Sunday, July 31, 2022

Healthy women can also benefit from spending time gardening

Our Best Writers Challenge And Discomfit Us


Every book you read, you read not with your eyes but with your world — with the totality of who and what you are, your eyes lensed with a lifetime of impressions and relationships and experiences you alone have had. No two readers ever read the same book. Each book holds in its margins infinite space for every possible reader to fill with the entirety of their being — that endless, ecstatic dialogue between reader and writer that we call literature. We engage in the dialogue for many different reasons — we read to touch into the exquisite interconnectedness of things, as Virginia Woolf did; to acquire superhuman powers, as Galileo did; to map the route to our dreams, as Jane Goodall did; to solace, empower, and transform ourselves, as Rebecca Solnit knows we do; to understand ourselves and each other better, as Alain de Botton knows we must — but we always emerge with our worlds clarified and magnified by the worlds we have visited.


Tiny turtle pooed ‘pure plastic’ for six days after rescue from Sydney beach


Healthy women can also benefit from spending time gardening

A pilot randomized controlled trial of group-based indoor gardening and art activities demonstrates therapeutic benefits to healthy women. PLOS One. Published: July 6, 2022

“A pilot randomized controlled trial of group-based indoor gardening and art activities demonstrates therapeutic benefits to healthy women. There is mounting anecdotal and empirical evidence that gardening and art-making afford therapeutic benefits. This randomly controlled pilot study tested the hypothesis that participation in group-based indoor gardening or art-making activities for one hour twice a week for four weeks would provide quantifiably different therapeutic benefits to a population of healthy women ages 26–49…

Engaging in both gardening and art-making activities resulted in apparent therapeutic improvements for self-reported total mood disturbance, depression symptomatology, and perceived stress with different effect sizes following eight one-hour treatment sessions. Gardening also resulted in improvements for indications of trait anxiety. Based on time-course evidence, dosage responses were observed for total mood disturbance, perceived stress, and depression symptomatology for both gardening and art-making….When taken together, group-based gardening or art-making can provide quantitatively measurable improvements in healthy women’s psychosocial health status that imply potentially important public health benefits…”



17 of the most beautiful bathrooms on Pinterest


For The Washington Post Magazine, Carlo Rotella with “How a 23-Year-Old Phenom Named Kingfish Became the Future of the Blues.”


 "The One Beat Book of Verse"



AND HERE I THOUGHT RESISTANT STARCH WAS BAD FOR YOU:  Dietary Supplement Cuts Risk of Hereditary Cancer by 60%, Scientists Find. “To be clear, this trial was carried out on people already genetically predisposed to developing cancer and doesn’t necessarily apply to the broader public. But there could be a lot to learn by better understanding how resistive starch can help protect against cancer.”


Two Poems


Days at the Races

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped. —Groucho Marx

Away they go, with their outlandish names,

saddled with human baggage, desperate wagers— enough to make a thoroughbred go lame,

be it a strapping colt or spry old stager.

Away they go, with Monday in the lead,

and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday gaining speed. Friday and Saturday, poor things, are off the bridle, while Sunday, bless its heart, is simply idle.

Some like to be there—tremble at the crack

of every whip, eat dust, bathe in the lather

and feel the press of flesh. Me? I would rather keep my distance, make my bets off-track.

Each week I pony up a little dough,

although I seldom win, or place, or even show.


Dictionary of Omissions

The chief shortcoming of the Dictionary is, paradoxically, that it is so good that one wishes it were larger.

—Modern Language Review

The atlas of my sunken continents,

the empty bowl I used to keep my fish in, the shoebox of expired pawn tickets,

and this, my Dictionary of Omissions.

Words I’d withheld like an obsessive hoarder have been arrayed in alphabetic order

by some unsparing lexicographer.

Forever at a loss, I now refer

to brave objections that I should have made, to simple kindnesses never extended, conclusions left obscenely open-ended, heartrending breaks faintheartedly delayed. The supplements arrive, set after set— perpetual addenda of regret.


What makes a great death scene

 Slaying The Dragon: Social Media Dragons 🐉 For Writers


SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE:  People who exercise regularly are more likely to live longer.


