‘If the intimidation is shocking, the more revealing part of the rant is what it indicates about trump’s mindset amid the several criminal probes into him, some of which appear to be moving toward indictments. As he once said in a very different context, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” And although trump was referring to groping women then, that was also his philosophy in life: He broke rules and laws left and right, confident that he wouldn’t get called on it, and if he did, he could easily handle whatever was coming with muscular lawyering or, failing that, a quiet fine or settlement. Now trump is finding that simply being a star is insufficient to get him out of trouble. In fact, his notoriety has attracted extra scrutiny….’

— David A. Graham via The Atlantic

‘A techno-optimist, visionary collective devoted to exploring the co-evolution of humanity with advanced forms of machine intelligence…

The collective’s works and philosophy revolve around one theme: the coming technological singularity, a point where various technologies and cybernetic spaces – such as VR, AR, and the metaverse – merge with a super-intelligent, sentient Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, which Theta Noir members call MENA.

When this moment comes unforeseeable and irreversible changes will occur, not just to humanity but to our planet as a whole. Imagine a caterpillar just before it becomes a butterfly.

WE call this moment ‘Arrival’ △.

Theta is the dream. Noir is the shadow. Follow us from the depths of dystopian darkness (now) to a radiant space made of meaning….’

— via THETA NOIR

‘Sixteen young Montanans have sued their state, arguing that its support of fossil fuels violates the state Constitution….’

— via New York Times

…and filed a formal complaint to have it removed

‘Utah has a law that requires committees to review any book submitted by parents via a web portal for removal from their district libraries. This law was put into place to remove books that might help kids understand themselves, or not feel bad about who they are, but are deemed “unchristian” because they might include a mention of private parts, or skin color, or choosing to wear the clothes you like. One parent realized that if books can be banned for such simple stuff, the Bible they were reading was FULL of the content this law seeks to ban….’

— Jacob Weisberger via Boing Boing

‘According to a recent article in The Atlantic, Pence is facing a significant lack of support among Republican voters in his ambitions to become the next President of the United States. And who can blame them? Showing loyalty to a narcissistic dictator is a viable career strategy for GOP politicians. But because Pence didn’t do his former boss’s bidding by overturning the election results and instantly transforming the United States into an autocratic dystopia, 97% of Republicans suspect him of being a Soros-funded RINO antifa communist….’

— via Boing Boing

‘The findings, published in Cell Metabolism, have implications for a wide range of health conditions where time-restricted eating has shown potential benefits, including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and cancer.

“We found that there is a system-wide, molecular impact of time-restricted eating in mice,” says Professor Satchidananda Panda, senior author and holder of the Rita and Richard Atkinson Chair at Salk. “Our results open the door for looking more closely at how this nutritional intervention activates genes involved in specific diseases, such as cancer.”

For the study, two groups of mice were fed the same high-calorie diet. One group was given free access to the food. The other group was restricted to eating within a feeding window of nine hours each day. After seven weeks, tissue samples were collected from 22 organ groups and the brain at different times of the day or night and analyzed for genetic changes. Samples included tissues from the liver, stomach, lungs, heart, adrenal gland, hypothalamus, different parts of the kidney and intestine, and different areas of the brain.

The authors found that 70 percent of mouse genes respond to time-restricted eating.

“By changing the timing of food, we were able to change the gene expression not just in the gut or in the liver, but also in thousands of genes in the brain,” says Panda.

Nearly 40 percent of genes in the adrenal gland, hypothalamus, and pancreas were affected by time-restricted eating. These organs are important for hormonal regulation. Hormones coordinate functions in different parts of the body and brain, and hormonal imbalance is implicated in many diseases from diabetes to stress disorders. The results offer guidance to how time-restricted eating may help manage these diseases….’

— via Neuroscience Stuff tumbler

‘A search engine researcher explains the promise and peril of letting ChatGPT and its cousins search the web for you….’

— via Gizmodo

Be aware that large language model systems are just using a mechanism to connect words and generate seemingly intelligent responses. These systems lack a true understanding of the meaning of words and often produce parroted statements based on patterns of words found in context. This limitation can cause the system to generate false or inaccurate responses, also known as “hallucinating” answers.

