Weird

Writing as a thankless task

Really Simple Syndication

It certainly is, for most. Last year Guinagh got $500 for his four-year work in translating Virgil’s ‘Aeneid,’ while his wife won $1,000 in a 25-word slogan contest. Pittston Gazette – Sep 18, 1954 If you’re interested, you can find Guinagh’s translation on archive.org.

Health

Physician Group Sues Trump Health Agencies Over Scrubbed Sites, Data

Really Simple Syndication

This is a MedPage Today story. Physicians have launched a legal challenge against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and federal health agencies for removing webpages from health-related websites. Doctors for America filed a lawsuit in federal court against the OPM, CDC, FDA, and HHS over the removal of a “broad range of health-related data and other information used every day” by health professionals and researchers. The announcement was made on Tuesday by Public Citizen Litigation Group, the legal arm of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. Public Citizen Litigation Group is representing Doctors for America, a nonprofit comprised of 27,000 physicians and medical students from all 50 states, in the suit. “Like many of my colleagues, I am both a doctor who takes care of patients and a researcher,” Reshma Ramachandran, MD, MPP, MHS, a member of the board of directors for Doctors for America, said in a statement. “Removing…

Tech

First-party Switch 2 games—including re-releases—all run either $70 or $80

Really Simple Syndication

Nintendo’s Switch 2 presentation gave us pricing for the console ($449 to start) and Nintendo’s product pages have given us pricing information for accessories ($80 for a Pro Controller, $90 for another pair of Joy-Cons, and $110 for a replacement dock, sheesh). But what Nintendo didn’t mention during the presentation was game pricing, either for standalone Switch 2 titles or the Switch 2 Edition upgrades for existing Switch games. Nintendo announced via its website after the presentation that Mario Kart World , the console’s flagship launch title, will cost $50 when you buy a digital copy as part of a Switch 2 bundle. But the game will cost $80 when you buy it on its own, $30 more than the pack-in version and $20 more than the usual $60 price for first-party Switch games. Pre-order listings at US retailers that have gone live since this morning also list several $80 games—we’ll use Wal-Mart’s as an example. The upgraded Switch 2 Editions for a trio of Switch games—2024’s Super Mario Party Jamboree, 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and 2022’s Kirby and the Forgotten Land—are all going for $80, the same as Mario Kart World. Read full article Comments

Tech

Male fruit flies drink more alcohol to get females to like them

Really Simple Syndication

Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are tremendously fond of fermented foodstuffs. Technically, it’s the yeast they crave, produced by yummy rotting fruit, but they can consume quite a lot of ethanol as a result of that fruity diet. Yes, fruit flies have ultra-fast metabolisms, the better to burn off the booze, but they can still get falling-down drunk—so much so, that randy inebriated male fruit flies have been known to court other males by mistake and fail to mate successfully. Then again, apparently adding alcohol to their food increases the production of sex pheromones in male fruit flies, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. That, in turn, makes them more attractive to the females of the species. “We show a direct and positive effect of alcohol consumption on the mating success of male flies,” said co-author Ian Keesey of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. “The effect is caused by the fact that alcohol, especially methanol, increases the production of sex pheromones. This in turn makes alcoholic males more attractive to females and ensures a higher mating success rate, whereas the success of drunken male humans with females is likely to be questionable.” Read full article Comments