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Below are 20 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in
MetaFilter's InsaneJournal:
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Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 | 2:57 pm |
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A looming male fertility crisis http://www.metafilter.com/168424/A-looming-male-fertility-crisis A newly published meta-analysis of 185 studies of 42,935 male-bodied people from 1972-2011 [pdf] found that sperm concentration has fallen by 52.4% in North America, Europe Australia and New Zealandwith no sign of stopping. No significant trends were seen in South America, Asia and Africa, but the authors noted that limitations in the underlying studies made it impossible to rule out a significant trend in those continents as well. While the current study is not designed to provide direct information on the causes of the observed declines, sperm count has been plausibly associated with multiple environmental and lifestyle influences, both prenatally and in adult life. In particular, endocrine disruption from chemical exposures or maternal smoking during critical windows of male reproductive development may play a role in prenatal life, while lifestyle changes and exposure to pesticides may play a role in adult life. Further, Declines in sperm count have implications beyond fertility and reproduction. The decline we report here is consistent with reported trends in other male reproductive health indicators, such as testicular germ cell tumors, cryptorchidism, onset of male puberty and total testosterone levels. The public health implications are even wider. Recent studies have shown that poor sperm count is associated with overall morbidity and mortality...Thus, a decline in sperm count might be considered as a 'canary in the coal mine' for male health across the lifespan. Our report of a continuing and robust decline should, therefore, trigger research into its causes, aiming for prevention. | 1:05 am |
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"Are my methods unsound?" "I don't see any method at all, sir." http://www.metafilter.com/168422/Are-my-methods-unsound-I-dont-see-any-method-at-all-sir Pence Breaks Tie as Senate Votes to Begin Debating Obamacare Repeal Here's a summary (single Pod Save America FB link) of what comes next (basically, 20 hours of debate, during which amendments can be proposed. First vote is repeal and delay for Rand Paul. Won't pass. Second vote will be on BCRA, with $100bn extra for Portman. Likely won't pass. Anything beyond that is anyone's guess, though the Senate Parliamentarian isn't making things easy for them).
Helpful summary on all the GOP healthcare bills.
( twitter thread explainer on "motion to proceed")
John McCain Is the Perfect American Lie
In other news:
Trump is ripping Jeff Sessions a new one, but won't say if he'll fire him.
Jeff " i'm just here for the racism" Sessions not only refuses to quit but decides to double down on hurting people with civil asset forfeiture and a crackdown on sanctuary cities.
Trump gave a batshit speech to the Boy Scouts last night where he bragged about his electoral victory and attacked Hillary and Obama.
Over to Russia:
Kushner: "All of my actions were proper." "Nothing to hide." lol
Despite this, Ivanka lawyering up.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is dropping Manafort's subpoena after he met with the Senate Intel Committee behind closed doors.
A little good news though: The house has overwhelmingly passed a Russia sanctions bill which gives Congress the power to block any effort by the White House to weaken sanctions on Russia. It now goes back to the Senate, where it will probably pass, before going to Trump to either sign or veto.
Oh yeah, Spicey has resigned because he hates the new Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who has said he's going to deal with leaks by " firing everybody".
Special thanks to WTF Just Happened Today for many of the links, and also to kirkaracha for supplying the Apocalypse Now quote I used for the title in the last thread. | Tuesday, July 25th, 2017 | 11:06 pm |
Billy Bragg on Roots, Radicals, and Rockers http://www.metafilter.com/168421/Billy-Bragg-on-Roots-Radicals-and-Rockers What do you get when a bunch of British school boys in the mid-'50s play Lead Belly's repertoire... on acoustic guitars? Skiffle. And Billy Bragg wants you to get to know the music that brought the guitar to post-war British pop. (YT video of his recent talk at the Library of Congress, with transcript.) So just who is this Bragg fellow? I think of him as the voice of "New England" and the Woody Guthrie-penned "Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key," but he is also the author of the newly-released Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World.
He appeared on Fresh Air ( transcript, which does not fully capture the musical interludes) to talk about the work, and about skiffle's origins and influence:
[It was] the means by which British pop went from being a jazz-influenced confection for adults, in which young people were offered novelty songs to a guitar-led music for teenagers. It's the introduction of the guitar into British pop culture...Before skiffle, the only place you'd really hear a guitar being played on the radio in the U.K. would be if it was a singing cowboy. Sometimes you might hear an old blues guy playing up Big Bill Broonzy or a calypsonian. It was unheard of for a British artist to play guitar. And then this guy Lonnie Donegan comes along and has a hit with "Rock Island Line" - again, a Lead Belly song. And that kind of kicks the whole thing off.
Soundtrack suggestion: "Rock Island Line," performed by Lonnie Donegan.
Enjoy! | 9:30 pm |
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"the living record of a universal mind" http://www.metafilter.com/168420/the-living-record-of-a-universal-mind The British Library has digitized Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook ('The Codex Arundel') and made 570 digitized images available online. [ via] The notebook of Leonardo da Vinci ('The Codex Arundel') is a collection of papers written in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), in his characteristic left-handed mirror-writing (reading from right to left), including diagrams, drawings and brief texts, covering a broad range of topics in science and art, as well as personal notes. The core of the notebook is a collection of materials that Leonardo describes as 'a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat' (f. 1r), a collection he began in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli in Florence, in 1508. To this notebook has subsequently been added a number of other loose papers containing writing and diagrams produced by Leonardo throughout his career. Decoration: Numerous diagrams.
