It lived up to expectations

OK, so I was feeling like looking up something odd to post, and clicked on the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.   What are the chances, I thought, that it would feature something about moose or flying squirrels or some other odd animal?   Actually, pretty high:

Assessing Bear/Cub/Otter identity and history of cardiovascular disease among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in Metro Vancouver 

Otter identity?    

I am curious about the last line in the abstract:

Interventions should target all gbMSM with increased risk for cardiovascular disease and clinicians should be mindful of culturally sensitive prevention and care for gbMSM who identify as a BCO.

What exactly does being culturally sensitive to a gay bear/cub/otter (still ?? about otter) who is looking good for a heart attack entail?   Do they think it's harder to tell a "bear" to lose weight because it's at the core of their sexual identity?  I hope that's not their point. 

Anyway, enough silliness today...

Domestication considered

While I work out which takes on the IPCC report I want to highlight here (there are a lot to choose from), you can do worse than read an article at BBC Future about how animals hanging around humans changes them.

Maybe I should print this out and have it in my pocket every day for the next month...

Treatment of rare cases of blood clotting in brain following COVID-19 vaccination

In other anti vaxxer madness

Pakistan has for years been a hotbed of anti-vax conspiracy belief against even the simplest vaccine available - the oral one for polio.   The government has made a push to get numbers of kids vaccinated:

The most incredible thing in the video is the police person saying that over the last 16  years, 1700 police have been killed in the course of trying to support the health workers administering the vaccine!

It is mentioned in the video that Pakistanis remember how the CIA used a fake vaccination campaign as cover to help track down Bin Laden - but  the conspiracy rumours that vaccines were actually harmful (and a plot by the West against Islam) long predated that.   Look at this quote from a Bloomberg report:

Mehrab Ali, a fruit merchant in Karachi, is one of many across the Islamic republic who won’t step forward after Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday launched the nation’s vaccination drive. The father of six, who also refused to vaccinate his children against polio, argued that Covid-19 is a foreign plot against Muslims.

“Coronavirus is nothing but a conspiracy,” said the 43-year-old, sitting by his pushcart on a road leading to Karachi’s port. “I don’t believe the coronavirus exists nor does polio. I am not ready to accept that Jews and Christians sitting abroad are worried about the health of our children -- no way.”

Just terrible.    

Cause for pessimism?

According to Axios, Republicans are actually feeling very positive about big gains in their coming mid term election, based on a few issues they are able to sell as purely Democrat problems (inflation, illegal immigration, and crime.)

All this at a time when the Republicans are busy ensuring as many of their voters as possible are catching COVID, and an IPCC report about the biggest future danger to the planet is about to drop, no doubt to Republican pooh-poohing. 

What a time we live in - because the Right has gone nuts.  

 

Tongue

My daughter took this pic while the dog had snuck upstairs and got on her bed.  This is unauthorised behaviour. Still, the photo amuses me.

Weed surprise

That Washington Post reports:

The most sought after marijuana being trafficked across the U.S.-Mexico border is now the weed entering Mexico, not the weed leaving it.

Cannabis sold legally in California is heading south illegally, dominating a booming boutique market across Mexico, where buying and selling the drug is still outlawed. Mexican dealers flaunt their U.S. products, noting them in bold lettering on menus sent to select clients: “IMPORTADO.”

Traffickers from California load their suitcases with U.S.-grown marijuana before hopping on planes to Mexico, or walking across the pedestrian border crossing into Tijuana. One car was recently stopped entering Tijuana with 5,600 jars of gummies infused with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. But relatively few of the southbound traffickers are caught — even as their contraband doubles or triples in value as soon as it enters Mexico.

Oddly, it seems to have status symbol appeal:

“Nobody is going to grow cannabis better than California probably ever,” Bubeck said.

Back in Mexico, he said, especially for younger smokers, the appeal is clear: “You’re showing ‘This is what I’m about. I’m a bad ass. I got this from America.’”

I still have a suspicion that the US is eventually going to regret, or pull back from, its current style of entrepreneurial legalisation.

