Random thoughts

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Trojan Unveils 'Conecocktions Ice Cream Truck' To Help Celebrate Penises of All Shapes and Sizes

 

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YELLOWSTONE LIVE
Why feeding bears is worse than you realize
Follow Nat Geo reporter Doug Main as he roams Yellowstone and encounters its wild inhabitants.
CHECK IT OUT

SHARE

WILDLIFE WATCH
In the Alaska-Yukon wilderness, wildlife crime fighters face a daunting challenge
There is growing need to patrol this wildlife-rich expanse, but resources are scant.

 

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Monkey tool use

Capuchin monkeys have refined their tool use over 3,000 years.

Researchers traveled to a popular spot in the Serra da Capivara National Park in Brazil known as Caju BPF2, an open-air site within the Baixão de Pedra Furada (BPF) valley. The spot, however, isn't a popular destination for tourists — its most frequent visitors are Sapajus libidinous, or capuchin monkeys.

Archaeologists dug into the ground of the area and they found that over the past 3,000 years, the stone tools that the monkeys use have evolved and changed, marking the first time this kind of development has been observed in a non-human species.

Capuchin tool use mainly features the use of quartzite stones for a variety of tasks, such as cracking nuts, processing seeds and fruits, stone-on-stone percussion, and sexual displays — specifically, female capuchins flirt by throwing rocks at potential mates.

 

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was a time when primarily a paininarse to animals
wonder if humans are as susceptible now mmmm

BUG BITES

The Terrifying Unknowns of an Exotic Invasive Tick
BY MARYN MCKENNA

The Asian longhorned tick showed up in the US last year and has flourished in unexpected places. And it's biting humans.

 

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NYT having a sexual ball today yay



June is coming to a close. During Pride month, The New York Times featured perspectives from L.G.B.T.Q. celebrities, wrote long-overdue obituaries for L.G.B.T.Q. history makers and reviewed L.G.B.T.Q. art. We’ve highlighted some of that work below. You can see even more at nytimes.com/pride.


We asked readers to tell us how they identify. More than 5,000 people responded.

Ahead of Pride Month, The New York Times asked readers to tell us how they identify. We wanted to capture the ever-evolving ways in which people describe themselves.
More than 5,000 people responded.
The words they used show us that “the human experience is infinite.”
See their responses >>

Ben Wiseman
The ABCs of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+
By MICHAEL GOLD
Words and abbreviations are changing with the need to address and respect people who do not feel represented.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The Court Cases That Changed L.G.B.T.Q. Rights
By CHRIS GEIDNER
From gay marriage to gender identity, a timeline of the legal battles that have shaped L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

The First New York Pride March Was an Act of ‘Desperate Courage’

 

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The Joy of Queer Parties: ‘We Breathe, We Dip, We Flex’

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
By JENNA WORTHAM
Gay clubs and safe spaces have historically offered a place for experiences and road-testing new looks, identity expressions, desires and orientations. Like “getting a rinse.”


The Night the Stonewall Inn Became a Proud Shrine

Larry Morris/The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON
It was “a bar for the people who were too young, too poor or just too much to get in anywhere else.”





Chasing the L.G.B.T.Q. Millennial American Dream

Illustration by John Whitlock, Photographs from Getty Images
By JEREMY ALLEN
The arrival of marriage equality offers a generation a future they could not have envisioned. But is it what they want?




And if you are in New York City for Pride

A Walking Tour of 11 Landmarks in Gay New York
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
This Pride month, we’ll take you to important locations in L.G.B.T.Q. history and tell you the stories about the gay New Yorkers, icons and activists who lived and worked there. Along the way we’ll let you know about some upcoming events and a few insider tips.

Michael Evans/The New York Times
By ANDREW SOLOMON
It wasn’t always feathers, floats and celebrities.

 

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PSYCHOLOGY
Radicalization: How empathy fuels conflicts
A glance at social media is telling: Insults, trolling and hatred seem to have become standard. It’s a clear case of not enough empathy, right? Not necessarily - more like too much.