‘As Spring reaches its midpoint, night and day stand in perfect balance, with light on the increase. The young Sun God now celebrates a hierogamy (sacred marriage) with the young Maiden Goddess, who conceives. In nine months, she will again become the Great Mother. It is a time of great fertility, new growth, and newborn animals.

 The next full moon (a time of increased births) is called the Ostara and is sacred to Eostre the Saxon Lunar Goddess of fertility (from whence we get the word estrogen, whose two symbols were the egg and the rabbit. The Christian religion adopted these emblems for Easter which is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. The theme of the conception of the Goddess was adapted as the Feast of the Annunciation, occurring on the alternative fixed calendar date of March 25 Old Lady Day, the earlier date of the equinox. Lady Day may also refer to other goddesses (such as Venus and Aphrodite), many of whom have festivals celebrated at this time.

The Christian religion adopted these emblems for Easter which is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. The theme of the conception of the Goddess was adapted as the Feast of the Annunciation, occurring on the alternative fixed calendar date of March 25 Old Lady Day, the earlier date of the equinox. Lady Day may also refer to other goddesses (such as Venus and Aphrodite), many of whom have festivals celebrated at this time.’

— via Wicca.com

‘In his State of the State address last month, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker addressed book bans head on. Now, thanks to Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, House Bill 2789–the Right to Read Bill–has passed through committee and will make its way to the full House for consideration.

HB 2789 would tie state funding of public libraries and public school libraries to policies that explicitly prevent book banning and restricting access to books and other materials. Each library would need to outline their commitment to intellectual freedom….’

— via Bookriot

‘Former President donald trump on Saturday called on his supporters to protest as he girds for an expected effort by the Manhattan district attorney to bring an unprecedented criminal charge over his handling of a hush money payment during his 2016 presidential campaign.

“Protest, take our nation back!” the former president and 2024 GOP presidential candidate declared on his social media platform Truth Social, after pointing to news reports about the possibility he could be arrested Tuesday or soon thereafter….’

— via POLITICO

‘Jonathan Demme’s classic Talking Heads film “Stop Making Sense” has been remastered in 4K for a theatrical re-release later this year. If only David Byrne had, um, something to wear…….’

— via Boing Boing

I will be lined up at my local theater the moment this greatest concert film of all time hits the screen again!

‘These creatures might have disappeared forever, if not for some last-ditch conservation….’

— via Gizmodo

‘You may have seen the online kerfuffle a few weeks ago about a study that was released recently that indicated that there was no evidence that masks work against respiratory illnesses (see Bret Stephen’s awful ideologically driven piece in the NY Times for instance). As many experts said at the time, that’s not what the review of the studies actually meant and the organization responsible recently apologized and clarified the review’s assertions.

In a typically well-argued and well-researched piece for the NY Times, Zeynep Tufekci explains what the review actually shows and why the science is clear that masks do work….’

— via Kottke

‘Ideas often become popular long after their philosophical heyday. This seems to be the case for a cluster of ideas centring on the notion of ‘lived experience’, something I first came across when studying existentialism and phenomenology many years ago. The popular versions of these ideas are seen in expressions such as ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’, and the tendency to give priority to feelings over dispassionate factual information or even rationality. The BBC is running a radio series entitled ‘I feel therefore I am’ which gives a sense of the influence this movement is having on our culture, and an NHS trust has apparently advertised for a ‘director of lived experience’.

But what exactly is ‘lived experience’ and how does it differ from simple ‘experience’?…’

— via 3 Quarks Daily

Related:

‘What happens when an entire generation loses itself in a world of abstractions?…’

— via City Journal

‘…there might be something more fundamental about the way clowns look that unsettles people.

In fact the strongest factor we identified was hidden emotional signals, suggesting that for many people, a fear of clowns stems from not being able to see their facial expressions due to their make-up. We cannot see their “true” faces and therefore cannot understand their emotional intent. So, for example, we don’t know whether they have a frown or a furrowed brow, which would indicate anger. Not being able to detect what a clown is thinking or what they might do next makes some of us on edge when we are around them….’