 

Oh, diddums

In more Creightonism:

In the news:

On Saturday, according to the Centers for Disease Control, Florida reported 23,903 new cases of COVID-19 for the previous day, Friday, August 6, bringing the state's total number of cases to 2,725,450. The Florida Hospital Association reported that 13,348 patients were hospitalized as of Saturday, which is also a record high for the state. 

Florida also reported an additional 93 people have died due to the virus, bringing the state's total COVID-19 deaths to 39,695, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In yet more rodent news...

It's a big week for rats and mice here.

First, a cute article at the ABC about how lab researchers are tickling rats to keep them happy.

Secondly, a while ago I noted with surprise that mouse sperm can be freeze dried, and still work.   That gets another mention with this twist:

 Scientists no longer have to worry about their bottles of mouse sperm breaking in transit. Researchers in Japan have developed a way to freeze dry sperm on a plastic sheet in weighing paper so that samples can withstand being mailed via postcard. This method allows for mouse sperm to be transported easily, inexpensively, and without the risk of glass cases breaking. The paper appears August 5th in the journal iScience.

And for a final story, rats like to pick their own friends:

Rats choose carefully who they spend time with, according to a new study published today. Published by researchers from the Universities of Portsmouth and Lincoln, the study found that male rats have preferred partners in their groups and they decide who to avoid, too.  

Previous research found that female rats didn't form friendships with other females, so this paper's findings are surprising.

Dr. Leanne Proops, from the University of Portsmouth's Department of Psychology, said that "discovering that male rats don't associate with other rats randomly, but seek out their preferred cage mates and actively avoid others, shows that rats are similar in this respect to other species like birds, primates and bats."

Dr. Teresa Romero, from the University of Lincoln's School of Life Sciences, added that "what's particularly interesting about this work is that it contrasts to the limited evidence available on social behavior in rats and therefore has important implications for the management and welfare of captive rat populations."

24 hours after

So I am about 24 hours since my first AstraZeneca jab.  

The effects are very minor.   I didn't feel sick at all last night, not even a sore arm.   My upper arm is a little bit sore now, and my stomach feels a little bit crampy, but it's nothing much.  I probably would enjoy a nap this afternoon, but I can say that on most days now!   (Even on a weekend, though, I am not good at actually sleeping during the day.)

Not sure why the GOP just don't go with a "Mexicans are like disease ridden rats" visual

 

About the Disney + series (and Mr Robot)

Due the generosity of my daughter, I now have access to Disney +, and have started watching The Mandalorian and Loki.

Unfortunately, my prior knowledge of the innovative soundstage they used to make these is partly interfering with my enjoyment of both.   

It's not exactly ruining them, but I keep looking at scenes and thinking I can tell where the studio floor ends and the massive screen begins.   It is not at all clear in some scenes, but seems to be in others.    

Oh wait - I am WRONG.   Loki didn't use "the Volume" at all - I was presuming something I shouldn't have.

In any case, I keep saying to my son (watching it with me) that I really do not care for the murky, sepia/brownish tint to all of cinematography in Loki.   It looks, I don't know, underlit, or filtered, or something; but for no clear aesthetic reason.    I mean, dramatic lighting works well in some shows - Mr Robot in particular is worth watching almost for its lighting decisions alone - but it seems out of place to me in Loki.

I am also somewhat bothered that the series' version of the Time Police should have such silly, short range weaponry - like magic wands you have to be close enough to touch someone with for them to work.   What sort of logic does that make?    

I will keep watching it, but I am not yet convinced it is all that good.

To be honest, I think it suffers badly in comparison to the second season of Umbrella Academy, which I thought was just great.  (And much better than its first season.)   As a "time police" themed series, I think UA did it much, much better.  And I loved its look.

As for The Mandalorian:  it's faster paced, looks better, and I am enjoying it enough.  I did point out to my son the derivative aspect of it from the gory Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub movies - which I would sometimes look at on SBS when they were shown there late on a Saturday in (what?) the 1980s.  When I showed him a Youtube compilation clip of gore from them, he was very surprised I had watched them at all, since I complain about movie violence quite a lot.   I explained that I could never stick it out with them, though, for that very reason.

Back to Mr Robot - after a lengthy break between seasons (which is not great - I had forgotten some of the backstory), my son and I are watching the last season now.    It is surprisingly good - so cinematic in feel, and some really dense dramatic writing.   It's kind of gut wrenching in the suspense a lot of the time, but gee, it was some achievement.

