The speech is 3.8 times longer than Biden's in 2020

Our article on 10 of the Strangest Cover Versions of Classic Rock Songs Ever Released takes a look at some pretty bizarre and very original remakes of classic rock songs. Some are a little more out there than others, some done in a serious fashion as artistic statements, while others were probably just meant to entertain—which I guess is the best word for that. Nonetheless, we really dug deep to try and pick out some very creative pieces that you may have never heard before, and then of course, we also included some of the most popular strange cover versions The post 10 Of The Strangest Cover Versions Of Classic Rock Songs Ever appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Have you been blessed with a bumper crop of homegrown beans? Come learn 7 different ways to preserve fresh green beans to make them last. This post covers several different methods to preserve pole or bush beans, including easy recipes and tips on how to can, pickle, dehydrate or freeze green beans and more. Nothing beats eating fresh, snappy green beans from the garden in the summertime. I love them cooked or raw! Yet we always grow far more than we can use fresh, so we’ve had to get creative and find ways to reduce waste and preserve them over the years. Even if you don’t grow your own, I hope you enjoy these ideas as much as we do! We dubbed 2023 “the year of the beans”. We harvested over 40 pounds that summer! Disclosure: Homestead and Chill is reader-supported. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Choosing Beans to Preserve All of the recipes below are ideal to preserve all types of green beans (sometimes called string beans or snap beans) including French beans, Romano or Italian beans, purple beans, or yellow wax beans. Some of our favorite varieties include Northeaster pole beans, Provider bush beans, and Gold Rush yellow wax beans. For the best quality and results, it’s best to preserve green beans when they’re as fresh as possible. Choose beans that are tender, snappy and crisp, and avoid preserving beans that are limp, tough, stringy, diseased, bruised, or otherwise “imperfect”. You can harvest and store beans in the refrigerator for a few days until you collect enough to preserve, but don’t wait too long! Freezing Fresh Green Beans Let’s start with one of the easiest ways to preserve green beans (and one of my favorites)… freezing them! We freeze small containers of green beans all summer long to later add to soups, chili, or right into the pan with other sautéed veggies. You can freeze fresh green beans raw or blanched first. We’ve tested both methods: both retain good color and flavor, though blanched beans are slightly more crisp at the time of use. If you do blanch them, I highly recommend using a steam blancher instead of boiling water to prevent water-logging. Either way, the key to enjoying frozen green beans (aka, how to prevent them from getting mushy) is to not overcook them later! All they need is very quick flash of heat and they’re ready to go. Please see our full guide on how to freeze fresh green beans. It also includes cooking tips! Canning Green Beans Green beans are a low-acid food so they must be canned using a pressure canner in order to achieve high enough temperatures to kill pathogens and prevent food borne illness. The only way to safely can green beans using water bath canning is if they’re pickled in vinegar – such as our dill pickled green beans recipe (featured below). Pressure canned green beans can be prepared using either the hot-pack or raw-pack method. The hot-pack method involves briefly cooking the green beans in boiling water before packing them into canning jars, which helps to soften them – meaning you can cram more into each jar. The quick pre-cooking also removes some air which can help improve quality and shelf life. On the other hand, the raw pack (aka cold pack) method is the most quick and easy way to can green beans. All you do is fill the jars with raw green beans (washed and trimmed) and then cover with boiling water. See complete instructions and processing times for pressure canning fresh green beans here. Pickled Green Beans (Can or Fridge) Who doesn’t love a crisp tangy pickle? Making pickled dilly beans is one of our favorite ways to preserve green beans. They’re a delicious addition to charcuterie boards, veggie burgers, potato salad, Bloody Marys, or straight out of the jar. Our easy pickled beans recipe is safe for water bath canning, or you can make them as quick refrigerator pickles instead – where you can easily make just a jar or two at a time! Fermented Green Beans If you haven’t jumped on the lacto-fermentation bandwagon yet, it’s time! These easy fermented green beans with optional dill and garlic taste similar to pickled green beans but with a little extra tang… plus a LOT of extra gut-healthy probiotics. The fermentation process effectively lowers the pH to preserve the green beans for up to a year (though they’re usually best quality when enjoyed within a few months). It also introduces millions of beneficial enzymes, antioxidants, and probiotics – a considerable perk over vinegar pickling. Dehydrate Dehydrating green beans is another great way to preserve them. It’s best to dry green beans using a food dehydrator, though it’s possible to dry them in the oven as well. Once dried, you can enjoy them as a healthy crunchy snack, or rehydrate them to add to meals like soups, stews, or casseroles. This article provides good instructions on how to dehydrate green beans. If you plan to eat them plain, try seasoning (tossing) the beans with a little drizzle of olive oil (or coconut oil) and sprinkle of salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and/or nutritional yeast before drying! Image courtesy of Clean Eating Kitchen In Soup (Freeze) Here’s a clever way to preserve green beans: as an ingredient in soup! Choose a bean-forward soup recipe, make a large batch, and then freeze it in portions to enjoy as easy future meals. I love these durable reusable BPA-free quart containers for freezing soup, chili, homemade vegetable broth and more. We often make “the garden sink” type soups (using whatever is ready for harvest in the garden) without following a recipe, but this summer I want to try making this simple-but-delicious looking chunky green bean soup or this cream of green bean soup recipe. Here’s another vegetarian green bean soup recipe that you can make in an Instant-Pot (or on the stovetop). I’d double or triple any of these recipes to really use up and preserve an excess of green beans! NOTE: Make sure to fully and rapidly cool soup before freezing it – such as by using an ice bath, stirring frequently, and/or divvying up a large pot into several smaller (wide and shallow) containers to cool in the fridge without a lid. It’s best for food quality AND food safety to rapidly cool hot foods, and to freeze already-cooled food instead of putting it into the freezer still warm. Freeze Dry Last but not least, you can freeze-dry your green beans to preserve them. If you happen to have a freeze drier at home, that is! Unlike drying them in a dehydrator or oven, freeze drying green beans will create ultra-light and crispy dried green beans that last up to 10 years in storage. Use rehydrated freeze dried green beans in any recipe that calls for fresh beans, or enjoy them dried as a snack. A Harvest Right freeze drier is on our wish list! I hope this list gives you plenty of ideas to preserve your harvest and enjoy green beans in new delicious ways. Have fun experimenting, and let me know if I missed any other clever ideas in the comments below! Don’t miss these related posts: 13 Ways to Preserve Tomatoes: Recipes to Freeze, Can, and More Best Cowboy Candy Recipe (Candied Jalapeños) Canning or Refrigerator  How to Freeze Basil in Ice Cube Trays (Olive Oil or Water) Crunchy Refrigerator Pickles: Quick & Easy Homemade Dill Pickles How to Freeze Zucchini (Summer Squash) Two Ways Did you enjoy this article? Want to hear more? Stay in touch! Sign up below to receive weekly updates on new posts from Homestead and Chill. The post 7 Ways to Preserve Green Beans: Can, Freeze, Dry, Pickle and More appeared first on Homestead and Chill.

