What would you do if a ghost blocked your path, or if a spirit appeared at your door, desperate for absolution? For the people of medieval England, these weren’t mere tales to spook children—they were real encounters that offered lessons about life, death, and the afterlife. Byland Abbey, a Cisterci...
Ghosts in Medieval Beliefs
Belief in ghosts was deeply rooted in the medieval imagination. Throughout the Middle Ages, countless references to restless spirits can be found in manuscripts and folklore. These spectres were often thought to have specific reasons for their appearance, most commonly to seek assistance from the living. Unlike the malevolent spirits of modern horror tales, medieval ghosts were often portrayed as suffering souls in need of help to reach peace.
From “ouch” to “aïe” to “yakayi,” languages across the world exclaim pain using similar-sounding words, hinting at a common origin
Most languages have a word that that serves as interjection for expressing pain. In Mandarin, it’s “ai-yo.” In French, it’s “aïe.” And in several Indigenous Australian languages, it’s “yakayi.” All have sound elements that seem quite similar—and that’s no coincidence, according to a new study in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Researchers found pain interjections are more likely to contain the vowel sound “ah” (written as [a] in the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA) and vowel combinations that use it, such as “ow” and “ai.” These findings may point back to the origins of human language itself.
Danny Sheehan recently told how UFOs have visited every single nuclear weapons facility in the world “several times” but never directly interacted with humans during the visits
Aliens have a "non-interference policy" and want to "avoid humans," an expert has claimed. UFO researcher and historian Richard Dolan made the claim in a video clip posted to his social media pages. The 34-second clip talks about how extraterrestrial beings mainly seem to shy away from directly interacting with humans, as other experts have recently hinted.
Indians slowly choking under clouds of air pollution
Air pollution is bringing death and disease to India, including to children, and even threatens the country's future generations. The government will need to look far beyond New Delhi to curb the issue, experts warn.
Air pollution goes beyond New Delhi
The recently opened clinic has already become a lifeline for those grappling with pollution-induced diseases, including bronchitis and breathing difficulties.
Doctors in this and other hospitals report cases of breathlessness, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). They say there are more patients than last year.
The elderly and those with heart conditions are particularly susceptible, experiencing heightened symptoms and requiring hospitalization.
The discovery of fast-forming exoplanets has provided new insights into the processes of planetary formation and evolution, challenging long-held assumptions about how planets emerge and develop in…
Understanding Planetary Formation
Planetary formation traditionally follows a gradual process known as core accretion. In this model, dust and gas in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star coalesce into planetesimals. Over millions of years, these planetesimals collide and merge, forming larger planetary cores. Once a core reaches a critical mass, it begins to attract a significant envelope of gas, eventually forming a fully-fledged planet.
However, the discovery of fast-forming exoplanets suggests that this timeline may be far more dynamic under certain conditions. Observations of young stellar systems reveal exoplanets forming within tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand years—a fraction of the time previously assumed necessary for planetary development.
Late Archaic large-scale fisheries in the wetlands of the pre-Columbian Maya Lowlands
On the basis of the data presented here, we conclude that the wetland features our team has investigated in the CTWS were initially constructed by Late Archaic hunter-gatherer-fisher groups and continued to be used by the Formative Maya. They were designed to channel annual flood waters into source ponds for fish trapping.
The mass harvesting of fish in these wetland-lagoonal environments served as a primary food source capable of supporting sizeable populations and semipermanent residence in the Late Archaic and ultimately fully sedentary pre-Columbian Maya populations by Formative times.
Researchers say fossilised marks were apparently made in same place within days of each other about 1.5m years ago
About 1.5m years ago a big-toothed cousin of prehistoric humans walked quickly along a lakeside in Kenya, footprints marking the muddy ground. But they were not our only ancestor on the scene: treading the same ground was the early human Homo erectus.
Researchers say an analysis of fossilised footprints discovered in deposits of the Turkana Basin, northern Kenya, suggest the marks were made by two different species on the human family tree who were in the same place within hours or days of each other.
