Sciencey stuff on Sunday and some Updates

No, I'm not starting a new weekly thing. I just happen to have a collection of interesting (to me anyway) stuff I discovered this week listening to the SciShow Tangents podcast. 

So here they are - all the fun, funny, freaky stuff I've discovered over the last 7 days. 

No. 1 - There are tastebuds in your penis

(I'm not sure if you can access the article because sometimes I can and sometimes there's a pay wall, but in case you can't, here's an extract - )

We discovered that the male urethra and glans penis contained many taste bud-like structures similar to the morphological features of the taste buds of the tongue. ... These structures have neuron-like appendages at the apical ends of rose buds in the wall of the urethra and glans

Yes. You read that right. Apparently something about the sweet taste receptors in the male urethra adding to the pleasantness of the feeling of having a cum. 

No. 2 -  Rats like playing hide and seek

Brecht says several clues point to the former. When the rats find the researchers, for example, they execute what are known as “joy jumps” or freudensprung. “This is something that a lot of mammals do when they are having fun,” including rabbits, lambs, and people, Brecht says. In addition, the rats often scurry off to a new hiding place after being found, extending the game and postponing the reward of being petted.

Apparently they can giggle but at a frequency that we can't hear. And they weren't even rewarded with food. 

Seems in another test they found that rats rewarded with food tended to be able to do repetitive tasks for an extended period of time, without getting tired, seemingly, while rats that were rewarded with tickles and petting got tired after a while, indicating that they were more engaged and involved in the activity.

No. 3 - Soccer-playing robots is a real thing. And there's a league called Robocup.

RoboCup is an annual international robotics competition proposed and founded in 1996 by a group of university professors (including Hiroaki Kitano, Manuela M. Veloso, and Minoru Asada). The aim of the competition is to promote robotics and AI research by offering a publicly appealing – but formidable – challenge.

The name RoboCup is a contraction of the competition's full name, "Robot Soccer World Cup", but there are many other areas of competition such as "RoboCupRescue", "RoboCup@Home" and "RoboCupJunior". In 2019, the international competition was held in Sydney, Australia. Peter Stone is the current president of RoboCup, and has been since 2019.

(From wikipedia)

Enjoy this video - 

No. 4 - This week's True Facts by Zefrank is about Wild Pigs and features a slightly more off-colour narration than usual. Not that I'm complaining. Enjoy!

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In other updates - 

On Thursday the sister pissed me off big time and said some stupid thing about how when I post stuff on FB she feels as if it's being done unto her because she's an empath, didn't I know and because I posted this - "She's so exhausting today, I just cannot" - she had a complete breakdown for the next 2 hours sitting in a corner and feeling suicidal. 

What?

I said first of all I didn't say who it was about. And there are enough idiots around me that I could have been talking about anyone. 

Secondly, by the time I had woken up from a nap I decided that I didn't want to leave the post up because I wanted to avoid people calling or texting me to ask how I was as I wasn't in the mood to respond to anyone. 

Third, if she knows it's not about her then what's all the crap about feeling suicidal and how does that involve me, cos here's a newsflash : I have mental issues too - she's not the only one with emotional or psychological shit to deal with. 

Her response was that if people saw my post they would think that I was a terrible daughter, and it would be shameful for my mum that I wrote that about her, and what would everyone think about me / us / the whole family that I couldn't do a simple thing like take care of my own mother after all the years she had spent taking care of me when I was a child. 

Hello what? 

I ignored her messages and deleted any new ones that came in as soon as they appeared on my phone. 

I had already said I wasn't in a place to have this discussion as I was having issues of my own. So I figured that was me setting boundaries and saying I don't want to talk to you anymore. Hence, swipe and delete. 

Actually after that it occurred to me that the only reason she thinks my friends would think this way is cos SHE thinks this way. Or HER friends think this way. And the fact that I don't just means that obviously I believe my friends to be way classier than she thinks hers are.  Cos my friends have been nothing but sympathetic and encouraging. 

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We went to the beach again last Friday. Spent 5 hours out. Mum was happy. This time we brought a sheet and our caregiver (can I just call her Jessica?) and I sat on the ground under a tree while the mama sat in her wheelchair enjoying the breeze. She even got up and went to breakwater to check out the water lapping at the bottom of the stone structure. 

A picnic! That's a kiwi fruit cushion we bring along for extra wheelchair comfort for mum whenever we're out and about. She's sitting on another that looks like an orange slice - so it's not like I was depriving her of it or nothing. 

Looking up! I was lying on the ground. 

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With some growing clusters here, the government has begun giving out DIY test kits to people who live near Covid HOTSPOTS! 

We collected ours this week, but since no one is ill and we hadn't actually BEEN to the locations where the Covid-positive people had been to, we're just holding on to the kits for now. 

It's good to know that there are ways to do self-checks before panicking and going to the hospital where there's probably a higher risk of transmission. 

If it's positive it means you could have had it at some point, or you may be having it now. In which case, go see a doc and get the PCR swab done. 

If it's negative, you're all good. Just stay home and feel free to self-medicate if it's just a minor cold etc. 

Seems simple enough. And it's better than nothing I suppose. 

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I've been mad about making my own quinoa bowls. I do enjoy eating them, always have. Just never thought to make my own. But with dining-in taken OFF the menu, I decided this would be a good time to get going with prepping my own bowls. 

I took two of these to a friend's house for dinner last night. She was actually excited for me to get there cos she was hungry and looking forward to what she KNEW would be Fondles-approved. She's pre-diabetic and it's always a relief when I say I'm bringing dinner over cos then she doesn't have to think too hard about what she should or shouldn't be eating. 

That's quinoa with butter chicken made with inner fillet, omelettes with white fungus / mushrooms / artichoke truffle pesto, garlic stir-fred prawns with zucchini and spinach with a dash of vermouth. 

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And finally, my current favourite - HT African Autumn - a delicious citrusy roobois infusion. 

My mood pic today ~