Mackenzie-Wölfe, Kanadische Wölfe | Canis lupus occidentalis (picture-alliance/imageBroker/M. Weber)
"The filthy swine got the mercy shot! Respect!” That was just one of many contemptuous comments on the internet after Stephan E. shot the German politician Walter Lübcke. The post was written by a user named Franz Brandwein on YouTube.
Insults and trolling on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook seem to have become standard. In the apparent anonymity of the net, users increasingly make hateful and derogatory comments. Many people have the impression that ruthlessness is on the rise, and empathy is but a distant memory.
Are people actually becoming more and more hateful? Or are social networks just revealing a ruthlessness that has always existed and that has merely migrated from the pubs of the offline era to the internet? This is, of course, a possibility, says Fritz Breithaupt, cognitive scientist at Indiana University in the US. But he also notes: "Verbal recklessness and brutality are on the increase."
In a meta-analysis, a US study from 2011 examined the development of students' empathy between 1979 and 2009. It found that empathy has drastically decreased. Especially since the year 2000, things have been going steadily downhill.
Read more: Opinion: Empathy is what makes us human
The dark side of empathy
But is it really that bad? Breithaupt defines empathy as "experiencing with another". Empathy means the capacity to cognitively as well as emotionally empathize with what is going on in another person. But this does not necessarily result in social and moral action.
In his book "The Dark Side of Empathy," Breithaupt speaks of five threatening tendencies that emanate from empathy. One of them is that empathy seduces black and white thinking and clearly divides the world into friend and foe. "Empathy can stir up conflicts instead of diffusing them."
Read more: A world breaks apart: When parents split up
Infografik: Umfrage Empathie in Deutschland
The right-wing extremist, who may even welcome the death of political opponents, is not without empathy — on the contrary. "Empathy leads to polarization, because in conflict situations we decide for one side, put it into the other's perspective and then demonize the other", explains Breithaupt. "Empathy can lead to radicalization,” he said.
The cognitive scientist identifies one reason why more and more people with a certain group or ideology are showing empathy by lashing out at people they perceive to disagree with them, or people who are unlike them: The world is full of lonely wolves in search of connection.
People are desperate to cultivate a sense of belonging.
Many people no longer have a fixed group affiliation, says Breithaupt. Families are splintered, and communities have dissolved among the anonymity of the big cities. And this is despite the fact that people cannot and do not want to live without other people.
Infografik: Umfrage was ist wichtig im Leben
If you look for a new pack, you have to prove to yourself and the other members that you belong. Empathy with the group, its concerns and its comrades-in-arms is therefore indispensable.
"In order to feel good with this partisanship, it helps to always consider this group to be the better or the more oppressed one," says Breithaupt. "It's a cultural phenomenon that everyone positions themselves in some way as a victim and thus also as empathic and compassionate. This is not a bad thing per se and can help tremendously in coming to terms with traumatic experiences.”
But this a self-centered form of empathy. "This kind of empathy is not particularly flexible, but very fixated on oneself and does not extend to other people," says Breithaupt.
Less is more

Radicalization: How empathy fuels conflicts | DW | 28.06.2019

 

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cool
you chose to look them up young fella
leader of men huh


TOP STORIES
Eli Baden-Lasar always knew he was conceived using a sperm donor. At 19, he discovered he had 32 half siblings. This is his journey to find them.
Saturday, June 29, 2019 11:46 AM EST
Over 10 months, he traveled to 16 states to meet and photograph all 32 of them.

Their pictures appear on the cover of this week’s New York Times Magazine.

Read More »

 

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Too many antioxidants can give you cancer, and other facts about the misunderstood molecules

And free radicals aren't always bad for you.

Poor lung cancer screening guidelines miss too many African American smokers

African American smokers tend to smoke fewer cigarettes, but have a higher risk of lung cancer.

 

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The Guardian's Audio Long Reads
Children
over medicating children
anxiety/scaremongering
jandj pharmaceutical corp, yet again


Why parents are addicted to Calpol – podcast

liqid paracetomol
5 tons per day UK

Why parents are addicted to Calpol – podcast

 

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Researchers discover right whales singing for the first time ever

Researchers discover right whales singing for the first time ever

 

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How a Victorian heart medicine became a gay sex drug

Wake up and smell the poppers.


