Monday, January 30, 2023

Critically endangered horse cloned; Finland is propaganda-resistant; etc.

Horse cloned using 42 year old frozen sperm: A bit of good news. A California zoo announced the birth of a critically endangered horse, a clone created with DNA preserved for 42 years. Named Kurt, the foal was born to a surrogate mother, a domestic quarter horse. Almost all surviving Przewalski's horses are related to 12 born in native habitats. Kurt was born through a breeding program to boost genetic variation in the species. The horse — also known as the Mongolian wild horse or the takhi — is shorter than domestic horses, and often has distinctive markings. The article has a 1 minute video showing the foal and mom doing their horse things.


Kurt


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Finland is the European country that is least susceptible to "fake news," with other Nordic countries trailing close behind, according to a recent analysis of media literacy. The United States and much of Western Europe – including the United Kingdom, France and Germany – ranked in a lower tier with countries such as Latvia and Lithuania in an expanded version of the analysis, which measures countries’ susceptibility to false news reports.

According to the report, the “dangers of fake news and related phenomena for democracy are hard to underestimate.” The countries where media literacy is at its lowest have the greatest restrictions on press freedom and low levels of education and personal trust.
This is notable because it is a source other than me who is warning about the now-grave danger to democracy, truth and civil liberties from divisive fake news, lies, slanders and crackpottery. The radical right propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, has been putting this kind of anti-democracy poison out for decades. 


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The radical right Republican concept of a social safety net: Truthout writes:
Republicans Want to Raise Retirement Age to 70 as Life Expectancy Is Falling

This would shorten the retirement window to a mere six years, if the latest life expectancy average holds.

House Republicans have been working out the details of their deeply unpopular plan to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to deepen poverty and shackle people to the labor force further into old age.
What radical right authoritarian government and citizen welfare haters don't seem to realize is that if they do nothing at all, the safety net will continue to slowly melt away.  About 41% of Americans say it's 'going to take a miracle' to be ready for retirement and ~59% of Americans say they will have to keep working longer. About 36% believe that they will never have enough money to be able to retire. Apparently, the shift of Americans into poverty isn't going fast enough for the Republican Party's taste.


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RRRRDS strikes in Connecticut (radical right reason-reality derangement syndrome): The WaPo writes on the kind of baseless crackpottery that drives the radical right's deranged but enraged culture war: 
She named her breakfast cafe Woke. 
A conservative backlash followed.

When Carmen Quiroga named her new breakfast restaurant, she wanted people to associate the cafe with waking up in the morning. She settled on Woke Breakfast & Coffee and spent six months renovating a building and developing a logo. Quiroga moved to Coventry, Conn., a few weeks before the restaurant’s opening this month. While finalizing the permits at town hall, another resident advised her to check Facebook. There, Quiroga saw several town residents criticizing her restaurant’s name, suggesting she’d chosen Woke to make a political statement. That was false, Quiroga told The Washington Post. .... 
After Quiroga put up a sign with the logo on the building in September, residents began condemning the restaurant’s name.
The town divided along the usual political line, crackpot radical right vs reactionary left. Those radical right anti-woke folks are antsy to say the least. If there is nothing to get in a froth about, they just make up some crackpottery and let all their mindless rage and hate gush out. What a bunch of WWS (whining, wuss snowflakes (sorry SNOWFLAKE)). Some folks just need to get a real, adult life.


Quick, get this photo to QAnon to decipher
its dark Illuminati meaning of the egg for 
the letter O

Ooh, an evil socialist pedophile conspiracy is afoot!
Check the basement for a child sex-trafficking operation!
Bring your AR-15s and lots of ammo!!

The AR-15 "Piecemaker"
It shoots evil socialist pedophiles (and other miscreants) 
into harmless little . . . . . pieces

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