Tag: stupid

Rats fed sugary soda for two months = they got stupider

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In order to study how cola-based sodas — which were chosen for study due to their prevalence in many modern human diets — might impact the rats’ brains, the scientists first separated the rats into three age groups: 2-month, 8-month, and 14-month olds. Each of those age groups were then split into water-drinking and cola-and-water-drinking cohorts…

Upon examination, the water-drinking rodents were perfectly fine. The soda sippers? Not so much…

During the behavioral tests, the scientists found that most of the soda-drinkers, specifically the 2- and 8- month olds, had worse memories and, generally, lower cognitive function than their purist counterparts — thus causing some serious difficulty when they tried to get around those damn mazes…

A closer look at the rattos’ brains confirmed that the soda groups had all sustained varying degrees of damage to the frontal cortex, which controls vital mental functions like attention, memory, and judgement, as well as the hippocampus, which plays a major role in both memory and learning.

Yeah, yeah. We all know rats ain’t people. So, just don’t feed the sugary stuff to your pet rodents. And think a little bit harder about whether or not you should be consuming the stuff.

Leave this laying around for your kiddies to pick up and play with!

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About a week ago, a company in Utah that makes custom modifications to firearms debuted what it described as a fun new product: a kit that encases Glock handguns in red, yellow and blue Lego blocks, refashioning lethal weapons to look exactly like children’s toys…

“There is a satisfaction that can ONLY be found in the shooting sports and this is just one small way to break the rhetoric from Anti-Gun folks and draw attention to the fact that the shooting sports are SUPER FUN!” the site proclaimed, exuding a bravado that would prove to be short-lived. “Here’s the thing. Guns are fun. Shooting is fun. 30 rounds full auto is fun.”

As word of the new product spread on the Internet late last week, the idea struck many people as so profoundly misguided that it would inevitably cost children their lives…

Dumb, yes, but legal in at least most of the country, said David Pucino, a lawyer at the Giffords Law Center. Although federal law prohibits toys from being manufactured to look like guns, no such law prohibits guns from being made to look like toys. Pucino noted that New York state bans people from disguising firearms as something else, which could make the Lego-crusted Glock illegal there, but he doubted that many other states had passed similar regulations.

Of course, it’s legal. We are a nation of stupid, first. Education, thoughtful regulation, are the last items on the good sense shopping list.

Who are these people?

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More than 93,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2020. “We are in an enduring crisis that is still going on. We are still right in the middle of it…”

The 29.4% increase is an alarming jump from 2019, which also set a record after 71,000 people died from drug overdoses, according to CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics…

The spike in deaths was driven by the increased presence of the dangerous opioid fentanyl into the illicit drug market in the US, along with increased isolation among people who use drugs and overwhelmed public health agencies during the pandemic. The increase is only the latest in a long-running epidemic of overdose deaths steadily rising over the last half-century, with more than half a million people dying as a result of drug overdoses in the last decade alone…

While fentanyl is now linked to 3 out of 5 overdose deaths nationwide, the preliminary statistics suggest deaths from methamphetamine, cocaine, and prescription pain pills also increased in the last year. That likely reflects their contamination with fentanyl, and increasing use of multiple drugs together, said Volkow. As little as 2 milligrams of fentanyl can be a lethal dose; one survey conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that 26% of counterfeit pain pills contained that dosage or higher.

We know all the usual steps needed to fightback…including policing producers of ingredients used by the makers of counterfeit drugs. One constant remains. A junkie is a junkie is a junkie. Straightening out that personality disorder still seems to be beyond modern American medicine.

You can be a MANLY MAN and a MANLY REPUBLICAN by keeping people from getting vaccinated

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According to the strict rules of masculinity, manly men should not recycle, lean in a certain direction, or wear a face mask. Now, evidently, the latest unnecessarily gendered action is receiving the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine and becoming immune to a contagious illness that has killed nearly 3 million people worldwide…

With each day, more Americans become eligible for vaccination, but certain demographics are more hesitant to take advantage of the shot. According to a new NPR/Marist study, 41% of self-identified Republicans, 34% of Independents, and 11% of Democrats say they do not plan on becoming vaccinated. Americans were also broken down by race, generation, education level, and voting history, and Republican men comprise the most anti-vaccine group. Compared to 34% of Republican women, 14% of Democrat women, and only 6% of Democrat men, 49% of Republican men say they will not get the vaccine…

In other words, toxic masculinity is now a public health crisis. Literally.

Dimwits!

Weed is still illegal in states where sex with farm animals isn’t

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In so many ways, laws are what keep society together. The rules that mark order. But they can also be deeply problematic. Consider that in some states bestiality is still legal, but smoking a joint isn’t.

That is the point of a new ad campaign from Jay-Z’s cannabis brand, Monogram. It uses black-and-white imagery and stark white text to point out the hypocrisy (and sometimes plain absurdity) of American drug policies.

The ad campaign is running in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Miami, and Washington, D.C., with plans to roll out in more cities in the next few weeks.

Sometimes, I wonder if a great education would be enough to countervail against the stupidity that keeps archaic laws on the books?

Biggest problem distributing the COVID-19 vaccine? Dumbass Trump!

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Tasos Katopodis/Getty – Dumbass and his troop of stooges

…After nine months of the pandemic, healthcare workers and vulnerable populations in the United States in the coming weeks are set to begin receiving vaccinations, which are expected to gradually reach the broader population as we move further into 2021. We’re not getting out of this nightmare tomorrow, but a timeline is coming into view, which is more than we could say in the uncertain early days of this crisis.

The carelessness and incompetence of Donald Trump and his administration, though, is complicating the path out of the pandemic they’ve done nothing but compound since the outset. The president has politicized public health and otherwise ignored the crisis as cases soar, giving up on mitigation efforts while counting on the emergence of a vaccine to bring things to an end. But as it turns out, he wasn’t even prepared for that—the thing he’s been touting as our ticket out of this mess—having reportedly turned down Pfizer’s offers over the summer to set aside more doses of the vaccine it was developing, which is now one of two set for emergency approval.

It is highly unlikely the Dumbass-in-Chief will be restrained from putting in his own counterfeit 2¢ worth of ignorance. RTFA and learn more about the dangers of this incompetent getting in the way.