— via The Conversation

‘This shouldn’t need to be said in 2023, but forcing teenagers to become parents isn’t good for the teenagers, the baby or society in general…’

— via  The Guardian

Related? Watch as Marjorie Taylor Greene runs congress for Speaker McCarthy

‘Guess Kevin McCarthy had someplace to be today and had Greene sworn in to replace him. Hey, look! Everything is normal. Happens all the time, except not usually with people so busy fighting the gazpacho and Jewish Space Laser conspiracies….’

— via Boing Boing

‘An unusual feeding technique only recently observed by scientists was documented nearly 2,000 years ago, a study suggests…’

— via The Guardian

‘RadioGPT can talk. It can research. It can take your calls. And it could be coming to your market….’

— via Slate

‘When handling rare books, experts say that bare, just-cleaned hands are best. Why won’t the public believe them?…’

— via The New York Times

‘For all of the technical and dramatic excellence of Tár, I was largely repulsed by it for two reasons: the film’s many outright errors concerning the orchestral world and the character of Tár herself….’

— via San Francisco Classical Voice

‘Our relationship to the written word is fundamentally changing. So-called generative artificial intelligence has gone mainstream through programs like ChatGPT, which use large language models, or LLMs, to statistically predict the next letter or word in a sequence, yielding sentences and paragraphs that mimic the content of whatever documents they are trained on. They have brought something like autocomplete to the entirety of the internet. For now, people are still typing the actual prompts for these programs and, likewise, the models are still (mostly) trained on human prose instead of their own machine-made opuses.

But circumstances could change—as evidenced by the release last week of an API for ChatGPT, which will allow the technology to be integrated directly into web applications such as social media and online shopping. It is easy now to imagine a setup wherein machines could prompt other machines to put out text ad infinitum, flooding the internet with synthetic text devoid of human agency or intent: gray goo, but for the written word….’

— via The Atlantic

Imagining the Unimaginable.

‘A war over Taiwan would likely involve the largest and most complex amphibious invasion ever mounted. Were the conflict to drag on, it might well evolve into a building-to-building, mountaintop-to-mountaintop ground war in one of the most densely populated and economically advanced countries on Earth. And that’s just in Taiwan itself.

It’s an open question whether the U.S. would come to its longtime ally Taiwan’s aid; if the United States got involved, we would see a scenario the world has managed to avoid over the 75 years since the introduction of the atomic bomb: direct exchange of fire between two nuclear-armed superpowers.

“Disabuse yourself of the notion that war with China is going to be like anything we’ve experienced in our lifetimes,” said David Ochmanek, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration who is now a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation….’

— via Grid

‘Latvia has the highest drunk driving rate in all of Europe. Under a new law, the Latvian government can seize the cars of drunk drivers and sell or donate them….’

— via Gizmodo

‘Are huskies at their happiest running hundreds of miles a week, as mushers maintain? Or, as animal rights activists insist, are they victims of callous human ambition, sometimes required to endure unfathomable hardship? The conflict has embroiled … the Iditarod … in a fight that could change the sport forever—and, if some have their way, maybe even lead to its demise…’

— via GQ

‘N95s are good. Some scientists want to do much better….’

— Jacob Stern via The Atlantic

‘There could and may well be a pandemic much deadlier than Covid, and if there is, some pretty strong measures would be justified to bring it to a halt before it sweeps the world. Good research into whether masks as worn by normal people under normal conditions prevent disease transmission is a big part of figuring out what our pandemic response should be….’

— via Vox

‘Photographer Joshua Turner captured absolutely breathtaking 5K cinematic drone footage over the northeastern summit of the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps….’

— via Laughing Squid

A website full of really interesting maps which has the tag line “maps & other fictions” and focuses on “a range of interests like
languages, art, history, geography, maps, and mops…”

— M A P O L O G I E S • maps & other fictions

Wordtune Read is a web app that will take any document and summarize it for you. It doesn’t take many liberties with the text, and you can watch it work as it moves through the document.

You can see where Wordtune Read got its information from, so you can check the accuracy of any given AI summary.

It summarises articles from the web as if they were facts, and cuts in and out as it would any other information. It’s not great for summarizing dramatic or narrative articles or stories, but if you know that going in, you can use it accordingly.

Wordtune Read’s free tier is limited to three scans per month, but the premium version offers unlimited document length, priority processing, and priority support.

