#FUCK SCIENCE!

[sleepy-bebby]

There’s a scientific journal called “Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List”.

In 2005, computer scientists David Mazières and Eddie Kohler created this highly profane ten-page paper as a joke, to send in replying to unwanted conference invitations. It literally just contains that seven-word phrase over and over, along with a nice flow chart and scatter-plot graph.

An Australian computer scientist named Peter Vamplew sent it to the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology in response to spam from the journal. Apparently, he thought the editors might simply open and read it.

Instead, they automatically accepted the paper — with an anonymous reviewer rating it as “excellent” — and requested a fee of $150. While this incident is pretty hilarious, it’s a sign of a bigger problem in science publishing. This journal is one of many online-only, for-profit operations that take advantage of inexperienced researchers under pressure to publish their work in any outlet that seems superficially legitimate.

[nando161mando]

[han-ban-bam]

nose away from the grindstone lads. go get some snacks. refresh ur eyes to refresh the work.

[hellsitegenetics]

hello i am here to humbly request the yuri genome so we may behold the yuri creature

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_(genre)

String identified: I went here and hit Ctrl + A

Closest match: Hypercompe scribonia genome assembly, chromosome: 12 Common name: Giant Leopard Moth

(image source)

[specsthesecond]

Being a very hands-on scientist at a monster facility would include:

🧫Volunteering to let the werewolves spill their cum inside you for samples and testing.

📋Testing if the alien tentacles would have any urge to breed if presented with human pussy.

🦠 Experimenting with how long slime entities can last in the human womb only surviving off of nutrients from the host.

🔬Using different pheromones and scents to elicit specific responses in different monsters.

📝Being the one to experiment with monster eggs. Keeping track of the gestation period, how many eggs are laid, how big they get ect.

💉Letting a plant monster pump its aphrodisiac down your throat to examine the effects and duration on humans.

✏️Examining the attitudes different monsters have with their breeding mate. Seeing which monsters just want to pump and dump and which grow possessively attached.

[r-aindr0p]

✨The shroud brothers (and yuu) wish you a happy pride month ✨

[victusinveritas]

[philsmeatylegss]

If I were Dan and Phil I would never hard launch because it’s so embarrassing that we were right. Like what do you mean you were so in love a bunch of thirteen year old’s clocked it? I would never give that satisfaction.

[the-shadows-request-candy-corn]

Trump may be about to sign the death sentence of the National Institute of Health, and, by extension, the Office of Lab Animal Welfare.

He gutted research animal protections.

Any vertebrate that isn't a mammal will have no rights.

Neither will mice or rats.

If NIH grants are stopped, researchers can't pay anyone. They can't perform research. They can't pay for veterinary services.

They won't be required to provide veterinary services.

The only medical research that will happen will be self funded by big pharma, and they can torture the animals and skew all the lab results that they want.

Just like Musk did to the primates in his neuralink research.

I don't know what's going to happen to me or anyone else at the university where I work. My job is to make sure the animals are treated humanely and to provide veterinary care. I'm especially scared about what's going to happen to those research animals if veterinary staff gets laid off. The USDA only covers mammals, and it doesn't even cover all of them. Every rat I've ever made a tiny paper gift box full of marshmallows for, every mouse I've ever watched grow up, every rodent I've ever separated from an aggressive dominant brother and then treated their tiny wounds, they have no protections if NIH goes down. Decades of research into humane handling, euthanasia, and animal behavior will be tossed aside and wasted.

Please, do everything you can. Protest. Contact your representatives. Anything you can do. Do it for science, for medicine, for people's lives, for people's jobs, and for the animals.

[black-fist-order]

THIS WAS ON A FRIEND’S PAGE: An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’

THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine."

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay."

That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem."

That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."

That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you exclaimed, "He sure knows me."

That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, "That's cool!"

That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.

That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?"

That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense."

That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!"

That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!"

That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!"

That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be."

That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!"

That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!"

That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense."

That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!"

That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.”

That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.

What you don't get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.

Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.

- Adam-Troy Castro

(To all who agree with its content, I ask that you PLEASE SHARE IT on your own post, and ENCOURAGE OTHERS to do the same.)

