Firesign Theater

I ran into The Firesign Theater back in my college days (yes, many years ago). Their humor is… different. Here’s an ad for Mr. Leonardo’s Warehouse of Eternal Art (1 min 13 seconds), and their own High School Madness (8 min 5 seconds). A comment from YouTube: “Visionaries; masters of parody on reality and play on words. The Firesign Theatre wrote, recorded, and produced, brilliant comedy. The kept a whole generation sane during the Vietnam War.”

“Don’t eat with your hands, son! Use your entrenching tool!”

More Firesign Theater is available on YouTube.

And more good news from FutureCrunch (now Fix the News) (bolding is mine):

Ghana’s fight against malaria has seen a major breakthrough, with a 90% reduction in malaria mortality since 2012. Mass shootings in the United States are down 29% from last year. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia just pledged $500 million to end polio for good. Real solutions to homelessness in the United States exist; Houston and New Orleans show the way. Student debts will be lowered for more than three million Australians.

Math jokes

And several other kinds. (You will need some specialist knowledge to get some of these.) If eleven pages of this aren’t enough, check the comments from the tech people on Hacker News. Some examples:

—Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip?
—To get to the other… er, um…

Not all math puns are terrible. Just sum.

The barman says, “We don’t serve time travelers in here.”
A time traveler walks into a bar.

Eleven pages: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.01010.

Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39659383.

And more good news from FutureCrunch (now Fix the News):

EVs help people who breathe

Hundreds of infants’ lives would be saved and millions of children would breathe easier across the US if the nation’s power grid depended on clean energy and more drivers made the switch to zero-emission vehicles, according to a new report from the American Lung Association….

Electric cars and trucks are better than gas-fueled vehicles because over the course of their lifetime they emit fewer carbon emissions. EVs create 3,932 pounds of carbon equivalent per year, compared to 11,435 for gas powered vehicles, according to calculations from the US Department of Energy. ((Some emissions occur during EV and battery construction and from recharging.))

This latest report estimates that by 2050, a switch to zero-emission vehicles and a decarbonized electric grid would mean 2.79 million fewer pediatric asthma attacks, 147,000 fewer pediatric acute bronchitis cases, 2.67 million fewer cases of pediatric upper respiratory symptoms and 1.87 million fewer cases of pediatric lower respiratory symptoms, and 508 infants’ lives would be saved.

The research comes from a larger American Lung Association report that said a big push for zero-emission vehicles would create more than $1.2 trillion in health benefits for the US by 2050… Globally, 8.8 million people die prematurely because of air pollution every year.

((Bolding is mine.)) https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/health/electric-vehicles-air-pollution-kids/index.html. 1,200 words.

ChatGPT 3.5 available for free

The famous Large Language Model is now available for free, no account needed. (Note that the premium and superior version is 4.0… possibly later by the time you read this.) https://chat.openai.com/

And more good news from FutureCrunch (bolding mine):

Three countries making uncelebrated progress on poverty
Uzbekistan has witnessed a sharp decline in child poverty, falling from 21.5% in 2021 to 13.7% in 2023; in the Philippines, a new report estimates the poverty rate could soon fall to single digits; and in Cambodia, average incomes have grown fourfold since 1990 and average schooling has increased from 2.4 to 5.1 years.

Swiss women win major climate court case

A group of 2,000+ senior women in Switzerland have won a court case that may force European governments to do more about climate change:

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Tuesday that Switzerland had not acted urgently to achieve climate targets, leading victims, who are mostly in their 70s, to suffer physically and emotionally while potentially placed at risk of dying.

The women, part of a group called KlimaSeniorinnen (Senior Women for Climate Protection), filed the lawsuit nine years ago.

The court’s judgment is binding, cannot be appealed, and could “influence the law in 46 countries in Europe including the UK,” the BBC reported.

I found this in Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/2000-senior-women-win-biggest-victory-possible-in-landmark-climate-case/. More information on senior women fighting climate change at https://19thnews.org/2024/01/climate-grandmothers-environmental-activism/:

These are the climate grannies. They’ll do whatever it takes to protect their grandchildren.