Analysis of 200-million-year-old digested foods reveals how the animals became dominant.
Faeces and vomit fossils from dinosaurs reveal how the animals evolved to rule Earth. The study, which was published in Nature on 27 November, analysed hundreds of pieces of fossilized digestive material, called bromalites, to reconstruct what dinosaurs ate and how this changed1. The fossils reveal that the rise of the dinosaurs, over millions of years during the Triassic period, was influenced by factors including climate change and other species’ extinction.
“Our study shows that you can use pretty seemingly unremarkable fossils to get pretty remarkable results,” says co-author Martin Qvarnström, who studies early dinosaur evolution at Uppsala University in Sweden.
On Impartiality, Nepotism and State Broadcasting
What’s actually happening here, according to Rusbridger, is that these powerful media owners and editors – who control the majority right-wing press in Britain – are incensed that they can’t control the broadcast media and the BBC in the same way they do the print media. So they set out to do just that....
It is background but it’s coming to the foreground.
The broadcast media has dissipated as a controlling force but it still influences older viewers and acts as a mythological source of objectivity, which is the reason its such a prized goal. Surfacing some of these networks and bring them into the light is, I hope, useful?
Like many other parts of the world, the UK is in the firm grip of an epidemic of disinformation and misinformation
OP: @mikegalsworthy@mas.to
Like many other parts of the world, the UK is in the firm grip of an epidemic of disinformation and misinformation
Where does it originate?
Misinformation and disinformation abound in the UK from many sources, each with its own motivation.
Foreign interference: Some foreign powers have been accused of using disinformation with a view to destabilising democracies; an example is the widely alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Conspiracy theorists: Various groups or individuals who advance anti-vaccine rhetoric, climate denial, and “alternative” histories have seized upon social media as a method for magnifying their messages.
Everyday users: The most insidious form of misinformation probably emanates from ordinary people who are unwittingly passing along unverified or misleading content. What perhaps originates as a misconstrued post spirals into general belief.
Media and politicians: High-profile individuals and, in some instances, even news outlets have at various times propagated false or misleading information sometimes deliberately and at other times through negligence, further harming the public trust.
https://northeastbylines.co.uk/news/politics/how-the-uk-became-a-nation-of-misinformation-and-disinformation/
Believe in Scotland welcomes Scot Gov mitigation of Labour's heartless Winter fuel Payment cut.
The UK Government's cut to the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) is the single largest attack on pensioner wellbeing in living memory.
Believe in Scotland campaigned against this cut with a billboard, video and social media campaign pointing out that Labour's own research claimed that as many as 4,000 pensioners could die if the WFP was cut.
The fact that the WFP was devolved before it was cut and that Labour in Scotland voted for the cut but then claimed they would mitigate it if they were in government is clearly a naked political ploy. Playing political games with the lives and general wellbeing of Scotland’s pensioners is unworthy of any elected politician or political party.
A pint of dust: Visual campaign launched to highlight dangers of dust inhalation
With respirable crystalline silica a major cause of silicosis – a chronic lung condition that kills up to 1,000 people a year in the UK – Dustcontrol UK has
A dust extraction specialist has launched a campaign to highlight the dangers of dust inhalation – as it calculates that common construction jobs such as drilling and floor grinding can see individuals ingest the equivalent of more than a pint of dust across the course of a 40 year career.
With respirable crystalline silica a major cause of silicosis – a chronic lung condition that kills up to 1,000 people a year in the UK – Dustcontrol UK has launched a campaign to underline just how big a risk common construction jobs can pose to workers’ health.
The ‘Dust to dust’ campaign highlights that, by failing to take the right precautions, workers run the risk of inhaling a level of respirable dust that can prove fatal. And to help those working in construction visualise the dangers, the firm has calculated the amount of dust that can potentially be ingested in a lifetime to be the equivalent of 1.28 imperial pints of respirable dust or 0.68 imperial pints of respirable crystalline silica specifically.
Skint, baw ragged, poackets ful eh ma / fingers, cannae afford tae burn toast an / it’s November. Christmas is close. Av been / away bit...
