Mice update
My previous post on this is here.
The tenant in the apartment next to mine was just evicted for hoarding. The company that cleaned it up filled up a giant dumpster all the way up to the top. I think the dumpster was about as big as the living rooms in our building. Anyway, I’ve caught 85 mice in my apartment. Now that she’s gone, I’m hoping that it stops. I did use 7 cans of Pestblock very recently, and that seems to be helping too. Real life mice are nothing like in the cartoons. Real life mice like to eat books – or at least chew and shred them to make nesting material. I feel sorry for my ex-neighbor for having a mental illness. But I also believe that people have free will, and that there’s no excuse for what she did to me and other people who live in this building.
YouTuber Reptiles Uncaged: Reptiles Are Very Territorial During Mating Season (Cutter Vs Thor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6iwqWeG7UM
YouTuber Reptiles Uncaged: 3 Male Green Anole Lizards FACEOFF For Territory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AomD960NTYs
Mice in my apartment
The tenant who lives in the apartment next to mine is in the process of being evicted for hoarding her trash. In the meantime, I have caught 73 mice in my apartment. I keep all my food locked up tight so they can’t get it. I’m not the one who’s feeding them. It’s my neighbor who’s doing that. Even if it is a mental illness, I still believe that hoarders have free will, and they know that the wild mice they are breeding are hurting every tenant in the building. The stuff they show on the Hoarders TV show? That stuff is real. The show is not staged. I hope my neighbor gets put in a medical facility where she can get the help that she needs. I’ve thrown out a lot of my stuff that got damaged. Mice chew on everything. And they pee and poop everywhere. I’m really angry at my neighbor. But I also feel bad for her.
Elephant at Chinese zoo filmed returning shoe to child
https://www.yahoo.com/news/elephant-chinese-zoo-filmed-returning-230905431.html
Elephant at Chinese zoo filmed returning shoe to child
By Rebecca Moon
August 18, 2022
An adorable elephant in Shandong province of eastern China was caught on video returning a little boy’s shoe after it fell into his enclosure at a zoo.
The video, uploaded to Twitter on Wednesday by Now This, shows the elephant grabbing the tiny shoe with his tusk and carefully reaching up to the boy as the child grabs his shoe back.
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1559918724169117696
Twitter users praised the elephant for the kind gesture.
“Elephants are the most loyal protective matriarchal animals that exist,” one user wrote.
“How beautiful that it reciprocates the gesture of the child,” another user commented.
Some Twitter users, however, suggested that the elephant appeared “sad.”
“It doesn’t belong in a zoo. Its eyes also look sad,” one user commented.
“That’s also obviously a routine, human throws something in and hands elephant some grass when it is returned. That small barren enclosure with shreds of grass on the floor. Nothing about this is lovely. So sad for that wonderful animal,” another user commented.
The video has garnered over 2.5 million videos and 14,200 likes since being uploaded.
YouTuber Grace King: Green Anole (terrarium build and care)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAyBvkoAGuw
Orcas observed devouring the tongue of a blue whale just before it dies in first-ever documented hunt of the largest animal on the planet
https://www.yahoo.com/news/orcas-observed-devouring-tongue-blue-092922554.html
Orcas observed devouring the tongue of a blue whale just before it dies in first-ever documented hunt of the largest animal on the planet
By Bethany Dawson
January 29, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7g7AVxOw5g
A study from Australia is the first to scientifically document the killings of blue whales by orcas.
Orcas were observed devouring the nutrient-rich tongues of the giant blue whales.
“This is the biggest predation event on this planet,” said a marine scientist.
For the first time, a pack of orcas — also known as killer whales — have been observed hunting and killing blue whales, the largest animal on the planet.
According to a report published in Marine Mammal Science, the scientific community has long debated if orcas can hunt the massive blue whales.
But this question has now been answered after three instances of packs of orcas attacking blue whales off the coast of Western Australia were recorded by marine scientists from Cetrec WA (Cetacean Research). It includes details of how the killer whales swam inside the mouth of the enormous whales to eat their nutritionally rich tongue just before they died.
“Here we provide the first documentation of killer whales killing and eating blue whales: two individuals killed, 16 days apart in 2019, and a third in 2021,” researchers wrote in the paper. “Notably, the first whale taken appeared to be a healthy adult.”
Researchers arrived at the first killing of a 72 foot-long blue whale to see large chunks of skin and blubber having been gouged its body and with most of the dorsal fin having been bitten off.
It was followed by relentless attacks by the orcas, where three lined up against the blue whale and pushed it underwater, while two attacked its head.
The study explains that 50 orcas joined the pack for six hours to feed on the carcass.
A few weeks later, the next attack occurred when a blue whale calf was targeted. Twenty-five orcas attacked the 40-foot long animal.
The final attack recorded by the study was on a 45-foot long blue whale, chased for 15 miles in a 90 minutes hunt. Again, the orcas hunting strategy was to push and ram the whale under the water while others attacked its head and tongue. A 50-strong pack devoured the remains of the kill.