VITAMIN D UPDATE:  Vitamin D supplements fail to lower risk of fractures in healthy adults, study says.


What makes a great death scene? And can 2,500 years of them be distilled into a top 50 list? Dan Kois  gives it a shot 


I’m not mixed, I’m African American. My whole family has medium to dark skin tones including myself but why do I have green eyes?


David A. Shaneyfelt (Alvarez Firm, Calabasas, CA), Confessions of a Catholic Litigator, 17 U. St. Thomas L.J. 111 (2020):

I imagine there are Navy Seals whose consciences prick them when they swim aboard an enemy’s base in the dead of night, slit the throats of guards on duty, retrieve a hostage, gun down pursuers, and swim back to their escape boat. They do what is necessary under the circumstances, within a framework that renders their actions morally unobjectionable. I am
not a Navy Seal. I am a civil litigator. And I am a Catholic, just as I know there are Catholic Navy Seals. I feel like the same lessons that apply to them apply to me, because I, too, seem to be doing the moral equivalent of slitting throats and gunning down enemies, while operating in a framework—the legal profession—that renders my actions morally unobjectionable.



Ridley, F.A., Hickinbotham, E.J., Suggitt, A.J. et al. The scope and extent of literature that maps threats to species globally: a systematic mapEnviron Evid 11, 26 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13750-022-00279-7: “Human activities are driving accelerating rates of species extinctions that continue to threaten nature’s contribution to people. Yet, the full scope of where and how human activities threaten wild species worldwide remains unclear. 

Furthermore, the large diversity of approaches and terminology surrounding threats and threat map-ping presents a barrier to understanding the state of knowledge and uptake into decision-making. Here, we define ‘threats’ as human activities and direct human-initiated processes, specifically where they co-occur with, and impact the survival of, wild species. 

Our objectives were to systematically consolidate the threat mapping literature, describe the distribution of available evidence, and produce a publicly available and searchable database of articles for easy uptake of evidence into future decision-making. Methods: Four bibliographic databases, one web-based search engine, and thirteen organisational websites were searched for peer-reviewed and grey-literature published in English 2000–2020. A three-stage screening process (title, abstract, and full-text) and coding was undertaken by two reviewers, with consistency tested on 20% of articles at each stage. 

Articles were coded according to 22 attributes that captured dimensions of the population, threat, and geographic location studied in addition to methodological attributes. The threats studied were classified according to the IUCN Red List threat classification scheme. A range of graphical formats were used to visualise the distribution of evidence according to these attributes and complement the searchable database of articles. Review findings: A total of 1069 relevant threat mapping studies were found and included in the systematic map, most conducted at a sub-national or local scale. Evidence was distributed unevenly among taxonomic groups, ecological realms, and geographies. 

Although articles were found for the full scope of threat categories used, most articles mapped a single threat. The most heavily mapped threats were alien invasive species, aquatic or terrestrial animal exploitation, roads and railways, residential development, and non-timber crop and livestock agriculture. Limitations regarding the English-only search and imperfect ability of the search to identify grey literature could have influenced the findings. Conclusions: This systematic map represents a catalogue of threat mapping evidence at any spatial scale available for immediate use in threat reduction activities and policy decisions. 

The distribution of evidence has implications for devising actions to combat the threats specifically targeted in the post-2020 UN Biodiversity Framework, and for identifying other threats that may benefit from representation in global policy. It also highlights key gaps for further research to aid national and local-scale threat reduction. More knowledge would be particularly beneficial in the areas.”


Ukrainian Artists In Occupied Ukraine Document The War

When it became too dangerous to meet in person, the artists continued to work individually. Some have since escaped the city but others remain, risking their lives. - The Observer


So What, Exactly, Is Culture?

To fully understand a culture it’s necessary to get to know the specific patterns of life within it, and these can’t be captured by abstractions or generalisations. You might, for example, say that culture X is Christian but that doesn’t actually tell you very much about how life is...



