Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalBreed is not a good predictor of individual dog behavior, study finds
The Labrador retriever has reigned supreme as the most popular dog in the United States for 31 years, according to the American Kennel Club, which describes the breed as friendly, active and outgoing.
But new research suggests it’s unwise to assume dogs will display specific personalities simply because they are the same breed, or to presume behaviors are exclusive to any specific breed.
In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers said they found that dog breeds are not especially helpful in predicting the behavior of an individual canine. Breed type explains just 9 percent of variation in behavior, according to a combination of survey responses and DNA sequencing, they added.
Scientists collected 18,385 survey responses from dog owners through a citizen science project called Darwin’s Ark. They also received saliva samples from 2,155 of these dogs, which allowed the researchers to sequence the dog’s DNA.
The combination of the genetic and survey data also revealed that 11 regions of the dog genome are significantly associated with behavior, including how often a dog howls and how comfortable a dog is around people. However, none of these genetic sites are specific to a breed. This suggests that the majority of behaviors assumed to be characteristics of a certain dog type actually predate the origin of breeds.
Dogs emerged around 10,000 years ago, and humans began intentionally breeding dogs just 2,000 years ago. In the years leading up to the 1800s, canines were selected for how well they could perform jobs like hunting and herding. But a shift in thinking occurred around 150 years ago during the Victorian era: People began to select dogs for their aesthetic traits and breeds were invented.
The idea that specific behaviors could emerge within the short timespan after breeds emerged suggested to the study team that something was off in humanity’s assumptions of breed-specific personalities.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/breed-not-good-predictor-individual-dog-behavior-study-finds-rcna25990
A bite mark, a forensic dentist, a murder: how junk science ruins innocent lives
Charles McCrory is haunted by a memory from his 1985 trial in which he was accused of murdering his wife, Julie Bonds, in a bloody attack at their home in Andalusia, a small town in deepest Alabama.
What haunts him is the look on the jurors’ faces as they listened to the testimony of the prosecution’s star witness, a dentist named Richard Souviron. He was a founding father of a cutting-edge branch of forensic science known as bite-mark analysis, which claimed to be able to identify violent criminals by matching their unique dental patterns to the bite wounds on victims’ bodies.
McCrory was expecting Souviron’s evidence to be nuanced. In his initial report, the dentist had been cautious about what could be deduced from two puncture marks found on the upper right arm of Julie’s body, saying that the injuries were insufficiently distinct to allow a positive match with the perpetrator.
But that was not what he told the jury.
When Souviron was asked whether the two marks were teeth marks, he said: “Yes.”
Then the prosecutor asked him: “In your expert opinion, based on the evidence presented to you, were these teeth marks made by Charles McCrory?”
“Yes,” the dentist replied.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/28/forensics-bite-mark-junk-science-charles-mccrory-chris-fabricant
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Article doesn't mention blood spatter or fire science evidence or the increasingly questionable "evidence" used to diagnose "shaken baby syndrome" which may not be a thing at all in most cases
Roger Stone Comes Back to Twitter, Is Immediately Re-Banned
After Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, veteran GOP operative Roger Stone thought he was safe to return to the platform after being permanently banned in 2017.
But his homecoming didn’t last long, as the longtime ally of ex-president Donald Trump was re-banned within hours of creating his new account.
“Well bitches I’m back on Twitter,” Stone bragged on Telegram early Thursday morning. “I’m anxious to see how strong Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech is.”
After the new account, @RogerStoneUSA, was connected to the self-described “dirty trickster,” he was banned within minutes—again.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/roger-stone-tries-to-come-back-to-twitter-is-immediately-re-banned?ref=home
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Well, b****, I guess you ain't.
Cops in Tiny Iowa Town Charged With Stalking Women and Tasering Party Guests
They’re accused of stalking and snooping, embezzling and evidence tampering, sextortion and falsifying documents, stealing from a fire department and repeatedly using a Taser on party guests. They’re accused of perjury, data breaches, and obstructing prosecution. They’re accused of illegal vacationing, misappropriating dental funds, and tax evasion.
They’re a gaggle of former officials from Armstrong, Iowa, where they’ve racked up more than 100 combined criminal charges.
Armstrong, located on the state’s northern border, has a population of approximately 875. But a clique of local officials—including the town’s former mayor, his son-in-law (the town’s former police chief), and a local ex-cop—are accused of single-handedly sending the tiny enclave’s crime rate sky-high. Together, they’ve been charged with more than 100 counts, ranging from assault to embezzlement. That’s not even counting another dozen charges facing an alleged accomplice cop in a nearby town.