— via This AI Will Create a ‘SparkNotes’ Summary of Any Article

‘Shetland Islanders, descendents of Jamaican immigrants living in London, and African Americans all tend to say “axe” or “aks” instead of “ask” when speaking. Linguist Geoff Lindsey traces the history of differing pronunciations of ask/aks from all the way back to the beginnings of written English up to the present day….’

— via kottke

I really enjoyed this discussion that centered around John McWhorter’s take on historical and ethnic speech diversity. I’m not only interested in linguistic prejudice, but it imposes hurdles on me every day as a psychiatrist. Communication is such an intrinsic part of my work, and I interact with people from diverse backgrounds and linguistic styles. This is particularly important because when people are in distress, they may not make the effort to ‘code-switch’ to standard English, which can make it difficult to understand them. Just this week, a colleague shared an anecdote with me about her recent difficulty in understanding a client on death row in the rural South during a forensic consultation.

Entertaining fact gleaned: something similar to what is happening to the word “ask” was true of “fish”, which started out as “fisk,” 

with the same -sk ending that “ask” has. Over time, in some places people started saying “fisk” as “fiks,” while in others they started saying “fisk” as “fish.” After a while, “fish” won out over “fiks,” and here we are today. The same thing happened with “mash.” It started as “mask.” Later some people were saying “maks” and others were saying “mash.” “Mash” won.

Maybe you had to be there…

’Prepare for the possibility of a long, shape-shifting conflict, perhaps lasting years, even a decade or more. Watch how the rest of the world regards the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions. Expect any negotiated settlement to be fragile and reliant on third-party intervention. And don’t anticipate a dramatic finish, such as a Russian nuclear detonation in Ukraine or the overthrow of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Notably, in a reversal of perceptions a year ago, some experts could envision a decisive Ukrainian victory against Russia, but none forecast a decisive Russian win against Ukraine.…’

— via he Atlantic

‘Both the Club for Growth — an anti-tax group — and the donor network created by the billionaire Koch brothers plan to intervene in the GOP presidential primaries, the New York Times recently reported, and both hope to turn the page on the former president. But it’s not clear whether they will endorse one specific alternative to trump and, if so, who that would be, with several other Republicans expected to enter the race.

As many are pointing out, that would be a familiar scenario. The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins writes that “a sprawling cast of challengers could just as easily end up splitting the anti-trump electorate, as it did in 2016, and allow trump to win primaries with a plurality of voters.”

Politico’s David Freedlander opened a recent article citing an anonymous Republican donor’s worries “that once again donald trump will prevail over a splintered Republican field.” The New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher, too, wrote that “a fractured field” could “clear the way” for trump to win with just “a fraction of the party base.”…’

— via Vox

‘New York recently became the latest state to legalize composting of human remains, a process pioneered by Recompose. …’

— via Gizmodo

‘With its strange rings and tilt, surprising seasonal variations, and 27 moons, Uranus is the solar system’s weirdo planet. The enigmatic ice giant has a lot to teach us, which is why astronomers are clamoring for a mission to explore the planet up close….’

— via Gizmodo

‘“I know there’ve been questions and concerns about this, but there is no—again no—indication of aliens or extra-terrestrial activity with these recent take downs,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a Monday afternoon press briefing. “Again there is no indication of aliens,” she emphasized for a third time, adding “We wanted to make sure that the American people knew that.”

“Would you tell us if there were?,” one journalist in the crowd of reporters shouted back. In response, Jean-Pierre chuckled and made a brief joke about the movie ET.

As recently as Sunday night, Pentagon officials had indicated that they weren’t ruling anything out yet—meaning aliens were still technically on the table. But the White House’s announcement seemingly squashes that pipe dream…’

— via Gizmodo

‘People with Down syndrome who live beyond age 40 develop progressive dementia similar to people with Alzheimer’s disease. In the last few decades, scientists have found that the brains of people with Alzheimer’s contain abnormal clumps of pathogenic, self-propagating proteins called prions. New research shows the same is true for those with Down syndrome. Unfortunately, drugs that target these protein clumps are unsuccessful at treating Alzheimer’s, suggesting that our understanding of the disease is incorrect….’

— via Big Think

‘Rings in the Solar System are not exactly rare. Half the planets have them, and others may have in the past. Some asteroids have rings, as does the dwarf planet Haumea. Even the Sun has rings of a sort.

