How on earth do you take so many L's in a day

'I've been in pain for three days'

'Rip-roaring pace'

“Blues” is more than just a genre, and for this article, we’ve taken on the ambitious task of exploring songs that use the word “Blues” in their titles, but not necessarily as an homage to the blues genre itself. Instead, this is a collection that spans rock, folk, and soul, showcasing how artists have embraced the word to amplify their stories of heartbreak, defiance, longing, and even humor. While the blues genre carries its own rich history, this list highlights the creative ways musicians have borrowed its evocative language to enhance their art. Each track selected here stands as a The post 10 Classic Songs With The Word ‘Blues’ In The Title appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

The post What Does the Bird Flu Pet Food Recall Mean For You & Your Cat? by Dr. Karyn Kanowski BVSc MRCVS (Veterinarian) appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com. You may have heard about the sad death of at least one cat after eating raw frozen cat food contaminated with the H5N1 virus. While a single fatality might not exactly have you quaking in your boots, it was enough to convince several pet food companies to test their products and issue voluntary recalls. Recalling products can be an extremely costly venture for any company, and not an action taken lightly, so how worried do pet owners need to be? The Facts About Bird Flu Avian influenza, commonly referred to as ‘bird flu’ or H5N1, is a highly pathogenic form of influenza virus that is devastating to the poultry industry.1 Historically, we have seen the disease spread from bird to bird and occasionally from bird to mammal, including humans, cats, and cattle, but during the most recent outbreak, there have been cases of virus transmission between mammals.2 Why is this a concern? Well, it suggests that this virus is continuing to change and evolve, which could have devastating results. H5N1 is almost always fatal in birds, which can have a devastating impact on wild bird populations. Additionally, mandatory cullings in poultry farms are often implemented in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus. In cattle, signs of infection are usually mild, with milk production most significantly affected. Humans, who can contract bird flu through direct contact with infected birds or mammals, tend to suffer mild flu-like symptoms of fever, headache, and coughing, with occasional vomiting and diarrhea as well. Over the past 12 months, there have been less than 70 confirmed human cases of H5N1 in the US, with only a single fatality. However, it is how the virus affects cats that is keeping plenty of pet owners up at night. Image Credit: Photoarte, Shutterstock Cats, Dogs, and Bird Flu The fact that cats can be infected with avian influenza is not new information, and the majority of cases are seen in farm cats or strays that have caught and eaten wild birds or ingested unpasteurized milk. In fact, sick barn cats have often been used as an early indicator to dairy farmers that bird flu may be in the herd. Unlike in humans and cattle, bird flu is often fatal in cats, with clinical signs including fever, lethargy, reddened or inflamed eyes, discharge from the eyes and nose, difficulty breathing, neurologic signs, like tremors, seizures, incoordination, or blindness. The recent death of a house cat in Washington County has led to widespread testing by pet food companies, with some issuing recalls for certain poultry-based products. While supporters of raw pet food insist that there is no need for alarm, the case does highlight one of the most glaring problems with the raw-feeding trend: pathogen risk. Although a raw diet has been shown to provide many health benefits to pets, the risk of bacterial, and now viral, contamination is a hazard that can be alleviated with some gentle cooking. There are now a large number of companies creating fresh-frozen meals as a safer alternative to raw, optimizing the nutritional benefits while minimizing the risk of pathogens. To date, although dogs are able to become infected with bird flu, the only cases found – either through natural or experimental exposure – have been asymptomatic. That’s good news for the dogs, but not so good for the spread of the virus. The big worry for cats is that we now know that they can become infected with bird flu from direct contact with infected animals, by consuming birds or unpasteurized milk, and through the consumption of contaminated raw meat. Coupled with the fact that this virus is particularly virulent in cats, pet owners are right to be concerned. How Can I Protect My Cat from Bird Flu? The first thing to know is that statistically, the risk of bird flu infection for your cat is very low, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay vigilant. The chances that your cat will come into direct contact with an infected animal are extremely low, but if your cat is fed a raw meat diet, particularly one that contains poultry, you may want to rethink their food choice. The FDA issued the following advice to pet owners: “H5N1 can be deadly to cats, as well as dogs, so we encourage consumers to carefully consider the risk of this emerging pathogen before feeding their pets uncooked meat or an uncooked pet food product. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Veterinary Medical Association discourage the feeding of uncooked meat diets to companion animals due to the potential presence of pathogens, including H5N1.  Heat treatments have been shown to be effective for inactivating H5N1 in meat, milk, and egg products. We recommend that consumers follow the USDA guidelines for handling and thorough cooking of raw meat before feeding. Animals should also be kept from hunting and consuming wild birds.” Image Credit: Jaromir Chalabala, Shutterstock The Take Home Message Although the risk of bird flu to your cat remains extremely low, the effects of the virus are severe, so it is important to stay up to date with information about this outbreak and how it may affect your pets. There are some simple ways to keep your cat’s risk even lower, and one of those is to ensure you are only feeding food that has undergone some form of heat treatment. If you do use a raw food diet, we would recommend getting in touch with the supplier to make sure they are screening for H5N1, and consider cooking meat products before feeding them to your pet – just remember to remove bones from chicken! Keep your kitty indoors, or if that isn’t an option, make some changes to reduce their hunting success. To make sure you stay in the loop, subscribe to Catster.com, and if you suspect that your pet has been infected or exposed to avian flu, it is important that you contact your veterinarian immediately for advice and follow the guidelines set out by the CDC. The post What Does the Bird Flu Pet Food Recall Mean For You & Your Cat? by Dr. Karyn Kanowski BVSc MRCVS (Veterinarian) appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com.

