Latest research shows how illegal drug consumption by humans is harming marine life
Wild sharks off the coast of Brazil have tested positive for cocaine, according to new study by Brazilian scientists, in the latest research to demonstrate how illegal drug consumption by humans is harming marine life.
According to a study entitled Cocaine Shark and published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, scientists dissected the bodies of 13 sharpnose sharks (Rhizoprionodon lalandii) caught in fishermen’s nets off a beach in Rio de Janeiro.
All 13 tested positive for the drug.
Previous studies have found cocaine in river, sea and sewage water, and traces of the drug have been found in other sea creatures such as shrimps.
A separate study recently revealed that high levels of cocaine residue were causing “serious toxicological effects” in animals such as brown mussels, oysters and eels in Santos Bay, in the Brazilian state of São Paulo.
But the concentration found in the Rio sharks was 100 times higher than had been found in other marine animals, the researchers said.
How the cocaine ended up in the sharks remains a mystery.
Lifted frm Reddit (apparently) but that is not where I got it.
Ignore watermark.
“Jackass” star Steve-O confirmed this week he is going to undergo breast augmentation for a laugh.
(TMX) – “Jackass” star Steve-O confirmed this week he is going to undergo breast augmentation for a laugh.
During an appearance on the “X5 Podcast” on Wednesday, the 50-year-old prankster said he’s been thinking about getting a pair of fake breasts for years.
“I came up with the idea a few years ago to get a boob job and just film a bunch of legitimately funny hidden camera pranks with me in disguise, in various disguises, and then revealing who I actually am, and just funny endurance stunts and whatever,” he said.
“I’ve been so particularly in love with that idea because the comedy, the opportunity for comedy, I believe is absolutely there, and it’s like the quintessential Steve-O — that level of commitment,” he said.
The augmentation will only be temporary, however. Steve-O said he would only have them for “max two months” before having them removed again.
“I spoke with the doctors, and I said to them candidly, ‘The one thing I’m really freaked out about and bummed out about and would back out of this over is if I’m just gonna be a mess afterwards,’” Steve-O said.
He confirmed he plans to get D-cup-size implants.
“You know, it’s going under the muscle, and the doctors are completely unfazed, like, ‘Two months, it comes out, absolutely no issue,’” he said.
Despite doing it all for a laugh, Steve-O said he is working with “the absolute best [doctor] in the world at giving men gorgeous boobs
Obviously the inclination is to say
> no, that's a captive audience and it's creepy.
Because part one is always true and part two is sometimes true, maybe even often true. Idk. It's part of how people take things.
But if you're a guy or a less than hot gal getting some attention, isn't it potentially a little nice?
Should it be reserved for 'socially acceptable for middle aged people on the right side of 5 to hit on young staffers who are no higher than a 6..?'
Or is this always bad business?
Time to find out who's an extrovert and who's not, I guess.
I heard someone say it's good because it gives people a boost of confidence and self worth.
I've heard others say it's always bad.
An ex girlfriend of mine used to give me the business cards and phone numbers she got whole being a waitress when we met as almosr a sign of bragging lol, she was proud of all of them
JoJo Siwa called out an audience member who booed her at a Pride concert in New York City: “Respectfully, f— you.”
It's actually really consistent and bold - it's also the least popular way to advance the movement because plenty of casually pro-life people would stop and go "Huh" if forced to think about their views and IVF.
It is perhaps a bit stupid but it has the same big dick energy of flying Palestinian flags at an unremarkable, modern, liberal Jewish synagogue - take the fight everywhere, all the time.
Picture story featuring human-animal hybrids found in Indonesia is believed to be at least 51,200 years old
The world’s oldest known picture story is a cave painting almost 6,000 years older than the previous record holder, found about 10km away on the same island in Indonesia, an international team of archaeologists has said.
The painting, believed to be at least 51,200 years old, was found at Leang Karampuang cave on the east Indonesian island of Sulawesi, researchers from Griffith University, Southern Cross University and the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency wrote in the journal Nature.