George Conway Makes the Case for Trump's Assassin

When 'Green' Hits the Beaches of Martha's Vineyard

Researchers have been able to turn simulation and observational data from a fusion reactor into an incredible 3D simulation. It provides a view of what it would be like to fly through the plasma, and gives insights into how the reactor behaves at such extreme temperatures.The modeled reactor is a faithful reproduction of EPFL’s variable-configuration tokamak (TCV). A tokamak is a donut-shaped reactor. Plasma at a temperature of over 100 million degrees flows through it and fusion takes place. The team at the Laboratory for Experimental Museology (EM+), part of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, recreated this 30-year-old machine and provided us with a unique way to look inside.                 “We used a robot to generate ultra-high-precision scans of the reactor interior, which we then compiled to produce a 3D model that replicates its components right down to their texture,” Samy Mannane, a computer scientist at EM+, said in a statement. “We were even able to capture the wear and tear on the graphite tiles lining the reactor walls, which are subject to extremely high temperatures during test runs of the TCV.”Flying through the fusion reactor is cool for everyone, but scientists can use it to actually learn how to improve the design and make the reaction more efficient. The simulation delivers the position of thousands of particles and their effects, shifting about 60 times per second. A special computing setup with five computers and 10 GPUs in total delivered this incredible visualization.  “We were able to build our system thanks to advances in infographics technology,” explained Sarah Kenderdine, the professor who heads EM+. “It would’ve been impossible even just five years ago.”The visualization shows the particles involved in the reaction. Electrons are in red; protons are in green; and blue lines indicate the magnetic field. They swirl around and interact, just as they would in the actual tokamak.“The physics behind the visualization process is extremely complicated,” added Paolo Ricci, director of the Swiss Plasma Center. “Tokamaks have many different moving parts: particles with heterogenous behavior, magnetic fields, waves for heating the plasma, particles injected from the outside, gases, and more. Even physicists have a hard time sorting everything out. The visualization developed by EM+ combines the standard output of simulation programs – basically, tables of numbers – with real-time visualization techniques that the lab uses to create a video-game-like atmosphere.”The visualization is not just a pretty video. It's accurate, it's coherent, and it's realistic.

