https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ODqho26VT4
Stay safe, bastards.
Isn’t Memphis near Missipipi?
New Strokes
I’m hearing good things about the next album, due April 10. I lost interest in The Strokes after First Impressions of Earth (2006?!), but I’d be hard-pressed to find a better debut album than Is This It.
Here’s a video for one of the new singles, “Bad Decisions.” If it sounds a lot like “Dancing With Myself,” it’s no accident. The band allegedly gave Billy Idol and Tony James songwriting credits to avoid litigation.
As near as I can tell, the message in the video is that The Strokes will be evolving musically, so if you want rehashed older albums (clones), too bad. Oh, and the band members’ faces are deepfaked onto actors playing the clones. Timely!
Counterpoint: Autoplaying Is Awesome
”Masturbation boosts your immune system and raises your white blood cell count, helping you fight off infection and illness.”
Way to go, science. More here.
Everybody Up To Speed?
Let’s talk.
Our Precious Bodily Fluids
Is fluoride making us idiots? Was General Jack D. Ripper right after all?
Probably not. Lots of limitations on the most recent study, including long-term vs episodic fluoride exposure, controlling for lead exposure, noisy data, and a couple of individuals with extremely low IQ’s that may have thrown the entire data set. Also, previous studies indicated problems only at extremely high fluoride exposures – much higher than typical water fluoridation.
But don’t let that prevent us from getting a good panic on!
David’s Lab Revisited
Nice little Alien short.
To celebrate the two-year anniversary of the Alien: Covenant DVD release, we wanted to share a little fun we had thanks to a partnership with YouTube Space LA, who helped recreate David’s Lab from the film’s set.
How Much Of Me Is Really Due To Me?
Sorry, I’m still dropping science on your bastard asses. Genes, germs, and environment. Who you are is very likely beyond your control.
Fucking fascinating.
Science has also provided a little comfort as to why your amorous advances are sometimes spurned. A famous study had women sniffing the underarms of T-shirts worn by men and then ranking the odor. The more similar the men’s and women’s immune system genes were, the worse the T-shirt stank to the women. There is a sound evolutionary explanation for this: If parental immune genes are too similar, the offspring will not be as well equipped to fight pathogens. In this case, genes used odor receptors as a proxy to size up whether a potential mate’s DNA is a good match. Studies like this affirm that chemistry between people really is a thing. Perhaps we should not take another’s romantic disinterest personally but view it more like organ rejection.
Full article aqui.
The Immune System, The Gut Biome, And Obesity
Turns out it may not just be calories in, calories out.
We’ve been fattening cows with antibiotics since the 1950s, but we’re just now starting to understand the relationship between the types of bacteria in the bovine gut and how they impact weight. Turns out, that relationship might exist for us, too – and the fix may not be as simple as probiotics.
According to an article in The Atlantic …
“A lot of the recent research on probiotics suggests it’s really not easy to keep and sustain new communities,” Stephens says. The immune system could explain that. “It may well be that your immune response gets ‘stuck’ at an early age based on what you’ve exposed it to. Probiotics might not be enough to change a person’s microbiome, because your immune system determined early on that certain microbes are either appropriate or inappropriate in your gut.”
Read the rest or don’t here.
Debbie
“She was a nice set of bones.” Iggy Pop
And He Brought Home The Bacon
https://youtu.be/qGdxX5qzeW8
DEVO’s first single, released March 12, 1977 on Booji Boy Records. (B/W “Jocko Homo,” of course.)
About the video …
“Mongoloid” was Devo’s second music video, after The Truth About De-Evolution. It was not actually made by the band, but by assemblage artist and experimental filmmaker Bruce Conner. Conner combined 1950s television advertisements, science fiction film clips (including a scene from It Came from Outer Space), and scientific documentaries with abstract animation and original film work. Devo marketed the film as “A documentary film exploring the manner in which a determined young man overcame a basic mental defect and became a useful member of society. Insightful editing techniques reveal the dreams, ideals and problems that face a large segment of the American male population. Very educational. Background music written and performed by the DEVO orchestra.”