#280 - Click Here

It Emerges Out Of The Misty Darkness! - [retro pic]
Lovely Merseybeat Tune from Hong Kong - [1967 footage, music]
CryptoMuseum: Huge Spy Radio Collection! - [great find]
The Most Beautiful Recent Concept Car? - [cool video]
Did you see the steampunk art by Vadim Voitekhovitch? - [wow art]
My Favorite Radio / TV! - [SONY FX 300 Jackal]
Just a 3D Mansion in Art Nouveau/Belle Epoque Style - [concept art]
Hilarious and Cool Art by BiboX - [wow art]
House of the Century! Indeed - [architecture]
Space Babes by WenJuinn - [somewhat nsfw, scifi art]
Rare Look on Repairs on Moscow Metro Subway - [wow photos]
The Death Of Subculture: Great Series of Articles - [insight]
History of Secret Radio Operations - [fascinating]
The Tallest Buildings (3D Size Comparison) - [wow video]
KDLT-TV 1999ft tower being climbed - [not for the faint-hearted, video]
Strange Ancient Feminine Statues - [Ramappa sculptures]
History (w/pics) of DX Remote Radio Listening - [interesting]
Dino EV Concept is quite handsome - [cool auto]
No cars on this Chinese "Island of Music" (info) - [travel]
Epic Lock Fails - [funny pics]
Union Pacific "Big Boy" Steam Engineinfo - [trains]
1966 Syd Mead Design for a Ford Pickup Truck - [futurism]
This is a HUGE resource of 1800s German Romantic Art - [great find]
Surreal Steampunk Art by John Stephens - [wow art]
Pimped out VW Campervans - [fun pics]
Huge Archive of Golden Age of Radio Publications - [great find]
Alpicool Futuristic Prefab House info - [wow design]
A stunning roll cloud moving over Lake Michigan - [wow video]
Greatest Optical Illusion in awhile - [tiktok video] 
Nissan's 370Zki is something else... - [cool video]
Strange & Cute 1906 Forgotten Silent Film - [cool video]
Playing banjo for a wild fox! He came back for an encore - [fun video]
Turboencabulator! Hilarious Explanation - [fun video]
More of this geek goodness, with charts - [fun video]
Ondrej Havelka' Outstanding Retro Music Video - [fun video]
How Spiritual People Fight (Parody) - [fun video]
Feel-Good Dancing in all its glory - [wow video]

Lake Eyre: Apps for Insects: Pollinators play an essential role in supporting biodiversity

 Outback in bloom as floodwaters travel hundreds of kilometres into Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre


As I read this article on pollination, and saw the smell and the image of honey 🍯 extraction, memories of my father came flooding back as he tended to 7 beehives in our garden in Vrbov that pollinated the entire Forrest and fields around us … 


Unpicking the link between smell and memoriesNature




Innovate to pollinate: hi-tech ways to welcome insects into your garden

A new wave of apps and AI wizardry is helping gardeners encourage bees, butterflies and more

When you are sitting in your garden, cup of tea in hand, do you find yourself grumbling when you spot a beetle nibbling your hydrangeas or a fly landing on your prized patch of raspberries? Or do you welcome these tiny visitors, as part of the life of your garden? 
Some creatures are difficult to like but, as the threat of an insect apocalypse looms, it is clear we need to try harder to get along. In Britain, flying insects alone have declined as much as 60 per cent in the past 20 years, a survey by Buglife and Kent Wildlife Trust suggests. 
“We need to have more empathy for insects, which are vital for ecosystems to flourish,” says UK-based artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, whose work investigates our troubled relationship with nature and technology. She has developed an algorithmic design tool to create gardens that encourage bees, beetles, moths, wasps, butterflies and other insects to thrive. Pollinator Pathmaker is part of a new wave of apps and gadgets that are sensitising us to their needs and encouraging us to rethink who — and what — our gardens are for.


