negatively affecting their studies, survey finds
The cost of living crisis is forcing more university students to take on more hours in their part-time jobs, with most saying that supporting themselves is affecting their studies, according to a new study.
More than half of the 10,000 students surveyed by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) said they did paid work during term time, with most saying they were using their wages to support their studies.
Continue reading...Graduates now owe an average amount of £45,000, Student Loans Company figures have revealed
Outstanding student loans in England have surpassed £200bn for the first time – 20 years earlier than previous government forecasts, as the number of students at universities continues to outstrip expectations.
The Student Loans Company (SLC), which administers tuition and maintenance loans in England, said that the balance of government-backed loans reached £205bn in the current academic year, including £19bn worth of new loans to undergraduates. The figure has doubled in just six years. It reached more than £100bn in 2016-17 after the coalition government decided to increase undergraduate tuition fees from £3,600 a year to £9,000 in 2012.
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If we want to move toward a world that meets everyone’s needs, we will need to get serious about the role of money on the left.
This is a wild story! So, in the late sixties, George Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic crew were tripping balls on LSD on their way to a gig in Pittsburgh. Billy Bates, one of the founders, thought he'd be clever and take a shortcut, driving right past a barricade. — Read the rest
How well-designed is your state's flag?
The post Design Matters: Critiquing US Flag Designs appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Cows are a significant source of methane emissions, primarily due to their unique digestive system. Milk and beef cows are ruminants, which means they have a specialized stomach chamber (called the rumen), which houses billions of microbes that facilitate the breakdown of fibrous plant material. The process is called “enteric fermentation,” and as these microbes work to digest the cellulose found in the cows’ diet, methane is produced as a byproduct. That’s a problem: The EPA identifies methane as being about 25 times more potent as CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Alga Biosciences leaps to the rescue, creating a new feed for cows that dramatically reduces how much burping goes on.
“Enteric methanogenesis, also known as cattle burps — is the single biggest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the world. During the digestive process of cows, sheep, goats and other ruminants, microbes in the stomach of these animals break down food into smaller components, such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats. As a byproduct of this process, methane is produced and released into the atmosphere when the animal belches,” explains Alex Brown, co-founder/CEO of Alga Biosciences in an interview with TechCrunch. “When we got into Y Combinator, we put all of our money at the time into academic live animal trials to test our product, and found that methane emissions from beef cattle were undetectable with our approach. This is the first time results of this magnitude have been observed in live animals.”
Reducing belching has a side effect beyond just the environment. Methane is full of energy, and Alga claims that roughly 12% of all the calories a cattleman feeds his cow end up being wasted in the form of methane burps. This is a massive hidden cost for farmers, and it poses a huge opportunity for re-directing those calories to meat and milk production. The theory goes that kelp-based feed additives provide a direct avenue to reduce anthropogenic methane emissions; it could also be a massive economic benefit for farmers.
The company raised a round led by Collaborative Fund, and the company now has raised a total of $4 million in funding. In addition to Collaborative, Y Combinator, Day One Ventures, Cool Climate Collective, Pioneer Fund, Overview Capital and others also participated. The company has also received a grant from USDA Climate Smart Commodities.
Caroline McKeon (co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer), Daria Balatsky (co-founder and Chief Technology Officer), Alex Brown (co-founder and CEO). Image credit: Alga.
“The best climate tech startups will build solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while being cheap, scalable and safe. We are thrilled that cattle farmers, like us, believe that Alga’s solution hits that trifecta,” said Tomas Alvarez Belon, investor at Collaborative Fund. “We are thrilled to support Alga Bio in this journey to create a methane-free world.”
The company is working on producing its feed additive for larger commercial pilots, and the company tells TechCrunch it can already produce at a scale of tens of thousands of head per day. There’s plenty of scale for growth; some sources estimate that there are around 1.5 billion cows in the world.
Alga Biosciences wants to help climate change, one bovine burp at a time by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
It is just over 200 years since the women’s suffrage movement began in Canada. Not even 100 years has passed since we were declared legal persons, and all women, regardless of race, won the right to vote. A mere handful of generations have passed (which, historically speaking, represent only a drop) since women won their sex-based human rights. And once again, our rights are uncertain.
I am of a generation of women whom feminists warned not to become complacent. I reaped the benefits of the sacrifices of first and second wave feminists. I took for granted that women had gained inalienable rights that could not be revoked. I have been in a long slumber of complacency.
As a therapist, I think a lot about the concept of “the shadow”: the power of that which we do not want to face within ourselves — things like complacency and fear. If we do not turn towards our shadow, it can obscure our consciousness and blind us to psychological forces that may become unseen drivers of our actions, such as misogyny.
