The Giant Spider Invasion

with Barbara Hale (aka Della Street) and Alan Hale (aka "The Skipper" from Gilligan's Island). All this horror courtesy of Wisconsin.

#FB00852

Mushrooms in elephant dung...

Mushrooms growing in elephant dung. Photographed in Danum Valley, Sabah, Borneo, East Malaysia. (Photographer/date unknown.)

#FB00852

Medical misogyny

The healthcare system has largely been made by men, for men.

Medical researchers historically excluded women from experiments — partly because they believed hormonal fluctuations in female lab animals would complicate data, partly citing concerns about harming women’s fertility, and partly because of researcher bias.

As a result, the male body has been treated as the biological default. This healthcare gender prejudice has left gaping knowledge gaps around how illness and pain impact women.

Those knowledge gaps have often been filled with sexist narratives: among them, that women’s pain or symptoms are exaggerated, rooted in emotion, or “hysterical”. That term has origins in ancient Egypt in 1900 BC, where it was suggested a spontaneously wandering uterus was the cause of women’s mental illness.

Read rest of article here:

https://360info.org/made-by-men-for-men-why-medicines-gender-bias-matters/

#FB00851

Music link....

Click this link. It's worth it!

#FB00850

Horse hoof restoration

#FB00849

G-Man Webcomics by Chris Giarrusso (May 18, 2024 -- May 24, 2024)

I noticed that my friend Chris (a fellow GoCreator!)

has a reader with some opinions, which is fine. What isn't so fine, in my way of thinking, is that after Chris politely explains his thought process, this reader basically invalidates Chris's response and tells him what he's really thinking as though he's a mind reader ("because you're ashamed of it!")

This is Chris's reader, so I don't want to butt in too much, but I'd like to ask you, my dear lame FA readers, to weigh in on this. Had Chris remained silent, things might have been looked at differently, but Chris took the time to explain himself. And very nicely, too.

What do you think? To me, it's not the content of Chris's cartoons (yes, cats can be mean), but it's more about Chris's behind-the-scenes explanation and that is was challenged as being false. 

Kindly leave your feedback on the individual pages of this G-Man series. I will later copy and paste your comments here. It's okay to mention that I sent you, but that will no doubt be apparent soon enough. 

---Teresa

#FB00848

Chris and I seem to have a few things in common when it comes to our strips NOT falling within the guidelines of some unwritten rule about what a comic strip is or is not. (Notice that Chris. like me, uses the word "readers"---never fans.) 

Mangoes and avocados....

1.  Just soft enough to still be firm.  2. Yellow means sweeter (some red okay)  

To speed up ripening, stick in a paper bag to trap ethylene gas. To slow down ripening, place in the refrigerator.

1.  More blackish, than green. 2. Squeeze test. Just soft enough to be a little firm.  3. Clean bellybutton

#FB00847

Picking a pineapple... cutting it up

1. A little green and a lot more yellow.  2. Nice, healthy green leaves (if you can pull the top leaf out easily, that's good).  3. Weight. It should be heavy.  4. Smell it. A ripe pineapple is easy to smell.

#FB00846

Choosing a watermelon...

 

1. Yellow spot, 2. Brown belly-button, 3. Hollow "bop-bop" sound (juicy) 

Sugar Babies are good watermelons...

Use a knife longer than your watermelon is wide.

#FB00845

The Suspicious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen

 #FB00844

Jack Paar (Feb. 11, 1960)

 Jack Paar was before my time, but there's something about him that I really like. I wonder what the story was about that got cut. Does anyone know? Wow. This was his heartfelt and tearful exit. What a class act. I also didn't even know that Hugh Downs was a part of a late-night talk show.

#FB00843

More scams, more victims...

Details of scams here.

Unfortunately, I believe, the only person apprehended was the US-based money mule. The real culprits are safely back in India, counting victims' money. These crimes still fool plenty of people... some lose everything, some even take their lives. Authorities in this country (and I know corrupt Indian authorities) are doing next to nothing to stop these scams. Scambaiters (with YouTube channels) are some of the only barriers between scammers and their victims.

#FB00842

 

Knorks and medical malpractice...

Teresa,

There is a product by this name and I can report that the metal version is very good for eating microwave burritos. They cut much better than a regular fork.

(T.W.)

KNORK

WHO WE ARE?

"Welcome to Knork, where sophistication and innovation dine together. Born from a vision to revolutionize the dining experience, our brand is the epitome of where form seamlessly meets function. We believe in the power of a mealtime moment, and our mission is to elevate it with flatware that's as much a talking point as it is a tool. Crafted with precision and care, each piece of Knork flatware is a testament to our commitment to excellence, transforming everyday dining into a culinary event." 

https://www.knork.net/

Also, Roald Dahl's father lost his arm and resorted to a regular fork with a sharpened edge for eating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_(autobiography)

Dahl's ancestry

Roald Dahl's father Harald Dahl and mother Sofie Hesselberg were Norwegians who emigrated to Wales before World War I, and settled in Cardiff.