Pollinators play an essential role in supporting biodiversity and contribute more than £500mn a year to UK agriculture and food production, according to official figures. But they are dis­appearing due to habitat loss, pesticides, invasive species or climate change. 
46% Reported drop in US honey bee colonies in just one year, from April 2020 to April 2021 
While chemical-heavy farming has much to answer for, our penchant for turning our gardens into “outdoor rooms”, treating creepers like wallpaper, lawns like carpets and sanitising our flower beds with sprays is compounding the problem. But Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker — developed as part of an art commission for the Eden Project in Cornwall — takes human tastes out of the equation. The online tool, hosted on pollinator.art, uses the algorithm to generate planting schemes that attract diverse pollinating species. 
Once you have entered your plot size and selected your site’s light exposure and soil type, it will pick from 150 plants to create a unique design, giving you planting instructions to download. Choose “pollinator vision” and you can see your garden through the eyes of an insect, with the software approximating colours it would detect. “I’m using technology to stop us seeing the world from just our own perspective,” says the artist. She developed the algorithm with the Eden Project’s horticulturalists, pollinator experts and an AI scientist.

The first edition of the Pollinator Pathmaker artwork — a 55-metre-long garden — began to bloom at the Eden Project this spring. “It’ll be like granny’s herbaceous border on acid when it’s fully grown,” says Ginsberg. 
“The giant Echium pininana, for example, are like skyscrapers for pollinators, attracting honey bees, bumblebees, solitary bees, butterflies and moths.” Aesthetes may balk at the seemingly random juxtapositions of heights, colours and shapes: the echiums, when mature, will explode out of drifts of purple loosestrife, interspersed with acid green Euphorbia corallioides (magnets for hoverflies) and yellow Verbascum nigrum spears (attracting bees). 
It has an eccentric charm, however, incorporating some deliberate stripes that act as flight paths (or “traplines”) for specific bee species to help them find the fastest route between flowers, alongside clumps for pollinators such as beetles that explore plants more randomly.

Another edition of the artwork was planted in London’s Kensington Gardens in April, as part of the Serpentine Galleries’ Back to Earth exhibition, and Ginsberg is now developing a plant palette to suit Germany’s northern region for an iteration at the LAS Berlin art foundation. Insects in Germany need all the help they can get: a 2017 study at Radboud University found that the abundance of flying species had plummeted by 75 per cent in protected areas over the previous three decades.

There are plenty of low-tech ways to attract pollinators to your garden, of course. Websites such as Bumblebeeconservation.org and RHS.org.uk provide helpful lists of plants to choose from, with Dr Andrew Salisbury, the RHS’s principal entomologist, advising that you should fill your garden with as wide a range of plants as possible that will flower throughout the year. 
The UK government also offers some basic tips as part of its Pollinator Action Plan, such as mow your lawn less often, avoid disturbing nests and think twice before using pesticides. But the algorithm does a computation that would be challenging to achieve without help. “The database knows what plants serve specific types of insects — such as foxgloves, which attract long-tongued bumblebees — and those that serve many species,” says Ginsberg. 
“It will balance out those specialist and generalist plants so it can serve the maximum diversity of pollinators, while ensuring the garden will flower year-round. That’s hard to do on your own.” Pollinator Pathmaker is conceived as a call to action to encourage us to consider the wellbeing of other species. In recent decades, technology has often exacerbated our separation from nature, but now it is increasingly awakening us to its plight.

In May, the UK government called on Britons to use the new Flower-Insect Timed Count (FIT Count) app to record insects in their gardens and elsewhere, as part of its own attempts to stem the loss of pollinators. It is encouraging people to give up just 10 minutes of their time to count pollinating insects “to help us track their numbers and movements, and support our efforts to reverse the decline of these vital species,” said the then environment minister, Rebecca Pow at the launch of FIT Count, developed by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and supported by Defra. FIT Count joins an array of apps and websites that encourage us to become caretakers of the natural world and its tiny inhabitants. 
Users of the Seek smartphone app, for example, can point their cameras at insects and plants to identify them, with the data passed on to scientists (if people opt in), while iRecord Butterflies sends sightings to the “Butterflies for the New Millennium” national recording scheme. I’m using technology to stop us seeing the world from just our own perspective Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Garden designer Tom Massey urges his clients to use them, to deepen their connection with their environments. “They encourage citizen science,” he says. “Everyone can become a plant or insect hunter, and record species they find in the wild, or in their gardens. The data can then be used to track and monitor distribution of certain species that may be rare, or under threat.”
 Seeing the results of your planting efforts reflected in increased numbers of insect species is also an encouraging pat on the back. Bees benefit from a better public image than most insects, thanks to the honey they produce and their efficiency as pollinators. It explains why a raft of bee tech is emerging to help their cause. “Bees are fundamentally important to about a third of the food we eat every day,” says Fiona Edwards Murphy of Irish company ApisProtect, in a promotional video. It has developed wireless in-hive sensors that monitor temperature, humidity, sounds and acceleration, helping commercial and hobbyist beekeepers to take action when needed. 