~~~
I grew up in a radicalized, fundamentalist religious organization run by a hierarchy of men. Women were not permitted leadership roles that might allow them to disrupt the established power structures. The organization’s dominion was cult-like: people were instructed not to befriend anyone outside the organization and to cut off even family members who did not believe. Followers were convinced of an impending apocalypse — a doomsday that would never arrive.
The male fraternity of leaders claimed they possessed the one true interpretation of what God himself demanded from earthly beings. The organization’s views were often science-denying. They forbid followers certain life-saving Western medical interventions, and taught that dinosaur fossils were fakes, evolution was a lie, and humans were only a few thousand years old, created by an aged, male God. They brainwashed followers into believing magical stories of demons hovering nearby, waiting to enter followers’ minds if they were not vigilant against the intrusion of “misinformation” or evil from the outside world.
The organization’s leaders demanded converts believe that myths and lies were real. They interpreted biblical teachings literally in order to legitimize enforcing women’s subservience to men and to gender-stratified roles. We were taught that women were only an extension of men, because we were made from the original man — Adam’s — rib.
Dissent from the dominant narrative was prohibited. Followers who could not reconcile material reality and scientific facts with the magic and superstition the organization fed us were deemed heretics. Anyone found to be introducing ideas that challenged the approved narrative, no matter how rational, was labelled an apostate. Punishment was meted out through forms of humiliation, public shaming, and ostracism. Likewise, those who left on their own accord were shunned — treated as though they were dead.
~~~
I took for granted that, when I left at age 15, I would survive. I sought freedom and autonomy. I wanted to define myself as a young woman distinct from who I had learned I was under extremist, fundamentalist religious dictates — merely the rib of Adam.
So one cold fall evening, with several plastic grocery bags stuffed with clothing, I left. I used the money I had been saving for driver’s education to pay for my first month’s rent in a rooming home. In my room I had a small fridge, a countertop stove, a pillow, and a sleeping bag. Most importantly for a girl on her own, I had a door that locked.
I was courageous (and likely also reckless, given my adolescent brain’s propensity to underestimate risk), yet never reflected on how my courage rested on the backs of the women who came before me. It was only because of the relentless work of women who had fought for my freedom that I was able to leave and get a job, make money, and provide myself shelter.
I was struck by the freedom I could exercise by choice. I knew even at the most difficult times that there was hope because I could make choices that would determine the course of my life, for good or ill. No one would force me. I was free.
Decades passed and it never occurred to me that my rights could be precarious.
~~~
When I saw the attack on women’s sex-based rights begin to gain momentum in the West, in the form of gender identity ideology, alongside the hard left’s science-denying radicalism, I did not join the public outcry. I watched as the very same sort of magical thinking from the extremist religion I grew up in took over many faculties of post-secondary education. The academy — once a bastion for the pursuit of truth through critical thinking, science, and debate — began to look a lot like a religious cult of the left.
I watched as ideology moved from the academy into our cultural institutions and then through society. Some parts of history became acceptable to remember, and others not, creating selective cultural amnesia. It was suddenly a social justice right to spew hate and vitriol, or to deface, burn, or otherwise destroy cultural symbols and institutions. Science — the method of investigative observation, questioning, hypothesizing, and testing that helps create knowledge — was labelled a politically-biased, colonial “idea.” Not even math was immune, with some academics suggesting the “belief” that 2+2=4 was not reflective of “other ways of learning,” and therefore not always true.
Gender studies — an outcrop of postmodernism and constructionism — chipped away at the biological, immutable fact of sex differentiation, insisting the sex binary was not real. It posited that humans could be deconstructed into disparate parts and existed on “spectrums,” that perhaps dozens of “genders” existed, and that male and female were not fixed categories. Those who wanted to erase the sex binary weaponized both invented genders and pronouns, targeting any person who did not agree as “discriminatory.” As this ideology dismantle
When these beliefs were challenged using scientific evidence, data, or historical and present realities, in a further Orwellian turn, truth itself was labelled bigoted.
It may have been institutions that introduced these ideologies and newspeak, but it is individuals that ushered in the crisis we face now. It is only because of each person’s willingness to ignore, conform, pretend, and lie that we allowed science-denying ideology to first become common vernacular, then the dominant narrative.
I had lived this before. Humans with rational faculties will abandon reason, sacrifice their own family members, and subscribe to outrageous and harmful ideas in order to maintain their position in the tribe.
I watched from the sidelines as women were deconstructed into non-entities, and children were set on by those determined to dismantle immutable categories dictated by nature. I sat in a terrible mix of fear and lethargy until I could not anymore.