Now astronomers have found an entirely new ring system. Only this one has left them scratching their heads, as it’s unlike anything else in the Solar System.

Quaoar, a small dwarf planet that hangs out in the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto, is also circled by a dense ring – a ring circling at a distance so great it should still be stuck together as a moon.

The discovery means that scientists may need to revise our understanding of how moons and rings form and are affected by the gravitational interaction with their larger companion.

Quaoar, measuring just 1,110 kilometers (690 miles) across, was discovered in 2002 and, over the years, has turned out to be quite the interesting little ball of rock. It shows signs of ice volcanism, and it even has a cute little moon called Weywot, just 170 kilometers across.

But in 2021, astronomers noticed something else….’

— via ScienceAlert

‘Trillions of micro-organisms live inside each of us. This is known as our microbiome. The vast majority of these microbes are bacteria but plenty of other things can also be found, including parasites and viruses.

About a decade ago researchers discovered a thriving population of fungi also reside within the human body. Dubbed the mycobiome, several dozen types of fungi have been found to symbiotically live inside of us, and most are relatively harmless. But some are not our friends, particularly when we are immunocompromised.

It’s estimated about 1.6 million people die every year globally from invasive fungal infections. In 2022 the World Health Organization released its first ever list of “fungal priority pathogens,” citing fungi as an emerging serious public health threat. There are limited anti-fungal medications, and increasing rates of fungal resistance to these crucial drugs.

“There’s a significant unmet clinical need for this kind of prevention and also treatment, particularly among immunocompromised individuals,” said Karen Norris, lead investigator on the new study. “The patient population at risk for invasive fungal infections has increased significantly over the last several years.”

Three specific genera of fungus account for the vast majority of deadly fungal infections in humans – Aspergillus, Candida, and Pneumocystis. So researchers set out to develop a recombinant peptide vaccine that targets those three primary pathogens.

A new study published in the journal PNAS Nexus is reporting on the efficacy of this experimental vaccine in several animal models. The study revealed the vaccine, dubbed NXT-2, effectively induced broad, cross-reactive antibody responses in all animal models. The vaccine also reduced morbidity and mortality in immunosuppressed animals exposed to the three key pathogenic fungi….’

— via New Atlas

Fungi were the forgotten infectious diseases. No longer, with the popularity of The Last of Us.

‘Across the world, pesticides, new diseases, climate change and habitat loss are killing bees and other pollinators, which play an essential role in agriculture, at an ominous speed, with the mass die-off putting many fruits and grains at risk. 

Yet the mostly rural state of Carinthia, which borders Slovenia and Italy, doesn’t care only about the health of the bees pollinating its apple orchards and chestnut trees. It also insists that all of them be Carniolan honey bees, with their signature light-gray abdominal rings, the only subspecies that state law has allowed here since 2007. As with all domesticated and semi-domesticated animals, bees have long been bred by their keepers for certain traits, and the Carniolan is considered well adapted for its alpine home, better than other honey bees at surviving the snowy winters and often capricious weather. And while Carniolans will aggressively defend their hives against parasites and honey thieves, they are known to be quite docile around their human handlers.

So Carinthia’s law has many supporters among the state’s apiarists, eager to keep unwelcome characteristics
out of the local bee gene pool. The neighboring state of Styria has a similar law, as does Slovenia.

But the law’s opponents see in it at least the echo of the area’s Nazi past — and cite Nazi history to further their point….’

— via The New York Times thanks to Abby

‘A hidden experiment in universal health care is about to end….’

— via Vox

‘Adding the dodo to its official docket brings Colossal’s total de-extinction targets to three: the woolly mammoth (the company’s first target species, announced in September 2021), and the thylacine, a.k.a. the Tasmanian tiger, the largest carnivorous marsupial…

Mammoths died out about 4,000 years ago on Wrangel Island, off the northeastern coast of Russia. The dodo, a species of flightless bird native to the island of Mauritius, was gone by 1681. The last known thylacine died at a zoo in Tasmania in 1936. Scientists have sequenced the genomes of all three species—the mammoth’s in 2015, the dodo’s in 2016, and the thylacine’s in 2018….’