I am worried that the big secret of what White Rose is building is going to turn out to be silly, but who knows.   I am enjoying it a lot for now.   It seems to have attracted next to no attention in Australia (probably because you have to buy it on Google to watch it), but it is very good if you are into well made paranoia stories.

    

 

 

 

Mental health stories

Gulf News reports:

Abu Dhabi: Malaysian police rescued a 28-year-old Malaysian man after he attempted to swim the nearly 7,000km from Malaysia to Mecca.

He was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation, local media reported.

Video footage and photographs of the incident have gone viral on social media in Malaysia. 

Police said the young man was detained before taken to the hospital, as he said he had intended to swim to Mecca.

In his second attempt in three weeks, it was not immediately known why the man wished to swim to the holy city in Saudi Arabia.

Dealing with a relative with mental illness must be a nightmare at the best of times, but restraining one with an obsession to go on 7,000 km ocean swims must be a particular problem, if you live near the sea, anyway.

Earlier this year, on You Can't Ask That, one young woman explained how, while having schizophrenia, she developed the idea that her leg had been possessed by the devil, so she went into her father's shed and cut it off with a saw.  Electric or conventional, I don't recall.  Oddly, she said it didn't involve much pain, and gave her a sense of relief!   I thought this was a particularly memorable story of the disasters that can happen due to mental illness.   She's fine now though, which is pretty remarkable in its own way too.

In a more conventional (so to speak, don't get upset, mental health advocates) story about a mentally ill person, Gulf News also notes:

A young Moroccan man was arrested for allegedly beheading his mother and walking with her head through the alleys of the Attasi neighbourhood in Casablanca.

Local media reported that the perpetrator, who suffers from serious psychological disorders, spent 10 years in prison for a terrorist crime.

 

 

Still enjoying M as H

Last night's Mad as Hell really had some particularly sharp and funny writing in it, I thought.   It's really such a credit to the writers and performers.   (I think the most consistently funny segment is always with  Draymella Burt, spokesperson for the Liberal Party.)  

Giving in

I strongly suspect that Jason Soon, and perhaps some other readers, may have thought I was being part of the problem, so to speak, by saying last week that I was resisting getting AstraZeneca.  I did say that I felt I could justify it by the fact that COVID was not spreading in Brisbane in any substantial way.

Well, as we know, that has changed, even though the numbers remain very, very modest by international standards.   But the outbreak has largely been on the side of town where I live, and when shopping centres I sometimes visit are the places where positive cases have been, it does feel it is creeping worryingly close to my door.  (Not only that, I do know of people who have had colds or virus - and indeed I thought I was getting one one a couple of weeks ago, but I became pretty sure it was just a bout of wattle related hayfever - but being around anyone with an illness that might be COVID is a worry.)

Not only that,  hearing of young, apparently healthy people dying abruptly of the virus helps put the risk in perspective.  (Also, Peter Doherty on Radio National this morning explaining what a bugger of a virus COVID 19 really is, and how it can get in every organ and cause damage we're really still learning about, has made me reconsider.)

So, later today I am off to get my first AZ jab.

Look, if I die from it, I would like it to be used in election material that I personally blame Scott Morrison for not having alternative vaccines available.  :)   

Update:   done.  Booked it in this morning, had to drive a couple of suburbs over.  Good explanations of risk and benefit given.  Given I have just read that a few people in their 60's died of it in NSW yesterday, its seems the right move.

In rodent news..

Over at Science Daily there are some rodent studies of interest:

Rats prefer to help their own kind; Humans may be similarly wired

The findings, published today, Tuesday, July 13, in the journal eLife, suggest that altruism, whether in rodents or humans, is motivated by social bonding and familiarity rather than sympathy or guilt.

"We have found that the group identity of the distressed rat dramatically influences the neural response and decision to help, revealing the biological mechanism of ingroup bias," said study senior author Daniela Kaufer, a professor of neuroscience and integrative biology at UC Berkeley.

With nativism and conflicts between religious, ethnic and racial groups on the rise globally, the results suggest that social integration, rather than segregation, may boost cooperation among humans.