Samples were collected in 2017, but weren’t dated until earlier this year.
The previous record holder was a lifesize picture of a wild pig believed to be created at least 45,500 years ago in a cave at Leang Tedongnge.
The recently discovered painting is of three therianthropes – or human-animal hybrids – and a wild pig.
In his 11 years studying ant behavior, biologist Erik Frank had never seen anything like it. He and his colleagues at the University of Würzburg brought Florida carpenter ants back to their lab in Germany to learn how they respond to injury. Most ant species treat the injured or severed limb of a comrade by coating it with an antimicrobial goo. But the reddish-brown carpenter ants took a different tack: They bit the remainder of the limb off, effectively amputating it.
Other animals, such as lizards, shed their own limbs to escape predators, but Frank says this is the first case of an insect severing the leg of a nestmate to save its life. The only other species that does this is humans. “I didn’t believe this at all because it was very counterintuitive,” he says. “I repeated the experiment four times before I accepted it.”
Zach Bryan's Nashville stadium show Saturday featured guests Kacey Musgraves and the viral "Hawk Tuah" girl.
FROM SPRINGSTEEN TO “Spit on that thing”: Zach Bryan’s Quittin Time Tour has featured plenty of diverse onstage guest appearances, from rock gods to country stars to NFL quarterbacks to, now, internet celebrities, as the viral “Hawk Tuah” girl popped up at his concert Saturday.
Performing at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium, Bryan once again used the encore “Revival” to bring out onstage whatever celebrities might be the building to assist on backing vocals, and on Saturday that meant Hailey Welch, the woman behind the viral internet video that everyone is talking about:
The path to humility is encapsulated in the advice that St. Silouan heard from God in his heart: “Keep thy mind in Hell and despair not.” Our generation especially struggles with pride and all of its trappings, and thus we have much to learn from the life of St. Silouan.
The now famous saying, “keep thy mind in Hell and despair not,” is a word given by God to St. Silouan one night as he struggled intensely with demons. Six months after going to the Holy Mountain St. Silouan was blessed to experience a vision of Christ in glory, in which he experienced the full Christ, and the life of Christ. Eventually he felt this grace subsiding and so he dedicated himself to extreme ascetical struggles in hopes of attracting the grace of God again. One night, fifteen years later, mentally and spiritually exhausted, St. Silouan wanted simply to bow before Christ in His holy icon, but a terrible demon stood in his way, and he heard from God in his heart, “The proud always suffer from demons.” When he asked God how to defeat pride he heard again in his heart, “Keep thy mind in Hell and despair not.” From that point on he practiced this and humbled himself to the extreme, and he became so acquainted with the practice that he could go there with but a movement of his soul. Fr. Sophrony[1] says that ultimately this state is impossible to describe—one can only really know it by experience. Even amongst those who have experienced it, St. Silouan’s experience is unique in that even his body experienced the fires of Hell, as it was a charismatic gift from God which corresponded perfectly to his state.
[More at link]
This topic arose more than once in the communication of the Archbishop with the Nazis. In 1943, he stood up against the planned genocide of the Athenian Jewish community and was threatened with a shooting. The Primate replied, “The Greek hierarchs are not shot. They are hanged. Please respect this tradition.”
The Archbishop continued to harshly denounce the invaders in his sermons. Once the head of the collaborationist government Georgios Tsolakoglou told him, “Be careful, or the Germans will shoot you.” Again, His Eminence Damaskinos said, “It is the military who are shot. The hierarchs are hanged, and I am ready for it.”
You bring back memories, man.
But I am serious..! This is how it works..!
This is one of the silliest quotes because we know that the ancient pagans often viewed one another's gods as correspondent - "Thor is their Zeus," etc.
And then you have the problem of henotheism where there is potentially a single god with many avatars and a pantheon of lesser spiritual beings... And you start to realize, "Wait, if the Vasihnavites, Shiavites, etc. are really just saying that there is a an arch deity over everything with many avatars in the form of lesser gods that he wears the masks of, plus lesser deities that can't defy him and act as angels and demons...
