Valley Fever and No Healthcare.

Dust storms spike with Valley fever cases. The largest number of dust storms from 1988 to 2011 are concentrated in the SW states reporting the highest numbers of fever cases.

The infection rate of Valley Fever in the Southwest United States has gone up a stunning 800 percent from 2000 to 2011, as dust storms have more than doubled.

New research directly links the rise in Valley Fever to the rise in dust storms, which in turn is driven by climate change. Valley Fever, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls “a fungal lung infection that can be devastating,” is caused by inhaling soil-dwelling fungus. When the soil dries out and turns to dust, the wind can make the fungus airborne.

“Dust storms are found to better correlated with the disease than any other known controlling factor,“ a new study led by NOAA scientists concluded.

[…]

But the biggest concern about modern Dust-Bowlification is the tremendous challenge of “feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate.” This is why climate action is so urgent and vital.

This all goes along nicely with the rethuglican agenda of making sure a whole lot of people will die from a lack of good nutrition and healthcare. Until the day comes along they are personally threatened, there won’t be minds changing. Unfortunately, money makes a very nice cushion against what always hits the poorer people first. Speaking of the Fuck You Care Plan, the secrecy continues:

Senate Republicans plan to send their health care bill to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for analysis but don’t yet have a plan to release a draft of the bill for public scrutiny, according to Axios.

“We aren’t stupid,” an aide to a Senate Republican told Axios.

It’s perhaps understandable that Senate Republicans would want to shine as little light as possible on an unpopular bill that could cause millions of people to lose their health insurance.

The Senate is reportedly putting the final touches on a health care bill that looks very similar to the so-called American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed by the House. According to the CBO, the House version would cost 23 million Americans their health insurance while dramatically increasing costs for older Americans and people with pre-existing conditions, in part because of the bill’s $834 billion cut to Medicaid over the next decade.

[…]

“We have no idea what’s being proposed,” McCaskill said, addressing chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT). “There’s a group of guys in a back room somewhere that are making these decisions… Listen, this is hard to take.”

“You couldn’t have a more partisan exercise than what you’re engaged in right now,” she continued. “We’re not even gonna have a hearing on a bill that impacts one-sixth of our economy. We’re not going to have an opportunity to offer a single amendment. It is all being done with an eye to try to get it by with 50 votes and the vice president.”

[…]

McCaskill went on to blast McConnell for his hypocrisy. Before the 2014 election that returned control of the Senate to Republicans, McConnell “pledged to send bills through committees, even if it might upset members of his own conference,” as The Hill reported in May of that year. But last week, McConnell gave the health care bill “fast track” status, meaning it can skip the committee process altogether.

Republican hypocrisy was also evidence during the House process. Before the 2010 election that returned control of the House to Republicans, House Republican leaders unveiled their “Pledge to America.” The pledge contained a “Read the Bill” promise vowing, “We will ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square by publishing the text online for at least three days before coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives.” But a number of House Republicans admitted to not even reading the AHCA before they cast a vote for it.

Think Progress has the full stories: Valley Fever and What Healthcare?

My Kind of Study.

It’s long been associated with anger and coarseness but profanity can have another, more positive connotation. Psychologists have learned that people who frequently curse are being more honest. Writing in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science a team of researchers from the Netherlands, the UK, the USA and Hong Kong report that people who use profanity are less likely to be associated with lying and deception.

Anyone who has been reading me for any length of time knows I tend to cuss. A lot. Can’t say I’ve ever considered it to be a possible mark of honesty though.

The international team of researchers set out to gauge people’s views about this sort of language in a series of questionnaires which included interactions with social media users.

In the first questionnaire 276 participants were asked to list their most commonly used and favourite swear words. They were also asked to rate their reasons for using these words and then took part in a lie test to determine whether they were being truthful or simply responding in the way they thought was socially acceptable. Those who wrote down a higher number of curse words were less likely to be lying.

This is interesting, but I have to wonder if the ability to lie was taken into account. Many children in abusive situations learn to lie extremely well. I was one of those, and while I can rarely be arsed to lie in adulthood, I am very good at it. Someone who is a good liar wouldn’t neglect a good intensifier. There’s an obvious tendency for those listening to take someone at their word, too. That would answer for people assuming someone who was cussing to be truthful, because we still have that ‘in polite company’ thing in our heads. We are, well most of us, taught that cussing isn’t polite from a very early age. Our languages are littered with euphemisms in place of cussing, which are considered to be acceptable, golly, darn, geez, etc. A lot of that has to do with so much cussing being religiously based.

