Would you like some free biological illustrations that aren’t the products of an AI’s unrestrained imagination? NIH BioArt is such a source.
These are bold, simple illustrations with limitations. There is a section on arthropods, but it doesn’t contain any spiders, or much of anything outside ticks and mosquitos. If you want a graphic of a tick, it’s got you covered. Here’s a tick for you:
Today is International Men’s Day. Finally! I’m so tired of being ignored all the other days of the year.
I do wish to complain, though. Most of the logos I can find on Google are all about facial hair, ties, and sometimes bowler hats. Is that all we are? We can do better.
The theme this year is “Positive Male Role Models.” I don’t want to hear about your positive role models, though — tell me how you’re trying to be a good role model.
I greatly appreciate Dan McLellan’s work — he’s a serious scholar of the Bible and he often addresses the shallow assumptions some people make about their religion, and delves into the complicated history of Christianity. Sometimes, though, I think his focus on Biblical scholarship can lead him to miss the big, glaring horror behind belief.
This video begins with an arrogant Christian prick reading triumphantly from the Bible. It confirms his prejudice that women are less important, and that their purpose is to bear children.
I was surprised at McLellan’s criticism. The guy is quoting this verse of the Bible, 1 Timothy 2:11:
Women are to learn in silence with complete submission. I do not allow a woman to teach or to hold authority over a man. She should keep silent. For Adam was formed first, and Eve afterward. Furthermore, Adam was not deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and fell into sin. However, women will be saved through the bearing of children, provided that they continue to persevere in faith, love, and holiness, marked by modesty.
McLellan rightly points out that this book of the Bible is presented as the work of the apostle Paul, but it isn’t — it’s regarded by scholars as the work of someone else altogether. Fine. So? Those words and ideas are ugly and do harm, no matter which ancient evangelist wrote them, and those words are canonically in the Christian Bible. Are the words of Paul generally regarded as true and accurate representations of Christian belief? That’s one implication of McLellan’s criticism, that the only valid source of information is Paul’s writings.
My objection is to the blatant misogyny — the actual empirical evidence is that women are just as intelligent and just as worthy as men, and that there was no Adam & Eve & an apple, and therefore reality contradicts the literal stories told in the Bible. I don’t give a damn who wrote it. It’s just another example of how the wickedness in their holy book inspires the wickedness of smug young men, like the one in the video.
That’s the better argument, not quibbling over authorship, but simply talking to women and recognizing their personhood and autonomy and equal worth to men. It’s so weird to see a kid who doesn’t care about scholarship being rebuked for his lack of scholarship, when he’s treating the Bible in the same way he would an Andrew Tate podcast.
He’s leaking the idea that he might appoint Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, to be the Secretary of Education, a department that he has also threatened to eliminate. This is pure power-mad arbitrary trolling. It’s not as if she has any qualifications for the job.
Among the early arguments against Justice, the foremost is her lack of a college degree, which may be met with criticism from one or two moderate Republican Senators but is unlikely to push any into the “nay” camp.
That tracks. He’s got a pattern of promoting the most ignorant, hateful people to positions of power because he know it will get a reaction from his opponents and get him on the news. It’s a troll move.
You know who else is a petty hateful troll? Nancy Mace.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) set off a firestorm on Capitol Hill with a bill to keep Sarah McBride, soon to be the first transgender member of Congress, from accessing the women’s bathrooms at the Capitol.
Why it matters: The measure is not being immediately dismissed by Republican leadership, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) telling Axios, “We’re going to talk about that. We’re working on the issue.”
He lies, he’s not working on the issue. He’s going to let it ferment as a distraction, because hate is the center of the Republican way. This is how they’ll also get the most anti-woman legislation done, by making hateful women the face of their party on those issues.
I am so sorry for what misery trans men and women are going to go through in the coming years.
It sure must be handy to be able to lead a billionaire around by his dick. Elon Musk is using his wealth to stop a result Trump doesn’t like.
Last week, satirical news website The Onion announced acquiring InfoWars in a court-ordered sale.
Subsequently, Musk-owned social media platform X “entered an appearance” – a legal term expressing the intention to take part in proceedings – asking the federal court that it be included on any future communications about the case.
As a result, a federal bankruptcy judge temporarily halted the transfer of InfoWars to The Onion while ordering an “evidentiary hearing” to review the auction process aimed at ensuring the “process and transparency”.
Judge Christopher Lopez of Texas Southern District warned people against feeling “comfortable with the results of the auction” until the evidentiary hearing takes place next week.
On the one hand, The Onion CEO Ben Collins is insisting that his company has won the bid fair and square and that the only thing pending was “standard processes”. Collins plans to relaunch InfoWars as a “satirised version of itself” in January.