"... What is a God, really? Aren't they nearly monotheists..?"
What is a God.
Plus there's the very classic position of the Jews and the Chrsitians - the gods of gentiles are demons.
Christianity does not become a religion that denies other gods, but one that claims other gods are misidentified.
Throw in some liberalism and yuo can even have Christians arguing that the worship directed as Vishnu by devoted Hindus who lead ethical lives and strive to be great manifestations of goodness & virtue for the sake of God's love is not the worship of demons, at all, but rather, an attempt to reach our God through their own traditions that may even be guided in some form by the Holy Spirit...
So, IDK, IDK to what extent anyone is denying other people's gods and its relevance to religion today.
The very earliest stuff obviously doesn't have that, and we rely on church history because it wasn't like even the most interesting thing a Roman governor did that week to kill some random churchmen who created conflict among Jews, nor do we have much preserved about mobs killing these guys other than in the original Christian communal sources.
But really, if you start from the premise that everything Christians ever write about thesmelves is pure propaganda without an iota of truth in it, that creates a non-serious standard with which to evaluate things.
Is it really absurd to think that Protomartyr Stephen was killed by a mob of Jews for preaching a radically different religion to them in a time of great political upheaval? Isn't this exactly what we think of Christians at later times - that they'd just turn on a guy and kill him for being a heretic? Why is it so unbelievable that it once happened to a Christian? Why is it so troublesome that the only people who bothered to write about these martyrs and preserve their memory were the people who were victims in the course of this?
Obviously, you can say that it's propaganda and lies, and maybe some of it was. But we know it's absolutely historic that Christians wre officially persecuted later on. it is also par for the course that they would be less formally persecuted prior to that. it also amkes sense that Christians, like every other group, try to preserve a communal memory.
Almost all of the Christian folklore surrounding Jesus can be directly tied to other myths that were common knowledge to Mediterranean people at the time.
Yeah I got the Mithra chainmail in my AOL account back in 1998 - I know the arguments.
But Christianity presents us with something very wild - it takes the Messianic tradition of Jews which was hitherto interpreted as being about creating an earthly Kingdom that conquers the world and incorporates the gentiles into Israel (or makes the gentiles servants of Israel, who all become noblemen living in a heaven on earth, some interpretations)... and Christ says
"Yeah, but no - the Kingdom is purely spiritual. It's not temporal. The gentiles join us by worshiping God with us and living these truths - look, this Roman occupier has more faith than all Israel, because you guys are just terrible. You bicker over the law, and miss the total point of the law..."
And the Messiah is now about conquering the world through spreading the Gospel of loving God, and loving your neighbor as yourself, giving up your possessions and conquering greed, freeing yourself from hypocrisy; living in simplicity and supreme virtue, at peace with those around you, practicing non-violence, and now we don't even need any kind of ceremonial laws at all because we are living the virtues. And that's how the world becomes part of Israel - by adopting the great things abotu our religion - and that's also how you get to heaven, which is only achievable after death when I come again...
This is a very unique interpretation of the Judaism of the time - absolutely revolutionary.
Even if you want to say that all the miracles and 'signs' are a myth, I think that the "Mithra" angle is actually bad beacuse you could just say they came up with those signs and added them so as to be able to claim they are fulfilling the Old Testament, which was infinitely more relevant to the Jews who were the community that gave birth to the religion.
Keep the faith, by all means. But part of believing is accepting that you don’t get to have proof.
Yeah I agree - there is no proof, and if there was proof, it would ruin it, because we'd no longer be doing good and loving God and our neighbor because it is right, but we would be doing it with the expectation of receiving heaven...
We would no longer be living a spiritual life for the good of oruselves and others - in hope & faith - but we would be Capitalists engaging in transactions that we deemed profitable.