A second survey involved collecting data from 75,000 Facebook users to measure their use of swear words in their online social interactions. The research found that those who used more profanity were also more likely to use language patterns that have been shown in previous research to be related to honesty, such as using pronouns like “I” and “me”. The Facebook users were recruited from across the United States and their responses highlight the differing views to profanity that exist between different geographical areas. For example, those in the north-eastern states (such as Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and New York) were more likely to swear whereas people were less likely to in the southern states (South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi).

As a native Californian, cussing was often heard, and often a part of any conversation. Especially if you were in the surfing crowd. Here in nDakota, cussing is not heard much at all, and it’s frowned upon for the most part. That’s changed a bit over the past 20 years, but not a great deal. The more rural you go, the more frowning it gets.

The full story is here.

Jumping Spiders, Galileo, and Twitter.

Kaldari/Wikipedia.

A fascinating story about a rain of jumping spiders, their penchant for hunting laser dots, scientists being brought together on Twitter, and how Jumping Spider eyes are built just like Galilean telescopes – they can see the moon. If you, like me, start following videos from the main one at the site, you’ll find all manner of people who keep these friendly and smart beings as companions.

The Atlantic has the full story.

Another Nail in the Garden of Eden.

Two views of a composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils, are shown in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters June 7, 2017. Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig/Handout via REUTERS.

The understanding of human origins was turned on its head on Wednesday with the announcement of the discovery of fossils unearthed on a Moroccan hillside that are about 100,000 years older than any other known remains of our species, Homo sapiens.

Scientists determined that skulls, limb bones and teeth representing at least five individuals were about 300,000 years old, a blockbuster discovery in the field of anthropology.

The antiquity of the fossils was startling – a “big wow,” as one of the researchers called it. But their discovery in North Africa, not East or even sub-Saharan Africa, also defied expectations. And the skulls, with faces and teeth matching people today but with archaic and elongated braincases, showed our brain needed more time to evolve its current form.

“This material represents the very root of our species,” said paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who helped lead the research published in the journal Nature.

Before the discovery at the site called Jebel Irhoud, located between Marrakech and Morocco’s Atlantic coast, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils were known from an Ethiopian site called Omo Kibish, dated to 195,000 years ago.

“The message we would like to convey is that our species is much older than we thought and that it did not emerge in an Adamic way in a small ‘Garden of Eden’ somewhere in East Africa. It is a pan-African process and more complex scenario than what has been envisioned so far,” Hublin said.

Fascinating! I’m sure as soon as all the creationists hear, they’ll be busy cooking up wild refutations of some sort. Full story here. And, from Nature:

Fossil evidence points to an African origin of Homo sapiens from a group called either H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis. However, the exact place and time of emergence of H. sapiens remain obscure because the fossil record is scarce and the chronological age of many key specimens remains uncertain. In particular, it is unclear whether the present day ‘modern’ morphology rapidly emerged approximately 200 thousand years ago (ka) among earlier representatives of H. sapiens1 or evolved gradually over the last 400 thousand years2. Here we report newly discovered human fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and interpret the affinities of the hominins from this site with other archaic and recent human groups. We identified a mosaic of features including facial, mandibular and dental morphology that aligns the Jebel Irhoud material with early or recent anatomically modern humans and more primitive neurocranial and endocranial morphology. In combination with an age of 315 ± 34 thousand years (as determined by thermoluminescence dating)3, this evidence makes Jebel Irhoud the oldest and richest African Middle Stone Age hominin site that documents early stages of the H. sapiens clade in which key features of modern morphology were established. Furthermore, it shows that the evolutionary processes behind the emergence of H. sapiens involved the whole African continent.

The Sex Life of Truffles.

Prices for a black truffle can exceed €1000 a kilogram, especially because this highly-sought after fungus—a gastronomic delicacy—still resists domestication. Researchers are trying to understand its particularly complex sexuality and the differences in lifestyles between a mother, who shelters the spores that we eat and a father who fertilizes her, without ever revealing himself…

I had no idea! Not that I can afford these anyway. Via CNRS News.

Make The Planet Great Again.

Most have probably seen this, but if you haven’t, it’s a must.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a stunning response to the U.S. president, calling his decision “a grave mistake.”

“If we do nothing, our children will know a world of migrations, of wars, of shortage. A dangerous world,” Macron said, referencing the cataclysmic effect of climate change all but completely ignored by the Trump administration.

He also encouraged American scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to come to France where their contributions and innovation would be appreciated. As for Trump’s vague promise to rework the terms of the Paris agreement, Macron issued a staunch warning.

