Plate tectonics, oceans, and continents might just be the secret ingredients for complex life on Earth. And if these geological features are rare elsewhere in the universe, then perhaps that explains why we haven’t yet discovered intelligent alien life. New research from American and Swiss Earth scientists suggests that these ingredients represent missing variables in the famous Drake equation, devised more than half a century ago to estimate the chances of finding advanced civilizations in our galaxy. Including these new variables could completely rewrite the probability of detecting intelligent life in the Milky Way, reports universetoday.com. The impetus for this research, with its galaxy-spanning implications, began with a mystery right here at home – why did life take so long to move beyond simple organisms? “Life has been around on Earth for about 4 billion years, but complex organisms like animals didn’t appear until about 600 million years ago, which is not long after the modern episode of plate tectonics began,” said Robert Stern of the University of Texas at Dallas. “Plate tectonics really jump-starts the evolution machine, and we think we understand why.” Stern and his collaborator, Taras Gerya of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, propose that plate tectonics – the grinding movement of the upper layers of the planet at long geologic time scales – helped speed up the transition to complex life. Early in Earth’s history, simple organisms formed in the ocean, but humanity – an advanced civilization capable of communicating across outer space – couldn’t exist if ancient life hadn’t transitioned to land. Vast, resource-rich continents were therefore a vital prerequisite for what Stern and Gerya call Active Communicative Civilizations (ACCs) like humanity to develop. But that alone wasn’t enough: the continents needed to move. The geologic record on Earth suggests that plate tectonics accelerated evolution on land through five distinct processes: it increased the supply of nutrients; sped up the oxygenation of both the atmosphere and the ocean; tempered the climate; caused a high turnover rate of habitat formation and destruction; and offered non-catastrophic environmental pressure that forced organisms to adapt. The end result of all these environmental pressures: us. If Stern and Gerya are right, plate tectonics were a requirement for eventual innovations like the wheel, the smartphone, and the Apollo program. And for other civilizations in the galaxy to develop similar technological marvels, perhaps their planets need plate tectonics too. But as far as we know, they’re rare. Earth is the only planet in our solar system to feature plate tectonics. Volcanism exists on some other worlds, like Venus, Mars, and Io, but these worlds have a singular solid shell, rather than multiple moving plates. Similarly, ocean worlds like Enceladus and Europa are bound within an icy coating, forbidding any hypothetical life there from transitioning to land. We don’t know for sure whether distant solar systems feature planets with plate tectonics – current space telescopes don’t have the resolution to make such determinations. But knowing that they might not enables a more accurate version of the Drake equation. There are two essential factors proposed in the revised equation: the fraction of habitable exoplanets with large continents and oceans, and the fraction of those that have plate tectonics lasting more than 500 million years. This version is much more nuanced than the original Drake equation, which simply took into account the fraction of habitable planets on which intelligent life had developed. “In the original formulation, this factor was thought to be nearly 1, or 100% — that is, evolution on all planets with life would march forward and, with enough time, turn into an intelligent civilization,” Stern said. “Our perspective is: That’s not true.” Indeed. Their math reduces the percentage of these planets that develop ACCs to just 0.003% at minimum and 0.2% at maximum – a far cry from the original 100%. When put together with all the other factors of the Drake Equation: number of stars formed annually, number of those stars with planets, number those planets that are habitable, number of those habitable planets with life, number of civilizations on those planets sending out detectable signals, and how long they send out the signals – well, the chances of finding intelligent alien life shrink considerably. The implications of the original Drake equation were that ACCs should be common, and we should see them everywhere. But including plate tectonics in the equation changes the result, and makes it clear that it’s perfectly understandable why we don’t see ET all across the galaxy. So intelligent alien life might be rarer than anyone thought. And Earth may be more special than we knew. All thanks to our planet’s fragmented, unruly, and shifting upper crust. The post Why we could be alone in Universe: plate tectonics on just 0.003% of planets appeared first on Anomalien.com.