Books The Wheel of Time Original Sin and Predestination: What “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” Adds to the Worldbuilding of The Wheel of Time How did the drilling of the Bore affect the world depicted in The Wheel of Time? By Sylas K Barrett | Published on January 28, 2025 Credit: Amazon Prime Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Amazon Prime The short story “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” is presented as an in-world introduction for scholars to the subject of Lews Therin’s attack on Shayol Ghul. In its introduction, a historian named Jorille Mondevin recounts the discovery of a manuscript, “a partial copy of no less than a history of the world from the drilling of the Bore into the Dark One’s Prison to the End of the Breaking of the world.” Most important to the interests of this historian, and the current Age, the manuscript contains the only known account of the sealing of the Bore by Lews Therin Telamon and the Hundred Companions. Mondevin describes the shape of the War of the Shadow, and how, eventually, the Dark One began to gain ground continually, leaving the Light unable to turn the tide, or win back any of the ground taken by the Dark One’s forces. They were losing, being pushed toward inevitable defeat with increasing speed, and if they were to win at all, it must be done quickly. Two different plans were proposed. One was Lews Therin Telamon’s plan to lead a strike force of soldiers and a circle of thirteen Aes Sedai into Shayol Ghul, where the Bore was detectable, to secure seals around “seven focus points” which would close up the Bore and seal the Dark One away for good. Another plan, which was favored by a powerful Aes Sedai named Latra Posae Decume, was to construct two great sa’angreal which would give the Aes Sedai enough power to push the Shadow back to Shayol Ghul and erect a wall around it, until a safe way to seal the Bore permanently could be discovered. Both plans came with dangerous risks and little certainty of success, but Latra Posae gathered a great deal of support for the sa’angreal plan. What’s more, she convinced every female Aes Sedai of sufficient strength that Lews Therin’s plan was too dangerous, and they all swore not to take part in it. Without women to create a circle, Lews Therin abandoned his plan and the sa’angreal became the focus of the Aes Sedai’s work. But when the Shadow (unknowingly) gained control of the area where the access ter’angreal were, the Aes Sedai lost their ability to be able to use the sa’angreal. Lews Therin argued again for his plan, acknowledging the risks but saying that was now the only chance, yet Posae maintained her opposition. Belief in the danger of misplacing the seals had spread, and many more female Aes Sedai had pledged to the “Fateful Concord,” including a great number who were nowhere near strong enough to qualify for the raiding party circle. Tempers and passions rose, and an apparently unprecedented division along male-female lines began to develop among the Aes Sedai in general, if not within the Hall itself. Finally the Hall decided to continue with Latra Posae’s plan, and her people began working to smuggle the access ter’angreal out of Shadow-controlled territory. But they were unable to recover the ter’angreal, and as certain defeat loomed and still the female Aes Sedai held to their Concord, Lews Therin decided to lead his soldiers and a group of male channelers in a desperate gamble to enact his plan without the aid of any female Aes Sedai. The seals were placed successfully, and by some great stroke of luck, all the Forsaken happened to be gathered in Shayol Ghul at the time and were trapped as well. Even though the taint on saidin and the Breaking also occurred as a result of Lews Therin’s actions, the sealing away of the Shadow and its generals did result in the rest of the Shadow faltering as Darkfriends fought each other for control over the Shadow’s forces, cut off from the Dark One and his Chosen generals. The Wheel of Time is a series rich in themes, tackling subjects such as the ethics of wielding power, the burden of duty, the effects of trauma in wartime, and many others. But one of the most interesting themes of the story is the division between male and female channelers, which exists in a world where the driving force of creation is made up of two separate-but-equal halves, each belonging to one of the sexes. (For the purposes of this essay, I will use the term “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, and to mean the binary of “male” and female” as it exists in the world of The Wheel of Time.) Jordan often plays with the division between the sexes throughout the series, showing different societies with different attitudes towards gender roles, some of which (Andor, Cairhien) are of the sort traditional in standard western fantasy, and others (Seanchan, the Aiel, Far Madding) which offer interesting and alternative social structures and gender norms. In the Aes Sedai, he presents the reader with an organization that is all-female by necessity, an organization which is one of the most powerful in the world and at the same time is hampered and dwindling as it tries to carry a burden that is meant to be shared. Of course, it takes several books for the reader to understand this about the Aes Sedai. In The Eye of the World we only know that they are very mysterious, very powerful, and cannot be trusted. We also learn early on that male channeling is associated with the Dark One and that the Dragon himself is basically considered to have been a Darkfriend. People suspected of being Darkfriends often have the Dragon’s fang scrawled on their door, and men who present the ability to channel are ostracized by their community, sometimes killed, even if they have been gentled and all danger of exposure to the taint has been removed. Few people know more about the origins of taint than that the Dragon’s mistake led to the Breaking and that male Aes Sedai are at fault for what happened to the world at that time. In fact, there is even a vague but prevailing sense, when the subject of the Breaking is spoken of by more learned characters, that it was hubris that led Lews Therin to attack Shayol Ghul directly, that he was overconfident in his abilities and put himself and the men he led into a dangerously vulnerable position that he should have known to avoid. It’s never said outright, but it has always felt implied to me by the narrative, and by the way certain characters speak of the historical incident. I have always wondered how true this interpretation of events was. Should Lews Therin be blamed, in a moral sense, for the taint on saidin? Was it overconfidence, or ego, or something else that made him decide to lead an assault on Shayol Ghul itself, an attack which resulted in a cataclysmic disaster, the end of an Age, and a near-severing of humanity from half of the One Power? And if it wasn’t hubris, why would he have made his attack without the aid of a single female Aes Sedai? “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” gives us an answer to that question. It’s somewhat bare bones and without the detail that Lews Therin, Latra Posae, and their fellow Aes Sedai might have given us if the tale had been recounted from their point of view, rather than by a historian of the Third Age translating a copy of an only partially-legible ancient text. However, the context that Latra Posae was influential enough to dissuade all of the female Aes Sedai from participating in Lews Therin’s plan is a fascinating one, not least because we learn that “an apparently unprecedented division along male-female lines began to develop among the Aes Sedai in general, if not within the Hall itself” and that “the lines of division […] hardened to a point where many female Aes Sedai refused to speak to male Aes Sedai, and the reverse as well.” The fact that there was such a powerful division along gendered lines before the taint was placed on saidin is such an important piece of context when it comes to the theme of male and female channelers working (or not working) together. I have always thought that the true masterstroke of the tainting of saidin—more than the resultant Breaking of the World and subsequent danger of future male channelers, more even than the huge reduction in the overall number of channelers in future generations—is the fact that even the most powerful circle of Aes Sedai is reduced tremendously in its overall strength and effectiveness if it is only comprised of one gender of channeler. If the Dark One had dramatically reduced the number of viable candidates for Aes Sedai in some other, non-gendered way, it would still have been a devastating blow to the Light, but it would not have reduced the Aes Sedai’s collective power in quite the same