“The Paris agreement [will] remain irreversible and will be implemented not just by France but by all the other nations,” he said, the two exceptions being Syria and Nicaragua.

“We will succeed,” he continued. “Because we are fully committed, because wherever we live, whoever we are, we all share the same responsibility: ‘Make our planet great again.’”

And there you have what a lot of people are going to do here in uStates – leave. Oh, by the way, California has passed single payer healthcare. Even though I’m a native, I won’t go back, the SoCal I know was gone long ago. I’m sure that won’t stop another massive influx of people.

Via Alternet.

And, The Idiot Fucks Us All Into The Ground.

President Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he is withdrawing the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, a move that honors a campaign promise but risks rupturing global alliances and disappointing both environmentalists and corporate titans.

But Trump said he would seek to negotiate a new climate deal that is, in his view, “fair” to America’s interests.

“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers,” Trump said.

“We’re getting out,” he added, “but we will start to negotiate and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. If we can, that’s great. If we can’t, that’s fine.”

Trump argued that the Paris agreement would “punish” the United States and instituted “onerous energy restrictions” that would stymie economic growth, especially in manufacturing industries. The president claimed that meeting the accord’s greenhouse gas emission standards would cost the United States close to $3 trillion in lost gross domestic product and 6.5 million industrial jobs.

I can’t go on. Not right now. Jesus Fuck, the idiot is going to kill us all. Full story is at The Washington Post. Read at your peril. Also, stay the hell away from twitter, it’s infested with fucking idiots, waving their tiny flags, which are considerably bigger than their brains.

There’s also this, but there’s no funny business with Russia, no, no.  And this: Trump’s argument for withdrawing from Paris agreement contains multi-trillion dollar math error: In a cost-benefit analysis, you’re supposed to analyze the costs and the benefits.

Climate Accord: Trump To Pull Out.

“Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, center right, after appearing to be pushed by Donald Trump, center.” CREDIT for caption/photo: AP/Matt Dunham.

There’s been a great deal of anxiety laden speculation over the Paris Climate Accord, as that represents our last, best hope. It seems it’s a last, best hope that the Tiny Tyrant wants no part of, and plans to withdraw from.  This is not yet formal, and the Tiny Tyrant is subject to doing rapid turnabouts on a whim, but he’s never been secretive about his scorn for the climate accord, or his desire to pull out. The damage he has already done here in uStates is tremendous, it won’t be long before we’re back to 1970s levels of pollution, with smog alerts and steeping in trash and toxicity once again. Naturally, this will lead to a much sicker populace, one which will not be able to take care of themselves, thanks to the Fuck You Care Plan. There’s one other country which is also adamantly against the climate accord. Bet you don’t need three guesses, either. It’s Russia.

President Donald Trump has privately told “confidants” he intends to leave the Paris accord on climate change, “according to three sources with direct knowledge,” Axios reported Saturday.

After persuading voters that America isn’t great anymore, Trump apparently intends to make sure of it — by having this country lead the effort to kill humanity’s last, best hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

Quitting a unanimous agreement by 190+ nations after a two-decade negotiating process would make us a rogue nation, a global pariah, like Vladimir Putin’s Russia. And, it could make Putin happy, as we’ll see.

While Trump tweeted out Saturday from Italy that “I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after the G7 meeting, “The whole discussion about climate has been difficult, or rather very unsatisfactory.” She added, “Here we have the situation that six members, or even seven if you want to add the EU, stand against one.”

Axios notes that “Although Trump made it clear during the campaign and in multiple conversations before his overseas trip that he favored withdrawal, he has been known to abruptly change his mind.” They add, however, top political appointees at EPA “were relieved” when Trump refused to join a consensus G7 statement reaffirming “their strong commitment” to the Paris accord.

While the White House’s attack on domestic climate action already undermines the global effort to avert climate catastrophe, we shouldn’t discount the importance of a U.S. withdrawal from Paris — especially if Trump teams with Russian President Vladimir Putin to undermine the whole global negotiating process.

Think Progress has the full story.

Soothing Silicone.

Can you tell I’m not in the mood for politics today? I’m not. I haven’t even checked the news, and I’m not going to check today. If the world explodes this day, I’d rather not know anyroad. Instead of anxiety, depression, and paranoia, have some soothing silicone:

Silicone Annealing – Cruz Culture.

Mixing Silicone for Rubber Moulding – Butser Rubber Ltd. (Yes, that name made me laugh.)

