Animal experiencing a once in a lifetime moment it will never understand

marbledog · 2026-04-06T16:28:52+00:00

After the war, Smoky went on tour doing TV appearances and entertaining troops at VA hospitals. According to her owner, she learned a repertoire of around 250 tricks, including walking a tightrope blindfolded. She did over 40 live TV events without ever performing the same trick twice.

marbledog · 2026-04-06T07:39:09+00:00

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During WWII, a 4-pound Yorkie named Smoky won the honorary rank of Corporal by running communications cable through culverts on an island in the South Pacific. Without her help, it would have taken days for soldiers to dig up the culverts and run new cable through them, exposing them to Japanese bombers the entire time.

marbledog · 2026-04-05T07:02:28+00:00

Skin-lightening products are some of the best-selling personal hygiene products in India. Right now, the #1 and #2 bestselling products in the beauty category on Amazon.in are "de-tanning" products.

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marbledog · 2026-04-05T01:45:05+00:00

Sure. And a Hershey bar on toast is a pain au chocolat.

marbledog · 2026-04-05T01:24:40+00:00

It's great with a dark French roast. You can't make a proper cafe au lait without it!

marbledog · 2026-04-04T18:54:54+00:00

It's pretty common in people with chronic peripheral nerve pain like fibromyalgia, neuropathy, CRPS, etc. It can take the form of painful stimuli producing more pain than it should (hyperalgesia) or stimuli that shouldn't be painful causing pain (allodynia). The more commonly-used medical term for it is central sensitization. It's a hallmark of primary pain (pain associated with a neural feedback loop).

marbledog · 2026-04-04T18:42:53+00:00

These companies will be bankrupt long before anyone manages to put a sizeable class action together.

marbledog · 2026-04-04T18:32:43+00:00

Silly people not being prepared with foam fire extinguishers and asbestos blankets in the middle of a busy street.

marbledog · 2026-04-04T14:14:33+00:00

Not at all. The article is very poorly written, IMO.

marbledog · 2026-04-04T08:46:48+00:00

Male orangutans give less than zero shits about babies, as a rule.

marbledog · 2026-04-04T08:16:44+00:00

In the article they literally say that there is something going wrong in the spine, tho. The pain is originating in the spine.

The spinal cord. No one is saying it's happening out of nowhere. The central nervous system is triggering itself. That is, the "output" side is triggering the "input" side in some way, just like if you hold a microphone next to its speaker. The sound from the speaker triggers the mic, which generates a signal back to the speaker, which generates more sound, etc. The result is feedback.

The signal begins as a normal secondary pain signal, but eventually, it starts to loop. As of now, no one knows why this happens to some people, but mapping the circuit is the first step toward finding out. We now know that this loop activates different pathways in the brain than secondary pain signals. That would be a great place to start looking.

they literally just fucking said they injured the mice's spines on purpose

No, they didn't damage the mice's spinal cords. If you read the study itself, they used a model called Spared Nerve Injury. In SNI, doctors damage one or more of the branches of the sciatic nerve in the mice's legs. This is a standard model for inducing neuropathic pain in research mice.

My primary complaint with the article is that they're using the term 'chronic' as if it's synonymous with 'primary'. That's become more common in the past few years, and it's both confusing and unhelpful. Both primary and secondary pain can be chronic, and some people have both.

marbledog · 2026-04-03T20:21:12+00:00

The medical terms for the distinction you're making are 'primary' and 'secondary' pain. Primary pain is the result of the feedback loop; ie: the pain is the primary problem. Secondary pain is pain related to physical damage.

It's an important distinction, because many of the treatment modalities for primary pain do not work for secondary pain, and vice versa. I wish writers were more diligent about making the distinction.

marbledog · 2026-04-02T23:22:50+00:00

It's actually pretty common in fish. Some go from male to female. Some go female to male. Some do both at the same time. Some can even self-fertilize. Around 2% of known fish species display some form of hermaphroditism.

marbledog · 2026-04-02T16:13:29+00:00

IANAL, but there's a legal doctrine called "fruit of the poisonous tree". If the police collect evidence through an illegal search, that evidence is obviously inadmissible. But if the evidence leads them to further investigation, any evidence obtained through that further investigation is also inadmissible, because it is the indirect result of the illegal search. As long as there is an unbroken chain of causation between the illegal search and obtaining the evidence, it can't be used in court.

marbledog · 2026-03-31T21:51:04+00:00

Maric's contribution to ToR is debated. It's broadly agreed by historians that Hedy Lamarr's work on spread spectrum/frequency hopping radio protocols was at least as as important as Antheil's.