I needed to investigate my shadow.
~~~
I understand now that I was acting from a part of me that still subscribed to the internalized misogyny I had learned in my youth. I knew that taking powerful action — to not comply and to speak the truth — meant that I had to confront two specific fears.
One I had met before in the rare, but dangerous, predatorial men with whom I had crossed paths as a young, vulnerable girl on her own. And, as any woman who has been intimidated, overpowered, or physically or sexually assaulted by a man knows, men and women are very different indeed. This is a physical reality that vulnerable women face more often. If a man loses his way and combines predatorial behaviour with physical prowess, he becomes a danger that can not only harm, but kill us. For women, sex-based rights, such as the right to women-only spaces, are not optional.
In 2017, trans-identified people were granted special rights and protection under the Canadian Human Rights Act, preventing discrimination on account of gender identity or expression. This was not enough for some. The demands became intrusive, as self-identified transwomen insisted also on access to women’s spaces and sports.
Some women said “no.” These women have been subjected to an endless barrage of threats and hate from trans activists who demanded subservience.
This scared me for a time. No one wants to meet the mob.
I don’t believe that most men are misogynist or that all transwomen want to destroy women’s rights and safety. But we must ask what it says about a man — trans-identified or not — who refuses to respect a woman’s “no.”
It is important also to note that there are numerous women supporting this ideology, allowing men to trample over women’s boundaries. The phenomenon of women offering up women’s identities and sex-segregated spaces to men who demand it may be related to internalized misogyny, but is more likely a part of what Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz described as the confusion of offering the teat of compassion when one should be wielding the sword of discernment. These women believe they are helping a marginalized population, but they are hurting half the population and abandoning their own, and others, rights and safety in order to “be nice.”
Fear also visited me because I had previously experienced exile from the group. Although I gained my freedom and autonomy at a young age, it came at a high cost: losing my family and community. Shunning takes an incredible psychological, emotional, and physical toll. Those of us who want to say “no,” and fight to protect our sex-based rights know we will be subjected to a modern version of old-fashioned mobbing and shunning. The deep slumber of unconsciousness can be a compelling alternative to facing our fear.
Yet there is a driver even more powerful than fear, and it is the protective and courageous force of love. A woman who watches another woman be harmed and does nothing psychologically damages herself. Women also cannot collectively watch children become victims of delusional ideologies and still face the mirror. Ignoring our protective instincts demands an incredible separation from ourselves. When we are connected to love for self and other, we know both rationally and instinctively that we have a responsibility to protect each other and children.
~~~
We are at a profound historical moment. In a few short years, efforts to erase biological women have snowballed. The ideologies that seek to deconstruct all categories and boundaries of protection are now dominant narratives in our mainstream media, public school systems, legal and justice systems, workplaces, and even, disturbingly, our medical and related health institutions. It is a surreal experience to witness ideology get into bed with science.
Community organizations across Canada have quickly fallen in line. Women’s centres have opened their doors to “self-identified women,” obliterating long-standing community supports for women. Even women’s rape shelters are open to biological males. The oldest rape crisis centre in Canada, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, was subject to vitriolic attack after refusing to allow access to biological males. The shelter was targeted with hate. Dead vermin were nailed to their door. “F**k TERFs” and “Kill TERFs, trans power” was graffitied across their windows. Activists petitioned to have this community pillar’s funding pulled, and Vancouver City Council caved. The shelter did not. They were attacked for saying the one word perpetrators of aggression or violence against women do not respect.
In 2017, Canada’s Liberal government paved the way to compromising women’s sex-based rights when they passed legislation ostensibly to protect people from discrimination based on gender identity and expression, but which far exceeded its purported aim. These laws entitled activists to manipulate language, which is what allows us to speak about and understand reality, so women could no longer be spoken about. Progressives applauded such female-obliterating language. Women became “birthing people” and “uterus-bearers.” They produced chest milk. A woman might have a penis, or male gametes. A woman was a thought. A woman was a feeling. A woman was a fiction.
Around the developed world, men who self-identified as women were allowed into women’s prisons, health centres, bathrooms, shelters, changerooms, and gyms. Men were self-identifying as female competitors in women’s sports. These men started smashing records. Women who had worked their whole lives to reach their competitive potential were being beaten by biological men. It was — it is — unbelievable.
In 2023, we are at the precise place feminists warned we would arrive should we fall into complacency. Hard left extremism, fervently religious in nature, has pulled us nearly to the nadir of its radicalized, science-denying demolition of rights and protections. Science denial harms women and children the most. It defines women as non-persons, viewing them instead as subjects of men, and uses children in harmful ways as pawns of radicalized ideologies.
