How mammals won...

The asteroid that ended the Cretaceous took with it famous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, as well as lesser-known but bizarre creatures like Anzu, or the "chicken from hell". There were duck-billed dinosaurs, long-necked dinosaurs, dinosaurs with armour all over their bodies – and, very quickly, all of them were dead.

In the shadow of these kings and queens of the Late Cretaceous, mammals like Purgatorius were small and scrappy, many of them filling the kinds of ecological niches today occupied by rodents. How was it that this miscellaneous group of seemingly vulnerable creatures – including our ancestors – survived doomsday?

Read rest of article here:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220812-dinosaur-extinction-why-did-mammals-survive

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Bill Watterson

Bill Watterson: “A comic strip only takes a second to read, but over the years it creates a surprisingly deep connection with readers. Seeing a strip every day is a fun ritual, and they feel connected to it. Even in a few panels you can develop characters and express an outlook on life as the months go by, and before you know it, readers are seriously invested in the world you’ve created. That incremental aspect, that unpretentious daily-ness of comics is a surprising source of power. Readers do form an emotional bond with your strip.”

What do you think? 

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Banksy

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Hearing aids soon-to-be more accessible...

As many as 30 million Americans have some trouble hearing, but few can afford to pay for doctors’ exams and prescription hearing aids — and most insurance plans don’t cover them. According to the Food and Drug Administration, only about one-fifth of Americans with hearing loss get help. 

The F.D.A. has now taken a final step that could put more accessible, and potentially less expensive, hearing aids in stores, pharmacies and online retailers as soon as mid-October of 2022. American adults with a perceived mild to moderate hearing impairment who are seeking a hearing aid will no longer have to be examined by a doctor first or get a prescription.

Read more here.

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Road signs

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Clay figurine

 I like the description as much as the figurine.

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Surveillance pickle

Found on Samuli "Dark Side of the Horse" Lintula's twitter page. Good find, Samuli.

https://twitter.com/samsoncomics/status/1559600719447179265

Dark Side of the Horse: Finnish site. Cool!

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Doritos

Yuck.

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Mullet celebrity hall of fame

Andre Agassi

Billy Ray Cyrus

Jared Allen

Jaromir Jagr

Mario Lopez

Mel Gibson

Patrick Swayze

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The coelacanth

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Posters

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Arnold Schwarzenegger, age 16

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Thanks for the typo alert, 6turtle9. Always appreciated! (I had an o after the h in Schwarzenegger.)
 

Where the Great Wall of China ends...

3,889 miles of wall ends here, at the edge of the Bohai Gulf. This spot is called is called Shanhai Pass, also nicknamed "Old Dragon's Head." 

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Cow bell marketing

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Hot dogs...

I'd settle for a plain beef hot dog (boiled), then wrapped in a slice of soft white bread with a little yellow mustard.  No thanks to chopped cabbage, quail eggs, relish, etc.  The worst would be catsup/ketchup. I won't even eat catsup/ketchup on French fries.

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Birds and hot peppers

Suet attracts many kinds of birds. Unfortunately, squirrels often also find suet attractive and they can dominate the feeder, keeping the birds you want to see away. One solution to this problem is to use a suet that contains hot pepper.

The idea behind using hot pepper is that mammals, like squirrels, dislike the hot taste and avoid it, but birds show no response and continue to eat the pepper-laced suet. It works well, but why?

Excellent explanation here.

Birds lack the hot response, but there is some evidence that some birds are very attracted to the taste. This is to the pepper plant’s advantage. The red of the chili pepper serves as a warning to mammals—“Don’t eat me; you won’t like it.” But the red color is attractive to birds. From the plant’s point of view, if a mammal, like a squirrel, were to eat the pepper which contains the seeds, it would use its molars to grind the seeds. This might be nutritious for the squirrel, but it destroys the progeny —the seeds — of the plant. On the other hand, birds will swallow the seeds whole and disperse them in their droppings. However, the situation is even more complex than this.

Seeds of many plants are subject to being eaten by animals or attacked by pathogens, such as fungi once they are released and on the ground awaiting germination. For pepper plants, there is a bigger advantage than simple dispersal of seeds by birds. As it turns out, seeds of chili peppers that pass through the digestive system of a bird germinate at a rate of 370% higher than seeds that do not pass through a bird’s digestive system. Part of the reason for this is that these seeds are also much more resistant to fungal infections because of protections added by the bird’s digestive system. So, deliberately attracting birds to come and eat the seeds greatly benefits the plant.

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At the airport...

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Monopoly. $400?!

What happens when you land on Go?

When you land on Go in Monopoly, you collect $200 as your salary. The rules state that you collect this when your token lands on or passes Go, so you do not have to wait until you have actually passed Go.

By earning a salary in this way you will have a source of income that does not rely on collecting rent from the other players. This will give you something to replenish your funds if you need to pay rent, taxes, or fines. 

When you land on Go do you get $400?

According to the official Monopoly rules, you do not get $400 when you land on Go. You collect $200 for passing Go or landing on Go – there is no official rule that states you get any extra for landing exactly on the Go square.

You may have heard that you collect double your salary if you land on the Go square, or that you get $200 when you land on it and another $200 on your next go when you pass it.

You may even have played it this way all your life, always hoping for the extra bonus salary if you land on the otherwise boring Go square. Sorry to say this is not in the official rules.

But, it is one of the more commonly used Monopoly house rules so it may be that your family and friends have always used this rule. They may well even think that it is in the official rules, but if you have a look you will find that it’s not there. 

I have NEVER heard the "rule" that landing on Go earns me double the salary. It's always been land on or pass Go. 

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Nobel Prize controversies...

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies

Raymond Vahan Damadian
Born	March 16, 1936 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	August 5, 2022 (aged 86)
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Madison Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Known for	Inventor of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

Raymond Vahan Damadian (March 16, 1936 – August 5, 2022) was an American physician, medical practitioner, and inventor of the first MR (magnetic resonance) scanning machine.

Damadian's research into sodium and potassium in living cells led him to his first experiments with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) which caused him to first propose the MR body scanner in 1969. Damadian discovered that tumors and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) because of their prolonged relaxation times, both T₁ (spin-lattice relaxation) or T₂ (spin-spin relaxation). Damadian was the first to perform a full-body scan of a human being in 1977 to diagnose cancer. Damadian invented an apparatus and method to use NMR safely and accurately to scan the human body, a method now well known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Damadian

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I pity the fools...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_farm

Not interested in inflating or manipulating my likes, followers, subscribers or any other measure of my social media presence. I like being the underdog, the lame damsel, the ignored, the untalented, the ire of the overlords, etc. The highlight of my existence was being dumped by GoComics only to have my followers fight back. I will love you forever for vindicating me. 

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Rita of Cascia

 What a soap opera. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_of_Cascia

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Dark Side of the Horse

I can't believe I forgot about this touching tribute from Samuli. What kind of sick, bone-headed patootie am I? There have been others from other creators, but suddenly I'm blank. I know Pab Sungenis has done a couple. Where is my memory... How embarrassing.

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At the water's edge...

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300% increase in boob size...

 

How much have female comic book characters changed over the years?

Find out here.

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