November 18, 2022

Leprosy: Ancient disease able to regenerate organs

Leprosy bacteria may hold the secret to safely repairing and regenerating the body, researchers at the University of Edinburgh say.

Animal experiments have uncovered the bacteria's remarkable ability to almost double the size of livers by stimulating healthy growth.

It is a sneakily selfish act that gives the bacteria more tissue to infect.
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The experiments, which were performed in the US, showed the infection heads to the armoured animals' livers, where it performed a controlled hijacking of the organ to reprogram it for its own purpose.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63626239

Lots of information there, wish BBC would realize there's a difference between a paragraph and a sentence.

November 16, 2022

Left Behind and the Translation of God Renegade Cut

Many thanks to ancianita for introducing me to RenegadeCut and sending me down a rabbit hole today. This is long, but he's pretty thorough, so enjoy.

You'll know where he's at within the first 15 seconds. I give him props for both reading LaHaye's wretched book and suffering through uthe wretched movies that followed it. Both were beyond me. I didn't find them ignorant enough to be funny. They were just bad.

November 14, 2022

The Wind Catcher

November 4, 2022

Deep Fried Coffee: A Horrifying Discovery

I imagine this was started by someone who couldn't afford a decent drum roaster. The first brewing method might confer some added richness if creamer had been used, quite nice for people who like coffee. The second method, nuh-uh. The facial expressions tell the whole story about that.

October 31, 2022

Brazil election: Bolsonaro yet to concede after Lula's win Published 58 minutes ago

(Talk about something from the foregone conclusion files)

More than 17 hours after Brazil's electoral chief declared Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva the winner of the presidential election, defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro has yet to concede.

The far-right president is said to have gone to sleep after he narrowly lost to his left-wing arch rival.

His silence is raising concern that he may not accept the result.

He has in the past cast unfounded doubts on the voting system.

More deja vu at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-63451859

October 30, 2022

Putin's war: scenarios for the short, medium & long term - Geopolitics with Alex Stubb

Alex Stubb is a former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Finland.

How many of us got it 100% right?

Kudos to him for admitting his own mistakes and crediting Poland and the Baltic states for getting it right.

October 15, 2022

Hooray! Somebody else finally said it--the stock market is hyperinflated

October 15, 2022

Don't you think that Russian TV is full of propaganda?

People weren't saying this stuff just four months ago. I have to like the woman who says she only tunes in to get a dose of cringe.

September 27, 2022

What Russian State Media Tell Us About REFERENDUMS

Think about having OAN as your only news source, blatted out of your TV 24/7, with no opposition and nothing else, anywhere. Think about a 10 year prison sentence if you don't manage to say the exact words they want you to say.

You're not even allowed to say the "pro Russian voters" all sound drugged, blink a lot, and are constantly shifting their eyes to the side to make sure they're not offending the guys with the guns.

Sheesh. Poor Niki.

September 26, 2022

This week's demented food video

Unlike last week's I think I'll pass on this one. They used to sell cod cheeks (minus the rest of the head) back in Boston, ostensibly for fish chowder. I used to marinat them in garlicky Italian dressing, skewer them, and cook them on the grill, they were just firm enough to stay on the skewer. I also did fish tempura with them, but they were a little too firm for that.

"Chippy Tea," however, was a definite winner.