Today I Learned #3: There's a wiki for everything!

[The_J]

Spoiler really gross and disturbing, but no picture :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymothoa_exigua

The parasite severs the blood vessels in the fish's tongue, causing the tongue to fall off. It then attaches itself to the remaining stub of the tongue and becomes the fish's new tongue.

Oh man, this is really nightmare material.

 

[Kyriakos]

Afaik that is not unusual among parasitic organisms, if they are big enough in relation to their host. They just replace an organ. I think some wasp larva does that with the stomach of other unfortunate insects (maybe roaches).
There are worse, really. Some other parasites just turn the host into a zombie and then control it, in the end using it as feeding ground for their young. Also those parasites are often blind themselves, and legless.
And then you have weirdos claim that all beings on earth are equal ^_^

 

[The_J]

I feel that being turned into a zombie is less terrifying than the organ-replacement, but that might be me .

 

[Kyriakos]

I feel that being turned into a zombie is less terrifying than the organ-replacement, but that might be me .

We are all in this together, host organism.

Come to think of it, 5 years ago I had written a story with such a parasite. It exactly replaced the human's tongue.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Afaik that is not unusual among parasitic organisms, if they are big enough in relation to their host. They just replace an organ. I think some wasp larva does that with the stomach of other unfortunate insects (maybe roaches).
There are worse, really. Some other parasites just turn the host into a zombie and then control it, in the end using it as feeding ground for their young. Also those parasites are often blind themselves, and legless.
And then you have weirdos claim that all beings on earth are equal ^_^

We are except to ourselves. Equally unimportant.

 

[Kyriakos]

We are except to ourselves. Equally unimportant.

I don't think so. Any other being on this planet will literally never progress in any way. Humans may, despite the massive problems and huge difference in regards to any ability.
One can look at cats and in a way be looking at the first domesticated cat, in ancient Egypt.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I don't think so. Any other being on this planet will literally never progress in any way. Humans may, despite the massive problems and huge difference in regards to any ability.
One can look at cats and in a way be looking at the first domesticated cat, in ancient Egypt.

And that progress matters to who except us?

 

[Kyriakos]

And that progress matters to who except us?

I mean, you can't ask an integer about a complex number's issues.

I think that humans will, if they keep existing for enough time, advance to something far more impressive than now. Even our current civ is significantly more advanced than hunter-gatherers, and those were all humans up until fairly recently in the timeline of human existence.
If anything, the rate of advancement is too high even for humans - which is why most people only know stuff within their own field, and little other. This too wasn't always like that. Besides, most fields in the near past had an amount of knowledge which a single human could realistically study, while (say) I've often read that math surpassed that in the early 19th century.

Even the ability of humans to just spend their entire life (due to sloth, leisure-seeking or despair etc) without doing anything of note, doesn't slow down progress. Since by now a lot fewer people are needed for that.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I mean, you can't ask an integer about a complex number's issues.

I think that humans will, if they keep existing for enough time, advance to something far more impressive than now. Even our current civ is significantly more advanced than hunter-gatherers, and those were all humans up until fairly recently in the timeline of human existence.
If anything, the rate of advancement is too high even for humans - which is why most people only know stuff within their own field, and little other. This too wasn't always like that. Besides, most fields in the near past had an amount of knowledge which a single human could realistically study, while (say) I've often read that math surpassed that in the early 19th century.

Even the ability of humans to just spend their entire life (due to sloth, leisure-seeking or despair etc) without doing anything of note, doesn't slow down progress. Since by now a lot fewer people are needed for that.

But progress is a human concept. Still only important to us. The universe, "Mother Nature" etc don't care.
Even if you believe in God our value to him isn't progress or cultural achievement.

 

[Kyriakos]

But progress is a human concept. Still only important to us. The universe, "Mother Nature" etc don't care.
Even if you believe in God our value to him isn't progress or cultural achievement.