The Daily Signal’s Friday scoop, “Judge in Trump Trial Gets Risk Assessment by Hostile Psychiatrist,” was timely, considering Trump opponent Biden’s obvious mental decline. It also may have triggered metaphorical PTSD in close readers of the New York Times. The name of that “hostile psychiatrist” is Bandy X. Lee, and until her irresponsible diagnosis of political figures from afar got her fired from Yale Medical School, she was quite the radical gadfly on the Letters and news pages of the Times. The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas wrote: Five mental health professionals, some of whom already accused Donald Trump of being “dangerous,” prepared a risk assessment for New York state Judge Juan Merchan to consider in his July 11 sentencing decision on Trump, according to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a longtime critic of the former president. That certainly sounds like a violation of the so-called Goldwater Rule, a statement of ethics restraining psychiatrists from speculating about the mental state of public figures they have not personally evaluated. The guidance came in the aftermath of the 1964 presidential campaign when a magazine published psychiatric diagnoses regarding Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater. Lucas continued: It isn’t clear whether all five are psychiatrists or may have other training. Their risk assessment could be a factor in the severity of Merchan’s sentence for Trump in Manhattan Criminal Court, which could be up to 20 years in prison for all 34 felony counts on which he was convicted last month. Lee edited the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” first released in 2017. In May, she published a new book titled “The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Threat to American Democracy and All Humankind.” Contributors to that 2017 book, including Lee and Harvard psychiatrist Leonard Glass, have used it to leverage themselves onto the Times’ Letters page, as NewsBusters noted earlier this year. But the Daily Signal piece suggests far more serious potential consequences regarding this ongoing Times' smearing of Trump as a mental case. Even the paper’s Trump-loathing editorial board thought Lee’s diagnosis of Trump from afar went too far and risked harmful stereotyping of mental illness (which didn’t stop the Letters page from printing her and her colleagues). In 2020 Lee went too far herself and was fired from the Yale School of Medicine for her bizarre, pseudo-scientific diagnosis of criminal defense lawyer and Trump defender Alan Dershowitz on Twitter. As the Times itself reported: “In January 2020, she compared Mr. Dershowitz’s wording with Mr. Trump’s own prominent use of the word ‘perfect,’ suggesting in a tweet that it could reflect a ‘shared psychosis’ through which Mr. Dershowitz had taken on what she said was Mr. Trump’s ‘grandiosity and delusional-level impunity.’” Lee even made the news section on January 6, 2018, cited by White House reporter Peter Baker and political correspondent Maggie Haberman: “Trump, Defending His Mental Fitness, Says He’s a ‘Very Stable Genius’.“ Here’s the passage, in which the reporters do their own uninformed psycho-analysis of Trump: Mr. Trump’s self-absorption, impulsiveness, lack of empathy, obsessive focus on slights, tenuous grasp of facts and penchant for sometimes far-fetched conspiracy theories have generated endless op-ed columns, magazine articles, books, professional panel discussions and cable television speculation. “The level of concern by the public is now enormous,” said Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine and editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” a book released last fall. “They’re telling us to speak more loudly and clearly and not to stop until something is done because they are terrified.” Perhaps the most arrogant and disturbing letter was one signed solely by Lee, which appeared on December 1, 2017. Ordinarily, we carry out a routine process for treating people who are dangerous: containment, removal from access to weapons and an urgent evaluation. We have been unable to do so because of Mr. Trump’s status as president. But the power of the presidency and the type of arsenal he has access to should raise greater alarm, not less. “Containment” of a political opponent for being mentally ill? That sounds....authoritarian. 

On Tuesday, CNN’s Inside Politics complained about Monday’s Supreme Court decision that ruled presidents have immunity for their official actions while in office. White House reporter at the Washington Post, Yasmeen Abutaleb, baselessly worried that Donald Trump could use the result to “prosecute his enemies.” Host Dana Bash began by noting the decision “cuts both ways,” recalling how some have said, "Well we're going to prosecute Joe Biden for what he's done at the border.”     Bash also shared former Rep. Adam Kinzinger's ridiculous statement from Monday where he declared, “Well, you know, now, Joe Biden pretty much has the ability to send SEAL Team Six after Donald Trump if he wants to.” Bash described Kinzinger as “being somewhat facetious, but somewhat not.” Abutaleb described Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term, as the “platform that seeks to basically eviscerate the federal government.” She continued to claim that the Trump campaign has “been quite systematic and figuring out how they can gut a lot of the protections that exist in the federal government.” She mourned that the Court just made Trump’s job easier, “getting rid of career federal workers, and now there's this ruling that says he can proceed with that carte blanche and go even further.” Ready to take one last jab at Trump, Abutaleb proclaimed that he already pushed “the powers of the presidency in many ways we couldn’t imagine” without this new ruling. She concluded by saying, “And now he's been told he can essentially use the DOJ to prosecute his enemies, and that would be protected, there might be a delay in the Manhattan case because he could classify that as an official act.” The president could already do that. From Trump’s perspective, Joe Biden is doing that right now, and this result is a safeguard against what Abutaleb is warning about. Click "Expand" to view the transcript: CNN Inside Politics with Dana Bash 7/2/2024 12:38 PM ET (...) DANA BASH: I mean, one thing I was thinking though is one of the things that he and others have said is "Well we're going to prosecute Joe Biden for what he's done at the border.” Well, now you can’t, not that they really probably were, but, you know, it kind of cuts both ways. Adam Kinzinger was on this show yesterday saying, “well, you know, now, Joe Biden pretty much has the ability to send SEAL Team Six after Donald Trump if he wants to.” I mean, he was being somewhat facetious, but somewhat not. YASMEEN ABUTALEB: Yeah. I mean, the Trump campaign already has this Project 2025 platform that seeks to basically eviscerate the federal government. You know, they have been quite systematic and figuring out how they can gut a lot of the protections that exist in the federal government, getting rid of career federal workers, and now there's this ruling that says he can proceed with that carte blanche and go even further. I mean, Trump I think it's important to remember in his first term, Trump was already pushing the powers of the presidency in ways we couldn't imagine without this, sort of, ruling. And now he's been told he can essentially use DOJ to prosecute his enemies, and that would be protected, there might be a delay in the Manhattan case because he could classify that as an official act. So, it's just I think there's still a lot to be seen about just how far this ruling will go. (...)

A while back, I started dehydrating various foods since I needed snacks for my camping trips, and it was cheaper to make my own rather than buying them from “specialized” stores. The post 10 things I wish I knew before dehydrating food appeared first on Survivopedia.

What does a “right” to abortion mean? Last year, on the first anniversary of the death of Roe v. Wade, I wrote an analytic poem critiquing the cruel prejudices lurking behind this common progressive claim. Now, on the anniversary of the Dobbs victory, this poem has been published in a broader collection critiquing the morality of progressive culture. The poem reflects on the existential questions surrounding the morality of abortion. What does it really mean to claim women have a fundamental right to kill their offspring? Behind pro-choice euphemisms is a claim of vast power. And despite the impact on their existence, the voices of unwanted children are rarely heard. Dobbs babies are never the subject of progressive compassion. They are discussed like objects, not people. Prior to Dobbs, this silence made sense. Children rarely survive abortions, and the few who do receive meager mainstream attention. But Dobbs did more than overturn the Supreme Court’s “egregiously wrong” decision in Roe. The court shattered the illusion of progressive compassion, exposing prejudices commonplace among society’s “tolerant and kind.” It did this by creating a new social class: Dobbs babies. These children owe their birth to five justices whose ruling resulted in the closure of abortion facilities across the nation. But for the decision, Dobbs babies would be extinct. Unwanted is unworthy Prejudice against unwanted children has long hidden behind the guise of love. Planned Parenthood describes abortion as “compassion care.” Famous Hollywood actresses, such as Anne Hathaway, refer to abortion as “another word for mercy.” And a CNN anchor implied the struggle to care for disabled children is a good reason to abort. Dobbs babies expose this prejudice. The spike in unwanted births created a class of unwanted children progressives quickly and overtly dehumanized. These babies were born because post-Dobbs trigger laws protected their lives. What messages will they hear about their worth? According to progressive morality, their lives are the result of a human rights violation. The guilt of this original sin will be nurtured through a progressive culture preaching that an ideal world would not include their existence. The lack of compassion shown toward these children by pro-choice Americans is shocking. Following the Dobbs ruling, a UCLA professor described unwanted children as a “death sentence.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement declaring abortion an “essential component of women’s health care.” The American Psychological Association called on Joe Biden to swiftly work to “protect abortion services,” and the American Medical Association referred to the decision as an “assault on reproductive healthcare.” Selective compassion But Dobbs babies are never the subject of progressive compassion. They are discussed like objects, not people. In These Times featured a story of a Mississippi woman who was denied an abortion after Dobbs. With his mother unable to travel out of state, Kingsley’s life was protected by Mississippi’s trigger law. In this story, Kingley’s birth is explicitly mourned. It highlights his mother’s pain as her life plans fall apart when she can't get the “abortion she needed” and is “forced to give birth” and raise her son. Kingsley’s humanity is left unacknowledged. The progressive cup of compassion has its limits, and Dobbs babies are the only identity group it is socially acceptable to wish did not exist. This highlights the absurdity of the progressive claim to moral superiority. The same movement that complains of “microaggressions” and chastises conservatives for bigotry against marginalized groups fails to see the hypocrisy of denying the humanity of innocent children conceived in less-than-ideal circumstances. Progressives, it seems, possess immense levels of unresolved cognitive dissonance. Scrutinizing progressive prejudice The time has come to scrutinize the prejudices held dear by progressive culture. Why must children bear the burden of proving their worth to a culture that despises their existence? How can the same movement that chants “silence is violence” hold fast to beliefs that dehumanize untold numbers of children due to the arbitrary circumstances of their conception? The limits of progressive “love” and “tolerance” must be tested. A balanced, rational conversation about the competing moral claims in the political and cultural realm demands that society contend with the cost of progressive beliefs and the unseen victims of its ideologies, because unfortunately, the harm of progressive ideas extends far beyond the child victims shackled with the shame of unwanted status. With Roe in the rearview mirror, we must discuss the Kingsleys of the world. Their pain results directly from our dominant moral philosophies, and these children will question their dignity from the earliest days of their lives. Yet it is critical that they know some valued their births, even while others mourned. Our response to their pain will speak to our collective capacity to engage with the silent suffering of the children buried in the abortion controversy. Those who value life need not fear encountering the pain of Dobbs babies, for in the pro-life community, their value was never disputed. But for progressives, the Dobbs baby is a threat. How will those who champion compassion and view offense as a cardinal sin respond to the pain of a child who bears the scarlet letter of an unwanted conception that could not be reversed by the “right” to abort? There is a price to progressive prejudice, and it is borne by the most vulnerable among us.

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