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Speech: humans are the scariest predator + Grimes eyeball surgery doesn't help SAD

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The disturbing sound of a voice: Humans are the scariest predator
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ar/594187/

EXCERPT: . . . Even when predators aren’t killing anything, their tracks, smells, and sounds can instill a state of simmering unease in their prey. This creates what ecologists call a “landscape of fear” ... Similar studies have shown that animals react very strongly to the perceived presence of spiders, hawks, sharks, and wolves. But what about humans? We kill many animals at much higher rates than their other natural predators, and we’re unusual in taking out those predators too. “We might expect animals to fear us, as any prey fears its predators,” says Suraci.

His team has shown that they certainly do. In an English forest, the researchers played the sounds of various carnivores to local badgers. The badgers ignored the sounds of wolves entirely [...] But they were profoundly disturbed by human speech, even the genteel tones of some BBC documentaries and a reading of The Wind in the Willows.

Next, the team wanted to see whether a larger carnivore would behave similarly [...] they placed speakers at sites where mountain lions had killed large prey and were regularly returning to feed. When the cats approached, the team played either talking humans or croaking frogs. The frogs didn’t faze them. The human voices—including those of Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh—made them flee more than 80 percent of the time.

[...] By tracking seven mountain lions that had been fitted with GPS collars, the team showed that the animals kept their distance from the grids, and moved more cautiously, when humans could be heard. Using camera traps, the team saw that medium-size carnivores were also perturbed: Bobcats became more nocturnal, skunks became less active, and opossums spent less time foraging. The only animals that benefited were mice and rats, which took advantage of the predators’ absence to expand their range and forage more intensely. To the rodents, the speakers provided a human shield. (MORE - details)



Nothing Grimes said about eyeballs or depression makes any sense
https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/16/not...ense-14159

EXCERPT: . . . a Canadian singer named Grimes (who happens to be dating Elon Musk) is somebody I need to pay attention to. As is often the case with celebrities, it's not for a good reason. Grimes ... provided some ... unorthodox ... advice on how to handle seasonal depression: "I eliminated all blue light from my vision through an experimental surgery that removes the top film of my eyeball and replaces it with an orange ultra-flex polymer that my friend and I made in the lab this past winter as a means to cure seasonal depression."

[...] assume that she had a wonderfully successful eyeball surgery. Is removing blue light a good way to help treat seasonal depression? No. It's literally the exact opposite. ... seasonal affective disorder generally occurs in winter because of lack of sunlight. ... Some evidence indicates that using blue light alone has a similar effect. In other words, if Grimes actually did this surgery, she has permanently altered her eyes with a treatment that, at best does nothing and at worst is the exact opposite of what she should have done.

Grimes's other health advice is also dubious [...] Grimes goes on: "I spend 2-4 hours in my deprivation tank, this allows me to "astro-glide" to other dimensions - past, present, and future."

I think she's been watching too many episodes of The Twilight Zone. Anyway, I guess that's better than telling women to steam-clean their vaginas like Gwyneth Paltrow. Don't listen to celebrities. Ever. Okay, you can listen to Kristin Bell because she's pro-vaccine. But that's it. (MORE - details)
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