Front paws forward, stomach on the ground, and most importantly, back legs kicked back. This is the full sploot position. And it is very cute.The sploot. Although the first use of the word is unknown it has gained increasing popularity over the last seven years. Its origins are in DoggoLingo, a cutesy internet language to describe all things dogs. Splooting is a dog specialty. Corgis, in particular, are exceptionally good at it.Splooting raised alarm in the summer of 2022 when squirrels were seen splooting in New York City parks. After that, Collins English Dictionary (coincidentally?) called “splooting” one of the top 10 words of 2022. Together with “permacrisis”, which says a lot about how the post-pandemic world was going. So why were squirrels splooting? To date, no scientific article has reported on the usefulness, efficacy, or prevalence of splooting, but theories abound. The dominant one relates it to heat dispersion. The behavior in squirrels was reported during a heatwave, and the US National Park Service calls summer “sploot season”. Could this be a way in which furry animals keep cool?   IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Humans predominantly disperse heat by sweating. When the moisture on our skin evaporates it cools us off. We are not alone in the animal kingdom in using this strategy (horses and monkeys do it too). Dogs pant. So do birds. This keeps them cool by evaporation of internal moisture.What if panting is not enough? Or too much water is being lost to evaporation? Time to sploot down on shaded ground, a cool rock, or the kitchen floor. Some furry animals like squirrels have relatively less fur on their abdomen. By lying down and spreading their body out on a cool surface, they might be able to lower their body temperature.Baby Louis (right) was a precocious splooter – as is his sibling.Image credit: Charlie Haigh/IFLScienceThe behavior uses the environment to regulate temperature, in some ways similar to ectotherm animals. Also known as “cold-blooded” these animals rely predominantly on environmental heat sources to control body temperature. Think of a lizard sunbathing and then hiding on cool rocks in the shade.Or maybe it’s just comfortable. It sure looks very relaxing.More research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon.

The United Nations (UN) has issued a report warning that some efforts to combat the effects of climate change may bring with them further risks. The report emphasizes how interconnected and fragile our system is in the 21st century and urges us not to focus on short-term solutions that may impact long-term prosperity.The report represents a call to arms, asking us to think about and respond to the various emerging challenges that may disrupt our planet’s wellbeing. It does so by examining eight major shifts across the world, which include the rapid development of technologies like artificial intelligence, the rise of misinformation, the forced displacement of people, and increased competition for limited natural resources.At the same time, the report considers how geoengineering experiments, like solar radiation modification (SRM) and other climate-altering technologies, could be more harmful in the long run. The concept involves seeding clouds with substances that make them more reflective, which would send sunlight back into space. Marine cloud brightening is one such technique, which uses sea salt to alter clouds in a region.Although it may sound promising, the technique is controversial as its local use can alter weather patterns elsewhere on the planet while also not addressing the underlying issues that drive climate change.“Recognizing that SRM technologies remain speculative and highly contentious, scientific scrutiny and more inclusive public discourse on the implications […] is critical at this stage,” the report explains.“Choosing to ignore SRM altogether at this stage, could carry its own risks—leaving society and decision-makers ill-prepared and potentially misguided.”Carbon offsetting is also a major concern. It is a widely used tactic whereby individuals, companies, or governments try to negate their fossil fuel emissions by funding equivalent emissions reduction or removal practices elsewhere. These practices include things like planting trees or restoring forests/wetlands, or preventing emissions in the first place, through energy efficiency improvements or avoiding destroying natural areas.However, many offsetting practices involve a range of issues and questionable activities that undermine its effectiveness.“Issues range from weak verification processes that allow fictitious or fraudulent projects to be certified to misrepresentation of an activity’s sequestration potential or the duplicative sale of individual credits to multiple buyers,” the report states.“There is mounting evidence and concern that large-scale offset initiatives, even those believed to be of ‘high-integrity’, have been overstating their ability to contribute to limiting atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions.”Despite the worrying nature of some of the challenges addressed in the report, the authors are keen to stress there are still options.“In the face of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste”, Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, explains in the forward to the report, “we might easily throw up our hands and imagine the world of 2050—just 25 years from now—as a dangerous, damaged place where both human society and the environment it inhabits face new and heightened threats.”“However, the point of this report is not to predict the future.”Instead, the intention is to “foresee the future”, by drawing on expertise and voices from diverse backgrounds. This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but Andersen believes there is more to it.“What, might you ask, is the difference? Prediction is passive: it means locking in a vision of the future. Foresight is about imagining the future and then looking at how to change it.”The global response is, to date, a mixed one. Locally driven resilience is becoming clearer as governments struggle to respond to disasters, and in their place, local communities are mobilizing to address the situation. Although less than ideal, it does show that grassroots networks can play a valuable role in combating environmental challenges.The report arrives two months before the UN’s Summit of the Future kicks off in New York. Discussions will focus on how the global community can address its commitments and deal with emerging challenges. One key effort, the report stresses, is the need for countries to develop more short-term targets that will allow them to measure their effectiveness.