And more good news from FutureCrunch (bolding mine):

FBI confirms huge decline in crime in the United States
New data from over 13,000 agencies, covering all of 2023, have shown that there was a 13% decline in murder last year (the largest one-year decline ever recorded); a 6% decline in violent crime, likely the lowest rate since the late 1960s; and a 4% decline in property crime. Fox News has been strangely silent.

From the internet (2018, part 2)

More stuff I saved because it was funny or useful or somehow worth saving:

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Changing life patterns: use habit substitution (replace smoking with chewing gum – can’t do both); habit attachment (append new habit to existing one, like floss after brushing).

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When dealing with clutter, I pick up an object and go “where should I put this?”, and of course this doesn’t work, because if I knew that, I would’ve put it there in the first place. It’s clutter because I didn’t have an answer.

So instead, I say “Where should this be a year from now?”

For some reason, this elicits entirely different answers. It cuts through the paralysis and imagines a future where the needful has been done.

Start with a very small habit that doesn’t take a whole lot of willpower to do and consistently do it…like do 1 sit up, and do it EVERY DAY.

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((I actually found this one to be helpful:))
Procrastinate later! What’s the rush? There’s always tomorrow!

((Also on procrastination:))
“Discipline is much more valuable than motivation.”

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In times of crisis, the wise build bridges, the fools build barriers.

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“When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.”

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

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Look for the word “homeopathic” on the label: that’s Greek for useless.

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I had no idea so many women wanted to be my friend until I started dating …@Spaziotwat

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The duty of the general is to ride by the ranks on horseback, show himself to those in danger, praise the brave, threaten the cowardly, encourage the lazy, fill up gaps, transpose a company if necessary, bring aid to wearied, anticipate the crisis, the hour, and the outcome. – Onasander

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And in good news from FutureCrunch (2024!):

Everything in America is awful
Apart from the fact that marriage rates are up and divorce rates are down, the percentage of Americans without health insurance has fallen by almost half since 2010, employment for people in their prime working years is at its highest level in more than two decades, manufacturing construction spending has climbed to $225 billion per month, cholesterol levels are gradually improving across the country, and life expectancy has increased for the first time in two years thanks to a levelling off of overdose deaths.

Global warming 2023 / 2024

We’re shattering heat records: https://wapo.st/49b3HcF (Washington Post free link, from June 2023, approx 1,100 words):

New precedents have been set in recent weeks and months, surprising some scientists with their swift evolution: historically warm oceans, with North Atlantic temperatures already nearing their typical annual peak; unparalleled low sea ice levels around Antarctica, where global warming impacts had, until now, been slower to appear; and the planet experiencing its warmest June ever charted, according to new data.

And then, on Monday, came Earth’s hottest day in at least 125,000 years. Tuesday was hotter.

“We have never seen anything like this before,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

But it’s not hopeless. EV sales are rising rapidly (almost all new cars in Norway, 25% of all new cars in Europe, from 2% in the US in 2020 to almost 10% in 2023); renewable energy is going up (see chart below); CO2 emissions are actually dropping in the EU and the US: https://wapo.st/3J3jRtX (Washington Post free link), approx 700 words. One chart:

The note in the upper-right corner is amazing: “China increased its renewable energy by almost 400% since 2015.”

Online breast cancer risk calculator

A 5-Minute Quiz Revealed Olivia Munn’s Breast Cancer Risk. You Can Take It Too.

Article is about 1,100 words: https://time.com/6952723/breast-cancer-risk-assessment-tool/.

What is the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool?
Who should take it?
Where do mammograms fit in?
Future innovations

Released in 1989 by the National Cancer Institute, the online questionnaire takes less than five minutes to complete and pretty accurately predicts a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer…. The questionnaire—also known as the Gail Model after its developer Dr. Mitchell Gail at the National Cancer Institute—is about 98% accurate in predicting risk of breast cancer in most women.

