tingilinde

happy birthday sarah!

 

Happy Birthday Sarah!

 

 

the idaho gop hates kids

It's illegal to medically examine child rape victims

The GOP loves control

 

the most religious countries

A ranking ..  the countries associated with happiness tend to be the least religious

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People in sub-Saharan Africa are typically among the most likely to say that religion is very important in their lives. At least 90% of adults say this in Senegal, Mali, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda and Zambia.

In contrast, people in nearly all European countries surveyed are among the least likely to say that religion is very important in their lives. In Estonia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Latvia and Finland, 10% or fewer adults say this.

...

 

 

finding the limit

For some time it was felt the maximum survival web-bulb temperature for a young healthy human is 35°C.  More recently it's been lowered - old people, children, various conditions all mean a lower limit.  And now the limit for healthy adults is around 31°C  with real world testing.

 

 

om spells bubble

On AI ventures

It's probably unwise to stay away from these companies as investments.

 

time to clean out the microwave

It has it's own biome - a biome that survives microwave radiation.

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Although previous studies found distinct communities of microbes in kitchen appliances such as dishwashers1 and coffee machines2, this is the first time that the microwave oven has been investigated for having its own microbiome. The research, published today in Frontiers in Microbiology3, adds to existing work challenging a common misconception: that microwave radiation heats up and completely kills bacteria that cause food-borne illness, such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella.

“We’ve all been taught, from like the 1980s, that if you use a microwave oven, it heats everything up — it kills everything,” says Jason Tetro, a freelance microbiologist, known as ‘The Germ Guy’, in Edmonton, Canada. This study is “important”, he says, because it shines a spotlight on potential pathogens in these appliances, especially shared ones.

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a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

a novel approach to measure soli dryness

Measuring in the region between the surface and underground aquifers hasn't been easy or accurate.  Now a seismic approach that uses human generated sound as a source -- traffic noise.

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In the wake of the 2019 magnitude 7.2 earthquake in Ridgecrest, California, Zhan set up a DAS array on a nearby cable to measure aftershocks. In collaboration with Fu, the team quickly realized that the array could also be used to measure how everyday underground vibrations change depending on soil water content. Over five years, the team collected data and created models to illustrate how moisture in the vadose zone varies over time. They found that during the historic drought in California from 2019 to 2022, moisture in the vadose zone decreased significantly at a rate of 0.25 meters per year, exceeding the mean average precipitation.

"From the top 20 meters of soil in the Ridgecrest region, we can extrapolate to the entire Mojave desert," says Yan Yang, a graduate student in geophysics and co-first author of the study. "Our rough estimation is that every year, the Mojave vadose zone loses an amount of water equivalent to the Hoover Dam. Over the drought years of 2019 through 2022, the vadose zone has been drier and drier."

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hmmm

 

 

 

hcr on the top campaign

It seems to be about keeping 45 away from television.

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The 2024 election is shaping up to be bizarre on the Republican side. The party’s presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump, has largely stayed home and posted on social media while his vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance has been trying to cover the campaigning for the team. Indeed, Vance’s offer on Wednesday during a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to debate Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris suggests that Vance is not unwilling to be seen as the face, if not the leader, of the Republican ticket.

The actual presidential nominee appears even more unstable than usual, and it certainly appears that his handlers are trying to keep him off stage. As Tom Nichols of The Atlantic noted yesterday, “When Trump is on TV a lot, his approval goes down. When he’s in hiding and his surrogates are rearranging his bonkers crazypants word salads into something like real thoughts, his approval goes up.”

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who won the olympics

Two answers..

France - it gave them delight and hope

NBC - apparently their ratings are sky high

Every medal count metric is flawed in some way, so just note some athletes are very happy while others are happy to have participated.