"Priming a common group membership may be a more powerful driver for inducing pro-social motivation than increasing empathy," said study lead author Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, an assistant professor of psychobiology at Tel-Aviv University in Israel.

I wonder - can this be cited as a reason urbanisation is more "civilising" than other ways humans can live?    Of course, as against that idea, I suppose that 20th fascism didn't exactly spring from the rural areas.   Maybe I am just trying too hard to find reasons why American wingnuttery is so centred in rural areas.

In another rodent article:

Researchers have discovered that spontaneous impulses of dopamine, the neurological messenger known as the brain's 'feel good' chemical, occur in the brain of mice. The study found that mice can willfully manipulate these random dopamine pulses for reward. 

This is all a bit confusing:

 Rather than only occurring when presented with pleasurable, or reward-based expectations, UC San Diego graduate student Conrad Foo led research that found that the neocortex in mice is flooded with unpredictable impulses of dopamine that occur approximately once per minute.

Working with colleagues at UC San Diego (Department of Physics and Section of Neurobiology) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, Foo investigated whether mice are in fact aware that these impulses -- documented in the lab through molecular and optical imaging techniques -- are actually occurring. The researchers devised a feedback scheme in which mice on a treadmill received a reward if they showed they were able to control the impromptu dopamine signals. Not only were mice aware of these dopamine impulses, the data revealed, but the results confirmed that they learned to anticipate and volitionally act upon a portion of them.

"Critically, mice learned to reliably elicit (dopamine) impulses prior to receiving a reward," the researchers note in the paper. "These effects reversed when the reward was removed. We posit that spontaneous dopamine impulses may serve as a salient cognitive event in behavioral planning."

 And finally, mouse eyes are sort of primed to know what to expect.  Makes sense, I guess:

A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born.

Writing in the July 23 issue of Science, a team led by Michael Crair, the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and professor of ophthalmology and visual science, describes waves of activity that emanate from the neonatal retina in mice before their eyes ever open.

This activity disappears soon after birth and is replaced by a more mature network of neural transmissions of visual stimuli to the brain, where information is further encoded and stored.

"At eye opening, mammals are capable of pretty sophisticated behavior," said Crair, senior author of the study, who is also vice provost for research at Yale." But how do the circuits form that allow us to perceive motion and navigate the world? It turns out we are born capable of many of these behaviors, at least in rudimentary form."

 

How Amercian conservatives talk themselves into hating their country (and became a danger to democracy itself)

A good bit of commentary at Vox by Zack Beauchamp:  The Anti-American Right.  I'll copy part of it:

How the right’s hyper-patriotism curdles into anti-Americanism

In the Jewish community, many of us have a suspicion of non-Jews who are a little too outspoken about how much they like Jews. These “philo-Semites” often end up being funhouse mirror anti-Semites, spreading stereotypes in the name of praising us. Trump’s infamous comment about Jewish accountants — “the only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes” — is a perfect example.

Conservative anti-Americanism is a little like this. It’s a hyper-patriotism gone sour: a belief in a fictional ideal of a perfect right-wing America that’s constantly betrayed by reality, leading to disillusionment and even disgust with the country as it actually exists.

Trump’s 2016 address to the Republican National Convention, which promised “a straightforward assessment of the state of our nation,” painted a picture of a country on the verge of collapse. “The attacks on our police and the terrorism in our cities threaten our very way of life,” then-candidate Trump said. “Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in third-world condition, and 43 million Americans are on food stamps.”

This dark depiction of the state of the country has become a hallmark of the Trumpified GOP, and Democrats’ 2020 electoral victories only deepened the conservative sense of betrayal at the hands of their countrymen. In late July, Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance warned that “we have lost every single major cultural institution in this country” — and suggested that America “has built its entire civilization” around selfish, miserable people. Earlier that month, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said “I look at Joe Biden’s America, and I don’t recognize the country that I grew up in.”

The Olympics have brought out this sense of alienation from America on the right. When conservatives see American athletes representing values at odds with their vision for the country, they don’t back Team USA in the name of patriotism — they turn on the icons of the nation itself.