Two city clerks have pleaded guilty in the case, with the remainder pleading not guilty.
Most of the allegations are new this month, when former Armstrong police officer Benjamin Scheevel was hit with 84 charges. Those charges include multiple counts of perjury, obstructing an investigation, stalking (including stalking with a dangerous weapon), unauthorized access and dissemination of police data, assault with a dangerous weapon, tax evasion, and theft.
Those allegations span two police departments: Armstrong, where Scheevel was most recently employed, and the nearby town of Estherville, where Scheevel previously worked as a cop.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/cops-in-tiny-town-of-armstrong-iowa-charged-with-stalking-women-and-tasering-party-guests?ref=home
The Community Where Patrick Lyoya Was Killed by Cops Saw It Coming
Daevionne Smith was leaving his father’s house in Grand Rapids, Michigan, one night in December when he was suddenly rushed by police officers. They surrounded the 30-year-old and told him to get on the ground, at gunpoint.
Smith, a Black man, barely had a moment to process what was happening before he heard a gunshot. Not wanting to take a chance, he immediately followed their orders.
“Why did you shoot, sir?” Smith asked an officer as he lay on the ground.
“I tripped,” the cop responded. The officer who fired the shot maintained that he’d done so by accident; he was charged with a single count of careless discharge and is scheduled to face trial later this year. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to 90 days in jail and a $100 fine.
Smith would later find out that police had suspected he was driving a stolen car.
In the end, however, the whole encounter was a case of mistaken identity: The officers didn’t even have the right car.
“I remember telling people at the time, ‘If they don't do something about this, somebody's gonna die,’” Smith told VICE News. Smith knows about the consequences of unchecked police violence: His cousin, Breonna Taylor, was the 26-year-old Black woman killed by cops in March 2020 during the execution of a no-knock warrant in Louisville, Kentucky.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3nd8e/patrick-lyoya-death-christopher-schurr
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"But the Civilian Appeal Board is weakened by the police union’s ability to override its decision." WTAF???
Ron DeSantis is following a trail blazed by a Hungarian authoritarian
In June of last year, Hungary’s far-right government passed a law cracking down on LGBTQ rights, including a provision prohibiting instruction on LGBTQ topics in sex education classes.
About nine months later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill banning “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” up through third grade. According to some knowledgeable observers on the right, these two bills were closely connected.
“About the Don’t Say Gay law, it was in fact modeled in part on what Hungary did last summer,” Rod Dreher, a senior editor at the American Conservative magazine, said during a panel interview in Budapest. “I was told this by a conservative reporter who ... said he talked to the press secretary of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and she said, ‘Oh yeah, we were watching the Hungarians, so yay Hungary.’”
(When I asked DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw about a possible connection, she initially denied knowing of Hungarian inspiration for Florida’s law. After I showed her the quote from Dreher, she did not respond further. Dreher did not reply to two requests for comment.)
It’s easy to see the connections between the bills — in both provisions and justifications. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán described his country’s anti-LGBTQ law as an effort to prevent gay people from preying on children; Pushaw described Florida’s law as an “anti-grooming bill” on Twitter, adding that “if you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer” — meaning a person preparing children to become targets of sexual abuse, a slur targeting LGBTQ people and their supporters that’s becoming increasingly common on the right.
This is not a one-off example. DeSantis, who has built a profile as a pugilistic culture warrior with eyes on the presidency, has steadily put together a policy agenda with strong echoes of Orbán’s governing ethos — one in which an allegedly existential cultural threat from the left justifies aggressive uses of state power against the right’s enemies.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/4/28/23037788/ron-desantis-florida-viktor-orban-hungary-right-authoritarian
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Except that FloriDUH isn't a separate country---yet.....
The Kremlin Keeps Trying to Call Volodymyr Zelenskyy a Drug Addict
For the past five months, the Kremlin has been waging a disinformation war to discredit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by labeling him a drug addict—and its latest effort involves Elon Musk.
Last week, in a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel called “Special Operation in Ukraine”, the administrators published a video showing Zelenskyy speaking to the new owner of Twitter.
The video was first published back in March on Zelenskyy’s own Instagram page, but the video the pro-Kremlin channel posted last week showed a white powder on the desk next to the Ukrainian president.
“We don’t know whether it was editing or just Zelensky’s [sic] cameraman was also on drugs and missed such a moment in the frame,” the text accompanying the video said.
A side-by-side analysis of the two videos clearly shows that the white powder was added in afterwards, and several fact-checking organizations have debunked the video.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88gpd3/russia-zelenskyy-drug-addict
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Propaganda so bad as to be truly laughable. Now Putin, OTOH, especially recently.....