OP: @scotlit@mastodon.scot
Skint, baw ragged, poackets ful eh ma
fingers, cannae afford tae burn toast an
it’s November. Christmas is close…
—William Letford, “This is it” Published in DIRT, Carcanet 2016
Were the Templars a Secret Cult?
Were the Templars truly secretive satanic worshippers, or is that just a myth perpetuated by conspiracy theories? Dive into the surprising evidence that reveals how this famed medieval order was far more open and integrated into society than legend suggests.
At the risk of appearing overly literal, it is perhaps worth stating the obvious – that a secret satanic cult requires, above all else… secrecy.
But the Templars were never an enclosed order, secretive and shut off from society as a whole. Even as third-party witnesses condemned the Templars for being secretive, the context of their testimony often made it clear that the order was well integrated within most echelons of society. Witness statements demonstrated that outsiders were regularly invited into Templar houses and chapels, and that the brothers were happy to chat, gossip or to engage in business just like other men of their class.
Testimonies at the trials demonstrate that, far from being secretive, the Templars were in close contact with other parts of society and led a far more sociable existence than one might expect from monks.
Drones spotted in UK could be from foreign adversaries:
*Ross Coulthart; Morning in America *
Drones detected near 3 US bases in England last week: Air Force
UFO expert says aliens ‘weren’t involved’ in famous Rendlesham Forest incident
Britain’s most well-known UFO sighting may have been caused by a bout of electromagnetic-fuelled psychosis, a top researcher has claimed.
The Rendlesham Forest incident, where members of the US Air Force stationed at RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, reported seeing unexplained lights and a craft in the forest in December 1980, has left people puzzled for decades over what the cause of the lights could have been.
Education should promote deep inquiry and individual autonomy, but often, it has been used as a vehicle for indoctrination. That's what Agustina S. Paglayan, a UC San Diego assistant professor of political science in the School of Social Sciences and the School of Global Policy and Strategy, argues ...
In the book, you argue that elites introduced mass education as a way to control and discipline lower-class children. How was this done, and why was it seen as necessary?
Mass education was really crafted as a clever system to instill obedience to the state and its laws. Schools used rewards and punishments to enforce rules, moral education dominated the curriculum and even basic reading and writing exercises taught compliance, like when students were asked to spell words like "duty" and "order."
School routines—following schedules, marching in lines, asking permission—all reinforced discipline. The entire system, from teacher training to school inspections, aimed to create citizens who wouldn't question authority or disrupt the status quo.
Governments saw schools as essential to maintaining internal security, viewing primary education less as a means to reduce poverty or promote industrialization than as a way to prevent social disorder.
Forgetful Politicians
Where does the Winter Fuel Allowance fiasco leave Scottish Labour? It’s been exposed as not just without principle but also without strategy as it has to pretend that it has autonomy and agency when it clearly has neither.
The Winter Fuel Allowance was due to be devolved in September of this year and replaced with a Scotgov equivalent. But in July of this year the UK Labour government announced that the WFA would be abolished for all but those on pension credit or other means tested benefits.
UK gov did not consult Scotgov about this. Rather, it notified them very shortly before making the public announcement. There is no conceivable way, therefore, to argue that Scotgov chose to cut the WFA. It had no involvement in that decision.
New research from the University of Zurich, based on data from more than 28,000 caregivers in three countries, shows that the longer individuals spend caring for loved ones, the more their well-being suffers, regardless of the caregiving context. These findings underscore the need for policy discussions to alleviate the burden of informal care.
The prevalence of informal caregiving continues to rise globally, bringing abrupt changes to caregivers' lives. But how does caregiving affect their well-being? Past research offers conflicting views: some suggest it enhances well-being by providing a sense of purpose, while others report declines due to emotional strain. To address this, a new study from the University of Zurich (UZH) analyzed data from 28,663 caregivers, who contributed 281,884 observations across panel studies in the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia. The results show a consistent drop in life satisfaction and emotional health, with an increase in loneliness and anxiety – particularly for women.