I am not saying you have to believe the corpus of text as 100% factual and become a Christian right now, but I am suggesting that people believing the text isn't absurd... Moreover, I would suggest that it tends to prove that Jesus Christ was real...
The text itself asserts
- Times & places where he was; actual historic figures; a trial and a death, all of a single person.
- Claims he drew large crowds, healed people, had some publicly known altercations with local religious authorities.
- Claims that other people died in very public events (Stephen the Martyr in Acts) and that actual meetings were convened to decide what to do about it with the head Jewish rabbi at the time (Gamaliel)
- Records his teachings in ways that sometimes kind of conflict with one another in terms of phrasing, and also records different details about events that could be mutually contradictory...
Which all implies that the synoptic Gospels and Acts were very opened to being fact checked by their contemporaries and future generations by trying to place themselves in history, and that the texts were not designed by a cabal of conspirators who wanted to deceive people and come up with the perfect story because the story they made was hardly written by committee - it has things we'd see as imperfections & errors.
Ever play Telephone with a single word for 5 minutes? Now do that to a epic for 100 years, the end result will certainly be something but it may be nothing like the truth
The Telephone game is designed to show you how private rumors occur.
The four Gospels are all the accounts of eyewitnesses to these events that were then recorded by their own hand or by their assistant's hand, and preserved within the church. Of course, some speculate that they were forged later, but there's a very long, complicated argument that involves the earliness of the spread of the knowledge of the Gospels and how well they were independently preserved in faraway locations from France to Egypt that indicate that they likely were completed shortly after Christ's death.
It's also the case that Christianity was a proselytizing faith, right, so immediately there are operations which send missionaries into the world to spread the news... By all means, deny the miracles and the story, but it seems likely that there was consensus about what had happened before the missionaries departed, which allowed for there to be the preservation of the Gospels and what would later constitute the New Testament.
There's not a good argument to be made that these guys were just spreading nonsense and spitballing it as they go - the story was straight before they were leaving Jerusalem, or else the four Gospels and the subsequent apostolic letters would not have been something they could have ever all agreed upon.
No, and that is to even be expected.
He was a prophet whose movement had around 120 or so core disciples along with his apostles, plus thousands who followed him about and considered him a healer and revolutionary teacher.
There are people who have done similar things that are completely lost to history other than small records that vaguely outline the controversy surrounding them... We shouldn't really expect more in terms of proof...
But what is unique is the fact that we have an extremely well preserved corpus of text surrounding him. We also have some good idea that a lot of his followers were prosecuted and killed, and never recanted in the process, which might incline you to believe in the radical truth that they lived by.
Of course I am biased - I am a Christian - but it really does just seem pointlessly antagonistic to dismiss His Existence at all.
I actually think there's an argument to be made that a lot of top tier athletes are never doing things like their taxes prior to a big match. It's just really anticlimactic to say "My spouse/manager/dad does all my paperwork and handles my finances before a fight" than to say "I isolate myslf from my spouse and don't have any orgasms before a fight."
I also think that they would make the argument that they have plenty of impulse control and focus, it's just a matter of the extent to which one has it.
It's one thing to be a man who does not look at p0rn or masturb8 and only sleeps with his wife and another thing to be a monk.
That is amazing - really good stuff. I will add that to my anecdotes on this topic.
Yeah I believe there's this weird story about how like... Onani/onanism entered the vocabulary through the Old Testament character and then the notoriously private Japanese adopted the foreign word "onani" to refer to masturb8tion and so it just sticks in my head a bit more and comes out when I feel the need to slightly self-censor in consideration of being on the work net (it's not an English speaking IT team but, you know how it goes, don't be the shortest hanging fruit).
I am just a social conservative in the Fediverse offering my two cents.
Sorry to coom on your circle jerk on jerking
Nah man freedom of speech includes hate speech.
If "hate speech" must be banned, why even have a democracy..?
You have to have faith in the ability of people to discern right from wrong, and the very first test of that is whether people are going to be mentally hijacked by some guy saying the N word.