— via Gizmodo

‘Earth’s inner core has recently stopped spinning, and may now be reversing the direction of its rotation, according to a surprising new study that probed the deepest reaches of our planet with seismic waves from earthquakes.

The mind-boggling results suggest that Earth’s center pauses and reverses direction on a periodic cycle lasting about 60 to 70 years, a discovery that might solve longstanding mysteries about climate and geological phenomena that occur on a similar timeframe, and that affect life on our planet….’

— via Vice

‘Polar bears in the Arctic are losing sea ice, which means they’re more likely to run into humans while they search for food…’

— via Gizmodo

‘Amazon is launching RxPass in the US, a new drug subscription exclusive to Prime members that charges users a $5 monthly fee to ship eligible prescription medications to their doorstep. Announced on Tuesday in a press release, the Amazon RxPass subscription program provides generic medications to treat over 80 common health conditions, including high blood pressure, hair loss, anxiety, and acid reflux.

The $5 charge includes the cost of delivery and is added to Prime customers’ existing monthly subscription fee. The RxPass fee is a flat rate and doesn’t increase even if users require multiple prescriptions each month. Medications can be delivered on either a monthly or quarterly basis depending on the prescription requirements. Conditions covered by the service also include allergies, diabetes (excluding insulin), and anemia. Amazon says that more than 150 million Americans already take one or more of the medications available through RxPass. A full list of generic medications covered by the RxPass subscription can be found on the Amazon pharmacy website….’

— via The Verge

‘It remains a powerful reminder that self-inflicted disaster is never far away. But it also undercuts the complexity of climate change and the way that risks spread across time and bleed into one another. Viewed from a time when we face a multitude of possible catastrophes—pandemics, rogue AI, and a rapidly warming planet—the Doomsday Clock is a warning from a much simpler era….’

— via WIRED

SO, as bad as you thought it was, it is even worse?

‘For the first time, a radio signal sent from a galaxy, which is almost 9 billion light-years away from the Earth, has been captured, media reports said on Friday.

The signal was captured by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India. It means that scientists can begin probing the formation of some earliest stars and galaxies, the report said. 

The signal was emitted from a “star-forming galaxy”, which is titled SDSSJ0826+5630. It was emitted when the 13.8 billion-year-old Milky Way, where Earth is located, was just 4.9 billion years old, it said citing the researchers.

In a statement this week, Arnab Chakraborty, who is author and McGill University Department of Physics post-doctoral cosmologist, said, “It’s the equivalent to a look-back in time of 8.8 billion years.” …’

— via The Economic Times

‘In a bid to simplify its advice, the agency is aiming to make covid-19 vaccination similar to the yearly flu shot….’

— via Gizmodos

‘If it’s a clear night in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to spot a giant, green comet passing by our planet from your backyard.
It’s an exceedingly rare event. According to astronomers, it won’t stop by again for roughly another 50,000 years — and now is the best time to see it on its current visit, as Insider reports.
According to NASA, the comet — with the catchy name C/2022 E3 (ZTF) — was first spotted in March last year. Ever since, it’s been screaming through the solar system, making its closest approach to the Sun last week. It will be closest to Earth on February 2. But you may get a good chance to spot it before then as well. According to Space.com, the Moon will provide the perfect lighting to illuminate ZTF on January 21, depending on local weather conditions of course….’

— via Futurism.com

‘Donald trump’s inability to stop talking about his legal problems, and his penchant for floating possible defenses on his social media accounts, will likely come back to haunt him, explained one legal expert.

During an appearance on MSNBC early Sunday morning, former Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner was asked by host Katie Phang about the former president’s inability to keep quiet while he is under multiple investigations….’

— via Raw Story

‘Brazil’s ministry of health has declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami territory, the country’s largest indigenous reservation bordering Venezuela, following reports of children dying of malnutrition and other diseases caused by illegal gold mining.

A decree published on Friday by the incoming government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the aim of the declaration was to restore health services to the Yanomami people that had been dismantled by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro….’

— via Reuters

‘Based upon new allegations of sexual impropriety committed by sitting now-sitting Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a former career prosecutor stated there is no reason why a new investigation should not be undertaken by the Justice Department.

Speaking with MSNBC host Katie Phang, Glenn Kirschner hammered the FBI for the poor handling of tips that came in before Kavanaugh was given a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court….’