Here’s the calculator: https://bcrisktool.cancer.gov/calculator.html.

And random good news from Future Crunch (now calling its newsletter Fix the News):

Lichtenstein’s parliament just voted 24-1 to legalise same-sex marriage. The African Development Bank says Africa will have 11 of the 20 fastest-growing economies in the world this year. McKenzie Scott has now given away $16.5 billion from the fortune she came into after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Fewer middle-aged people are dying from cancer in the UK than at any other point in the last 25 years. Gene editing for sickle cell disease is expensive, but it’s going to get a lot more accessible.

The cystic-fibrosis breakthrough that changed everything

Cystic fibrosis once all but guaranteed an early death. When the disease was first identified, in the 1930s, most babies born with CF died in infancy. The next decades were a grind of incremental medical progress: A child born with CF in the ’50s could expect to live until age 5. In the ’70s, age 10. In the early 2000s, age 35. With Trikafta came a quantum leap. Today, those who begin taking the drug in early adolescence, a recent study projected, can expect to survive to age 82.5—an essentially normal life span.

Of course, there are issues:

Side effects: “It can cause cataracts as well as liver injury. More perplexing, Trikafta may affect the brain. For Jenny, starting Trikafta coincided with a wave of intense insomnia, brain fog, and anxiety.”
Trikafta repairs the results of a specific mutation: “For another group of CF patients, Trikafta simply does not work. About 10 percent lack the F508del mutation that the triple combination was specifically designed to fix.”
Since so many people have been more or less cured, support groups for CF patient have been disappearing, even for the 10% who are not helped by Trikafta: “Recently, Make-A-Wish announced that children with CF would no longer automatically be eligible for the program, because “life-changing advances” had radically improved the outlook for them.”
And… CF patients expected to die young. Often they have no savings, no professional skills, no kids, because they did not expect to live long enough to deal with those. But now they will live.

7,700 words but all interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/cystic-fibrosis-trikafta-breakthrough-treatment/677471/. Send me a note if you can’t read it.

From the internet (2018, part 1)

I save interesting sayings that I find on the internet. Here are some from 2016-2018 but which still make me laugh… or learn:

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> Old Chinese proverb: You can’t polish a turd.

Rlippa: But you can sure step in it… over and over and over again.

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” …You Don’t Tug On Superman’s Cape…

You Don’t Spit Into The Wind
You Don’t Pull The Mask Off The Old Lone Ranger
And You Don’t Mess Around With “A Grand Jury Subpoena.”

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Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tells me: “The result will violate a cardinal national security rule: Avoid having more than one nuclear crisis at a time.”

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biffbobfred Ars Scholae Palatinae:

<<…>>

My grandmother was kinda like this. At night she got up and laid on the bathroom floor, probably because the tiles were cool and soothing (no evidence of a fall). My sis found her in the morning. No known cause of death. I can guarantee she was not part of Project Mayhem or whatever. Human bodies are incredibly complex. Sometimes I wonder why we don’t randomly explode. The fact that some people live for 30,000 days or more is still magic to me. Not a miracle but magic.

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I don’t know why men go to bars to meet women.

Go to Target.

The female to male ratio is 10 to 1 & they’re already looking for things they don’t need.

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Remember, folks, you can lead a gift horse to water, but you can’t look him in the mouth. (Or something like that.) Sometimes you just have to bite the hand that you’re dealt.

We could stand here and talk until the cows turn blue. But we have to get all our ducks on the same page, or the fan is gonna hit the roof.

Wake up and smell the music. Don’t count your chickens without breaking a few eggs!

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You never realize how many shortcuts a computer has until a cat sits on the keyboard.

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Libertarians believe consenting adults have the right to do whatever they choose, except band together. — Emo Philips

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/11/14/raccoons-drunk-crab-apples-cause-false-rabies-scare-west-virginia/:

High animals are more common as more jurisdictions legalize marijuana and people plop the drug into tasty edibles that also appeal to their pets, who can’t read warning labels and don’t typically have the impulse control to stop at one, Brulliard reported.