๐๐ค๐ Repeal GRA ๐๐ค๐ Liked a tweet & made it onto a list๐น Flushed out sheet music & a whole orange from a tuba once ๐ฌ
Folkestone Cretaceous
Joined April 2010
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Pip Cooper retweeted
Forget all the huge supermarkets and their mawkish Christmas adverts, this was the best Christmas advert - Enniskillen pub Charlie's put out this advert back in 2023. Itโs brilliant.
Pip Cooper retweeted
Iโve got you. JamesBlunt.lnk.to/AirplaneMoโฆ
Pip Cooper retweeted
๐๐ป Today's Star Trek Trivia Question (Level: Expert)
Thanks to @The1stDuty for this one:
In TOS "Where No Man Has Gone Before," what name is on the tombstone Gary Mitchell intends for Kirk?
a. Captain Jerk
b. James R. Kirk
c. Jimmy Boy
d. Poor Dead Jim
e. Captain Corpse
Pip Cooper retweeted
In 1797, a British Army surgeon called John Rollo had a diabetic officer passing sugar in his urine.
He put him on meat and fat. The sugar vanished. The officer recovered. Rollo wrote it up.
For the next hundred years, low-carbohydrate eating was the standard treatment for diabetes. In the textbooks, on the wards, in what doctors actually did.
In 1915, Frederick Allen opened a diabetes clinic at the Rockefeller Institute. There was no insulin. He kept patients alive on almost no carbohydrate at all, and some lived long enough to receive the first insulin in 1922.
The diet bought them years they had no other way of getting.
Then insulin arrived, and the diet became an inconvenience.
If a needle could handle the blood sugar, nobody needed to restrict the bread. The drug had a manufacturer. The diet had nobody.
In the 1950s, Elliott Joslin, the most influential diabetes doctor in America, began quietly loosening the carbohydrate limits that had defined his own field for 150 years.
In 1977, the McGovern guidelines told the entire American public to cut fat and eat more carbohydrate. Diabetics were not excused.
By the 1980s, the American Diabetes Association was recommending that 50 to 60% of a diabetic's calories come from carbohydrate.
Half of every meal from the one thing the disease is defined by being unable to handle.
The prescriptions went up. The insulin doses went up. The amputations went up. The pharmaceutical companies posted earnings that would embarrass a small country.
In 2008, the ADA conceded that low-carbohydrate diets could be appropriate. As an option. In a footnote. After thirty years of recommending the reverse.
In 2019, a two-year trial put type 2 diabetics on a low-carbohydrate diet, and more than half came off their medication with normal blood sugar. The same result Rollo wrote up in 1797.
In 2021, Diabetes UK quietly published guidance accepting low-carbohydrate eating as a valid option.
224 years after the case report.
Remarkable pace.
Pip Cooper retweeted
๐๐ป Today's Star Trek Trivia Question (Level: Intermediate)
If you want to pick a lock or crack a safe, who should you call?
a. A Ferengi
b. An Ocampan
c. A Vidiian
d. A Talaxian
e. A Trill
Pip Cooper retweeted
Hereโs one of the most fascinating child development videos Iโve ever shared.
As your baby learns language, they begin by approximating the examples you set.
After a period of early experimentation with sound (including cries, coos and gurgles), infants begin babbling - making speech-like sounds (which often include components of conventional speech) that are - nonetheless - not yet conventionally meaningful.
This babbling phase is a precursor to the use of formal words. And it happens in all languages.
Including sign language.
This video shows an infant (who, by the way, is not hearing impaired) โbabblingโ to her deaf grandparents.
As they sign to her, she responds in kind, using her hands to approximate the signed communication that they are modeling.
Itโs a whole serve and return conversation, just as if they were conversing verbally.
If youโll watch carefully, youโll note distinct turn taking.
And - interestingly - that with her grandparents she largely avoids vocalizations, in favor of gesture.
What a treat to see this rich example of bilingual language development.
This fascinating video was shared to TT by mara_mccullough.