Although chimpanzees and humans share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA, our differences are vast – or at least we like to think. Take a look at chimp behavior and you’ll quickly realize that we’re not so different from our primate cousins (for better or for worse).Chimps are warmongersHumans aren’t the only animals to wage war on their own species. Between 1974 and 1978, a brutal war between two factions of chimps was documented in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park by the famous primatologist Jane Goodall. Following the death of the long-term alpha male, Mike, Goodall noticed the community splintering into two factions: the Kasakela and the Kahama. The war was marked by a series of brutal and coordinated attacks by the Kasakela group, resulting in the systematic killing of all male members and some females of the Kahama group. The Kahama were effectively wiped out, allowing the Kasakela to expand into their territory. It came to be known as the Gombe Chimpanzee War – and it left a profound impact on Goodall.“Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind – Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff's chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face… Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé's thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes,” she wrote in her memoir.It would be naive to see this as mindless violence. In 2023, scientists documented chimps in Côte d’Ivoire spying on rival gangs, carefully moving to higher ground to get a better view and gather information. This, the researchers claim, is essentially an age-old tactic of human warfare.While some researchers have accused certain primatologists of anthropomorphism, others have suggested that war-like behavior among chimps might provide insights into the evolutionary origins of organized violence in humans.   Chimps love to hunt animals and eat meatChimps typically eat a diet of fruits, roots, nuts, leaves, plants, flowers, and bugs, but meat does make up a small part of their diet in the wild. To get their hands on this protein-rich delicacy, smaller mammals like monkeys are typically targeted.Once again, Goodall was one of the first researchers to scientifically document chimps indulging in carnivorous behavior and it's since become relatively common knowledge. A particularly strange behavior was observed in Gombe National Park where researchers saw chimps hunt down and eat dozens of baby red colobus monkeys. While passing around and sharing the catches, the chimps were seen biting open the monkey skulls and tucking into their brains. On a few occasions, the chimps even used sticks and leaves to mop up the last bits of brain matter.In another instance, researchers even observed chimps using spears to hunt sleeping bush babies in Senegal.Scientists have pondered whether chimp hunting behavior might shed light onto the early evolution of humans', as well as our taste for meat. Chimps are basically little scientistsThe world of chimps isn’t all blood, guts, and violence. A huge body of evidence also shows that chimpanzees are capable of incredible displays of cognitive power and emotional intelligence.For one, chimpanzees are known to actively seek out medicinal plants when they are sick or wounded. A study in 2024 noted how injured and ill chimps in Uganda’s Budongo Central Forest Reserve will eat plants that hold anti-inflammatory properties or naturally contain highly potent inhibitors of pathogens such as E. coli.Likewise, chimps have been seen applying squished bugs onto their wounds. While the medicinal benefits of crushed insects aren’t known, insects have historically been used for therapeutic purposes by humans as far back as 1400 BCE and continue to be used in certain parts of the globe to this day.Who knows, perhaps these chimps are onto something that modern medicine has yet to grasp...

Fancy a trip to see the stars? Don’t worry if you haven’t got a rocket – to see the stars we’re talking about, you only need a passport, some flip-flops, and a Japanese phrasebook.Our destination is right down in the south of Japan, on the three islands of Iriomote, Hatoma, and Taketomi. Scoop up some sand on their beaches, take a closer look at it, and you’ll see not only the usual fragments of shell and rock, but tiny cream-colored stars.At a glance, it might look like someone took a stroll on the shore throwing about a bag of pastina, or perhaps a baby sea star convention, but these little stars are in fact the remnants of a species called Baclogypsina sphaerulata.First described in 1860 under a different name, they’re a member of an ancient group of protozoans – widespread, single-celled organisms that nibble on organic matter – called Foraminifera. B. sphaerulata is only one of an estimated 4,000 living forams, although the group is thought to have been around since the early Cambrian period, around 540 million years ago.As organisms in this group drift about in the sea, they collect calcium carbonate and use it to build shells or “tests” with a whole host of different shapes, from the rather more blob-like to intricate spirals and, of course, stars. When forams die, these shells remain and settle on the seafloor, and in the case of B. sphaerulata, eventually wash up on Okinawan beaches.Upon closer inspection, the stars are also covered in dots.Image credit: Alain COUETTE via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)Japanese folklore, however, tells a different story. According to legend, the star-shaped sands are the result of the Southern Cross and the North Star getting jiggy with it and making a bunch of little star babies.Their offspring were said to live in the sea off the coast of the Okinawan islands, but were killed by a giant sea serpent, with only their skeletons remaining. With time, their remains ended up on the beaches.The idea of stomping along a baby star cemetery might take away some of the excitement of finding them in the sand, though perhaps it’ll put people off taking them away from the beach (which is very much not allowed).But if it’s any consolation, these cosmic offspring leave behind a very helpful legacy. Foraminifera can be used by scientists to figure out what the Earth was like millions of years ago, giving clues about the age of rocks and ancient climates.Thanks, little stars.