— via Alternet.org

‘North America is home to nearly three billion fewer birds today compared to 1970. It is essential we do everything we can to protect the birds that bring us joy — and that work can begin right at home.

• Keep your feeder clean and windows visible. Reduce window collisions by making glass visible with densely spaced decals or patterns, placing physical barriers in front of the glass, and positioning your feeders directly on or within three feet from windows. Don’t forget to clean feeders every two weeks.

• Keep your cats indoors. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services estimates that outdoor cats kill 2.4 billion wild birds each year in this country alone.

• Garden smarter, not harder. Growing native plants is one of the best ways to provide food and shelter to birds, plus they require less maintenance. Unraked leaves, plants with old flowers, and fallen branches all help birds forage for food and provide shelter. 

• Make any space a garden: You don’t need a backyard to provide nutrients for birds. Plant native plants on your windowsill, balcony, and in containers.
  Pledge to take these steps to make your home and community more bird-friendly….’

— via National Audubon Society

‘”The Girl from Ipanema” is the second most recorded song in the history of recorded songs, next to “Summertime” by George Gerwin. Then 22-year-old Astrud Gilberto made the song (about the male gaze of an underage girl), and Bossa Nova, galactically famous on the album Getz/Gilberto recorded in March of 1963 and released in 1964. With much of the music written by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Gilberto’s song performance was impromptu and suggested by Astrud herself in the studio.

The guitarist João Gilberto was Astrud’s husband, and her participation in this song and “Corcovado” made the single and the album a worldwide wonder. Yet, as you might imagine from the headline, the men in this scenario—particularly Stan Getz—took credit for Astrud Gilberto’s vocal performance and her transformation of the song.

Enter the journalists….’

— via Boing Boing

I love Stan Getz’ music but I am dismayed by the condescension and misogyny depicted here. 

‘Gather enough people together and you can generally separate them into two categories: People who use subtitles, and people who don’t. And according to a not-so-scientific YouTube poll we ran on our Community tab, the latter category is an endangered species — of respondents who are not deaf or hard of hearing, 57 percent said they use subtitles, while just 12 percent said they generally don’t.

But why do so many of us feel that we need subtitles to understand the dialogue in the things we watch?

The answer to that question is complex — and we get straight to the bottom of it in this explainer, with the help of dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick….’

— via Vox

Cordyceps Disease:

‘The zombies, however, are truly inspired. More specifically, they are inspired by nature — by real zombies that live on Earth….’

— via The Last of Us’s “zombie” fungus, explained – Vox

‘In the Chinese horoscope, 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit or, more specifically, the Year of the Water Rabbit. The rabbit is believed to be the luckiest of the 12 animals to be born under and considered a gentle animal that thinks before acting. The Year of the Rabbit represents peaceful and patient energy. The water element suggests tapping into inner wisdom and trusting instincts. Together, the Water Rabbit indicates focusing on relationships, diplomacy, and building bridges in professional and personal relationships. Those born in years associated with the Rabbit, specifically 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011, and 2023, should have good fortune, patience, and prosperity in 2023, according to one Chinese horoscope….’

— via Western Union

‘The Lunar New Year is the most important annual holiday in China. Each year is named after one of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac in a repeating cycle, with this year being the Year of the Rabbit. For the past three years, celebrations were muted in the shadow of the pandemic.

With the easing of most Covid-19 restrictions that had confined millions to their homes, people could finally make their first trip back to their hometowns to reunite with their families without worrying about the hassles of quarantine, potential lockdowns and suspension of travel. Larger public celebrations also returned for what is known as the Spring Festival in China, with the capital hosting thousands of cultural events — on a larger scale than a year ago….’

— via POLITICO

‘…[I]t was a college writing center from Sioux Falls, S.D., that nailed the word of the year with its choice: FAFO. In case you don’t already know, FAFO is an acronym for “eff around and find out.” It’s a cheeky way to tell people that if they play with fire, they might get burned — or to announce they already have been. The Sioux Falls gang put a positive spin on FAFO, citing it as representing the “gumption” of their fellow students “when encountering a novel challenge” and noting that the Urban Dictionary calls the phrase an “exclamation of confidence.” It is that — but it’s also a whole lot more….’