Pip Cooper retweeted
Beautiful Blue Tit on my suet block this week. ๐
Taken from my bathroom window. ๐๐ฆ
Pip Cooper retweeted
๐๐ป Today's Star Trek Trivia Question (Level: Intermediate)
Okay one more special one for Sir Stewart. What is Picard's favorite holodeck program?
a. Knuckles Malone
b. Sherlock Holmes
c. Dixon Hill
d. The Royale
e. Max Sterling
Pip Cooper retweeted
๐๐ป Today's Star Trek Trivia Question (Level: Expert)
Quite sadly, we've just lost Sir Patrick Stewart. What was his personal favorite episode?
a. "Encounter at Farpoint"
b. "Deja Q"
c. "Mรฉnage ร Troi"
d. "The Inner Light"
e. "Who Watches the Watchers"
Pip Cooper retweeted
โSomeone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all, Number One, we're only mortal.โ - Picard Star Trek Generations RIP Captain ๐ซก๐ขโค๏ธ
Pip Cooper retweeted
There were five slave trades. You were taught about only one. ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ๐ฌ๐ง
One. The Atlantic. Twelve million Africans shipped to the Americas. Britain banned it in 1807, then hunted it for sixty years.
Two. The Barbary trade. A million Europeans taken to North Africa. Britain bombarded Algiers in 1816.
Three. The Saharan trade. A thousand years of caravans north across the desert. Britain had its northern end banned. Tripoli, 1857.
Four. The East African trade. Twenty thousand people a year through one customs house. Britain forced the market shut. 5 June 1873.
Five. The Ottoman trade. Raiders sold Eastern Europeans south for three hundred years. Britain made the Sultan ban it in 1854.
It cost sixty years and two thousand sailors. Nobody else fought all five. ๐๐ฌ๐ง
It isn't over. Mauritania only made it a crime in 2007. Fifty million people are in slavery today.
Someone has to remember who started the fight. โ๐ฌ๐ง๐ช
Pip Cooper retweeted
๐จ Breaking: After a three year battle, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has finally changed its policy on single-sex spaces for staff to bring it in line with the law.
It is amazing how simple it is! Now all NHS Trusts must urgently follow suit.
Bethany Hutchison, President of the Darlington Nursing Union and lead claimant in the case, said:
โThis short sentence in a policy has taken women three years of fear, humiliation and extraordinary personal sacrifice to secure.
โWe were nurses asking for the most basic protection: somewhere private and safe to undress at work, away from members of the opposite sex. Instead of listening, the Trust told us to compromise, broaden our mindset and be more inclusive. We were forced out of our own changing room, placed in inadequate facilities, threatened with disciplinary action and made to fear for our jobs and professional careers.
โVulnerable colleagues were put under intolerable pressure. International nurses feared losing their visas. Women who had experienced domestic abuse were left distressed and afraid. Four of us were reported to our professional regulator simply for speaking publicly about what was happening.
โThroughout it all, the Trust defended a policy it had been warned was unlawful. Even after the Supreme Court clarified the law, it refused to change course. It took a full tribunal judgment, an apology, damages and an enormous bill before the Trust finally wrote biological reality into its policy.
โWe welcome this change because it will protect women across the Trust, but it should never have required a three-year legal battle. No nurse should ever again be treated as we were for asking for dignity, privacy and safety.โ
See more breaking in the Daily Express and with @CConcern and the Christian Legal Centre who have supported the nurses from the beginning.
express.co.uk/news/uk/226004โฆ
christianconcern.com/ccpressโฆ
Pip Cooper retweeted
Due to popular request, I'll have this available as a fine art print for a couple days. I called this piece "Of Stone and Science", and it is the full Hunter moon from 10/25. It's super detailed!
Get the print: cosmicbackground.io/pages/ofโฆ
Pip Cooper retweeted
An adorable Long Tailed Tit in my Somerset garden, as photographed from my bathroom window. ๐๐๐ฆ
Pip Cooper retweeted
๐๐ป Bonus Star Trek Trivia Question (to honor Walter Koenig)
What is Chekov's first name?
a. Sergei
b. Piotr
c. Aleksandr
d. Pavel
e. Vanya
Pip Cooper retweeted
25 OCTOBER 1854 The Charge of the Light Brigade, one of the most famous and tragic cavalry charges in British history, took place at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.
Lord Raglan, the British commander, sent an order "to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns". From his hilltop, the target was obvious. In the valley below, it wasn't. When Lord Lucan, who commanded the cavalry, asked which guns, the officer carrying the message, Captain Nolan, is said to have swept his arm towards the wrong end of the valley: "There, my lord, is your enemy! There are your guns!"
Lord Cardigan led about 670 men down a valley more than a mile long, with Russian guns firing on them from three sides. Nolan was one of the first to die.
They reached the guns, but at a terrible cost. About 110 men were killed and around 160 wounded, and roughly 375 horses died. Watching, the French General Bosquet said: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." It is magnificent, but it is not war.
Cardigan survived. He reportedly went back to his yacht in the harbour to dine. That same day the 93rd Highlanders stood firm as "the thin red line", and the Heavy Brigade made a successful charge of its own, now largely forgotten.
Weeks later Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalised the charge: "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die."
Behind the legend were real men and real families. Many survivors later fell into poverty, and some ended their days in the workhouse.
Today we remember their courage, and reflect on the responsibility of those who command others in war.
Courage should never excuse failures of leadership.
Pip Cooper retweeted
As I previously posted
"They use the frightening image of your child confronting a strange man in the bathroom to get you to agree you should let any strange man in the bathroom with your child."
Pip Cooper retweeted
The premise of this ad depends on viewers recognizing that a girl has good reason to be alarmed by an adult man in a women's restroom -- it relies on people recognizing that men in little girls bathrooms are a problem.
The central problem with the Democratic Party's position in this ad is that Democratic policy treats the sex-based boundaries of girls as a problem for trans people.
Apparently, a girl's fear matters when the man is a Republican. But, the Democrats don't see a problem when that man says he is a woman. Does her discomfort suddenly become prejudice based on a man's sincere promise tonher that he is also a girl, just like her?
In the Democratic party's policy, if you replace the Republican man with any man and call him a woman, the little girl is now expected to:
- stay and be potentially subjected to indecent exposure or voyeurism without redress should it occur
- leave and find a male-free space to protect her privacy and personal boundaries,
- try to suppress her needs until she can relieve herself privately,
- avoid drinking water or fluids or eating things that might require a space to relieve herself,
- remain silent despite feeling frightened and uncomfortable with the man's presence, or
- face punishment for objecting.
Either her privacy and boundaries matter, or they don't. A change in someone's declared and undefined "gender identity" doesn't make her concerns disappear. Having to call the man "woman" doesn't make the situation any less frightening.
And then there's the โgenital inspectorโ fantasy of the Democrats.
The Democratic party is suggesting this is a solution that has actually been proposed by Republicans when they are the only people talking about it or suggesting it.
Can the Dems identify:
- which law requires strangers to inspect children's genitals?
- who proposed stationing inspectors in bathrooms?
- why enforcing sex-based protections requires genital inspection?
People generally know their own sex. They can understand the rules and comply without physical examination. Sex is routinely recorded at birth, and existing documentation provides less intrusive means of resolving genuine disputes.
Besides, sex isn't defined solely by genital appearance. Surgery can alter appearance without changing sex.
So what assumptions are the Democrats making tha makes genital inspections supposedly necessary?
That transgender people cannot recognize their own sex?
That trans people cannot understand the rules?
That trans people will deliberately disregard the rules or break they law? That trans people cannot be trusted to comply with the same laws and rules as everyone else without everyone being subjected to invasive genital inspections?
That the only way we can possibly know a person's sex is through the crudest form of sex verification?
Or, that the possibility that someone might break a rule means that everyone must be physically examined?
The Democrats invented an enforcement scenario, attribute it to the GOP and then condemn their opponents for supposedly demanding it. The Democrats are the people introducing genital inspectors into this debate, so they bear the burden of explaining why they're necessary. So the GOP should make them explain it and ask them which GOP law maker suggested the solution they are fantasizing about.
And they cannot use a frightened girl to make their political point without confronting the question their own ad raises:
Why is a girl's fear of a man in her restroom persuasive when it serves your campaign, but her right to object to sharing that space with males becomes negotiable when it conflicts with your gender-identity policies?
This type of scare ad is easily countered -- it is a Dem fantasy and only makes the GOPs reasons for championing Equal Rights for women and girls more evident.
Anyone swinging to the Democrats because of this ad, is an idiot. Any Democratic institution supporting this ad is idiotic.
๐จ BREAKING: This ad, when tested, moves swing voters 8 points away from Trump & Republicans.
THATโS HUGE MOVEMENT.
Please share!
Turns out Americans donโt like creepy Republicans obsessing about their junk. ๐คทโโ๏ธ #MAGAInYourBathroom