Doesn't really matter if the only non-blind being has faulty eyes, or how they work

 

[Cutlass]

TIL: My grandfather's family emigrated from France to Acadia (now Nova Scotia) in 1690. Jean XXX was a master tailor and served in the French army. He died in Belair, near Port Royale in 1706. His children settled in Cobequid (now Truro) and on Isle St Jean (now PEI); Anse-à-Pinnet to be exact (now Stewart cove). In 1758 the British (having won the war) deported all his children (now in their 50s and 60s) and their families back to France. They all lived in close proximity to each other around St. Malo. Then in 1785 two of those families emigrated to Louisiana where I knew the history from 1800 onward.
@aimeeandbeatles @Lemon Merchant

@Zelig as well, IIRC is from Port Royale.








TIL that there's a house for sale in Vermont that has a jail attached to it.


https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/quaint-vermont-house-comes-with-its-own-jail/

Quaint Vermont House Comes With a Unique Feature—Its Own 7-Cell Jail
By Tiffani Sherman | Nov 6, 2020

Joe Martin
A house with an intriguing backstory is on the market in a small Vermont town. All it will take is a buyer with the key to unlock this home's past.

“This house was the jailer’s house, with the attached jail. Over the years, the house has been updated. It's been a single-family home for many years, and the jail has just kind of been there,” says the listing agent, Jennifer Allen.

But for a buyer looking to lock up a deal, there's a minor caveat about the incarceration situation.

 

[The_J]

I hope the people who're visiting it have a good read of the description beforehand .



TIL that sex determination is complicated.
In mammals, females have XX chromosomes, and males XY chromosomes.
In birds, it's kinda the opposite, females ZW chromosomes, males ZZ.
In platypuses, there are 5 X and 5 Y chromosomes o_O (that I learned today, and looked up some more things).
In some insects, males have 1 X chromosome, females have 2.
And in other insects, males have half a set of all chromosomes, and females the "normal" double set.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system
Aye, not easy.

EDIT:
And there are species, which don't have males, where basically all organisms are female/hermaphrodite. Yet, they need the sperm of a related species to reproduce, despite the fact that the sperm actually does nothing in this case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynogenesis o_O

EDIT2:
While posting here, I realize I miss Aimee.

 

[GinandTonic]

Thats bloody nuts.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I hope the people who're visiting it have a good read of the description beforehand .



TIL that sex determination is complicated.
In mammals, females have XX chromosomes, and males XY chromosomes.
In birds, it's kinda the opposite, females ZW chromosomes, males ZZ.
In platypuses, there are 5 X and 5 Y chromosomes o_O (that I learned today, and looked up some more things).
In some insects, males have 1 X chromosome, females have 2.
And in other insects, males have half a set of all chromosomes, and females the "normal" double set.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system
Aye, not easy.

EDIT:
And there are species, which don't have males, where basically all organisms are female/hermaphrodite. Yet, they need the sperm of a related species to reproduce, despite the fact that the sperm actually does nothing in this case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynogenesis o_O

Here is an outline for a seminar given by a good friend of mine on sexuality. Yes it is quite complicated. The outline only touches on subjects covered and hides the depth of each topic, but it lays out all of the various ways sexuality is impacted..

 

[The_J]

TIL: Switzerland is a 3rd world country.
(as are Austria, Sweden, Finland and Ireland)
Per cold-war definition, 1st world is USA+allies, 2nd world USSR+allies, 3rd world unaffiliated. Since mentioned countries were officially neutral, they're 3rd world countries.

TIL also that in the global north-south divide, Australia belongs to the North. (yes, I know, this is meant political, but it sounds ridiculous).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North–South_divide_in_the_World

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL: Switzerland is a 3rd world country.
(as are Austria, Sweden, Finland and Ireland)
Per cold-war definition, 1st world is USA+allies, 2nd world USSR+allies, 3rd world unaffiliated. Since mentioned countries were officially neutral, they're 3rd world countries.