Harald and his brother Oscar, who were born in the 1860s, split up and went their separate ways after deciding that a better future lay before them outside their native Norway. Oscar headed to La Rochelle, France.

Harald had suffered an unfortunate accident as a teenager in the late 1870s, breaking his left arm by fixing the ceiling tiles of the family home and then falling off the ladder. A doctor was summoned, but was drunk on arrival and mistook the fractured arm for a dislocated shoulder. The doctor's attempt to relocate the shoulder failed, causing Harald to scream in agony. Harald's mother was a visitor at Harald's hospital room and viewed the scene in shock. By the time she told the doctors to stop, Harald's arm was very damaged. The doctors realised they had made a mistake, and the only way to not keep him in that condition was to amputate his left arm. Harald lived with one arm for the rest of his life, but he did not let the lack of a second arm hinder him; even fashioning a special sharpened fork to aid in eating, his only serious limitation being his inability to cut the top off a boiled egg.

#FB00841

Urine spray...

UltraLameFest2 is always sending me great ideas. Again, my readers know me so well that it's scary.

 #FB00840

Failed cutlery combinations...

My readers know my interests well. 6turtle9 often hits the mark when sending me blog suggestions.

#FB00839

Animated Cartoons

 Read about it here.

#FB00838
.

Jean-Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal

I first learned about the Sartre Prize from “NB,” the reliably enjoyable last page of London’sTimes Literary Supplement, signed by J.C. The fame of the award, named for the writer who refused the Nobel in 1964, is or anyhow should be growing fast. As J.C. wrote in the November 23, 2012, issue, “So great is the status of the Jean-Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal that writers all over Europe and America are turning down awards in the hope of being nominated for a Sartre.” He adds with modest pride, “The Sartre Prize itself has never been refused.”

Read the rest here.

#FB00837

Wages Against Housework

 4. Wages Against Housework

Silvia Federici 1974

They say it is love. 

We say it is unwaged work. 

They call it frigidity. 

We call it absenteeism. 

Every miscarriage is a work accident.

Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both working conditions. . . 

but homosexuality is workers’ control of production, not the end of work.

More smiles? More money. Nothing will be so powerful in destroying the healing virtues of a smile.

Neuroses, suicides, desexualization: occupational diseases of the housewife.

Many times the difficulties and ambiguities which women express in discussing wages for 

housework stem from the fact that they reduce wages for housework to a thing, a lump of 

money, instead of viewing it as a political per- spective. The difference between these two 

standpoints is...

Read the rest here.

#FB00836

Manual of Instructions to Undertakers...

 

Manual of Instructions

TO UNDERTAKERS,

WITH

Full and Complete Instructions in the Best Methods for

Preserving the Dead,

Including Minute Directions for

Arterial Injection,

With Plates Illustrating the Location of the Principal Arteries.

 

    It is to be understood that this Manual of Instruction is not for sale, but

    is only for your information and instruction while using the Excelsior 

    Preservative, and that it will not be furnished to any other than our 

    customers at any price.

Therefore we trust that you will keep this Manual under lock and key, or where 

no person other than yourself or your regular assistants can have access to it, as it 

contains all of the information and instructions that you could heretofore have 

gained by personal attendance on mine or any course of lectures on Embalming, 

at much expense of time and money, with the single exception of a practical 

demonstration of the operation of taking up and injecting the Arteries.

#FB00835

While convalescing...

#FB00834 

Can Dogs Smell/Tell Time?

#FB00833

World Food Prize Winner dies...

Prof. Monty Jones was the first African to be awarded the World Food Prize. He won the award in 2004 for his discovery of the genetic process to create the New Rice for Africa (NERICA). In 2007, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential persons in the world under SCIENTISTS & THINKERS category.

The ability of the African rice to grow under low input conditions makes it an especially useful genetic resource for developing stress-tolerant rice varieties for rainfed ecosystems in Africa. In 1992, a team led by Dr Monty Jones, a senior rice breeder of AfricaRice, decided to work on interspecific hybridization to develop varieties that might combine the high yield potential of Asian rice with the local adaptation of African rice.

 

The African rice varieties show strong adaptability to harsh environments, strong ability to compete with weeds, resist local diseases and pests, and withstand drought, flood, infertile soils, and iron toxicity.

 

Several attempts to exploit the African rice genome through interspecific crossing had  failed due to incompatibility barriers.AfricaRice circumvented the sterility barrier between the two species by using anther culture and embryo rescue techniques, coupled with back-crossings to the Asian rice parent. Several hundred interspecific progenies with promising agronomic performance were generated, increasing the biodiversity of rice.

 

The interspecific lines were evaluated across Africa by farmers through participatory varietal selection (PVS), which is an innovative approach that allows farmers to select their preferred varieties that match their needs and growing conditions, and that generates valuable feedback on farmers’ preference criteria for rice breeders.

 

The most successful lines, based on their performance and popularity among upland rice farmers, were named the NERICA varieties. The first NERICA varieties were released in Côte d’Ivoire in 2000. The development of the upland NERICA earned AfricaRice several international awards including the World Food Prize in 2004 to Monty Jones.

#FB00832 

Insect embroidery

 #FB00831