Tobias Buckell soft-launches his Patreon. He joins a long list of other authors there, including Kameron Hurley, Jim Wright, Mur Lafferty, Mary Robinette Kowal, Fred Clark, Writing Excuses, and Uncanny Magazine among others.
Introducing the Enemies of the People according to our president. A remembrance that reporting is neither easy, or in many cases safe. (Grokked from Jason Sanford)
The secrets of the dinosaur death pose. It's because as the body decomposes, the muscles in the chest and abdomen (such as the abdominis rectus) tear and rip from contraction (because they overlap with alternating grain). The more supple (and mostly oriented in one direction) muscles of the neck, ribs, and posterior spine survive longer and these contract pulling the animal into the classic pose. Your strongest and thickest muscle is the psoas, which connects from the lumbar spine to the lesser trochanter of the femur. Also as demonstrated in humans (who walk upright and therefore put greater stresses on their spines, welcome to why lower back and neck pain are so damn common) the spine has a natural S curve to it (lordotic for cervical and lumbar and kyphotic for thoracic). This is why it's easier for you to look straight up (extension), and harder to see straight down to your feet (flexion). This leads to the classic "holding the leg in a kick position to look at the toes" posture, slightly pronounced in those of us with larger body habitus. These muscles survive longer after death and because they're mostly pulling in the same direction (for humans, making us upright) they tend to have more of an affect. In humans we have another muscle few animals have, the diaphragm. The largest single muscle in your body (IIRC). When this contracts after death, it pulls our bodies into the classic fetal position. Dinosaurs (avians, and most other animals) don't posses this counter balance to the back muscles.
"The White House is proposing to slash Environmental Protection Agency funding that pays for Great Lakes pollution cleanup by 97 percent, according to a budget document obtained by the National Association of Clean Air Agencies." We're boned. Hey, Great Lake Sports Fishing Industry, your livelihood is on the line here. "The plan also includes a $13 million cut in compliance monitoring, which the EPA uses to ensure the safety of drinking water systems. State grants for beach water quality testing would also be eliminated." Living next to a water body that often has its beaches closed because of bacterial counts, I'm sure this won't cause any problems at all. And that's before we start talking about places like Flint and West Virginia. Boy, I hope he has a plan on how to employ all the people that will be let go because of this. (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)
"Polls consistently show that Republicans are more likely to hold racial prejudices, and not just in the South. Nationally, almost one in five Republicans opposes interracial dating, compared to just one in 20 Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center. While 79 percent of Republicans agree with negative statements about blacks such as the one about slavery and discrimination, just 32 percent of Democrats do, the Associated Press has found." (Grokked from Ellen Kushner)
"The Keystone XL oil pipeline won't use American steel in its construction, despite what President Donald Trump says… White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday that's due to language in a presidential directive Trump issued in January."
"The healthcare industry is a well-known information security dumpster fire, from the entire hospitals hijacked by ransomware to the useless security on medical devices to the terrifying world of shitty state security for medical implants -- all made worse by the cack-handed security measures that hospital workers have to bypass to get on with saving our lives (and it's about to get worse, thanks to the Internet of Things)." Yes, this.
"Last year, when presidential candidate Donald Trump hammered the Affordable Care Act as 'a fraud,' 'a total disaster,' and 'very bad health insurance,' many Americans seemed to agree with him… Now that President Trump and fellow Republicans are attempting to keep their promise to get rid of the law, voters increasingly seem to be having second thoughts." That's because many of those Americans wanted a public option, and another large group wanted the law fixed so it worked better (and mandate Medicaid expansion to those states who refused). They're somewhat surprised to realize that "Repeal and Replace" mostly meant "Repeal".
"'Just like Jesus said, The poor will always be with us,' (Rep and doctor Roger Marshall) said. 'There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.'" A reminder that just because you're a doctor you can still be an idiot. Dear Dr. Marshall, you might want to brush up on that Bible passage (John 12:8, in case you forgot). To quote Inigo Montoya, "I don't think it means what you think it means." Medicaid is not a "free" program. You might want to brush up on just how bad off you have to be to qualify. And, yes, many people on Medicaid 1) don't have the habit of seeing their doctor because 2) they never had the money to regularly see a doctor and 3) have difficulty getting to a doctors office reliably and 4) really don't deserve your scorn. So take your advanced degree and crappy bedside manner and shove it. (Grokked from Seanan McGuire)
"FBI Director James Comey has requested that the Justice Department publicly deny President Trump's allegation that President Obama had ordered a wire tap of candidate Trump, a law enforcement official confirms…"
"Before heading off to his so-called 'winter White House' in Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday, President Donald Trump summoned some of his senior staff to the Oval Office and went 'ballistic,' senior White House sources told ABC News." (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)
"The White House asserted this week that broad swaths of federal ethics regulations do not apply to people who work in the Executive Office of the President. Ethics experts say this sets the Trump White House apart from past administrations." I'm sure that'll fly.
"Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world. This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton." (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
No comments:
Post a Comment