Stories And Podcasts You May Have Missed
Documenting LGBTQ Love Stories In China

Raul Ariano
Italian-born photographer Raul Ariano is currently based between Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He became fascinated by "Chinese people and their way of adapting themselves in the fast-paced change of their society." Over dinner during Ariano's first weekend in mainland China, he says he was talking with a friend who called LGBTQ people "sick and dangerous." "I was shocked to hear that," Ariano says. Over the course of five years, he photographed more than 30 LGBTQ people around the country for a portrait series.

50 Years After Stonewall

Scott McPartland/Getty Images

It's the last weekend of Pride Month, a month to celebrate the history and contributions of LGBTQ Americans. NPR's Ari Shapiro spoke with Eric Marcus of the Making Gay History podcast about his collection of oral histories on the Stonewall riots, which happened 50 years ago this week. (Listening time, 11:59)

 

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every few years a story comes out re this

Research underway at the University of Technology, Sydney’s AFTER facility is yielding some surprising new findings about how bodies decompose in the Australian bush. Supplied by UTS
‘This is going to affect how we determine time since death’: how studying body donors in the bush is changing forensic science

Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation

On the outskirts of Sydney, in a secret bushland location, lies what's officially known as the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research. In books or movies, it'd be called a body farm.

 

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love beef/meat
dont care about cattle farts etc
governments WW can clean up there act on a 000 other things than rake away individuals rights/likes

IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL DAILY BRIEF
WHERE’S THE BEEF?
THE EU-MERCOSUR TRADE DEAL DOSSIER
This is an OZY Special Briefing, an extension of the Presidential Daily Brief. The Special Briefing tells you what you need to know about an important issue, individual or story that is making news. Each one serves up an interesting selection of facts, opinions, images and videos in order to catch you up and vault you ahead.

WHAT TO KNOW

What happened? After two decades of talks, the EU and Mercosur — the customs union made up of Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay — reached a trade deal on Friday. The EU’s main aim has been to reduce tariffs for European industrial products like cars, while South American leaders like Argentine President Mauricio Macri, pictured, are looking to boost exports of agricultural products. Venezuela is a member of Mercosur but was suspended from the bloc in 2016.

Why does it matter? While the deal will likely take years to be approved by EU member states and individual Mercosur governments, it comes at a crucial time for the Amazon rainforest. To get the deal signed, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a noted climate skeptic, had to agree to implement the terms of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, something U.S. President Donald Trump had reportedly been trying to convince him not to do at last week’s G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. But some environmentalists still aren’t happy with the agreement, as it remains unclear whether it will force more accountability on climate — or merely pay lip service.

​

HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT
Don’t have a cow. Brazil produces 15 percent of the world’s beef, second only to the United States, and farm exports to the EU are a big draw of the trade deal. Cattle pastures are responsible for the majority of deforestation in the Amazon, and encouraging the beef industry in Brazil — especially given Bolsonaro’s proud climate change denial and brushing off of environmental concerns — is likely to contribute further to the rainforest’s devastation. The EU pledged in 2017 to eliminate deforestation from its agricultural supply chains by 2020, but scientists have since noted that imports from Brazil have fallen short of that commitment.

Or do, but OUR cow. Leaders of France, Belgium, Ireland and Poland sent a letter to the European Commission in June outlining concerns about the sustainability of South American beef farming practices. But that might be a cover: Though it’s couched in the language of fighting climate change, the EU is a big beef producer too (nearly 13 percent of global supply) and many farmers are concerned about the increase in competition, even as manufacturers rejoice in the chance to sell cars without the high tariffs of yore.

Where is the Lorax? While Europe’s insistence that Bolsonaro, 64, keep to the Paris climate goals could curb the Brazilian president’s impulses, deforestation has increased sharply since he came to power. In May, Amazon deforestation surged to a record high: An estimated 47 acres are cleared every hour. Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed concern about Bolsonaro’s record, but didn’t seem inclined to halt talks on the trade deal. "I don't think the non-conclusion of the agreement with Mercosur will mean that a hectare less forest will be felled in Brazil,” she said. The agreement does call for independent evaluation of how countries are keeping to the Paris climate goals, though the mechanism for that hasn’t yet been announced.

