‘Colossal recently added $60 million in funding to move toward a 2027 de-extinction of the woolly mammoth.
The Dallas-based company is now working to edit the genes for the reincarnation of the mammal.
Colossal planned to reintroduce the woolly mammoth into Russia, but that may shift….’ (Popular Mechanic)
‘The fool is posting his own mugshot. Never surrender, after he just surrendered…’ (Boing Boing)
His ‘White Bird’ Captured a 1960s Dream
‘David LaFlamme, who infused the psychedelic rock of the 1960s with the plaintive sounds of an electric violin as a founder of It’s a Beautiful Day, the ethereal San Francisco band whose breakout hit, “White Bird,” encapsulated the hippie-era longing for freedom, died on Aug. 6 in Santa Rosa, Calif. He was 82.
His daughter Kira LaFlamme said the cause of his death, at a health care facility, was complications of Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. LaFlamme had seemed an unlikely fit for the role of flower-power troubadour. He was a classically trained violinist who had performed with the Utah Symphony Orchestra. He was an Army veteran. “When I was a young man, I carried my M-1 very proudly and was ready to do my duty to defend my country,” he said in a 2007 video interview….’ (New York Times obituary)
‘A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll provides some bad news for trump: Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, the cascading indictments are likely to take a toll on his general election prospects.
The survey results suggest Americans are taking the cases seriously — particularly the Justice Department’s 2020 election case — and that most people are skeptical of trump’s claim to be the victim of a legally baseless witch hunt or an elaborate, multi-jurisdictional effort to “weaponize” law enforcement authorities against him….’ (POLITICO)
‘“A woman is a woman and a man is a man,” stated the 76-year-old guitarist….’ (Jambase)
‘I’ve been studying nonverbal communication for over 50 years, 25 of them as an FBI agent specializing in decoding human behavior. I learned that humans are fairly good at lying — but they’re lousy at concealing their true emotions, especially when stressed. We reveal our unspoken thoughts in our bodies: faces flushed with embarrassment, lips pursed at unwelcome questions, fingers covering the neck dimple when discussing a touchy subject…
Here’s what I noticed at this debate:…’ (POLITICO)
‘9/11 Truther Vivek Ramaswamy won the hearts and minds of GOP voters last night by exuding the smarmy smugness of incel streamer Nick Fuentes while siding with Russia, calling for an increase in the combustion of fossil fuels, and for repeatedly interrupting the debate to hurl insults at the other candidates. Last night’s performance has cemented his reputation as a younger, nastier, and more energetic version of Donald Trump. DeSantis’s tactic of angrily yelling his answers didn’t have a chance against Ramaswamy’s stage-commanding presence.
Another selling point for Ramaswamy is the fact that the company that made him rich, Roivant Sciences, has never been profitable. For Republicans, “beating the system” in a Trump-like fashion is a badge of honor.
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Wikikpedia reports that while serving as CEO of Roivant Sciences, Ramaswamy engineered high-profile deals that brought in major investments and generated massive personal profits for himself through share sales, even as later failures wiped out billions in shareholder value. Ramaswamy was insulated from company losses because he held his stake partially through the parent firm Roivant. For example, when clinical trials failed for Alzheimer’s drug intepirdine from Roivant subsidiary Axovant, shareholders lost over 75% of their investment overnight while Ramaswamy pocketed cashed out $37 million in Axovant shares before problems emerged. In this way, Ramaswamy personally enriched himself on speculative biotech investments, while regular shareholders bore the greatest losses when expectations were not met….’ (Boing Boing)
‘Fulton County is bracing for the worst. trump has called for protests, but few supporters show up anymore. Perhaps they have seen the hundreds of January 6th adherents get charged, and the jail sentences that have been rolling out.
The donald has also shuffled the deck chairs on his Georgia representation, hiring a new lawyer that most assume is intended to represent well on TV….’ (Boing Boing)
‘donald trump, known for his orange makeup, blasted Fox & Friends for displaying photos of him looking, well, orange.
