ExFatLoss publishes a summary of the ex150 trial results. “Just like the proverbial dog chasing an automobile, I realized that I didn’t know what to do next. When I first asked for volunteers to try ex150, I was worried: what if this crazy cream diet doesn’t work for anyone else? What if it only works for me? Spoiler alert: it seems to work for nearly everybody. Young and old, men and women, obese to normal weight, very active to lazy.” We’d quibble a little: it worked for nearly everyone, but also 10 out of 10 participants had previous experience with low-carb/keto/carnivore. It’s not clear if it would work for the average person. Even so, a great start and an interesting finding. We hope to see ExFatLoss continue his research and would be interested to see others replicate this result! 

Luck based medicine: angry eldritch sugar gods edition — an n=1 self-experiment, concluding among other things that “1-2 pounds of watermelon/day kills my desire for processed desserts, but it takes several weeks to kick in.” The author also says, “metabolism is highly individual and who knows how much of this applies to anyone else.” And we agree. We will need hundreds or thousands of people doing n=1 studies like this in order to crack nutrition. You go back and look at 19th century astronomy, there were scores of astronomers tracking each new comet and asteroid. A 21st century nutrition science will rely on similarly broad participation. Nutrition may well be more confusing, and maybe more complicated, than the heavens. Fortunately it is easier to eat lots of watermelon than to set up an astronomical observatory.

Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots, then develop friendships, Northeastern University researchers say — they also like youtube.

Cleopatra (1917) is a lost film starring early sex symbol Theda Bara, the original “vamp”. All known copies were lost in a 1937 studio fire, and only tiny fragments remained. Until this month when someone found a fragment included with a toy film projector listed on eBay, and uploaded 41 seconds of footage to YouTube.

Unclear if it’s promising or not, but it’s an exciting idea: Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria

The term “go ham” is an acronym. As if that’s not bad enough, “Pakistan” is also an acronym. 

The song “Frank Mills” from the musical Hair was inspired by real Lost and Found submissions to Rave Magazine in 1966, and here they are: 

Creator of comic series Fables releases the series IP to the public domain after clash with DC over video game adaptation:

I chose to give it away to everyone. If I couldn’t prevent Fables from falling into bad hands, at least this is a way I can arrange that it also falls into many good hands. Since I truly believe there are still more good people in the world than bad ones, I count it as a form of victory.

… In the past decade or so, my thoughts on how to reform the trademark and copyright laws in this country (and others, I suppose) have undergone something of a radical transformation. The current laws are a mishmash of unethical backroom deals to keep trademarks and copyrights in the hands of large corporations, who can largely afford to buy the outcomes they want.

In my template for radical reform of those laws I would like it if any IP is owned by its original creator for up to twenty years from the point of first publication, and then goes into the public domain for any and all to use. However, at any time before that twenty year span bleeds out, you the IP owner can sell it to another person or corporate entity, who can have exclusive use of it for up to a maximum of ten years. That’s it. Then it cannot be resold. It goes into the public domain. So then, at the most, any intellectual property can be kept for exclusive use for up to about thirty years, and no longer, without exception.

Of course, if I’m going to believe such radical ideas, what kind of hypocrite would I be if I didn’t practice them? Fables has been my baby for about twenty years now. It’s time to let it go. This is my first test of this process. If it works, and I see no legal reason why it won’t, look for other properties to follow in the future. Since DC, or any other corporate entity, doesn’t actually own the property, they don’t get a say in this decision.

A Meat Thread on twitter: “Let me tell you the story of this still of stephen colbert wearing meat goggles, my buddy Frank, and how I learned to distrust science journalism.” The upshot: “Frank is fine, the world barely remembered the story two months later and he went on to get a doctorate from Chicago and is doing great work. But I never again trusted a science article from a newspaper.” 

T. S. Eliot wrote the book that was the basis for the musical CATS. Also he wrote it under the pen name “Old Possum”.

Mark Twain invented the bra clasp. But he did it under his other name, Samuel Clemens: