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Cake day: March 5th, 2024

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  • Relevant Section on the genetics:

    For the study, the researchers took blood from five of the cats, which had been adopted, and conducted a DNA test on four of the felines, which turned up no genetic mutations associated with white fur.

    They then performed a whole genome sequencing for two of the cats, and this step turned up a deletion in what’s called the KIT gene, which can encode whether white will turn up in a feline’s coat (scientists have also connected variations in the KIT gene to piebald patterns in various animals like horses and mice.)

    “In summary, comparative data from other species and genotype segregation analysis support the newly discovered KIT region deletion as potentially being a cause of salmiak coat color in cats,” the researchers conclude.



  • Relevant section of the article where it lays out what has been changing and what still needs to change:

    … graft has been all but exterminated in some of the worst affected areas - for instance, government services such as issuing passports, permits and licences.

    He also tells the BBC that significant progress had been made in reforming education and police.

    Problem areas

    Mr Kalmykov admits, however, that the government has been less successful in eradicating corruption in using natural resources (e.g. in mining and forestry), regulating monopolies and in large infrastructure projects.

    “Progress has been slowest where big interests and big players meet,” he says.

    According to him, “in the next five-ten years the government should focus on cleansing the judiciary, which will make the general system of public administration healthier”.






  • Some good stats in the article:

    … bicycles already surpass cars as a means of transportation in the interior of Paris, accounting for 11.2% of trips compared to 4.3%. A similar trend is seen in trips between the suburbs and the city center: 14% are made by bicycle and 11.8% by car.

    Rue de Rivoli, with its two-way cycle lanes and its dedicated lane for buses and taxis …

    … Paris has more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of facilities adapted for cyclists, including more than 300 km (186 m) of bike lanes and 52 km (32 m) of provisional lanes, according to the latest available municipal data, from 2021. The rest are lanes shared with cars or lanes only marked with paint on the ground.

    By 2026, local officials want the entire city to be suitable for two-wheel transportation. To this end, it has set aside $250 million, $100 million more than in Hidalgo’s first term.

    … only 27% of the “bike plan” has been carried out despite the fact that 62% of Hidalgo’s second term in office has already elapsed.

    … indicated that 11.2% of trips in Paris were made by bike between 2022 and 2023, compared to 4.3% by car. The change in trend is clear. In 2021, two wheels still represented 5.6% of trips, while cars were 9%, according to Belliard.

    … the research indicates that residents of the nearest suburbs also prefer to use the bike, with 14% of trips compared to 11.8% for cars. The figures are even better during rush hour, when 18.9% of trips are made by bike and only 6.6% by car. Travel on foot, however, continues to lead mobility within the municipality with 53%, followed by those made on public transit, with 30%. The study was carried out with 3,337 residents of the capital region who agreed to be fitted with a GPS tracker.


  • Interesting piece of the journal article:

    On the contrary, many analysts reject historical precedents as guides to contemporary policy. Perhaps they should take warning from the aforementioned infamous 1972 Club of Rome/MIT study, Limits to Growth (LTG) [99], which showed that, on a business-as-usual track, global society would face collapse by mid-21st century. As might be expected, many economists and techno-optimists roundly rejected this assessment—economists ignore overshoot and even grossly underestimate the damage from climate change; their concepts and models are divorced from biophysical reality [100]. However, subsequent studies show that the real world is behaving with disturbing fidelity to LTG modelling, particularly the two (of four) scenarios that indicate a halt in growth over the next decade or so, followed by subsequent declines and collapse [101].

    [Emphasis mine]

    Complete Abstract:

    Homo sapiens has evolved to reproduce exponentially, expand geographically, and consume all available resources. For most of humanity’s evolutionary history, such expansionist tendencies have been countered by negative feedback. However, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduced many forms of negative feedback, enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth. This natural capacity is being reinforced by growth-oriented neoliberal economics—nurture complements nature. Problem: the human enterprise is a ‘dissipative structure’ and sub-system of the ecosphere—it can grow and maintain itself only by consuming and dissipating available energy and resources extracted from its host system, the ecosphere, and discharging waste back into its host. The population increase from one to eight billion, and >100-fold expansion of real GWP in just two centuries on a finite planet, has thus propelled modern techno-industrial society into a state of advanced overshoot. We are consuming and polluting the biophysical basis of our own existence. Climate change is the best-known symptom of overshoot, but mainstream ‘solutions’ will actually accelerate climate disruption and worsen overshoot. Humanity is exhibiting the characteristic dynamics of a one-off population boom–bust cycle. The global economy will inevitably contract and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century.




  • That’s a good point about disease and I think it could be a potential cause of the low genetic prevalence.

    I don’t know about your roaming free option. I think if that were true, there would still be wild packs today or there would have been roving dog packs mentioned in historical text (possible but I don’t recall any mention of them). Alternatively, they would have inter-breed with European varieties and had a more significant impact on genetics, but that’s not seen.

    While I agree that Europeans liked to remove/exterminate “uncivilized” things, that mostly applies to people. I suspect if the American dogs were significantly useful they would have made use of them.

    This conversation allowed me to recall that the plains tribes utilized dogs as pack animals. Then once horses made their way onto the scene those tribes switched from dogs to horses for that role. I’m not sure what other “jobs” American dogs performed but I suspect if they were significantly utilized as pack animals they were probably breed for such and with that niche gone they may not have performed well in other “dog” tasks, compared to European varieties.

    To conclude, for American dogs to be such a small percent of the current dog genome, I think, the European varieties had to significantly outlive their American counterparts. Whether because they were replaced by better performing European varieties/horses, because they died from European diseases, or a combination of those options.