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Fruit Flies Age Faster After Witnessing Death
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 997
This is fascinating:
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/science/fruit-flies-death-aging.html
In brief, fruit flies that have witnessed or been in the presence of other dead fruit flies will age faster than fruit flies that have not. And - for reasons yet unknown, fruit flies that have been exposed to death are thereafter avoided or shunned by those of their brethren that have not witnessed death.
If the simple psychology of a fruit fly can have that kind of reaction to death or trauma, what then of people?
And, while on the surface unrelated it reminds me how once Hollywood established the convention that people fall down dead when they've been shot, and people have been doing that ever since (when in fact chances are you've got a fair bit of life in you yet...).
Sunday Morning Coffee
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 516
Coffee, before work at the fishbowl on Ward & Baker.
Sit inside, only E***** is there, the Big City Blonde, holding court with a table of older blonde ladies ranging from 30 to 50 odd, presumably she's selling her line of skincare and beauty products. She catches my eye, that glance of shared recognition and dismissal.
She's always a show but I'm not always up for it, move outside.
Reading my book, Hegel's "The Philosophy of History", I'm only just starting to get into it. I'm about halfway through.
Inside the café there's a beautiful girl looking out the window. She doesn't see me, or - more probably, isn't paying attention, slender with dark Semitic features, dark curly haired pulled up behind her head, gazing across the street with a melancholy, thoughtful air. She's looking at Shoe-La-La, no, she's looking into the beyond in that way that people do when they're distracted. She'd make a great painting - through the window reflecting the old apartments on Baker, the bus stop, blue sky and white clouds, the veils of reflections filling in her body, I surreptitiously snap a photo with my phone, how to paint this?
I'm interrupted from my own reveries by H*****, the fashionably dressed dog walker. We chat, about my book, about Yoga & Vedic Masters', he's studied in India, 5 years, about ...
Classical fluffy woo-Nelson conversations, but nothing out of the ordinary. It takes a turn, though, when he talks about the UFO's he's seen on Baker, a couple of years ago, why, even, just again last night - right there, over Pulpit rock, there were, then they opened a portal and just disappeared, our alien overlords, and it wasn't in the paper and why isn't anyone talking about this...
This is my cue, I've had my coffee, my refill, time to get to work...
Rub-a-dub-dub
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 996
Rub-a-Dub-Dub
5 men in a sub
and who/where do you think they be?
The Diver, The Pilot, The Founder who founders
A Billionaire and his heir...
All Crushed now and Drowned at the bottom of the Sea...
(actually, only need: "Rub-a-Dub-Dub, 5 Men in a Sub, And Where do you think they be???"...Everyone knows the rest...)
That the Entirely Predictable Misadventures of the most unsympathetic and entitled band of Adventurers should demand our undivided attention, sympathy, empathy and grief, well, no thanks, there are better causes.
Paris, Texas - Wim Wenders
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 928
2 hours of my life I'll never get back...
I'd heard good things about it, finally got around to watching it. And no. Not my cup of tea, not at all.
That said, most reviews disagree.
Link: Wiki on Paris, Texas
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