X filed a lawsuit against Media Matters‚ stating that the publisher “knowingly and maliciously” misrepresented the amount of antisemitic content on the platform. The media watchdog released a report on Thursday that accused X of placing ads for brands next to pro-Hitler and white nationalist accounts. Elon Musk vowed to fight and file a thermonuclear lawsuit. “Not […] The post Twitter/X Files Thermonuclear Lawsuit Against Media Matters appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Our Top 10 Koko Taylor Songs list looks at the Queen of Blues. Koko Taylor’s accomplishments made her a trailblazer for women in the blues genre. Her music broke color barriers. She kept the tradition of the big belters alive. Her vocal style was reminiscent of legendary artists Bessie Smith‚ Ma Rainey‚ Big Mama Thornton‚ and Memphis Minnie. Koko Taylor’s talent left a permanent mark on the blues scene. She inspired generations of singers with her talent and determination. The gritty vocalist had an impressive stage presence that captivated her audience. Her raw vocals fit well with the new era The post 10 Essential Koko Taylor Songs appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Democrats Have a Youth Problem

You name it – from ladybugs and thousands of grasshoppers to a World War II artillery shell‚ if it's small enough it's probably been found in someone's butt.Usually‚ it's not exactly baffling how the objects got up there. But just occasionally‚ there is a real mystery. Recently‚ for example‚ a team conducted a colonoscopy on a 63-year-old man and found a fly lurking in his colon. The man‚ who had an unremarkable history of minor heart problems‚ asthma‚ and tinnitus‚ showed up for his colonoscopy having prepared his bowels for the procedure. Not having a view clear of debris is detrimental to the usefulness of a colonoscopy in diagnosis‚ and as such medical professionals have come up with a scale of cleanliness known as the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale. Just as you can have your erections graded (when medically necessary) you can have your colon cleanliness assessed on a scale from 0 to 9. The right colon‚ transverse colon‚ and left colon are assessed on a scale from 0 ("mucosa is not visible due to solid feces‚ and the fecal masses cannot be removed") to 3 ("the entire mucosa of the colon segment can be seen well‚ with no residual soiling"). These scores are then added up for the overall score‚ with the patient in question scoring 2 ("the mucosa of the colon segment can be seen well‚ with minor amounts of residual stool‚ small fragments of stool and/or opaque liquid") in all segments for a good overall score of 6.With a clear view‚ as well as moderate pancolonic diverticulosis‚ five colon polyps‚ and hemorrhoids‚ the team found a fly hanging out in the transverse colon. The fly was not moving‚ even when prodded by the doctor performing the colonoscopy."The patient was unsure on how the fly got into his colon‚" the team explained in his case report‚ adding that the find was very rare and a mystery. "He had strictly consumed clear liquids the day before the procedure. He reported having eaten pizza and lettuce for the evening meal 2 days before the procedure‚ but does not recall a fly in his food."And yet here the fly was‚ seemingly completely intact after its ordeal and subsequent death.The study is published in The American Journal of Gastroenterology.

JWST has gazed deep into the heart of our Milky Way galaxy and spotted some never-before-seen features that astronomers are yet to fully understand.The image shows Sagittarius C‚ a star-forming region located around 300 light-years from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way‚ Sagittarius A*. This is relatively close to the galactic center and provides the stage for some especially exciting star formation activity. “The galactic center is a crowded‚ tumultuous place. There are turbulent‚ magnetized gas clouds that are forming stars‚ which then impact the surrounding gas with their outflowing winds‚ jets‚ and radiation. Webb has provided us with a ton of data on this extreme environment‚ and we are just starting to dig into it‚” Rubén Fedriani‚ a co-investigator of the project at the Instituto Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain‚ said in a statement.Captured by JWST’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera)‚ the image shows a cluster of approximately 500‚000 stars and protostars that are forming and glowing against the backdrop of violent infrared-dark clouds. In the middle of the cluster‚ we can see a massive protostar over 30 times the mass of our Sun. The darker patches of the image might initially seem less crowded with stars and protostars‚ but the opposite is true; these are the most crowded parts of the image. It only appears less busy because the cloud surrounding the protostars is so dense that the light from the stars behind it cannot reach JWST. The full version of the newly released image of Sagittarius C in the Milky Way.Image Credit: NASA‚ ESA‚ CSA‚ STScI‚ S. Crowe (UVA)The strangest feature of the image is the cyan-colored feature surrounding the lower side of the dark cloud. As explained by the researchers‚ you’d typically expect this to be produced by energetic photons being emitted by young massive stars‚ but they suspect that JWST has picked up on something more significant‚ which they’re keen to investigate.The team also wants to look further into the needle-like structures in the ionized hydrogen that chaotically appear in the cyan-color haze.“There’s never been any infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity we get with Webb‚ so we are seeing lots of features here for the first time. Webb reveals an incredible amount of detail‚ allowing us to study star formation in this sort of environment in a way that wasn’t possible previously‚” explained Samuel Crowe‚ the observation team’s principal investigator and undergraduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.“The image from Webb is stunning‚ and the science we will get from it is even better. Massive stars are factories that produce heavy elements in their nuclear cores‚ so understanding them better is like learning the origin story of much of the universe‚” he added.