After complaining in one of his tantrum tweets, posted this morning, that the Fox program has refused to find nonexistent polls between Biden and himself that place him way ahead, the modest ex-president then raged against Fox for showing viewers what he looked like, and was especially upset that the program allowed trump’s chin to show….’ (Boing Boing)
‘On Monday, September 11, the 4K restoration of Jonathan Demme’s classic Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense will premier at the Toronto International Film Festival. Trailer below. In attendance will be David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, and Chris Frantz. This will be the first time the band will be together publicly since their 2002 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The four will participate in a panel discussion hosted by Spike Lee following the film. So far, there is no announcement of a performance. Meanwhile though, David Byrne has expressed his “regrets” about the acrimony within the band….’ (Boing Boing)
One of the two greatest rock’n’roll concert films of all time, together with The Last Waltz. Rewatched the latter recently after Robbie Robertson’s passing; time to rewatch Stop Making Sense again!
Neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley reconstructed Pink Floyd’s classic rock song “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1” using recordings of the brain activity of 29 patients who heard the song while undergoing brain surgery. ( Daniela Hernandez via WSJ )
‘The Georgia case sweeps more broadly than prior indictments — and for the first time, some of the charges carry a mandatory minimum prison sentence….’ (POLITICO)
One can only hope…
‘The single most effective method for resolving debts is carefully sending a series of letters invoking one’s rights under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1978 (and other legislation) to a debt collector who is operationally incapable of respecting those rights, then threatening them with legal or regulatory action when they inevitably infringe upon them in writing, leading to them abandoning further attempts at collection.
This effectively makes paying consumer debts basically optional in the United States, contingent on one being sufficiently organized and informed. That is likely a surprising result to many people. Is the financial industry unaware of this? Oh no. Issuing consumer debt is an enormously profitable business. The vast majority of consumers, including those with the socioeconomic wherewithal to walk away from their debts, feel themselves morally bound and pay as agreed….’ (Boing Boing)
‘It seems Ice Cube has become quite the conservative media darling lately, sitting down with not just Carlson, but Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan as well. He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities….’ (The Guardian)
‘Two conservative lawyers make a strong 14th Amendment argument. But the politics of their theory are very, very dicey….’ (Vox)
‘Astronomers have found that free-floating planets far outnumber those bound to a host star….’ (The New York Times)
‘The music he matched to his passionate yarns mined the roots of every essential American genre, including folk, country, blues and gospel. Yet when his history-minded compositions first appeared on albums by the Band in the late 1960s, they felt vital as well as vintage….’ (The New York Times obituary)
When I came home from traveling during the summer of 1968, my good friend and partner in music discovery said “I’m not sure you’re going to like this,” handing me the newly-released Music From Big Pink, The Band’s seminal first album. He could not have been more wrong and he did not stop apologizing for a long while. No music moved me more, or brought me more joy, during the late ’60’s and into the ’70’s. The deaths of Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, its pathos-ridden vocalists, and now Robertson, the Band’s guitar voice, leave all our hearts more speechless.
‘We have a rich picture of the beginnings of language, thanks to decades of scientific research with children, infants, and even babies in the womb. But if you wanted to know how language ends in the dying, there’s next to nothing to look up, only firsthand knowledge gained painfully….’ (The Atlantic)
‘[V]iolent extremist groups have begun to mesh over a unifying figure: trump. The former president has become a focal point of domestic extremism, and by not denouncing them — and sometimes courting them — he has been adopted by these groups as a de facto spiritual leader. In some ways, Trump has also co-opted these groups to boost his own support. This, in my assessment, makes the former president a leading driver of domestic extremism, and an unprecedented danger to our security….’ (POLITICO)
‘The rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are skyrocketing. And it’s not just because of climate change, but we know that anytime this population is asked about climate change, it is clearly a source of severe distress,” he said. “People are deciding not to have children, people are worried about their future….’ ( Sarah Owermohle via Stat )