On the other hand, Jones, who is a vocal Trump supporter, has hailed the court’s review order. “The cavalry is here. Trump is pissed,” he said, implying that the president-elect is unhappy with the court-ordered sale of a news platform that has consistently supported the 45th US president.
So many questions. Why did a judge decide to include an unrelated third party in the proceedings? What gives Trump the right to interfere? Why is Musk doing the bidding of Trump? Why did they bother to have an auction if some random asshole can swoop in and invalidate the results?
For better or worse, Coca Cola has driven the iconography of Christmas — that jolly bearded fat man in a red suit is a corporate construct. Every year, Coca Cola proudly trots out some new heartwarming ad featuring Santa or a polar bear or whatever knocking back a frosty cold soft drink. Buy coke! They’ve been working hard for almost a century to make sure you associate this holiday with their beverage.
This year they blew it. They’ve aired an AI-generated ad that features trucks and an annoying jingle. Is this to be our new sentimental memory of Christmas?
One of the wealthiest companies in the world decided that they don’t need to pay artists to do their advertising artwork, and would instead have a computer churn over old imagery and cobble together an unappealing hash that won’t win over anyone. Take a look at the comments on that video — people hate it.
The National Institutes of Health is a hugely successful organization behind modern biomedical research in the USA — among their many goals was establishing policy for dealing with infectious disease, as well as funding research in vaccines.
You already know what the know-nothings and anti-intellectuals of the MAGA movement think of the NIH. They’ve been opposing rational responses to the pandemic for years now, and one of the big names in the anti-NIH, anti-Fauci, anti-masking, anti-vaccine mob was Jay Bhattacharya. So guess what’s going to happen?
Bhattacharya, who holds a medical degree and PhD from Stanford, has never held a senior government position, nor any role overseeing a large bureaucratic organization. While that might have stymied his candidacy in prior administrations, Kennedy and his allies view his inexperience as a positive, saying they are seeking reformers willing to battle the bureaucracy.
Inexperience is a positive with these people.
Let’s hope we don’t have another disease outbreak in the next few years. We already know that Kennedy wants to starve infectious disease research, and with a MAGA ideologue running the NIH…people are going to die that wouldn’t need to.
You will either be amused or horrified by my discovery of the documents leading to the original sale of my mother’s house. My mom & dad bought this place in 1976, the first and only home they would own, for this amazing price:
That’s right $28,990, and they bought it with a $500 down payment. My father’s income at that time was, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of $10K, so it was a bit of a stretch for them.
This is the same house I’m selling for $435K now.
The housing market is stark raving nuts. Boomers had it relatively easy.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this — NPR has always been a news source for comfortable liberals who want soft voices and current events delivered gently, without any trace of alarm. They’ve got tote bags to give away and coffee table books to sell! They’ve responded to the incoming wave of ignorance with a puff-piece about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that doesn’t use the word “unqualified” even once.
Trump has threatened to appoint RFK Jr to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. He doesn’t have any expertise in public health, medicine, or science, but he has a slogan, “Make America Healthy Again,” and that’s good enough.
Another word NPR doesn’t use is “conspiracy theorist.” They acknowledge that he has a few wacky ideas, but hey, he wants to stop the chronic disease epidemic in the USA, isn’t that a good thing?
Kennedy’s baseless claims have included that Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain”; that school shootings are attributable to antidepressants; that chemicals in water can lead to children becoming transgender; and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV. He’s also long said that vaccines cause autism and fail to protect people from diseases.
NPR never questions whether Kennedy’s policies would actually work, or for that matter, what his policies are. We’ve got a real health problem — obesity, diabetes, narcotics, etc. — but they don’t address his solutions, if any. What he has done is tap into MAGA paranoia.
He knit together an unlikely coalition — some from the left and some MAGA supporters — eager to take on the establishment.
“Bobby Kennedy and Trump have bonded over tying the core of MAGA — which is a distrust of institutions and getting corruption out of institutions — to our health care industries,” says Calley Means, an adviser to Kennedy and the Trump transition team, who spoke with NPR before Kennedy’s nomination.
What corruption? Be specific. The corruption I see is that there are an awful lot of quacks getting rich writing pop-sci diet books, and pharma MBAs leading their companies to immense profits at the cost of every day Americans’ health. You’re not going to fix that by hounding doctors and scientists and imposing bogus health treatments on the public.
By the way, Calley Means is a Harvard MBA with connections to the Heritage Foundation but no medical background who wrote pop-sci book about nutrition. I imagine that RFK Jr has the “wrote a book about dieting” demographic solidly locked up.
Means — himself a former lobbyist for the food and drug industry — has emerged as one of the leading voices in the MAHA orbit. He and his sister, Dr. Casey Means, catapulted into the political sphere after publishing a bestseller on metabolic health. Both have business ventures in the health and wellness industry.