way. While that remains true, it is also true that a powerful division between male and female channelers occurred before the Dark One touched saidin, and that it might even have been responsible for the opportunity the Dark One had to place the taint. In a footnote, Mondevin mentions that many scholars ponder how things might have gone differently if female Aes Sedai had accompanied Lews Therin and his male Aes Sedai into Shayol Ghul. Would saidar have been tainted, too? Or would the presence of female channelers, the use of both halves of the One Power, have made the circle strong enough to protect itself from the Dark One’s touch, and to complete the placing of the Seals without giving the Dark One a chance to touch either half of the One Power? One can’t know for sure, of course, and Mondevin herself (perhaps voicing Jordan’s own opinion) scorns such fruitless speculation, but it’s hard to deny that, viewed from a certain angle, one could say that the tainting of saidin is actually the fault of the female Aes Sedai. Latra Posae is presented in the text as being basically responsible for the division among the Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends, and there is something vaguely sinister in the way that the other female Aes Sedai made an accord among themselves against Lews Therin and his plan. If the text were to say that Lews Therin struggled to convince anyone of his plan, and was only able to recruit a certain number of men and no women, it might read differently. But as it is stated in “The Strike at Shayol Ghul,” the suggestion is that the women, at the behest of Latra Posae, basically ganged up against the men. Lews Therin was the Dragon, after all, known to be the reincarnated champion of the Light. While this doesn’t make him a ruler or dictator, or mean that everyone should just have done as he commanded without question, his decisions regarding a war against the Dark would, and should, carry a great deal of weight. The fact that Latra Posae was able to—alone, as far as any record shows—turn almost all of an entire gender against him really does smack of interference by the Dark. Could Latra Posae have been an agent of the Dark One, working to undermine the Aes Sedai of her time the way we have seen Black Sisters do in the Third Age? It’s certainly possible. And even if she wasn’t, it is clear that the destruction wrought by the Shadow during her time, the fear and desperation the forces of the Light felt as their defeat approached, would have been part of the reason that the Aes Sedai became so viciously divided at a time when they most needed to stand together. While there is no way of knowing what might have happened if female Aes Sedai had accompanied Lews Therin to Shayol Ghul for the sealing of the Bore, we do know that men and women working together, channeling saidin and saidar in harmony, can achieve feats that cannot be achieved by either on their own. Lews Therin’s strike at Shayol Ghul was already a desperate gamble if both sexes had accompanied him. With only one, the chances of success would have been greatly reduced—perhaps to impossibility. Since we know that the champion of the Light is always a man, and that the division between male and female Aes Sedai at the end of the War of the Shadow was instigated and perpetuated by a woman (Lews Therin did capitulate to trying Latra Posae’s plan first, while she refused to try his even after access to the Choedan Kal was lost), it is difficult not to read the story as telling us that the taint on saidin is the fault of women’s stubbornness and self-certainty. I’m not sure if Jordan intended this implication to be read as a certainty or merely as an interesting possibility, but he’s clearly playing with the idea throughout the series. As I mentioned in the beginning of this essay, distrust between male and female channelers is a core theme in The Wheel of Time. In the Third Age this division exists because of the taint and the Aes Sedai have no better strategy for dealing with the threat of madness other than gentling, however, the narrative does become increasingly critical of their approach to dealing with male channelers, despite its acknowledgment that they have little choice in how they handle men born with the spark. For example, most members of the Red Ajah are depicted as hating, or at least distrusting, all men, even though their work involves only a small