Mother orcas are the lead aggressors
Previous studies thought that orca attacks had to be executed by the biggest killer whales — who are male and can grow to 30 feet in length— to be successful. However, the breakthrough study documented these killings were led by female orcas, with the study saying that the drive to feed their offspring may make them more aggressive.
“This is the biggest predation event on this planet: the biggest apex predator taking down the biggest prey,” study co-author Robert Pitman, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, told National Geographic. “We don’t have dinosaurs anymore, so for me as a whale biologist and a zoologist. It’s an amazing thing.”
Meerkat Manor: Rise of the Dynasty Episode 1
Video description:
Swift, great grand-daughter of the late Flower, now leads the Whiskers with the help of long-term partner Brea. Today her thirteenth litter is due to emerge. Things aren’t so rosy for Flint Lockwood, matriarch of the Hakuna Matata gang.
Meerkat Manor: Rise of the Dynasty follows the compelling, heart-string tugging saga of three matriarchs, all of whom are descendants of the legendary meerkat Flower. Neighbors and rivals are forced to compete in order to ensure the survival of their families in an environment that is undergoing a great deal of change: the Kalahari Desert in South Africa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_VmIzInSMw
YouTuber Shawn Woods: Humane Mouse Trap In Action – Full Review With Real Mice & Motion Cameras
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrlxhPvAHBk
A scientific paper claims that humans acquired COVID-19 from a Chinese research lab, and not a food market. But instead of having the paper peer reviewed, they are trying to suppress it.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
April 3, 2020
One of the great things about science is the peer review process. When one group of scientists comes to a conclusion, other groups of scientists are allowed to peer review the work of the original group, to try to determine whether or not the original research has merit.
This link, which no longer works, used to show a scientific paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
Fortunately, the internet archive still has the paper at this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https:/www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
The paper is titled, “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus.”
The paper’s lead author is Botao Xiao, from the South China University of Technology.
The paper’s publication month is February 2020.
The paper states:
“An article published on The Lancet reported that 27 of 41 infected patients were found to have contact with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. We noted two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus in Wuhan, one of which was only 280 meters from the seafood market. We briefly examined the histories of the laboratories and proposed that the coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory…”
“… The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.”
This paper has not been peer reviewed. I hope it will be.
If the statistics cited in the paper are true, then which of these two scenarios is more likely:
a) Humans contracted COVID-19 from a food market that is more than 900,000 meters away from the wild population of this bat species
or
b) Humans contracted COVID-19 from a lab that was doing research on bats and on coronavirus, and the lab is located only 280 meters from this food market
I’m curious to read of any peer reviews that get published.
And I’m curious to know why no peer reviews have been published so far.
And I’m also curious to know why the original link no longer works.
Note from Daniel Alman: If you like this blog post that I wrote, you can buy my books from amazon, and/or donate to me via PayPal, using the links below:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t seem to know that there is actually an INVERSE correlation between billionaires and dangerous intestinal parasites
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said that it was immoral to allow billionaires to exist when there are people who have ringworm.
She later said that she had meant hookworm, not ringworm.
Hookworm is transmitted to people when they walk barefoot in the feces of other people who are infected with hookworm.
And in the real world, there is actually an inverse correlation between the existence of billionaires, and the rate of hookworm infection.
According to wikipedia, this is how to prevent hookworm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookworm_infection
Hookworm infection
Prevention
The main lines of precaution are those dictated by good hygiene behaviors:
Do not defecate in the open, but rather in toilets.
Do not use untreated human excreta or raw sewage as fertilizer in agriculture.
Do not walk barefoot in known infected areas.
The places with the highest concentrations of billionaires, such as Manhattan, Silicon Valley, and Singapore, have very few or even zero cases of hookworm. (Although I will admit that San Francisco may be an exception to this trend, as an expert on global public health recently stated that the city’s high rate and tolerance of open defecation actually makes the city dirtier than third world countries. San Francisco is run so badly that the government spends $37,000 on each homeless person per year, and yet they still somehow manage to remain homeless. Can you imagine how much housing any city that wasn’t run by idiots could rent or buy for that much money?)
A long time ago, when there were no billionaires anywhere in the world, hookworm was very common all over the world.
Anyone who is truly against hookworm would be in favor of the existence of billionaires, not against it.
And that’s not even taking into account the charitable work of billionaires such as Bill Gates, which has saved huge numbers of lives.
And that also doesn’t take into account all the jobs that these billionaires provide, as well as the goods and services that these billionaires provide. For example, think of LEGO billionaire Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and IKEA billionaire Ingvar Kamprad. Does anyone seriously want to argue that the world would be better off if the countries of western Europe had not allowed these two people to become billionaires?
Media bias: Wikipedia has repeatedly removed reliably sourced information about how hunting endangered animals, when done properly, makes their populations get bigger
Wikipedia has repeatedly removed the following reliably sourced information from its Trophy hunting article. (The deletion history can be seen here, here, here, and here.)
In 2015, a Texas hunter who had won an auction paid $350,000 for legal permission to kill an endangered black rhinoceros in Namibia. The Washington Post wrote the following about the particular animal that was chosen for this kill: “The bull, Knowlton said, was a problem in his own herd. The animal was too old to breed but so aggressive that it had already killed calves, cows and and other male rhinoceroses in a jealous rage.” The money was used to fund conservation efforts. Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism had approved of the kill. The meat was eaten by residents of a nearby village.