Queer female soccer stars demanding equal pay, Black basketball players kneeling to protest police brutality, the world’s best gymnast prioritizing her mental health over upholding the traditional ideal of the “tough” athlete — this is all a manifestation of the ascendancy of liberal cultural values in public life. And an America where these values permeate national symbols, like the Olympic team, is an America where those symbols are worthy of scorn. 

“So much of the self-perception of the American right is about losing the culture war. And that, specifically, is where some of this overt anti-Americanism — especially from the grassroots — is coming from,” says David Walsh, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Virginia who studies the history of the right.

That disdain has also seeped into the right’s recent rhetoric toward an institution that conservatives have typically celebrated: law enforcement.

The other recent Vox piece by Zack is also good:

The biggest threat to democracy isn't coming from China.  It's coming from within.

Here's a little bit:

In countries where democracy is at real risk of collapse or even outright defeated — places like India, Brazil, Hungary, Israel, and, yes, the United States — the real drivers of democratic collapse are domestic. Far-right parties are taking advantage of ethno-religious divides and public distrust in the political establishment to win electorally — and then twist the rules to entrench their own hold on power. Leaders of these factions, like former US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aid and abet each other’s anti-democratic politics.

More traditional authoritarian states, even powerful ones like China or Russia, have thus far played at best marginal roles in this struggle.

“Much of the recent global democratic backsliding has little to do with China,” Thomas Carothers and Frances Brown, two leading experts on democracy, write in a recent Foreign Affairs essay. “An overriding focus on countering China and Russia risks crowding out policies to address the many other factors fueling democracy’s global decline.”

There is, though, no doubt at all that Russia assisted the democracy threatening Trump gain office.

The unexpected dip

I keep saying the pandemic is obviously complicated, and noted last week that the UK drop in COVID cases was a puzzle.   There's an article at Nature confirming this is still the case:

Scientists are scratching their heads over the precipitous decline in daily COVID-19 infections in the United Kingdom following their rapid rise earlier in the year. Officially recorded new cases more than halved in just two weeks: from a high of 54,674 on 17 July to 22,287 on 2 August.

“Nobody really knows what’s going on,” says epidemiologist John Edmunds at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). In particular, it’s not clear whether this sudden trend indicates that the peak of the third wave has passed, or whether it is a blip caused by complex social factors.

And no, this is nothing that obnoxious idiots like Creighton should be taking as anything like vindication.

Against the Berg (again)

It's been quite a while since I have complained about Chris Berg and his cloak of affability giving him some undeserved cover for terrible takes for which he should be condemned. Fortunately, the ABC seems to have binned invitations to him. (I wonder why...ha ha.) But anyway:

So says the man who (I recently reminded myself on the weekend) was writing pieces with Sinclair Davidson a decade or so ago for the IPA to sow disbelief in climate change as a serious problem.  

And who then went on to write a book with him recently about how the ABC needs to be defunded  - while (as far as I can tell) spending no time on commenting on the very specifically screaming pile of anti vaxxer bullshit that is Sky News in Australia.   Because private media is always better at stuff like this, hey, Chris?

For what it's worth, I think people are reading too much into Swan's comments.   I would see it more like this:

Oh look, even monty is involved in countering Nick Coatsworth's criticism:

God knows Swan has become a hate figure for the wingnut Right.

As with most medical people commenting on this, I'm prepared to cut him a fair bit of slack.  It is, as I keep saying, an obviously complicated pandemic, and uncertainty is going to be reflected in comments made from time to time.   People should stop sweating on every single comment without taking the broader context.   

As for Coatsworth - I don't know why, but there is something about his media presence that I find off putting.   That TV and twitter ad where he encourages vaccination - it's all a bit head-tilty, robotic and unengaging to my mind.   I wish they hadn't used him for it.

Seems right

The only quibble I have is that the article he refers to as being in "the conservative media" is on a website called "American Greatness" which I have never heard of.  Nor have I heard of the author.

Nonetheless, the sentiment is very popular in wingnut land - and it is true, the current state of the American Right is full of paranoia and conspiracy ideation about the Left, and this has been building up over many years with top Republicans (and all but a handful of right wing commentators) declining to call it out as harmful and wrong.   It gets the base motivated, so why stop it.   Not to mention the money that media people can make out of the devotion of cult conspiracy belief.   

Update:  more from Robert's thread: