The joys of amateur sports

Posted for Bobby Hartshorn and all those other old men up in Minnesota.

If there are any readers who don't like amateur sports, I suggest watching this film for five minutes to understand why other people do.

Awesome

I wonder if someone can guess what these are.  I had not the faintest idea.  Answer tomorrow - or if someone posts it in the Comments. (click to embiggify)

Addendum:  As one reader realized, these are phasmid eggs (the eggs of stick insects).  So we turn to Wikipedia:

The Phasmatodea (also known as Phasmida, Phasmatoptera or Spectra) are an order of insects whose members are variously known as stick insects, stick-bugs, walking sticks, stick animals, or bug sticks. They are also occasionally referred to as Devil's darning needles, although this name is shared by both dragonflies and crane flies. They can be generally referred to as phasmatodeans, phasmids, or ghost insects, with phasmids in the family Phylliidae called leaf insects, leaf-bugs, walking leaves, or bug leaves. The group's name is derived from the Ancient Greek φάσμα phasma, meaning an apparition or phantom, referring to their resemblance to vegetation while in fact being animals. Their natural camouflage makes them difficult for predators to detect; still, many species have one of several secondary lines of defense in the form of startle displays, spines or toxic secretions...

Phasmatodea eggs resemble seeds in shape and size and have hard shells. They have a lid-like structure called an operculum at the anterior pole, from which the nymph emerges during hatching. The eggs vary in the length of time before they hatch which varies from 13 to more than 70 days, with the average around 20 to 30 days. Some species, particularly those from temperate regions, undergo diapause, where development is delayed during the winter months...

Many species' eggs bear a fatty, knoblike capitulum that caps the operculum. This structure attracts ants because of its resemblance to the elaiosome of some plant seeds that are sought-after food sources for ant larvae, and usually contribute to ensuring seed dispersal by ants, a form of ant-plant mutualism called myrmecochory. The ants take the egg into their nest underground and can remove the capitulum to feed to their larvae without harming the phasmid embryo. There, the egg hatches and the young nymph, which initially resembles an ant (another instance of mimicry among Phasmatodea), eventually emerges from the nest and climbs the nearest tree to safety in the foliage. The eggs of stick insects have a coating of calcium oxalate which makes them survive unscathed in the digestive tract of birds. It has been suggested that birds may have a role in the dispersal of parthenogenetic stick insect species, especially to islands.

Lots of fascinating details.  While doing the research, I discovered that the image I embedded was sourced from the Levon Biss Studio, which offers limited edition prints of the top photo plus some close-up views of smaller groups of the eggs.

For images of the adults see my previous posts entitled Yellow Umbrella Stick Insect (2021) and Black Beauty Stick Insect (2012).  The latter has an extended comment by reader Liesel Weppen on the ease (and joys) of raising phasmids at home in a terrarium.  I highly recommend reading her comment if you would like to raise these yourself; I have seen offers of eggs for sale on the internet, including from various scientific supply companies.

Here's a friendly stick insect who crawled up my blue jeans to join me for a walk in the woods up at Leech Lake a couple summers ago:

A pigeon dyed (and died) for a gender reveal

"Flamingo, who was believed to be less than a year old, was found wandering through Madison Square Park, in Manhattan, last week. His plight prompted anger at the person or people who had dyed him pink and have not yet been identified. The Wild Bird Fund took Flamingo into care and announced the king pigeon’s death Tuesday."

A comparison of primate feet

This comment in response to "losing the grip ability in our feet" is relevant:

"...our feet are actually pretty amazing comparatively to the list. They're hyper specialized for balance, not grip. That balance lets us throw objects harder and faster than any other creature on the planet, which is one of the major skills that contributes (contributed) to our place at the top of the food chain. Also the whole endurance walking/running thing that humans are the best in the world at..."

More at the interestingasfuck subreddit thread.  I fondly remember being able to grasp things on the floor with my big toe until bunions intervened...

Republicans control the Iowa legislature, so...

Some relevant comments at the antiwork subreddit thread.

Not to be outdone, in Wisconsin here is a 14-year old working in a fast-food establishment...

"According to the Fair Labor Standards Act Amendments in 1996, employers are allowed to pay workers under 20 years of age $4.25 per hour for the first 90 days of employment.

Employers are not allowed to replace current workers with employees under 20 and are also not allowed to fire them before the 90-day window has elapsed, but it still provides an opportunity for exploitation for employers who want to hire cheap workers."

For context, I had my first summer job at age 16, selling woolen clothes door-to-door in July, paid on commission only.  After the first week I had spent more parking my car at the business than I had made in commissions, so my mom helped me find a job in a Green Giant pea-packing plant in rural Minnesota.  Twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week at minimum wage (unless it rained in which case you didn't work).  I told that story back in 2010.

And for further context, my mom started working on her parents' farm when she was old enough to hold the reins of a team of horses that pulled the cultivator (a hired man would put the horses into harness).  Neighbors said it "looked like there was a big straw hat riding the cultivator."

Addendum:  Related (humorous) GIF

An unbelievable collection of religious relics

Father Jelenić was lecturing to 40 high school students, and with a nod, he allowed us to join them in a dark sanctum behind the altar. On one wall, dimly lit cabinets were crowded with dusty glass containers that held artifacts said to be, among other Catholic wonders, a piece of the True Cross, part of the Virgin Mary’s veil and the tongue of St. Mary of Egypt. Most impressive were three desiccated corpses laid out in glass coffins, all still wearing their colorful religious robes. “What you see in Vodnjan can be seen nowhere else on earth,” boasted the priest. “Even the Vatican doesn’t have what we have here.”

Despite his years, Father Jelenić was bursting with energy and spoke with the flair of a Shakespearean actor. “Look! Look!” he cried. “Here is the bedsheet of the baby Jesus. Here is soil from beneath the Crucifix. Here is a stone from the pillar where He was whipped by the Romans. Here is a part of the Crown of Thorns.” The list went on: “There are relics from the 12 Apostles. Relics from the prophets! Look! Look! The finger of St. Anthony. More fingers! So many fingers! The pelvic bones of St. Sebastian. The foot of St. Barbara!” The three bodies on display were particularly sacred, Jelenić explained, because of their mysterious state of preservation. “This is a miracle right here in Vodnjan. There is no scientific explanation as to why they are in such good condition. They were never embalmed!” In 2009, the corpses were given CT scans in a forensic laboratory. “The inner organs were all intact! A miracle!”

Father Jelenić led us into his office and opened a tome he had written about the trove, called Sanctuarium Adignani. It was as glossy as a high-end museum catalog, with beautifully lit photographs and a price tag of €2,000. (“Yes, the book costs €2,000, but it is worth 10 million,” he declared. “It’s priceless, really.”) He eagerly flipped through its pages, holding his right hand up in reverence at key images: “Relic! Relic! Relic!” Then he paused at a double spread of the mummy of St. Nikoloza Bursa: While alive, Nikoloza had levitated, and her body could still cure disease. Even her image had spiritual power, Jelenić said, as he dangled a key chain above the page. “Look at the energy. You see how the keys move? Just from a photograph!”

The story continues at Away To Istria in Smithsonian magazine.

A message from José Andrés and World Central Kitchen

"We are just several days away from it being five months since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, displacing millions of people, claiming tens of thousands of lives, and destroying thousands of buildings and entire communities. But these numbers only partially convey what the Ukrainian people have had to endure. Refugees fleeing—primarily women, children, and seniors—have embarked on long and arduous journeys, waiting up to 72 hours before crossing the border to safety. People remaining in Ukraine are living through the trauma of constant shelling and the threat of uncertainty as more and more residential areas are targeted seemingly at random. 

As the situation has unfolded, the war in Ukraine has also become a war on food. Activity at ports and borders has been disrupted, straining the food supply that feeds not only Ukraine, but the world. Since activating five months ago, WCK food cargo trains, and restaurant and farm partners, have been hit by missiles. Still, every single day thousands of WCK's Ukrainian Food Fighters show up to provide nourishing meals and food aid to families remaining in the country. Today, our incredible teams served their 100 millionth meal in response to invasion.

Since the first cold night in February when WCK began serving soup to families fleeing the attack at a border crossing in Poland, we've delivered 100 million meals in eight countries, at more than 6,000 different distribution points, including in over 1,000 cities and towns inside Ukraine. Today, our teams inside Ukraine continue to expand efforts reaching families under constant attack in eastern cities while still caring for refugees who have fled west. Between the preparation of hot, fresh meals and large grocery kits with ingredients for families to cook with at home, we are serving more than 1.7 million meals every single day—this scale of an emergency response is beyond what World Central Kitchen has ever seen before, and we will keep cooking. 

With the situation in many eastern cities intensifying and needs outside Ukraine subsiding, we’re scaling down our efforts in neighboring countries to focus on ramping up our response for the most vulnerable families. Working with the thousands of WCK team members across Ukraine, we will continue to reach as many people in need of hot meals and grocery kits as we can. 

WCK envisions—and continues to hope for—a world where we would not have to respond to senseless violence under these circumstances, but we are beyond grateful to stand alongside more than 4,300 brave Food Fighters who work tirelessly to ensure anyone in need is met with a hot meal. It is because of all the WCK team members, volunteers, and global community of supporters that our efforts in Ukraine and in seven neighboring countries have been made possible—thank you. Read more about how we built the largest humanitarian food relief effort in Ukraine."

Received in an email because of my previous contributions [boldface added].  The video has only 74 views as of right now, so I thought perhaps I could give it a little boost.  And they will get another contribution from me.

You can donate via this link.  And please share the video.

Reposted from last year because of the earthquake in Turkiye.  Chef Jose Andres sent out a call today for helpers with experience preparing food in that region.  I expect kitchens will be set up before the end of the week.

A deep-field zoom from the JWST

I'm running out of blogging time today, so I'll repost this later with salient comments, but for now just marvel at what the James Webb Space Telescope is revealing.

Via the European Space Agency.

The history of Tater Tots

Tater Tots would be my side of choice to go with my filet of walleye almondine at my last meal.

By 1951, Ore-Ida had already become the largest distributor of sweet corn in the United States. But the big money was in french fries. Fellow Idahoian J.R. Simplot figured out how to freeze french fries without turning them black in 1946, and was well on his way to billionaire status. The Grigg brothers wanted in. But french fry creation had a technology problem: The machinery could cut the potatoes into fries, but, as Nephi wrote, “we had a problem of separating the fries from the slivers and small pieces of potatoes that occurred [when] slicing the irregular shaped potatoes.”

When an equipment manufacturing company inexplicably showed up at their plant to demonstrate a prune sorter, Nephi and his plant superintendent Slim Burton chatted with them about a redesign. Could the barrel be redesigned so that it would eliminate the unwanted pieces of potatoes from the very wanted french fries? It could.

The story continues at Eater.  And if you have nothing better to do with your time, try browsing the Wikipedia page of last meals.

The world is at risk for an even worse pandemic

I heard this topic discussed in a British science podcast ("Science in Action"), but hadn't seen a print version until this morning, when Kottke referred me to a New York Times op-ed piece.

Bird flu — known more formally as avian influenza — has long hovered on the horizons of scientists’ fears. This pathogen, especially the H5N1 strain, hasn’t often infected humans, but when it has, 56 percent of those known to have contracted it have died. Its inability to spread easily, if at all, from one person to another has kept it from causing a pandemic.

But things are changing. The virus, which has long caused outbreaks among poultry, is infecting more and more migratory birds, allowing it to spread more widely, even to various mammals, raising the risk that a new variant could spread to and among people.

Alarmingly, it was recently reported that a mutant H5N1 strain was not only infecting minks at a fur farm in Spain but also most likely spreading among them, unprecedented among mammals. Even worse, the mink’s upper respiratory tract is exceptionally well suited to act as a conduit to humans, Thomas Peacock, a virologist who has studied avian influenza, told me...

It’s hard to imagine a better way to incubate and spread a deadly virus than letting it evolve among tens of thousands of animals with an upper respiratory tract similar to ours crowded together. When the coronavirus infected Danish mink farms in 2020 and the minks generated new variants that then infected humans, the efforts to save the industry were futile because the outbreaks were uncontrollable.

If different strains of flu have infected the same person simultaneously, the strains can swap gene segments and give rise to new, more transmissible ones. If a mink farmworker with the flu also gets infected by H5N1, that may be all it takes to ignite a pandemic...

Perhaps the best news is that we have several H5N1 vaccines already approved by the Food and Drug Administration whose safety and immune response have been studied.

The U.S. government has a small H5N1 vaccine stockpile, but it would be nowhere near enough if a serious outbreak occurred. The current plan is to mass-produce them if and when such an outbreak occurs, based on the particular variant involved.

It's not hard to predict the divergent public response in the United States when an announcement is made that a dangerous pandemic is coming and everyone needs to get a new vaccine.  Something like this could "weed out" vaccine skeptics even more effectively than COVID did.  But the cost to the economy, not to mention the human tragedy of innocent bystanders would be catastrophic.

An Arizona "sovereign citizen" declares his car exempt from regulation

Discussed at the Idiots in Cars subreddit, where the discussion thread mentions the risks involved in confronting these deranged people.

Triggers for mental illness

I'm interested not in the itemized list, but the reason why it would be alphabetized, then rearranged.  I suspect some copy/paste errors between the original and this copy.

Apparently the place is real; I haven't tracked down the original of this document.  Via.

Addendum:  A tip of the blogging cap to long-time reader Gregory Charles Lyons, who saw a copy of these Reasons For Admission displayed in an exhibition at the Erie Art Museum.  At the exhibition the list was noted to have been from the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia.

An homage to film noir

This multi-award-winning short film is a mashup of clips from more than 60 classic film noir movies (listed in the credits).   The creators call it a prequel to a full-length movie if they can get funding for such.

A tip of the blogging cap to Miss Cellania at Neatorama, who manages to find all sorts of interesting stuff.

Newborn baby pictured grasping his mother's IUD

I will 100% guarantee that the device was placed in the newborn's hands by delivery room personnel, perhaps just for laughs or maybe for publicity/social commentary, as is clearly pointed out in the comments at Jezebel, where the editorial staff properly used the term "appears" in the article's title.

"Should brain-dead women be used as surrogate mothers?"

Incredibly, this question (posed by a Norwegian philosopher and originally published in the Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics) has now become a topic for discussion and debate on Fox News.

Those interested can read about this at Jezebel.