Moot points. While prominent Green politicians have denigrated the EU doing business with Bolsonaro, it may not matter after all — and not because of Brazil. Governments on both sides still need to approve the trade deal, which is closely associated with Argentine President Macri, who’s up for reelection this fall. If he doesn’t win, the deal likely will be buried by his opposition, considering the high support for trade protectionism in Argentina.

 

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WHAT TO READ
EU-Mercosur Deal Faces Hurdles on Two Continents, by Ryan Dube, Emre Peker and Jeffrey T. Lewis in The Wall Street Journal
“French President Emmanuel Macron, who had asked the EU to safeguard the bloc’s farmers and climate goals, called the agreement ‘a good one given that the demands we made have all been taken into account.’ “

Can Economic Pressure Curb Jair Bolsonaro’s Anti-Indigenous Agenda? by Sue Branford in Pacific Standard
“Bolsonaro, a former Army captain, currently shows no sign of restraining his strident rhetoric and attempts to conduct policy by fiat in one of the world's largest functioning democracies — not only angering the Congress and the courts, but also confronting one of his most important trading partners.”

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WHAT TO WATCH
Leaders Cheer after EU, South America Bloc Reach Trade Deal

Watch on AFP on YouTube



European Farmer's Beef With Mercosur Trade Deal

“It’s about a model in which the EU does not only export goods and services, but also values and principles.”

Watch on Euronews on YouTube

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WHAT TO SAY AT THE WATERCOOLER
Hot in here. French President Emmanuel Macron was widely credited with insisting that Bolsonaro accept the Paris climate goals as a condition of the deal. Perhaps it has something to do with the record-breaking heat wave that was gripping his country: France recorded its highest temperature ever on Friday, at 113.2 degrees Fahrenheit, and the World Meteorological Organization predicts that the number of heat waves in France is expected to double by 2050.

 

[rbkwp]

its NOT a cultural activity
read up on it
recently 'scientific research' utter BULLSHIT
like there mania for ruling the world
thru war and murderous domination

Why is Japan killing whales? | Inside Story

Published on Jul 2, 2019
Japan has resumed commercial whaling in its waters despite global outrage.

Whales were hunted to the brink of extinction until 1986, when a group of countries agreed to temporarily stop whaling for profit.
It turned into a semi-international ban.
But Conservationists are now worried the species might be facing a similar threat.
Many countries continue to hunt whales for 'scientific' purposes.
And Japan, which is one of the leading commercial whalers - has now resumed the practice in its waters.

But is it commercially sustainable?
And why is whaling so important for Japan?

 

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so many of the noisy blighters on island, morning to dusk



Drugged, Castrated, Eager to Mate: the Lives of Fungi-Infected Cicadas

“This really has all the elements of a sci-fi horror story,” a mycologist said.


Image

When cicadas are infected by a parasitic fungus, the insect’s innards get digested and their rear ends are replaced by a chalky white plug of spores.CreditCreditKasson et al.

Parasites Infect These Beetles. It Might Be a Good Thing.
May 2, 2019

Look What the Cat Dragged In: Parasites
April 17, 2019

Giant Fungus Is Older, Bigger and Rarely Mutates
Jan. 8, 2019

The Wasp Wants a Zombie. The Cockroach Says ‘No’ With a Karate Kick.
Nov. 27, 2018

Parasitic Vines That Feed on Parasitic Wasps That Feed on Trees
Aug. 30, 2018

Drugged, Castrated, Eager to Mate: the Lives of Fungi-Infected Cicadas

 

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Funny...I don't remember dying my skin green and picking up shears....

Can anybody direct this demon barber to Fleet Street, please?

 

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Pearl Lily
"

Upfacing Trumpet

Upfacing Trumpet

Oriental

Xmas Lily

Asiatic Pollenfree

Upfacing Trumpet

Oriental Trumpet

Aurelian Trumpet

Patio Asiatic

We LOVE gardening!

 

[ArtAppreciation]

It can be quite jarring and annoying


To have a Bot who wants to spit on my clock for me

As I go to brave my way through the solo male edging vids
Like, fist and dust off this one and no T
THANKS I’m my
Dying for you to sit on my fat my thereby overly friendly
Friend there in Speedo

This does
Not appeal to me


And also
I can’t enjoy most content any more because I’ve found hi