But have no fear! Means and RFK Jr have a simple plan to fix everything.
Means says a key to their plan is eliminating conflicts of interest.
See above reference to Means’ own interests.
When the article does cite critics of RFK Jr, it’s always with qualifications and padding, and never goes into much depth.
“There are some things that RFK Jr. gets right,” says former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden. “We do have a chronic disease crisis in this country, but we need to avoid simplistic solutions and stick with the science.”
Great — we have a “chronic disease crisis,” but what’s the solution? It never says. Is it “drink raw milk” (Kennedy has endorsed that)? Is it “end all vaccinations” (he thinks they cause autism, and change children’s gender identity)? Is it “tear down cell phone towers” (he thinks 5G is used for mind control)? Is it “take anti-depressants off the market” (he claims they cause mass shootings)? Is it “replace COVID vaccines with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine” (he thinks those are effective)? Or maybe it would help to insert more racism in science policy.
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he continued, adding, “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”
Reading NPR’s article, you might come away with the impression that Kennedy is a grounded, qualified person trying to fix a real problem in how we let pharmaceutical companies run rampant — which I think is a genuine issue that resonates with the public — but it completely neglects to point out that Kennedy is an unhinged conspiracy theorist who will make everything worse. But that’s NPR for you.
If you’d like a more accurate perspective on the consequences of Kennedy running the bioscientific and medical establishment, read Science magazine.
Public health researchers are alarmed, especially given Kennedy’s opposition to vaccines. “I can’t imagine anyone who would be more damaging to vaccines and the use of vaccines than RFK,” University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm told CNN.
Numerous critics of Kennedy have weighed in with concerns. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia vaccine expert Paul Offit told CNN Kennedy is a “science denialist.” Even Jerome Adams, who was surgeon general during Trump’s presidency, said at a meeting this week that if Kennedy discourages people from getting vaccines, “I am worried about the impact that could have on our nation’s health,” economy, and security.
“We’re all in a state of panic,” this person added. “The damage that he can do is enormous. I don’t know anybody who isn’t worried about this.”
But then, Science isn’t in the business of spooning comforting pablum into the mouths of the well-off.
Matt Gaetz.
Being nominated to head the DOJ is such sweet revenge after they came after me for “sex trafficking.” The general wisdom concerning age gap dating is to halve one’s age and subtract seven. I’m 42 and have almost never betrayed this general maxim over the last 10 years
I think that’s a fake tweet — it comes off Twitter, which is a pretty unreliable source. But still, it’s a funny jab at the horrible Gaetz, who, if he actually used that formula would think it acceptable for him to date 14 year olds, and “almost never” anyone younger.
The joke did make me wonder about where that “general wisdom” comes from. Do people actually do simple algebra to figure out who they should date? Is there actually a formula floating about?
I found a source. To put it in perspective, the first thing on that page is a calculator to figure out the age difference between two people: you type in your age, and your date’s age, and it subtracts one from the other to get the difference.
The universal formula for calculating an age difference is:
Age Difference = |Age 1 – Age 2|
Now that we know how smart the audience for this calculator is, they explain the “rule of seven,” which is not a rule, but only a tool for rationalizing kiddie-chasing.
A common rule for the maximum and minimum age one is supposed to date is the so-called “rule of seven”. It sets boundaries based on the age of one of the partners, and can be applied both ways. It goes as such: to define the minimum age of a partner, half your age and add seven. E.g. if you are thirty years old, calculate 30 / 2 + 7 = 15 + 7 = 22, or an age gap of 8 years would be acceptable in this direction).
To find the maximum socially acceptable age for a partner, subtract seven from your own age, then multiply it by two. For example, if you are 30 years of age, calculate (30 – 7) * 2 = 23 * 2 = 46 years or an age difference of 16 years would be acceptable in this direction.
OK, Matt Gaetz (or whoever posted that tweet) got the formula wrong, unsurprisingly.
“would be acceptable”…there are so many assumptions built into that phrase. Acceptable to who? Shouldn’t the important thing be acceptable to each other, with a recognition that a large age difference opens the door to power imbalances, and that children do not have the judgment of adults? This is a complex issue that doesn’t lend itself to simplistic formulae.
The one useful thing on that page is that they have a table of actual age differences between American couples. About 35% of all married couples have birthdays within a year of each other — which makes me totally average, since my wife and I have a 6 month age difference. Over 60% of American married couples have an age difference of less than 3 years! That tracks, since most of us form relationships with people with whom we have a lot in common, and those relationships develop organically from common associations. Do I need a calculator to figure out who I’m comfortable talking to?