More on Leonardo's notebooks from The Guardian's Jonathan Jones. | 8:03 pm |
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Cousins, identical cousins... http://www.metafilter.com/168416/Cousins-identical-cousins "Pet brothers from other mothers..." UK-based image library Warren Photographic may specialize in pet photography, however, what they truly stand out for is finding animal brothers from other mothers! Cats and bunnies, guinea pigs and also dogs they all seem related in their adorable image gallery.
"It was my mum that came up with the inspiration for matching animals when a friend suggested she try it with her matching seal-point Birman kitten and dwarf bunny. I have continued her great work" Mark Taylor explained to Bored Panda. | 5:30 pm |
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The Thing in the Woods http://www.metafilter.com/168410/The-Thing-in-the-Woods In 1962 woodsman David McPherson Sr. found himself deep in the forest of Lutes Mountain, some 15 kilometres west of Moncton, N.B., staring upwards at a 181-kilogram white box with cameras and hanging from a tree by a deteriorated parachute. What began as a day of scouting timber would turn into the mystery of "the thing in the woods" that would stay with his family for the next 55 years. | 3:46 pm |
"It's real. Those emotions are real. The loss is real." http://www.metafilter.com/168411/Its-real-Those-emotions-are-real-The-loss-is-real In These Games, Death Is Forever, and That's Awesome [Wired] ""Permadeath" has been growing in popularity among game designers in recent years. Although it can take different forms depending on which game you're playing, the message is always the same: Mistakes have consequences. [...] The games today that use permadeath as a feature are something of a hybrid of old and new. They have more storyline than Pac-Man but the emphasis is not on a heavily scripted Hollywood-style narrative. Rather, the game's fictional worlds set the scene, establish a strong sense of place, but give the players more leeway to imagine their own personal stories." " Y'all Are Crazy With Permadeath In Fire Emblem [Kotaku] "But for some of you masochists, that doesn't seem to be enough. You've just got to turn a fun game into something unmanageable. There seem to be a few ways to play Fire Emblem with permadeath on. The first is resetting the game every time a character dies. This doesn't add any real challenge to the game; it just wastes time. Sure, the stakes are raised a bit to ideally inspire better strategy, but the punishment is making the game not fun by having to replay the exact same part again. Any punishment in a video game that makes the game not fun is too steep. Others will decide to just carry on whenever a character dies. I do not understand this."
" Why permadeath is alive and well in video games [GamesRadar+] "There's no perfect definition of a permadeath game. They vary from single player survivals like Don't Starve to shooter MMOs like DayZ. The concept drives low-budget roguelikes like FTL and big-budget blockbusters like XCOM: Enemy Unknown. There's even an iOS game called One Single Life that can't be played again once you've died (well, unless you delete then reinstall it). There are twists, too. Dark Souls and ZombiU let you retrieve souls / items from your own corpse to reverse failure, while the hacking game Uplink can see your computer permanently 'disavowed' from the fictional in-game network if you're caught. Permadeath can feature in various genres, then, but it can also be a genre itself. Essentially, permadeath is about being unable to rewrite the past--mistakes carry consequences."
" Someone Please Explain the Appeal of Permadeath and Roguelike Games To Me? [Forever Geek] "I will just come out and say what a great many gamers think but refuse to say out loud because many gamers have become sensitive over last few years aka people who think what they think is right and any opposing view is wrong. A glance at the title of this article even says so much. Initially, it was "why permadeath is ruining gaming" and once I wrote it and realized how hypocritical I sound, I changed it to try to attempt to get some insight into what makes gamers like these games so much. EXTREME MODES and Permadeath games that seem to derive pleasure from torturing people are somehow the norm now? WHAT??!! It's right there in the description. Someone please tell me the appeal of punishing games? How is that fun?"
" Darkest Dungeon and Permanent Death in Video Games [Den of Geek] "It's not natural for us to think of adventurers in an RPG as disposable, but in a roguelikeRPG, that strategy starts to make a lot of sense. Just as you would weigh the pros and cons of adventuring forward in a roguelike, in DD you weigh the pros and cons of keeping team members around and paying extra for their recovery or cutting them loose and starting anew. In this fashion, DD is similar to X-COM in that proper roster management is essential. Permadeath adds yet another dimension to this strategy. With permadeath, you can't rely on having only one "A" team of adventurers. As you expand your base of operations and expand the size of your complete roster, it's imperative to work on several of your favorite classes to ensure you have backup teams to send away when characters die off or when stress/impairments requires time away from combat."
" What can "permadeath" video games teach us about suicide? [New Statesman] "The rise of permadeath in video games whereby player characters die permanently in-game, or where a game must restart from the beginning should the player character die, in the absence of multiple lives or continues has changed the way players approach games. In these instances, emotion is often the driving force when it comes to decision-making, and thus with permadeath mental state governs player action, as opposed to logical rationale. It's worth noting here that self-sacrifice when players kill themselves to respawn or restart levels; or non-playable characters sacrifice themselves for the greater good/to save their companions is different from suicide as portrayed in the above examples. Permadeath essentially forces players to consider consequence, permanence and finality within the bounds of digital landscapes." | 2:41 pm |
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