Life on the line: kneading pigment into silicon – Stephen Woolverton.

Cool Stuff Friday.

The Infinite Now from Armand Dijcks on Vimeo.

Over the past months I’ve been working with Australian photographer Ray Collins to bring his amazing oceanscapes to life in the form of cinemagraphs, a blend between photography and video. Each cinemagraph is created from one of Ray’s stills, and sets it in infinite motion, making a unique moment in time last forever.

These cinemagraphs inspired André Heuvelman from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra to get together with pianist Jeroen van Vliet to record a very moving custom soundtrack, which I combined with a selection of the cinemagraphs.

You can see the original cinemagraphs at armanddijcks.com/cinemagraphs-waves

Ray’s images can be found at raycollinsphoto.com

André Heuvelman’s music: andreheuvelman.com

Stunning and mesmerizing work by all!

The Canadian Museum of History has unveiled a unique new exhibit that brings the faces of a 4,000-year-old Indigenous family back to life.

The museum revealed the three-dimensional forensic reconstruction of a shíshálh family whose remains were found in an ancient burial site near what is now Sechelt, B.C. The digital images move and blink in the incredibly life-like display.

“To look back on some of our people that existed within our territory 4,000 years ago, and to be in close proximity of their images — it’s a humbling experience,” Chief Warren Paull of the shíshálh Nation told CBC News.

“I see cousins. I see family.”

You can read more about this here. Amazing work.

SHE INSPIRES installation view.

Women’s history has long been marginalized in mainstream education, relegated to its own niche of study and overlooked in favor of male-dominated historical narratives. SHE INSPIRES, a group exhibition at The Untitled Space, highlights these lesser told histories through the work of over 60 contemporary artists. Each piece in the show is an homage to an important woman. Curator, Indira Cesarine, tells Creators, “SHE INSPIRES aims to honor and celebrate women who have impacted our culture and tell their stories which should be rightfully included not just as ‘women’s history,’ but everyone’s history.”

[…]

SHE INSPIRES is on display at The Untitled Space in Soho through May 20th. Click here for accompanying events and more information.

You can read and see more at The Creators Project.

The Slow Mo Guys take on mousetraps on a trampoline.

Zuul crurivastator.

Zuul crurivastator, a newly discovered species of armoured dinosaur named after a creature from Ghostbusters, is shown at the Royal Ontario Museum. (Andrew Francis Wallace).

“It has this very short, broad snout, and then it has these two sets of horns that project backwards from the eye; one above the eye and one a little bit further down. And that’s exactly what we see in the skull of this dinosaur.”

Research on the new species, led by Arbour, was published in the May issue of the Royal Society OpenScience journal.

Zuul, the dinosaur, is about 75 million years old. Its body was found in a river deposit in Montana’s Judith River Formation and spanned about six metres long.

The dinosaur’s skeleton was found almost entirely intact, according to Evans, noting it was “remarkably preserved” under 10 metres of rock.

“This is a dinosaur that would not have been exposed for paleontologists to find for probably hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years,” he said. “The fossil was never exposed to modern erosion or plant roots . . . so that means we have a level of preservation that is jaw-dropping.”

The skeleton had to be broken up into several pieces in order to be removed. Zuul likely weighed about 5,500 pounds, equivalent to the size of a white rhinoceros.

“This is very rare, to find a complete articulated skeleton, especially for this group of dinosaurs,” Arbour said. “They’re just not as common.”

Its species name, crurivastator, means “destroyer of shins,” a reference to a large knob of bone at the tip of its tail, which may have been used to strike the legs of predatory dinosaurs in defence, or for battle during contests for mates.

Researchers have preserved the large, sharp bony spikes that formed in Zuul’s skin over its tail and likely the entirety of its body, forming its armour. They also managed to maintain very rare keratin sheaths — the same material which forms finger nails, bird beaks and the top of turtle shells — and soft tissues such as its scales.

While the dinosaur’s colour is unknown, Evans said they believe it may have been brightly coloured due to its outer keratin layer.

Full story here.

It’s – It’s A Cookbook!

Loud-mouthed Loon Dave Daubenmire has a warning for Christians, but why not let everyone in on the secret? Aliens! It’s Aliens, people, start your screaming now!

Religious Right activist “Coach” Dave Daubenmire issued a rather cryptic warning on his “Pass The Salt Live” webcast this morning when he suggested that efforts are underway to deceive Christians into welcoming “extra-dimensional beings” who will soon appear as rescuers of the world.