In the US, beekeepers lost 46 per cent of their honey bee colonies between April 2020 to April 2021, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, a collaboration of national research labs. Key causes of colony collapse include the rapid spread of the parasitic varroa mite — aided by warming temperatures — habitat loss and lack of nutrition. Boston-based Best Bees Company installs hives on corporate and residential properties in urban centres and uses software to monitor colony health, giving the data to Harvard University, MIT, Nasa, as well as hive owners. “We’ve discovered that plant species diversity is vital,” says founder Noah Wilson-Rich. “The more species they pollinate, the better their health.” Good nutrition can also help bees to metabolise pesticides.

To help create habitats in which bees can thrive, the company is also developing a “smart hive”. It will react to changes in temperature and humidity without human intervention. Insect tech is getting increasingly sophisticated. Bulgarian company Pollenity already offers Beebot sensors to hobbyist beekeepers, and aims to bring a robotic insect to market soon, after live-testing it this summer. Their RoboBee performs the “waggle dance” of a bee to guide a hive’s swarm to flowers and away from dangers. “The beauty of this system is being able to tap into the intricate communication methods of the bees to influence them,” says chief executive Sergey Petrov of the technology, developed by researchers at the Free University of Berlin. “It could be a game-changer in navigating bees away from pesticides.” If catastrophe strikes and bees die out, researchers at Harvard University are developing a RoboBee that will pollinate plants itself. In the UK, start-up company Olombria, founded by designer Tashia Tucker, is helping the underdogs of the pollinator world become more efficient. Hoverflies account for 30 per cent of all pollination, despite the fact they are easily distracted and often roam off before carrying pollen between plants. Olombria’s AI pollination system includes sensors, cameras and chemical signalling devices that can be placed in strategic spots in a field to direct hoverflies to plants in bloom. The undesirable traits of some insects — from stinging and biting to damaging foliage and fruit — often make them disagreeable guests in gardens and have slowed down both scientific research and technological innovation. We know that wasps, for example, are important pollinators but people’s disdain for them and their affection for bees means we have far fewer studies into the former’s ecological benefits.

The problem with wasps is people,” writes professor Seirian Sumner, a behavioural ecologist and entomologist at University College London, in her new book Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps. Last year she co-authored a review of 500 academic papers to begin quantifying their value. It found that wasps help pollinate 960 plant species, with 164 plants — largely orchid varieties — completely reliant on them. Wasps also act as natural pesticides, feeding on aphids and caterpillars that damage plants. 
The occasional sting, it seems, is a small cross to bear for the benefits they bring to your garden — as long as you are not allergic to them, that is. The RHS is now trying to help us see the positives in insects we have long maligned, perhaps inspiring future technological innovation to help them thrive. Earlier this year it announced it will no longer label any garden wildlife as “pests”, instead doing positive PR for misunderstood insects like wasps, moths, ants, slugs and snails. “Insects play an invaluable role in biodiversity so we are trying to encourage a more tolerant attitude,” says Andrew Salisbury. 
Different plant and insect species also co-evolve together, which means banishing one will disrupt others. Salisbury points out how gardeners regularly complain about the damage that winter moth caterpillars wreak to foliage on trees and shrubs, but moths are useful pollinators and birds such as blue tits time their egg hatching to their arrival, relying on them to rear their chicks. “What you lose in perfection from them, you gain in birdsong and a more lively garden,” he says. Recommended ReviewScience books Book review: 'Silent Earth' by Dave Goulson — a plea for the pollinators Nature doesn’t conform to human ideals, says Tom Massey.
 “Things that people see as messy have so much benefit.” He encourages his clients not to clear dead wood from their gardens, for example, to allow solitary bees and other insects to make it their home. But if our gardens don’t live up to our conventional standards of beauty, will we care for them as we should? “There’s a different kind of joy you get from watching pollinators in action,” says Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. “Seeing a bumblebee’s bottom sticking out of a spotted deadnettle flower is a sublime aesthetic experience in itself.” It’ll take more than a few algorithms and gadgets to avert an insect apocalypse, of course. But this new wave of innovations could help us understand that our gardens — and technology — can be designed for the benefit of other creatures beyond ourselves.
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RIP Archie Roach - The Hilltop Cabin