If you believe people can't do that... Why vote? You just support soft totalitarianism.
I think people believe that onani leads to looking at p0rn, which is inherently exploitative to those involved (men and women) and a foul industry. Likewise, it can produce exaggerated sexual fantasies that are unhealthy and can create predatory relationships.
It's hard to imagine jerking without explicit content, and once you have gone from Swimsuit edition to Softcore, it's hard to go back... From softcore to hardcore, it's hard to go back... From niche hardcore to regular, boring hardcore... It's hard to go back...
And it leads to becoming a person who does this frequently... And then, what if you want a family? Do you really want to be taht guy who is looking at crazy stuff and rubbing one out while your infant daughter is sleeping 30 feet away in her room? Do you want to be the guy whose wife is out of action from giving birth and you are like "Oh, OK, I will just look at explicit hardcore content and content myself..."
It's a bad habit.
It also creates crazy expectations of others which may even lead to so desiring some novel experience that you have an affair or "open" your marriage.
But to be entirely fair to the guy's point:
Lots of top athletes have superstitions about abstaining from intercourse prior to events - some are very extreme, with fighters isolating themselves from their spouses and training for months without any release before their MMA fight/boxing match. Some say they do it for, say, just a week ahead of time, etc.
There are a few who have the opposite philosophy and claim to actually do it more in the week leading up to the fight.
It's really a massive point of contention because some people claim it is a mere superstition while others absolutely will not break their routine.
There is also the famous incident where Bobby Fisher says that he performed poorly at a tournament because he had sex after the first night and the experience totally removed him from his focus...
This might be why it impacts fighters and certain people whose lifting styles are really about maximized performance and not a routine... If concentration is interrupted, it can result in very poor output. Like I can see how someone who is very intense about what they are doing and requires total focus would be interrupted by any form of sexual distraction. This is probably very, very relevant to guys who are fighters...
This might also have to do with perspectives on sexuality - people who ascribe a lot of meaning to it versus those who do not...
Lots of stuff to consider, I think.
LOL, bro, is your actual counter to this putting on the fedora and flexing the neckbeard as hard as you can?
Religion is clearly rubbish! How can you argue against that!
If you were actually an atheist of any caliber, you would be familiar with apologetics enough to not be so dismissive in an inadvertently hilarious manner.
Wonderful observation.
It's really our duty to be familiar with both sides and be ready to debate.
Of course, exception guy will be in the thread pointing out extreme edge cases in which we all agree that there is no alternative to the accepted opinion ("R*pe is bad, mmkay?")... But this is besides the point.
Just amazing - the government literally going to bat for the sake of concert goers who demand hotel rooms.
Can't imagine working through drug addiction and getting clean enough to be given a hotel room, and then eagerly trying to find some form of employment to become stable, and then your case worker is like *What do you think about spending a few days in Aberdeen...? WIth the Taylor Swift concert and all... There's a need for this room for someone else..."
Lol what.
... Who do we think is behind the DDoS attack?
Are the Israelis up to something?
It's great - scratches the itch, overall. I sometimes pine for places where major debates on a specific topic constantly rage - ideally, I'd be able to discuss religion whenever I wanted, skipping threads I felt I didn't want to wade into....
But it is a good enough replacement overall and I feel like we are proceeding to having such a size. I am also open to the idea that I have not curated enough to find a place where this si consistently happening in the Fediverse yet...
I was a fairly active member at Reddit with a good social standing, I made 1 “controversial” comment and I got perma-banned… this sucks.
There have been some controversies that have led to banning and banning of entire instances. Usually, this involves Lemmy instances that were tolerating a lot of blatant transphobic memes that cut deep and were very mean...
I get why people isolated them.
I am still worried, though, that there are people who would still react this way to good faith discussion where there are disagreements. While there are some places where that is for sure OK, I think there are some instances that might react so negatively as to want to ban a specific user or their instance over it. I may be overreacting but IDK.