Penguin plumage may look like adorable little tuxedos‚ but new research has shown they serve a very practical purpose too. It seems African penguins and two of their close relatives use the dots on their bellies as “name tags” that enable them to identify one another‚ even amid a bustling throng of other penguins.Humans are not alone in their ability to identify individuals from among their species based on specific marks and characteristics. Previous research has shown that primates are capable of this‚ but so are others. Paper wasps‚ for instance‚ can recognize the faces of other wasps‚ while some parrots appear to give their offspring names which are articulated as specific squarks.In birds‚ the ability to identify individuals has largely been based on audio signals‚ rather than visual ones. This makes sense if you think that‚ in most cases‚ the animals will be hiding in trees and so may not be easy to distinguish visually. However‚ it seems there are some exceptions to this.For example‚ it is known that Bewick's swans‚ a particularly diminutive species of swan found in Europe‚ identify one another via sight. But it is not currently known how they do so. Well‚ that was until the penguins waddled onto the researchers' radar.It seems a colony of African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) held at the Zoomarine Italia‚ a marine park near Rome‚ may well hold a clue as to how birds recognize one another.According to Luigi Baciadonna‚ a psychologist who conducted the work while at the University of Turin‚ the little dots on these bird’s chests are striking‚ reports Science. The patterns appear to be unique to each penguin‚ allowing zookeepers to identify and keep an eye on the animals they look after. So do the birds use these markings for the same purpose?To test it‚ Baciadonna and colleagues set up a simple test at the park to explore it. At feeding time‚ a penguin would be gently ushered into a small enclosure. At the end of the space were two life-size photographs of other penguins – one of the enclosed penguin’s mate and the other of another member of its colony.The aim was to see if the enclosed penguin would spend more time looking at its mate than it did the other image‚ which‚ they believed‚ would suggest the animal recognized the image.The researchers found that the penguins did indeed spend longer looking at the photo of their mate (23 seconds on average) than they did the other penguin and that they spent almost double the time standing next to them.Following this‚ the team edited the photo of the penguins to remove their dots. They then repeated the experiment with two images – one of the penguin’s mate and one with the same bird without its dots. Once again‚ the birds spent more time looking at the image of their mate with their markings.Finally‚ in a third test‚ the penguins were shown two photos similar to the first test (with a photo of their mate and another member of their colony)‚ only in this version the researchers removed the dots from both images. And‚ as you may have guessed‚ the birds did not seem to recognize their mate.It seems then that the ability to recognize other individuals from the same species is an ability held by more animals than previously thought. We bet you won’t look at penguins the same way again.The study is published in Animal Behaviour.[H/T: Science]

When we say the words “science experiment”‚ it probably conjures up images of bubbling flasks of brightly colored chemicals‚ or shooting laser beams‚ or basically anything from the opening sequence of Dexter’s Laboratory. It probably doesn’t make you think of a bunch of people sitting in a room watching a video of someone shaking a box. But scientists recently carried out this last experiment‚ and behind a deceptively unglamorous exterior is a fascinating insight into the workings of the human brain.This experiment aimed to test something that you are likely very skilled at‚ even if you’ve never thought about it before. Come for the science‚ stay for the ego boost.“Just by looking at how someone’s body is moving‚ you can tell what they are trying to learn about their environment‚” explained study author Chaz Firestone‚ an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University‚ in a statement. “We do this all the time‚ but there has been very little research on it.”What Firestone is referring to here is a type of behavior called an epistemic action. These are actions we perform when we’re trying to learn some information about an object or our environment. What the box-shaking experiment demonstrates is that humans are very good at understanding the reasoning behind someone else’s behaviors.  The team recruited 500 people and asked them to watch these two videos of someone shaking a box.Could you tell who was trying to figure out the number of items in the box‚ and who was trying to figure out the shape of the items? Almost all of the 500 participants could‚ and they figured it out within seconds.“What is surprising to me is how intuitive this is‚” said lead author Sholei Croom. “People really can suss out what others are trying to figure out‚ which shows how we can make these judgments even though what we’re looking at is very noisy and changes from person to person.”The next thing the team would like to investigate is how adept we are at telling the difference between epistemic actions and another‚ sometimes similar‚ class of behaviors called pragmatic actions. For example‚ you might dip your toe into the bath to check the water temperature before diving right in – that would be an epistemic action. However‚ you would also probably place your foot in the water first if you were simply getting into the bath‚ secure in the knowledge that the water was just right – that would be a pragmatic action.“It’s one thing to know where someone is headed or what product they are reaching for. But it’s another thing to infer whether someone is lost or what kind of information they are seeking‚” Firestone summarized.Far from simply being a fascinating window into an under-studied area of human cognition‚ this work could have real-world implications. One example is in the field of artificial intelligence (AI)‚ developing robots that can deduce what we’re looking for from our actions‚ just as we humans do all the time without realizing.The team‚ which also included sophomore neuroscience student Hanbei Zhou‚ is also keen to learn more about when in human development these undeniably impressive skills start to appear.Firestone said‚ “When you think about all the mental calculations someone must make to understand what someone else is trying to learn‚ it’s a remarkably complicated process. But our findings show it’s something people do easily.”Go us!The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.