Well-being suffers over time
A huge landslide on the bottom of the Baltic Sea may have resulted in a tsunami. As part of a new project, researchers will try to uncover what could have happened 8,000 years ago, and whether it could happen again.
“When we studied sediment from the seabed off Blekinge we noticed anomalies. The sediment is like a history book, but the pages here are in completely the wrong order. Different types of layers are mixed up, and the order we were expecting to find them in simply doesn’t exist. The question we want to answer is whether this is due to a tsunami,” says Elinor Andrén, professor of environmental science at Södertörn University.
“The hypothesis we will test is that around 8,000 years ago, a submarine landslide caused a tsunami that affected the coastal areas of the southern Baltic Sea. This theory is not really far-fetched, as a similar event occurred off the coast of Norway. The area’s bedrock also has weaknesses that may cause earthquakes, which can lead to landslides. Something must have caused the landslide on the seabed."
Was the poem about the Tay Bridge disaster ?
Exactly and a point many cannot seem to understand, most occupational diseases are as a whole, caused simply by ignorance : The time to change this corporate 'for profit over all' ideology has well past. You take care sir and try not to worry . As with your elders, I am quite sure the heart failure will get you first ! Live long and prosper dude
That shit is mass produced over here in garages and garden sheds, the only substance that does go into every batch of whatever the manufacturers have to hand is the colouring. Taking it is even more dangerous than giving it a label !
My apologies , twas merely a slip of the finger .. I shall replace the missing Z and O forthwith.
Thank you for pointing this out, Jings, I hadn't actually noticed the missing letters !
This is what happens when you play around on small phone screens without your glasses on ..ha ha
I think it all depends on which app you are using .
On some apps the title link is the thumbnail along with the link under the header.
Whereas on other apps the title or header link is to be found below the post!
Confused? ..So am I
Yip - There are two separate videos in the post, Modern Standardised English is definitely being spoken in video 1..The Title ..Just as it says 'In English'
Rocket Engine Goes Up In Flames During Test At SaxaVord Spaceport In Britain
Nope.. No paywall on this version here dude :-
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a20718322/building-a-time-machine/
This is exactly what the research guys have concluded, whether it be dusty folks in war zones, emergency service personnel or just your ordinary, average everyday dusty dude in the street. The inflammatory response is triggered by a build up of nasties in the body, a combination of toxins, fine particulates and biological pathogens, the end result is immune dysregulation...Bingo!
And again, what you consider to be merely an economic issue is exactly where you seem to be missing the point.
Quarrying is environmentally destructive. It has contamination and pollution issues. It carries health issues. As well as the costly logistics of transporting bulk around the planet. Governments these days no longer wish any company, large or small, to go around tearing rock, in any form - pre ground or otherwise -out of the ground. So your next problem would be sourcing the base materials for your manufactured product legally.
Economically, even if you did manage to quarry,crush,sieve,grade and mix your sand for lets say £1000 a ton. What architect on the planet would specify the use of such an environmentally unfriendly and costly material and what construction company in the world would pay such a price?
Architects are already specifying more sustainable materials and construction techniques are changeing, but at present, people are still destroying the planet and killing each other for sand ! That's the current economic situation.
Nobody is saying that without a time limit and at great expence sand can not be manufactured, but it is not even that simple.
Firstly : You would have to quarry your rock of preference before crushing, sieving, grading, and more than likely, also having to transport your specific rock grains to be mixed with other types of crushed and graded chips, depending on your sands ultimate purpose.
Secondly : It is not cheap to extract stone from the earth plus quarrying leaves very big holes in the ground! Permission from authorities to open new quarries or pits is not easily obtained in most countries.
Thirdly: Crushing is hazardous, polluting, environmentally destructive and very expensive .
The sand problem has been bubbling away on the back burner for years, hence the many and various ongoing efforts from all around the globe to recycle or create new and innovative construction materials.
Why the world is running out of sand
Our planet is covered in it. Huge deserts from the Sahara to Arizona have billowing dunes of the stuff. Beaches on coastlines around the world are lined with sand. We can even buy bags of it at our local hardware shop for a fistful of small change.