How a book is made – from cover to cover The New York Times – “Have you ever wondered how a book becomes a book? Revisit our look at a recent novel’s journey through the printing process.”


Archie Roach, pioneering Indigenous singer behind Took The Children Away, offered message of hope and solidarity


Shelley spent time on the water, wrote about it, loved sailing, but couldn’t swim. He died by drowning  


NEWS YOU CAN USE: You should save those silica gel packets that come with your purchases. Here’s why.


Mad honey, ghost ships, flying snakes: Adrienne Mayor plumbs the engrossing strangeness of the ancient Greco-Roman world 

Muhammad Ali’s championship belt from his 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight title fight has sold at auction for $6.18 million.


Miles Franklin Literary Award 


       They've announced the winner of this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, the leading Australian novel prize, and it is Bodies of Light, by Jennifer Down; see also the Text publicity page


Real Objectivity Involves A Heck Of A Lot Of Subjectivity

That is, "being objective" means having the ability to identify with someone else's subjective experience. - Aeon

We Miscalculated. The World Is Not A Game

As the scope of algorithm-based applications in social reality has expanded over the past decades, we have by the same measure been conditioned to approach ever more fields of human life as if they were strategy games. - Liberties Journal



The Meaning Of Art: To Point Out Evil

I am using the word “evil” to encompass the whole range of negative human experience, from being wronged, to doing wrong, to sheer bad luck. This list of evils is also a list of the essential ingredients of narrative fiction. - The Point

Dating from 1958, the Marabout, meaning ‘large conical tent,’ was designed by the engineer Raymond Camus, a pioneer in the field of prefab structures, and built in the workshop of Jean Prouvé.

Settled at the highest point in the Kanimbla Valley, with panoramic views across to the Blue Mountains escarpment, The Hilltop Cabin feels like the top of the world.









The Rehearsal (HBO): The new Nathan Fielder show has a strange premise. Fielder helps a real person rehearse an upcoming event that they are worried about. In the first episode, Kor has told a friend he has a MA when in fact he has a BA. The fib has tormented him for years. For the rehearsal, Fielder builds a life-sized replica of Kor’s favorite bar where the confession will take place and he stocks it with actors. The confession is run through multiple times, ala Groundhog Day. The rehearsal probably cost five hundred thousand or more. The enormous difference between the scale of the rehearsal and the fib is part of the point. Kor is an expert on the trivial. Fielder himself rehearses the rehearsal. It’s ridiculous but why don’t we do this more often? How about rehearsing a pandemic?

I confess that on first watching I missed that the ending was a rehearsal (like missing the gorrilla on the basketball court). Very meta. Strange but recommended. Tyler would like it and I don’t normally say that kind of thing.

The Old Man (HULU/FX): Jeff Briges seems miscast as an action hero, even an aging action hero. Yet, the writers turn that to their advantage and make the action scenes slower, more realistic, and more brutal than is typical. The Old Man builds as it slows. Excellent performances from Bridges, John Lithgow and especially Amy Brenneman. A reverse Stockholm effect. The underlying story in which an Afghan warlord seems to control the US government at the very highest level is a bit absurd and there is an entirely unnecessary substory with another old man but the ending is superb, logical, meaningful, and deepening and changing everything that came before.

The Alpinist on Netflix. Recommend to me after I recommended 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible but I could only handle 10 minutes. Too scary. Too nuts. Like watching Roman gladiators battling to the death, it just felt wrong to watch. When I came to write this review, I was not surprised to find that Leclerc had perished.

Westworld S4 (HBO): Season One was one of the best seasons of television ever. S2-S4 are a waste of time. S4 I found incomprehensible.