Citing an article listed on the website of apocalyptic End Times activist Steve Quayle, Daubenmire warned that some unnamed “they” are “setting us up for the appearance of these, I believe, extra-dimensional beings that are going to come as our rescuers, the ones who are going to rescue the world and the very elect themselves, if it was possible, will be deceived.”

Yeah, okay, someone has watched The Twilight Zone a bit too much. Is the ‘extra-dimensional’ bit necessary? Seems to me if you want to sell aliens coming here with a “ooh, we’ll rescue you” con going, it would be in their interest to look like the peacemaker on Famous Fantastic Mysteries, complete with white doves, a symbol christians can be relied upon to fall for, with oohs and aahs.

Daubenmire then cited another article about the “imminent return” of the “cloudeaters,” whom he asserted were an ancient race of giants, as he marveled that “this stuff is now falling into the mainstream thought, mainstream media, mainstream science” but Christians are not paying attention.

Oh, yes, cloudeaters, giants who have this amazing technology, and they are gonna come back from … somewhere. Let’s take a look at the synopsis of Unearthing the Lost World of the Cloudeaters: Compelling Evidence of the Incursion of Giants, Their Extraordinary Technology, and Imminent Return:

UNEARTHING THE LOST WORLD OF THE CLOUDEATERS is a book unlike any other, one that demands the Smithsonian to open its hidden warehouses so the history of ancient America can be rewritten! As chronicled by Dr. Thomas R. Horn, radio legend Stephen Quayle, and two teams of investigators and film crews (following a secret conference with leaders of the Ute Nation, Zuni, and Hopi tribes) the most compelling evidence is finally unveiled involving pre-Columbian, dragon/giant-worshiping interlopers who traversed the Atlantic Ocean and secret Anasazi routes to corrupt the earliest Americans with portal-opening sorcery, human sacrifices, ritual cannibalism, and technology of the fallen ones. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, IN UNEARTHING THE LOST WORLD OF THE CLOUDEATERS: DISCLOSED! The truth behind the great Smithsonian cover up REVEALED! The pre-Flood architecture of the Giant Kings DECIPHERED! Pre-Flood angel civilizations and the remnants of Watchers UNCOVERED! The secret of the Anasazi and why they disappeared overnight UNVEILED! Ancient hidden stargates that medicine-men still use to see the future CONFESSED! The sacred mountains where the giant bones are kept EXPOSED! What tribal elders confessed about returning giants UNMASKED! Giant, cannibalistic gods that demanded human sacrifice DISCOVERED! Children of Cloudeaters, six-fingered, six-toed mutants UNWRAPPED! Shapeshifters, Skinwalkers, and other sky people UNEARTHED! Where the gates will open when the Cloudeaters return Learn the secrets to America’s earliest history and the truth about the giants in its past and future as you travel with Dr. Thomas R. Horn and Stephen Quayle into the most groundbreaking, history-altering investigation primed to challenge predominant, institutional dogma and scientific orthodoxy.

Well, that has crackpot written all over it. I can easily assert that the “leaders” of the Ute, Zuni, and Hopi nations had nothing to do with this, unless they were indulging in a joke. Joking about may well have happened, but I don’t expect someone like Mr. Quayle can easily discern humour. There’s just an astonishing amount of “every story we could think of” in that conspiratorial and paranoia spiced stew. So, according to Coach Dave, this “stuff” is now falling into mainstream thought, media, and science. I gotta say, that’s news to me. I’d think if scientists were going to raise the alarm about giants and mutants, they had the best opportunity ever at all the Marches for Science, but I didn’t see any signs warning people about the imminent return of cloudeaters or anything else. Haven’t seen anything on various blogs kept by scientists, either. Of course, if giant cephalopods are involved at all, PZ may well keep quiet about this one. Well, let’s see how Coach Dave finishes up:

“The MK Ultras, the satanically ritually abused children,” he said, “all that kind of stuff, it is right before our face.”

Oh, are people still going on about that nonsense? Is it too much to ask you christians on the lunatic fringe to pick one and go with it? You started with aliens, just stay with it. As for the satanist silliness, please, please, get it through your dense heads: Lucifer is a key player in the christian mythos. The whole thing falls apart without him. Anyone who is actually serious about satanism is also a christian, they just prefer a different perspective. All that “stuff” might be right in front of your face, Coach Dave, but it sure as hell isn’t in front of mine. No MK Ultra moles, no satanic children, no dragon/giant worshipping interlopers, no giants, none of it. A person might be tempted to think you’re doing a bit of mind altering acid yourself. So, anyone seen anything suspicious lately?

Via RWW.