Sunday, April 10, 2022

Coffee and Provocation


Wolf's Tooth Dog Food
Wolf's Tooth is a fictional Tarantino Universe brand dog food featured in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It comes in several distinct flavors like Raccoon & Rat.  It's strap line:  "Good food for mean dogs."  Coffee mug available here 

Tourist Trapping in Wales
A small Welsh Town changed its name in 1880 in order to bring in tourists.  The gambit:  making their town name ridiculously long and nearly impossible to pronounce:  Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Tracking the First Humans in North America
Ancient footprints in New Mexico suggest humans may have roamed White Sands 23,000 years ago.

Faster Vaccine and Drug Development?
A new tool speeds up development of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products by more than 1 million times while minimizing costs.

The Dog Aging Project
The Dog Aging Project at the University of Washington is looking into how genes impact canine disease and aging.

Back to Earth in a Mushroom Suit
Actor Luke Perry was buried in an eco-friendly mushroom burial suit

Pigs at the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court is going to hear a challenge to a California law requiring more space for breeding pigs. The law came into effect after California voters approved a a 2018 ballot measure requiring more space for pigs that are sold as pork in the state. Because California raises only about 2 percent of pigs in the US, but consumes about 13 of all pork, the California law will effectively impact on commercial growers in the US, same as an earlier change in egg production did.  As noted in an earlier post, US farmers have seen soaring pig mortality in recent years, and one factor appears to be crowding and lack of exercise.

Fighting Wild Pigs in Canada
Alberta is offering a $75 bounty for hunting and trapping wild boar.  The program is experimental and will be extended if successful.

Magical Thinking and Conspiracy Theories
Fooling the A study by the Rand Institute says Republicans fall for fake news slightly more than Democrats do.  "Truth decay" is more likely among people with low numeric and scientific literacy and who ascribe to magical reasoning and thinking (like religion). Non-White respondents were consistently more susceptible to "Truth Decay," a finding that the researcher suggestion might "reflect distrust of traditional sources of factual information among groups that have, at times, been systematically persecuted by societal institutions for government, medicine, and science."

Dolly Knows Nature
Dolly Parton: ‘Mistreating Mother Nature’ is ‘like being ugly to your mama’.

Fund Raising With Flour
After losing a political bet in Austin, Nevada, Reuel Colt Gridley carried a 50-pound bag of flour on his shoulder from Austin to Clinton while singing "John Brown's Body", Afterwards, he auctioned off the sack of flour with the proceeds to go to the United States Sanitary Commission during the American Civil War. After the sack of flour was won at auction, it was given back to Gridley who auctioned it off again.... and again, and again. Auctioning this single flour sack eventually raised more than $250,000 (equivalent to $4,137,000 in 2020).

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