TIL also that in the global north-south divide, Australia belongs to the North. (yes, I know, this is meant political, but it sounds ridiculous).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North–South_divide_in_the_World

And the name Australia comes from australis meaning southern.
The Dutch discoverer Abel Tasman called Australia "Zuidland" (Southland).

 

[Birdjaguar]

Newborn survival tied to doctor’s race

Black infant mortality rate cut in half when Black physicians deliver babies

BY TONYA RUSSELL
THE WASHINGTON POST

Rachel Hardeman has dedicated her career to fighting racism and the harm it has inflicted on the health of Black Americans. As a reproductive health equity researcher, she has been especially disturbed by the disproportionately high mortality rates for Black babies.

In an effort to find some of the reasons behind the high death rates, Hardeman, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and three other researchers combed through the records of 1.8 million Florida hospital births from 1992 to 2015 looking for clues. They found a tantalizing statistic. Although Black newborns are more than twice as likely to die as white newborns, when Black babies are delivered by Black doctors, their mortality rate is cut in half.

“Strikingly, these effects appear to manifest more strongly in more complicated cases,” the researchers wrote, “and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns.” They found no similar relationship between white doctors and white births. Nor did they find a difference in maternal death rates when the doctor’s race was the same as the patient’s.

“It is the first empirical evidence to describe the impact of the physician’s race on an outcome such as infant mortality,” Hardeman says. With 5.7 deaths per 1,000 live births, the United States has a high infant mortality rate, and Black babies are in the gravest danger, with an infant mortality rate in 2018 of 10.8 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with a rate of 4.6 white babies per 1,000 live births.

Infant mortality is defined as death during the first year of life, and 66 percent of those deaths, for all races, occur in the first 28 days of life, with 14 percent within the first hour and another 26 percent within one to 23 hours. When Black doctors delivered Black babies, their mortality rate was more than halved from 430 per 100,000 live births to 173 per 100,000, Hardeman says. Although infant mortality in the United States has been decreasing, the gap between Black and white infants has persisted, Hardeman says. The root, she says, lies in structural racism.

She defines structural racism as the “normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics — historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal — that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color.”

Hardeman and the other researchers — Brad N. Greenwood, associate professor of information systems and operations management at George Mason University; Laura Huang, an associate professor at Harvard Business School; and Aaron Sojourner, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management — wrote that more research was needed to understand why Black physicians outperform their white counterparts. They cautioned that it wasn’t practical for all Black families to seek Black doctors to deliver their babies, not only because there are too few of them but also because the reasons for the disparity in care need to be understood and addressed.

“Key open questions include the following: 1) whether physician race proxies for differences in physician practice behavior, 2) if so, which practices, and 3) what actions can be taken by policymakers, administrators, and physicians to ensure that all newborns receive optimal care,” they wrote.

Common causes of infant mortality are premature birth, low birth weight, maternal complications and sudden infant death syndrome, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of these deaths are caused by complications related to the mother’s health. Historically, Black maternal health has always been concerning, with Black women four to five times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than white women, regardless of income, education or lifestyle. A Black woman does not have to be poor for her life or her baby’s life to be at stake.

The most recent figures, for 2016, show 40.8 pregnancy- related deaths per 100,000 live births for Black women and 12.7 per 100,000 for white women.

Big data pool. Florida take notice!

 

[r16]

so , what is it ? Black families do not fear of the hospital bill when the medical team is Black and have more physicals as a result ?

 

[Birdjaguar]

so , what is it ? Black families do not fear of the hospital bill when the medical team is Black and have more physicals as a result ?

No, the data is very focused. The black baby infant mortality rate is halved when the delivering doctor is black. It leads to a conclusion that white doctors pay less attention to the health of black babies than black doctors and as a result many black babies die unnecessarily.. The data comes from tracking 1.8 million births in Florida over 22 years.

 

[r16]

thanks for the clarification . So , one more of those things that shouldn't have been happening anyhow ...