Flutterby™!

The Difference between Bluegrass, Old Time and Celtic bands, now finally
 explained!

Old Time and Celtic songs are about whiskey, food and struggle. Bluegrass
songs are about God, mother and the girl who did me wrong. If the girl isn’t 
dead by the third verse, it ain’t Bluegrass. If everyone dies, it’s Celtic.

So one route to popularity is apparently to have a sound system during campaign season. So many people want to borrow my speakers for events...

When The WaPo goes full on Borowitz or Onion... Every man should be worried. At least, I’m worried.

Meanwhile, of the 66 women the GOP said signed a letter in defense of the Kavanaugh nomination, many do not support him when contacted on the matter by reporters.

Alumni of Blasey Ford's high school circulate letter of support

Mormon Bishop Sam Young excommunicated for wanting to stop sexually explicit interviews of children.

Young, founder of "Protect LDS Children," said in August that he had been sent a letter informing him that a formal disciplinary council would convene on his behalf to discuss his future in the church following his public outcry aginst the interviews, which can involve bishops asking children about masturbation or pornography.

Wow. Linus Torvalds on stepping back and his conduct and attitudes with respect the process of building Linux and working with people https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/C...2wxUmGsz9ZJzqgJQ@mail.gmail.com/

Detroit kids’ lead poisoning rates higher than Flint. Some of this is probably due to fucked up water delivery systems, some of this due to lead paint in houses being torn down. That latter is something to remember when you see lobbying for limiting paint company liability...

For Charlene: Video of three humpback whales breaching one after the other

Texas Border Patrol agent accused of "serial killing spree" in Laredo:

Juan David Ortiz, an intel supervisor for the Border Patrol, has been accused of killing four women, including one transgender woman, and kidnapping a fifth woman, who escaped and alerted law enforcement.

Shadow forwarded along this Reddit post of a video of a bunch of cool tables. Gonna go call an intro to square dance demo this afternoon, but might have to go into the shop and make some sawdust, 'cause that gets the creative juices flowing again.

Almost half of US cellphone calls will be scams by next year, says report:

The percentage of scam calls in US mobile traffic increased from 3.7 percent last year to 29.2 percent this year, and it's predicted to rise to 44.6 percent in 2019, First Orion said in a press release Wednesday.

Another giant study confirms that your coffee habit is probably good for you

JAMA: Association of Coffee Drinking With Mortality by Genetic Variation in Caffeine Metabolism — Findings From the UK Biobank. JAMA Intern Med. 2018;178(8):1086-1097. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.2425

Why PayPal’s crackdown on ASMR creators should worry you — Misogyny, weaponized (again).

The thing is though, the men purposely attacking the women making sound-effect videos don't want to just harm them. Read the threads behind this harassment campaign and you'll see that these guys actually want to destroy the women they're harassing. It's a trip into the mind-set of an incel who really wants to kill women, who thinks it's heroic.

And, of course, PayPal is helping them.

Eccentric Flower with some worthwhile thoughts on tags and genres, or why, yes, it's great if your book ends up as mainstream literature, but there are values to the fringe labels too.

National Review: End Qualified Immunity:

I'm going to start with a story that will break your heart. In the early morning hours of July 15, 2012, a young man named Andrew Scott was up late, home with his girlfriend. They were playing video games when they heard a loud pounding on the door. Alarmed, Scott grabbed a pistol and opened the door. He saw a man crouching outside in the darkness. Scott retreated, gun still at his side, pointing down to the ground.

How the NRA’s allegiance to cops undermines its credibility on gun rights

Also, if you haven't been seeing how the Dallas PD has been playing the news on this Dallas cop who stumbled through the wrong door (and her stories have changed on this several times) and shot a man in his own home, it's worth looking at coverage. If your blood pressure can handle it.

Does 'right to work' imperil the right to health? The effect of labour unions on workplace fatalities.

RESULTS:

The Local Average Treatment Effect of a 1% decline in unionisation attributable to RTW is about a 5% increase in the rate of occupational fatalities. In total, RTW laws have led to a 14.2% increase in occupational mortality through decreased unionisation.