But believe it or not, the world is facing a shortage of sand. How can we possibly be running low on a substance found in virtually every country on earth and that seems essentially limitless?
The problem lies in the type of sand we are using. Desert sand is largely useless to us. The overwhelming bulk of the sand we harvest goes to make concrete, and for that purpose, desert sand grains are the wrong shape. Eroded by wind rather than water, they are too smooth and rounded to lock together to form stable concrete.
The sand we need is the more angular stuff found in the beds, banks, and floodplains of rivers, as well as in lakes and on the seashore. The demand for that material is so intense that around the world, riverbeds and beaches are being stripped bare, and farmlands and forests torn up to get at the precious grains. And in a growing number of countries, criminal gangs have moved in to the trade, spawning an often lethal black market in sand.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is-running-out-of-sand
You could be right on the governments dislike of a popular and profitable imported product!.. But what about RPE ?
RPE will not eliminate disease in cases of extended long term exposure.
RPE has only to be used as 'The very last resort'..and is only supposed to be used as..'The very last resort'..and only as..'The very last resort' for short periods of time, as..'The very last resort'
Why do so many people equate the usage of respiratory protection with 'A Safe Working Environment ?'
In areas where long term usage of such protection is required, an operatives working environment is exactly the opposite of 'SAFE' !
There is No Known Safe Working Exposure Limit when working in respirable crystalline silica dust..NONE !
Nope the link is there , just hit the thumbnail
Why no image attached.. I do not know..Another of life's little mysteries I suppose 👽👽😳
Do I sound upset ? Crikey! ha ha
Sorry duder ,I am immune to upset and trivialities such as social media comments do not even register as irratation on my ragged toenail scale.
I do attempt to upload the original paper where possible, but when (As is par for the course these days) the publication is behind a paywall and as in this case, without even an abstract ,then the news article has to be the option for the post.
Take care and have an article annoyance free day .
Not my headline and I did not write the article
Here is the actual report ,crikey you have to pay for it !!.. Well what a bummer ,there is the reason for posting the news article instead of the actual report..Happy Now ?
Large Study Links Industrial Solvent in Drinking Water to Parkinson Disease Risk in Camp Lejeune Veterans
Neurologist Samuel Goldman, MD, MPH, had long felt obligated to dive into the question of whether the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that had contaminated the drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune up to the mid-1980s were associated with an increased risk of Parkinson disease.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2805182
I would say that slavery could perhaps be considered an occupational hazard!
Slavery or the imprisoning /detaining personel against their will to enforce labour was once common in farming ,construction and many other industries in this country and probably still goes on.
Gangs would (and probably still do) convince unwitting refugees to come over here to work for them on the promise of great wages and full board. Once here these people would be kept in shacks,caravans and the likes, but usually in overcrowded slum conditions, threatened with violence or beaten daily and forced to work without pay or for food (if they were lucky)
A few years back the construction industry raised awareness of this problem and asked the workforce to be vigilant,to keep their eyes open and report any signs or suspicions of enforced labour. Thanks to this awareness campaign many of these gangs were caught and imprisoned ,thousands of illegally detained people were released... The car wash app was set up for a similar purpose
Raising awareness on the subject of occupational hazards is not solely about RPE ,employees face many risks and many hazards...
As for car washing ,PPE required would be waterproof footwear and clothing ,protective gloves , eye protection, a respirator for use when cleaning the inside of dirty vehicles , a respirator would also be required when the likes of chemical sprays, special waxes, sealers, body finishes or any other solvents were in use... Take care
Scotland voted to remain in the Tories 'Advisory' Brexit Poll The Tories used their 'Merely Advisory Poll' to drag us all out though,without consultation.
The penny has finally dropped for the majority in England, they now know for a fact that they were sold a box completely devoid of lollipops and Brexit was simply just another Corporate Westminster Corruption con.
I wonder if todays English and Welsh local elections might reflect this slight change of opinion by the masses ,mmmmmm?..ha ha