In 2017, a hunter paid $35,000 for permission to kill one bongo at a ranch in Texas. The ranch’s manager said this was enough money to feed the ranch’s approximately 30 remaining bongos for an entire year.
In 2017, wildlife experts said the ranches in Texas had more blackbuck antelope than their native country of India.
In 2018, a hunter from Kentucky legally killed an adult male giraffe in South Africa. Because this particular male was too old to breed, and because it had previously killed three younger adult males who were capable of breeding, this particular kill caused the population to get bigger, not smaller.
The above content is notable, relevant, and reliably sourced. There is no legitimate reason to not include it in the article.
Audio recording outtake shows Casey Kasem getting angry and using profanity
In this 79 second recording, Casey Kasem gets upset in response to his coworkers’ repeated refusal to honor his request to not schedule sad long distance dedications directly after an upbeat song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDYK2H0ldbo
This has got to be the most appropriate and justified use of profanity that I’ve ever heard. Casey was really moved by the death of that dog, and his point about the dedication being preceded by an uptempo song is excellent.
Here’s the dead dog dedication as it was actually broadcast on American Top 40 on September 14, 1985. Skip to 26:19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEG9pP8NGx0
Video: Woman yells at disabled veteran for bringing his well behaved service dog to restaurant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtZKD9U5ypw
Video shows Justine Damond rescuing eight baby ducks from storm drain three weeks before she was killed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPKxIR1xZHk
Justine Damond: video shows Australian rescuing ducklings near Minneapolis home
Weeks before she was shot dead by Minneapolis police the Australian, also known as Justine Ruszczyk, was filmed reuniting a family of stranded ducks
July 19, 2017
When reporters asked friends and family for stories about Justine Damond, many of them asked: “Have you heard about the ducks?”
Three weeks before she was shot dead by police Damond, a 40-year-old Australian who had changed her surname from Ruszczyk in anticipation of her wedding, climbed into a storm drain and rescued a group of ducklings near her home in Minneapolis by gathering them in the folds of her skirt. The way her friends tell it, this incident was special but not atypical.
By chance, the rescue happened at a corner in the Linden Hills neighbourhood, outside the home of photojournalist Angela Jimenez, who filmed it. After Damond died Jimenez sought and received permission from Damond’s family to release the footage and this has been shared by the Guardian.
Damond, originally from Sydney, was on her way to teach a meditation class at the Lake Harriet Spiritual Centre when she saw the trapped ducklings. Jimenez remembers that two teenage boys had spotted the ducks first, but that Damond was the first to jump in the sewer, less than two minutes after she arrived.
On the video she is shown gathering the ducklings and persuading the mother of the ducklings to walk over the road for a family reunion. She can be heard telling neighbours: “She might just need to chill a bit … I’m going to let you guys be the duck rescuers, are you guys OK with them?”
And then she heads off to work, with the family of ducks reunited.
“That was beautiful,” says a neighbour.
“Guess what, I just rescued eight ducklings,” Damond later texted the centre’s administrator, Nancy Coune. “The mother duke was distraught and I climbed and pulled them all in my skirt … There was this moment when I think they realised I was there to help and they just started jumping to my lap, I was in bliss!”
On 15 July Damond called police, fearing that a sexual assault was taking place in an alley near her home. Police said the partner of the officer who reportedly killed Damond, Mohamed Noor, was startled by a “loud sound”. Damond died in her pyjamas. A mobile phone was found nearby.
After her death Coune said: “We’ve come together. We’re teetering back and forth between tragic heartsick to outrage, to trying to understand it, to really knowing that there is a greater purpose and that at some point we will come to terms with this … people are struggling here.”
Damond’s partner Don Damond said: “Our hearts are broken and we are utterly devastated by the loss of Justine. It is difficult to fathom how to go forward without her in my life.”
Heroic dog saves friend from river! Or he just wants a stick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6xJIw0V2Fk
Why trophy hunting can be good for animals
A trophy hunter pays $350,000 to legally kill a specific male rhinoceros which is old and has stopped breeding, and which has been harassing the younger males and preventing them from breeding. The money is used to pay to care for the living rhinos. Under this kind of policy, one population of rhinos increased from 100 to 18,000.
I myself am a vegetarian, but I have to admit that the logic in this video is quite sound. This is a good lesson in economics and the benefits of property rights.
I do understand why some people might have emotional objections to this, but even they can’t argue against the real world results of this kind of policy.
If the opponents of trophy hunting wanted to bring an end to it, all they would have to do would be to outbid the trophy hunters. As of yet, I don’t see any examples of them having done so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUA8i5S0YMU
Good Mythical Morning! May I have the pleasure of introducing you to my favorite YouTube channel?
These two guys have been best friends since first grade. They both have engineering degrees, but both quit that field to work full time on their videos. They grew up in North Carolina, but recently moved to Los Angeles. Every weekday at 6 A.M. they put up a new 12 minute video – and they have hundreds of them going back a few years.
https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink2/videos?flow=grid&view=0
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 