[wilwheaton]

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.  Their flu vaccine will also likely be delivered in the form of a spray, as many people have an aversion to needles. “Respiratory infections move through the nose, so a spray might be an easier delivery system,” Hai said. Additionally, the researchers say there is little chance of a virus mutating to avoid this vaccination strategy. “Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this,” Hai said. Ultimately, the researchers believe they can ‘cut and paste’ this strategy to make a one-and-done vaccine for any number of viruses. “There are several well-known human pathogens; dengue, SARS, COVID. They all have similar viral functions,” Ding said. “This should be applicable to these viruses in an easy transfer of knowledge.”

Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains

This is HUGE. This will fundamentally change how we get inoculated.

[marionmabelle]

the words “women” and “female” being on a list of flagged words to censor research projects that might violate trump’s anti-DEI policies is absolutely insane. we literally make up half of the population.

[brainrotcharacters]

makes me giggle to think of X2 Logan meeting dp&w Logan when this is a thing

[wachinyeya]

‘Ferrari in a junkyard’: Mules sold at auction are rare, endangered horses

https://washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/09/przewalskis-horses-rescued-dna-shrek-fiona/

Hannah Huckabay regularly combs livestock auctions online for horses she can rehabilitate and train at her Colorado ranch. But when she saw a video in February of a mule for sale in Kansas, she could hardly believe what she was seeing.

The stocky animal’s short black mane shot straight up like a mohawk, and its white belly stood out against its tan coat. As it nervously paced in its corral, Huckabay said it bore a striking resemblance to Przewalski’s horse, a critically endangered species she’d learned about while studying equine science.

“I was like, ‘There is no way. That is not a mule,’” Huckabay recalled thinking. “That’s a purebred Przewalski.”

Such a find would be incredibly rare. Once extinct in the wild, around 2,500 Przewalski’s horses remained worldwide as of 2022. They’re native to Mongolia and in June, seven were reintroduced to nearby Kazakhstan as part of an effort to return them to their natural habitats. They are the only truly wild horse remaining (mustangs are feral horses).

But scientists say Huckabay’s hunch appears to be correct. Hair samples from the animal Huckabay purchased - along with a second horse recently surrendered at a Utah sanctuary - were sent to Texas A&M University’s animal genetics lab. Both appear to be Przewalski’s horses, said Rytis Juras, the genetics lab’s director who tested both samples.

The hair test looks for genetic markers associated with different horse breeds to determine an animal’s likely ancestry. Unequivocally confirming that the horses are purebred Przewalski’s and not hybrids would require advanced blood tests that are expensive and would mean sedating the equines.

The blood tests look at the number of chromosomes in a horse’s cells - 66 in a purebred Przewalski, versus 64 in a common horse or 62 in a donkey. An even more advanced version could sequence the horse’s entire genome.

But Juras and two other scientists who reviewed the findings said the hair-test results are reliable.

“If I would have gotten it from a zoo … that would be one thing,” Juras said of receiving the samples. But two random tests with Przewalski’s results were “surprising and a little bit disturbing,” he said. “This is weird.”

How the horse Huckabay found - and the second in Utah - ended up in livestock auctions is a mystery, said Christopher Faulk, a professor of animal science at the University of Minnesota who has studied Przewalski’s horse genetics and also reviewed the DNA results.

“Someone had to have known what they were, they don’t just appear out of anywhere,” Faulk told The Post. “Especially to have been disposed of in that way is even weirder,” he said, since livestock that aren’t purchased at auction can end up in slaughterhouses.

“That’s like finding a Ferrari in a junkyard,” he added.

Huckabay bought the animal for $1,375 in February and, after three weeks in quarantine, the ragged and underweight animal sold as a mule arrived at her ranch outside Denver.

Seeing its features in-person left her even more convinced it was a Przewalski’s horse, she said. With a large clunky head and stiff black mane, her daughter said the horse was so ugly, he was cute, Huckabay recalled. They named him Shrek, after DreamWorks’s beloved ogre.