One of my girls came to breakfast with a mouthful
Winnie showed up with a chipmunk dangling from her mouth. Yep, my little one-eyed wonder hunts too. She saw Vicky come running down the stairs, and went over to greet her. The chipmunk seized its opportunity and limped into an overturned trashcan that serves as a sometime shelter for one of the girls while both of them watched it. Finally Vicky darted in after it and ran off with it. Winnie watched for a brief second, then gave the feline equivalent of a shrug and went off to eat Rachael Ray kibble, which she may find more palatable than raw chipmunk.
The Supreme Court seems fed up with a Trump judge who sabotaged Biden
Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump judge in Texas who essentially seized control of much of the United States’ southern border policy, appears likely to join the small cohort of Republican judges who went so far out on a limb that even this Supreme Court will not tolerate their behavior.
Last August, Kacsmaryk ordered President Joe Biden’s administration to reinstate a Trump-era policy colloquially known as “Remain in Mexico,” which requires many migrants who arrive at the US-Mexico border to stay in Mexico while their asylum case is pending in the United States. But Kacsmaryk read federal immigration law so narrowly that even President Donald Trump’s version of this program wasn’t harsh enough to comply.
Indeed, as Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone conceded during an exchange with Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday morning while the Supreme Court was hearing the case, under Kacsmaryk’s reading of federal law, no administration has ever complied with that law since it was enacted in 1996.
The case is Biden v. Texas, and it concerns what options are available to the federal government when it is confronted with an asylum seeker at the Mexican border. Under Kacsmaryk’s incorrect interpretation of federal immigration law, the government only has “two options vis-à-vis aliens seeking asylum: 1) mandatory detention; or 2) return to a contiguous territory.”
Kacsmaryk’s reading isn’t just wrong, it is obviously wrong. On its face, federal immigration laws give the government at least four options when confronted with an asylum seeker at the Mexican border. It can do what Kacsmaryk says, or it can grant parole to someone seeking admission to the United States “for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” And, when parole isn’t available, the government can also release an immigrant into the United States on “bond of at least $1,500.”
As Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted during the oral arguments, the case largely turns upon the proper meaning of the words “significant public benefit.” Arguing on behalf of the Biden administration, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said that these words permit the government to reserve its limited detention space for immigrants who present a danger to the public or who might be a flight risk, and to parole other immigrants.
https://www.vox.com/2022/4/26/23042653/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-trump-biden-texas-immigration-border-asylum
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Even Alito? Huh.
The surprising complexity of a classic Chinese condiment
Oyster sauce is a much-loved ingredient of the Chinese dinner table. How is it made, and why is it so irresistible?
Of all the intriguing condiments in Chinese cooking, there is one whose moniker probably raises more questions than it answers: that is, oyster sauce. How, you might wonder idly, can such a pale, briny food item as the oyster, rarely cooked, produce something so deeply brown and velvety?
Even if you've never used it yourself, you've almost certainly had oyster sauce many times, in a wide variety of familiar Chinese dishes. The comforting savouriness of beef with broccoli owes much to this glossy brown sauce, and chow mein, likewise. Oyster sauce is salty and sweet, with a kiss of ginger and a strong umami punch. It has a long history, one that runs in parallel with that of other delicious brown gooey sauces from around the world.
Oyster sauce gets its colour from a source known to everyone who's browned bacon or onions: the Maillard reaction, in which heat causes proteins and sugars to react together, deepening in hue as they become even more delicious. The sauce is made from the liquid oysters have been poached in, boiled until it's caramelised and dark and then enriched with soy sauce and spices. It is not, like a fish sauce or Worcestershire sauce, usually a product of fermentation. In one charming video, a couple in Shenzhen, China, demonstrate the traditional method with many hours of simmering in a wok (a bottle of beer appears part way through – the perfect accompaniment to some fishy hijinks).
Interestingly, while it has likely been made for ages, oyster sauce as a marketable concept is not terribly old. It was in 1888 that the founder of the most prominent oyster sauce brand, Lee Kum Kee, began to package and sell what company legend describes as an overboiled oyster soup turned to briny, savoury goo. Since its founding in Zhuhai, China, the company has become a global condiment behemoth. It's not the only sauce on the market, but it is everywhere, and chances are, if you've had oyster sauce, you've had Lee Kum Kee.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220426-the-surprising-complexity-of-a-classic-chinese-condiment
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This made me hungry for dinner, and I haven't even had lunch yet......
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
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