The pile driver for the float house has arrived. Cool to see how the digger was paddling the barge around with the assistance of that little boat.

Organic Wines Uncorked: The Dark Side of Sonoma's Sustainability Movement: Part 2 - Reactions and A Mancozeb Honor Roll. On "organic" and "biodynamic" certification and pesticide use and...

Kacey Musgraves sings "Burn One With John Prine" to John Prine (YouTube video)

(You might be familiar with her from Follow Your Arrow (YouTube))

Every time I see a picture of Bruno Mars he's in these awkward poses and I think it's great that someone who must be deeply impacted by a degenerative muscle or joint disease at such a young age is accomplishing what he is... #offmylawn

Always amusing to talk with college folk about retention, and watch themselves try to not tie themselves in knots about admissions policy, and whether retention is about helping students succeed, or pre-filtering.

A few years ago we discovered square dancing, just about the time that the Petaluma square dance club folded. I (formerly an "I hate dancing" person) liked it so much I became a caller. We're tired of driving out of town to dance, and want to build a community around square dancing here in Petaluma, with a new take (which partly means it ain't all gonna be fiddle and bass music).

On Thursday September 20th at the Hermann Sons Hall, 860 Western Ave, Petaluma CA, we'll have the first of a series of introductions to square dancing. Come alone. Bring friends. Drag along your partner even though they think they hate dancing. We're LGBTQ and straight friendly.

The event is free (though we'll accept donations to cover hall rental and such). We'll likely do a couple of these using slightly different sets of calls each time to keep it fresh and then figure out where we're going with it, so come by and dance and say "hi"!

Human gut study questions probiotic health benefits:

Cell: Post-Antibiotic Gut Mucosal Microbiome Reconstitution Is Impaired by Probiotics and Improved by Autologous FMT (PDF). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.08.047

Cell: Personalized Gut Mucosal Colonization Resistance to Empiric Probiotics Is Associated with Unique Host and Microbiome Features. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.08.041

The upshot appears to be that:

• Expelled fecal matter doesn't really give enough information about what bacteria are in the mucosal lining to be a useful diagnostic tool.
• There are some people whose guts will be populated by probiotics, and some whose native gut bacteria will suppress the newly introduced bacteria.
• In the study on repopulation after an antibiotic series, the control group's natural biome repopulated fairly quickly, but for both of the groups that were normally either resistant or not to the probiotic population, the probiotics dominated the gut for a long time. So taking probiotics after antibiotics may actually long-term fuck up your gut biome.

Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, July 2018 Volume 121, Issue 1, Pages 77–81.e1: Food allergy to previously tolerated foods:

Conclusion: Food allergy to previously tolerated foods primarily appears after an elimination diet in atopic patients. Anaphylactic reactions are common. Health care providers should consider these risks before recommending elimination diet of tolerated foods.

Kuba Shand-Baptiste in The Independent: Lily Allen's decision to hire an escort during her tour is nothing to be ashamed of

The singer’s openness is great, but now is the time to pay attention to the studies, activism and voices of sex workers all over the world who have long been fighting for decriminalisation

While we're looking at Dallas police malfeasance, how about whoever set up Ms. Guyger with a 15 hour shift? We know officers on duty that long make fatal mistakes, upper brass should be held accountable too.

Addendum: Document details Guyger’s account of shooting; Jean’s attorney tells different story

Just pondering the differences between a ruby throated hummingbird and a redneck hummingbird.

Auto-corrupt just got "lusty" from "list". I'm not sure it's wrong.

The Rialto Report: Adult Film Locations – Part 12: The Misty Beethoven Mansion. Tracking down locations from the golden age of porn films.

Sure glad they're keeping flyers safe: Houston police officer mistakenly fires AR-15 at Hobby Airport baggage claim

Just back from Cabaret at the Cinnabar Theater. Lands a little more heavily in the current political climate...

One from a friend (whom many of you know, even if you don't know it): Gillian's Eye is a Spec Fic adventure/revolution story, with a fun cast. Their first book was getting its legs, this one really caught me.