In Canada, we are led by a head of state, Justin Trudeau, who is leading the demolition, declaring “transwomen are women,” and whose government has paved the way for the decimation of women’s sex-based rights and the ability to differentiate ourselves autonomously as persons from men.
We must make conscious what has been alive in the shadows all this time. There are still some men who believe women’s identities belong to them. To them, women are only a rib of Adam, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. This historical moment is evidence of the society we create when we fall into slumber, refuse to see our shadow, accept myths as reality, and deny science and history.
Women have historically been refused legal personhood specifically and only because of our sex. The purpose of the women’s suffrage movement was so we could take equal part in the political system, just like the only other sex: men. This was not only so we could participate fully in public life, but so we could vote in favour of our own interests.
Those of us who have been complacent are waking from a long slumber precisely because the threat of not facing the shadow of cultural misogyny is so high. Each time those who want to erase women threaten or intimidate one of us, they wake up legions more. As our right to exist as biological beings unique from men, to choose women-only spaces, and to represent ourselves are again being colonized, we must not allow ourselves to shirk from fear but face it. Women know we are not a fiction. And we will force leaders who dwell in the shadows, believing we do not exist, back into reality when as embodied females we enact our legal right to vote and remove them from power.
Carla Duda is a therapist and author of the upcoming book, “The Art & Practice of Responsibility: Improve relationships, create meaning, foster well-being.” Learn more about her work and writing on topics like ethical therapy, relationships, and parenting at carladuda.com.
The post Adam’s Rib: I escaped a fundamentalist religion only to find women’s rights under threat on the outside appeared first on Feminist Current.
Herkimer, dubbed the worlds largest beetle, is a 16 x 10 foot Hercules Beetle statue who lives in Colorado Springs. This gigantic bug has guarded the entrance to Rock Creek Canyon along Highway 115 for over sixty years. Herkimer is located right next to the Colorado Springs Bug Museum. — Read the rest
The original Taco Bell building has been ripped out of the ground for safekeeping. In 2015, the first ever Taco Bell restaurant was uprooted from its original location in Downey, California, and driven down interstate 5 to the Taco Bell HQ in Irvine, CA. — Read the rest
In Italy Father’s Day is recognized on St.Joseph’s saint day, which is today. And I have to say given Joseph’s role in Jesus’s birth, there’s a strange subtext to the day here Anyway, I spend much of both the Italian and American Father’s Day quoting from the first episode of the horror omnibus Creepshow (1982), which is appropriately called “Father’s Day.” It’s a story of a wealthy, homicidal patriarch that is murdered by his daughter after having her lover killed in his ongoing campaign to control her love life. It’s an awesome episode, and everything is narrated by the bored, dissolute heirs of this fortune while they’re waiting for their great aunt Bediliah to arrive to celebrate Father’s Day, which happens to be 7 years after she murdered the pater familia.
Creepshow: “I want my Cake, Bediliah”
The line repeated throughout the episode is by the tyrannical patriarch, who belligerently cries, “I want my cake!” while banging the table with his cane. And that’s what I find myself saying again and again on this hallowed day. I often preface this demand with some context, “It’s Father’s Day, and I want my cake!” And once I get it I say, “It’s Father’s day, and I got my cake,” the latter being a reference to the end of that episode, but no spoilers here. Anyway, I’m not sure why Creepshow continues to be a huge touchstone for me on a regular basis 40+ years later, but it is. The other thing I find myself exclaiming histrionically when the occasion calls for it is “I can hold my breath for a long time!” which is a quote from the third episode of Creepshow called “Something to Tide You Over.” You just have to see that one, which is my all-time favorite.
Creepshow: Lost Reception
Also, while we’re on the subject of Creepshow, it’s worth noting the “Father’s Day” episode also features a young Ed Harris doing an impressive series of disco dance moves:
A Young Ed Harris doing the sprinkler move
I love Creepshow, and all these GIFs were actually taken from the bava archive during the heady days of the Summer of Oblivion. I went on a little Creepshow tear in June 2011, and the tale of the blog confirms that. Speaking of GIFs, I’ve been watching a bunch of Yasujiro Ozu‘s films recently, and I got an idea for an interesting GIF project for my house. I ordered the Blu-ray and will be trying to make really high quality GIFs from Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon (1962) because I think that film is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and like the first episode of Creepshow, it is all about fatherhood I’ll try and write about my Ozu GIF project once a figure a few things out, but until then 2011 is a little something to tide you over
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