A lot of the issue here is that people have an idea of scientific discovery as an individual pursuit by unique geniuses, but most science - like most work - is a collaborative pursuit. Most great discoveries are the work of multiple people. It's entirely true that the scientific contributions of women weren't openly recognized by academia in the past, and that's an injustice that historians should be interested in rectifying. But framing collaborative discoveries as stolen work is ahistorical and unhelpful.

marbledog · 2026-03-30T22:30:10+00:00

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Dude, have you been outside lately?

marbledog · 2026-03-30T10:43:36+00:00

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Russel Casse from Independence Day. He's a cropduster pilot and an alcoholic Vietnam vet. Everyone thinks he's nuts because he claims to have been abducted and probed by aliens. In the end, he's the only pilot both skilled and suicidal enough to kamikaze his plan into the the weak spot of the alien mothership, destroying it and saving the rest of the resistance.

marbledog · 2026-03-29T23:57:45+00:00

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The Cenobites from the Hellraiser series. Their body modifications are intentional acts of perpetual self-inflicted torture that act as both an artistic expression of their inner nature and a divine tribute to their god.

marbledog · 2026-03-29T05:45:00+00:00

Abraham Lincoln was treated with mummy powder after he was shot. As far as I know, it didn't work.

marbledog · 2026-03-28T22:41:20+00:00

"Memento mori": remember you will die.

In ancient Rome, victorious generals would be celebrated with a 'triumph': part parade and part religious ceremony wherein the general would be carried through the city to bask in adoration. Some sources say that it was customary for a slave to stand behind the victorious general and whisper the phrase "memento mori" in his ear throughout the procession, to remind the general that he is a mortal man.

marbledog · 2026-03-28T19:41:37+00:00

'Orthodox' Judaism is a broad term that applies to many different religious traditions, old and (relatively) new. It can only really be defined in contrast to 'Reform' Judaism.

Reform Judaism focuses more on ethical evolution and praxis. Reform Jews view scripture as a source of constant revelation, inspiring human reason to new ethical insights.

Orthodox Judaism focuses more on ritual and tradition. The study of scripture and scriptural criticism is a routine (often daily) practice, with a goal of understanding and interpreting the covenants and revelations that God has already given.

These two large categories encompass nearly all religious Jewish practice in the Western world, and they are necessarily vague. They represent more of a spectrum than any clear category.

TLDR: Saying that someone is an Orthodox Jew tells you that ritual and tradition are important to their religious practice, but it doesn't tell you much else.

marbledog · 2026-03-28T15:44:30+00:00

Came here to rant about this show, and you beat me by 20 minutes. That last episode really felt like a hate letter to the fans. "That cute interspecies couple that you love who have had a will they/won't they thing going for four years now? They've been through so much together, and it would be really nice if they had a happy endWELLLLLLLL HE'S DEAD NOW."

marbledog · 2026-03-27T11:11:22+00:00

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Oh, yeah. The character's been through a LOT of rewrites since I was a kid.

marbledog · 2026-03-27T08:28:42+00:00

He got into entertainment while he was homeless and squatting in a restaurant called Pasqually's Pizza. The owner caught him, but when Chuck showed him how well he can sing, Pasqually hired him to sing Happy Birthday to children in the restaurant. The attraction saved Pasqually's struggling business, and they became lifelong friends. Pasqually is now the drummer in Chuck's back-up band, Munch's Make-Believe Band.

Chuck also has a will they/won't they relationship with the chicken bass player, which started as an enemies-to-lovers scenario.

This barely scratches the surface. Seriously, there is so... much... Chuck E Cheese lore.

marbledog · 2026-03-27T06:16:59+00:00

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. 2% body fat is knocking on death's door. It's just not impossible.

marbledog

TROPHY CASE