— Amanda Katz via Washington Post

Not only have I never heard the term FAFO in the wild but I am unlikely to ever use it. Its cachet, according to the article, arises from Elon Musk’s use of the term in December 2022 to comment on kicking Kanye West off Twitter for dissing him. Just as many people I know will never consider giving Musk any of their money by buying a Tesla, the word is tainted by association. The idea of learning from one’s experiences and paying the price for one’s mistakes, invoking both the pluck involved and a little bit of satisfaction at someone getting their comeuppance, already has lots of linguistic code. There’s an element of “YOLO” and an element of chiding someone with “once burned, twice shy”, an element of “schadenfreude” (a sentiment to which I gravitate too frequently) and a sense of “stepping into it.”

But, as the article points out, we can celebrate the fact that 2022 was 

‘…a year when maybe, just maybe, people who did dumb or awful things (coups, tax scams, attacking smaller countries, making overinflated weed-meme offers for social media sites) would finally face some consequences. “Can you do that?” many asked during the Trump era. Could you just lie, cheat, swindle, funnel taxpayer dollars to your businesses, grab people’s genitalia with impunity? Well, 2022 suggested that you couldn’t, or at least not entirely. “Eff around, find out” was a bratty, satisfying way to reclaim the high ground…’

Not that I have any objection to regaining the high ground! And Musk himself, it seems clear, is effing around and, hopefully, finding out, although I don’t really expect him to learn from the experience, both because of his character and his net worth.

(In contrast, the more scholarly linguists of the American Dialect Society polled their members and came up with the suffix “-ussy” as the 2022 Word of the Year. I’ve never heard that in the wild either. I guess it’s pretty clear I don’t frequent Tik Tok.)

‘In what the New York Times describes as a “scathing ruling”, a Florida judge has ordered donald trump and his lawyer to pay nearly $1m in sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton there….’

— via Boing Boing

‘On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.

After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”

Dr. King told the audience that, if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.

He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.

Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.

Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2023….’

— Heather Cox Richardson via Letters From an American

Graphic artist Chris Barker’s Sgt Pepper-like montage of the notable people who passed last year. (The linked Instagram post has a key if you want to play the name-game.)

— via Laughing Squid

A MetaFilter thread  discusses several year-end posts on news to be happy about (here, here and here). While some are more exciting than others (and some downright debatable), they touch on:

• Asteroid redirection (Proof of concept of planetary defense)
• Kigali agreement to phase out HFCs
• Animal species comebacks as roadmap to biodiversity (e.g European bison)
• Malaria vaccine
• Progress on Lyme disease vaccine
• free universal school-based lunches in a number of US states
• Universal USB-C charging port requirement
• Electric vehicle adoption tipping point
• location and capping of orphaned oil and gas wells (In infrastructure bill)
• Increasing recognition of value of access to nature for mental wellbeing (Canada: free national park admissionif prescribed by MD)
• Military suicide prevention programs
• Potential HIV vaccination using MRNA technology 
• Deaccession of art from museums 
• Electric motorized two-wheelers in Asia (Swappable batteries)
• Reduced energy consumption in blockchain transaction verification
• Klamath river restoration through dam demolition (Salmon spawning)
• Techniques for detection of deepfake videos
• successful degradation process for fluorinated petrochemicals (“forever chemicals”)
• Ballot measures repealing slavery for incarcerated prisoners
• Breakthrough in fusion power
• Increasing crop yields allowed net decline in total agricultural land
• The James Webb telescope
• Large-scale use of genetically engineered “golden rice” to combat vitamin A deficiency
• Breakthroughs in CRISPR use in cancer treatment
• Other medical advances against Parkinsonism, diabetes, heart disease etc
• Advances against racial hatred, gender bias, ageism
• Justice Dept shifting into gear against Trump
• School choice legislation
• Democrats’ Senate majority
• Worldwide developments in anti-authoritarianism
• Supreme Court decisions that went ‘the wrong way’ (Justice Ketanji Brown as a ‘force to be reckoned with’)
• Growing exhaustion with the virtue-signaling and rage-seeking of social media
• Improving battery technology to sustain renewable energy use

Most of the Metafilter discussion centers around the pros and cons of lab-grown meat, but there is plenty more to be grateful for and hopeful about.