After almost two months of helping Shrek acclimate, Huckabay’s daughter stumbled upon a video posted on June 9 from a sanctuary in Utah.

“Did we just have a Przewalski mare surrendered?!” the caption read.

Kelsey and Gunnar Bjorklund - who own the Lazy B Equine Rescue and Sanctuary in Utah - suspected their mare was also a Przewalski. But they had no idea there was a second possible Przewalski, saved from another auction.

The Bjorklunds’ horse was brought to their facility after being purchased for $35 in January at an auction in Utah, where she was advertised as a mule.

“It takes more money to get your nails done,” Kelsey said, adding that her previous owner decided to surrender the mare after she flunked out of a professional training program.

When the horse arrived and was unloaded from the trailer, “we were just in shock,” Gunnar said. It was clear the animal wasn’t a mule or a mustang, he said.

“Anyone getting possible Przewalski vibes!?” the Bjorklunds posted. “A true wild, endangered species of equine‼️ How cool would that be!”

In response to seeing the Bjorklunds’ viral video, Huckabay’s daughter posted her own videos of Shrek two days later. One got over 11 million views.

After coming across Shrek’s video, it was easy for the Bjorklunds to settle on a name for their mystery horse - Fiona, the princess-heroine from the Shrek movies.

The rescuers were stunned that two possible Przewalski’s horses could have surfaced almost simultaneously. The Endangered Species Act allows private ownership of endangered animals, but only with a permit, and under strict stipulations. The law prohibits the possession of illegally obtained endangered animals or their transport across state lines without permits.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment on whether officials are investigating the horses’ chain of custody.

Some livestock auctions have occasionally served as hubs for illicit trade in exotic animal species.

Because most Przewalski’s horses descend from only about a dozen surviving individuals, scientists closely manage breeding genetics for diversity. Compared to the feral mustang, Przewalski’s are more resilient, said Dolores Reed, a biologist who helps oversee a small herd of the endangered horses at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. Przewalski’s horses are built for the Mongolian steppe’s harsh climate, she said, adding, “they’re very tough,” and can be unpredictable.

There are about 100 Przewalski’s horses in U.S. zoos, Reed said.

Shrek and Fiona are adjusting to their new environments, their owners said. After keeping his distance from people and trotting in circles in his pen while stressed, Shrek has relaxed and moved to a larger field. He has bonded with two gentle mares and while he won’t accept treats from people’s hands, he loves when apples and carrots are left in his feed bucket, Huckabay said.

“He’s very piggy,” she said.

In Utah, Fiona has put on weight and made friends with a miniature mule and a quarter horse filly at the Bjorklunds’ sanctuary.

The rescuers wonder what would’ve happened if Shrek and Fiona hadn’t been saved. The endangered animals might’ve been sent to slaughter “and nobody would have known about it,” Gunnar said.

Huckabay and the Bjorklunds plan to care for the horses as long as needed, but said they’d prefer to see their rescued Przewalski’s move to a professional conservation program.

Shrek is happy on the ranch, but Huckabay said she’d rather see him with “a herd of his own.”

“That would be the best-case scenario,” she said.

[alaa-pales]

Stop Torturing our Children💔‼‼

Gaza is experiencing a catastrophic spread of skin diseases due to harsh living conditions. Overcrowding in tents, high temperatures, water shortages, and the lack of essential nutritious food contribute to the worsening situation. The press photos reflect the suffering of residents from skin diseases caused by environmental pollution and poor sanitation, which exacerbates their hardship and further endangers their health and daily lives. 😥

وتشهد غزة انتشاراً كارثياً للأمراض الجلدية نتيجة الظروف المعيشية القاسية، حيث تساهم الاكتظاظ في الخيام وارتفاع درجات الحرارة ونقص المياه ونقص الأغذية المغذية الأساسية في تفاقم الوضع. وتعكس الصور الصحفية معاناة السكان من الأمراض الجلدية الناجمة عن التلوث البيئي وسوء الصرف الصحي، مما يفاقم معاناتهم ويعرض صحتهم وحياتهم اليومية للخطر

Save our children from this war. Link for donation 👇🔗🍉

[myhotplaythingsreblogs4]