subset of that gender, and could very well be viewed as a compassionate act intended to reduce suffering as much as possible. Another example is the way that Lelaine and Maigan (neither of whom are even Red) are willing to suggest using a version of Compulsion to subjugate and control the Asha’man. The way many Aes Sedai believed for a while that the Dragon should be captured and held by the White Tower to be wielded like a weapon by the Aes Sedai is also an example of the same theme. In each case there is reason for the woman or women’s position, but the increasing immorality that they turn to in the face of the question around the taint is significant—especially if the female Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends are even partially to blame for the fact that the men of Lews Therin’s strike force were unable to defend against the placing of the taint on saidin. It doesn’t help that Lews Therin is a full character in the reader’s eyes, through his presence in Rand’s head and the fact that his soul is also Rand’s. We are inclined to be connected and sympathetic to him because we know him, while Latra Posae is only a name with only a few facts attached to it, one of which is that she stood in opposition against Lews Therin and turned many others against him as well. Even if both sides share the blame equally for what happened during the strike at Shayol Ghul—or if both sides are be considered blameless given how desperate and uncertain their circumstances were—it still remains that it is male channelers who were willing to risk everything for what they saw as the only chance for the world’s salvation, and generations of male channelers who bore the brunt of the pain and destruction that follows. However, as I consider all the lessons that we might glean from this glimpse into the last days of the War of the Shadow, it occurs to me that there is another way of interpreting the story of the strike at Shayol Ghul. Though neither Lews Therin nor Latra Posae could have known what would come of their choices, or have seen the results in their own lifetimes, both the setting of the Seals on the Dark One’s prison and the construction of the Choedan Kal do eventually prove equally necessary for the survival of humanity. Lews Therin’s actions trapped the Dark One and the Forsaken for a time, breaking up the Shadow’s advance and undermining its remaining forces. (Indeed, one could even argue that the Breaking, as horrible as it was, contributed to this, as it metaphorically and literally wiped the board clean.) It may be that, as imperfect as his solution was, it bought the world the time it needed to prepare for a renewed conflict, with new champions of the Light, that will eventually win the Last Battle and find a way to seal the Dark One’s prison for good, just as Latra Posae believed necessary. Although the Choedan Kal weren’t used in the War of the Shadow, without their creation Rand never would have been able to cleanse saidin. Latra Posae’s choices may have resulted in the opportunity for saidin to be tainted, but they also provided the means by which it would one day be cleansed. So even this division amongst the Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends could be seen, through a certain lens of hindsight and maybe a little squinting, as collaboration, with each gender providing a vital piece of protection for humanity’s future. Saidin and saidar aren’t only supposed to work alongside each other, after all. They also push against each other to provide the force that drives the Wheel of Time and spins out the Pattern of Creation. At the end of day (if such a thing exists, there are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time), perhaps these two forces can’t ever be truly divided. They only seem to be to those inside the Pattern, with an imperfect view of its totality. Your regularly scheduled Reading The Wheel of Time will return next week as we embark on Book Eleven of the series, Knife of Dreams.[end-mark]  The post Original Sin and Predestination: What “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” Adds to the Worldbuilding of The Wheel of Time appeared first on Reactor.

'My People': Deportations, Cries, and Lies

Is this the "Sputnik moment" of artificial intelligence?

The original photo from 2017 and the follow-up from 2018 show something massive moving about.

The effect remains even when you're not high.