Bad news all day, every day.

Friends: We are losing the use of antibiotics, giant pieces of ice are breaking off Antarctica, our fancy modern products are poisoning us/giving us disease/reducing our IQ, and society is probably going to collapse.

Like I said, bad news all day, every day.

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WHO warns against 'post-antibiotic' era

The 'post-antibiotic' era is near, according to a report released today by the World Health Organization (WHO). The decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents is a global problem, and a surveillance system should be established to monitor it, the group says.

There is nothing hopeful in WHO's report, which pulls together data from 129 member states to show extensive resistance to antimicrobial agents in every region of the world. Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture — to promote livestock growth — and in hospitals quickly leads to proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria, which then spread via human travel and poor sanitation practices.

"A post-antibiotic era — in which common infections and minor injuries can kill — far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the twenty-first century," writes Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security, in a foreword to the report.

Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans as Antarctic Ice Melts

The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday.

The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis.

The Scary New Evidence on BPA-Free Plastics

Scientists have tied BPA to ailments including asthma, cancer, infertility, low sperm count, genital deformity, heart disease, liver problems, and ADHD. "Pick a disease, literally pick a disease," says Frederick vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia who studies BPA.
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Today many plastic products, from sippy cups and blenders to Tupperware containers, are marketed as BPA-free. But [recent] findings—some of which have been confirmed by other scientists—suggest that many of these alternatives share the qualities that make BPA so potentially harmful.
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George Bittner...recently coauthored a paper in the NIH journal Environmental Health Perspectives. It reported that "almost all" commercially available plastics that were tested leached synthetic estrogens—even when they weren't exposed to conditions known to unlock potentially harmful chemicals, such as the heat of a microwave, the steam of a dishwasher, or the sun's ultraviolet rays. According to Bittner's research, some BPA-free products actually released synthetic estrogens that were more potent than BPA.

The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains

Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellinger’s Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a “silent pandemic” of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicals—substances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothing—that they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified.
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It's surprising to learn how little evidence there is for the safety of chemicals all around us, in our walls and furniture, in our water and air. Many consumers assume there is a rigorous testing process before a new chemical is allowed to be a part of a consumer product. Or at least some process.

"We still don’t have any kind of decent law on the books that requires that chemicals be tested for safety before they come to market"...

Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?

Maybe, but "but the odds of avoiding collapse seem small."

We're all gonna die, but I'm probably gonna die alone and have no one notice for six years...

Woman dies and nobody notices for six years because of auto pay:

Nobody batted an eyelid. Bills were paid. And life went on as normal in the quiet neighborhood of Pontiac, Michigan.

Neighbors didn't notice anything unusual. The woman traveled a lot, they said, and kept to herself. One of them mowed her grass to keep things looking tidy.

At some point, her bank account ran dry. The bills stopped being paid.

After its warnings went unanswered, the bank holding the mortgage foreclosed on the house, a common occurrence in a region hit hard by economic woes.

Still, nobody noticed what had happened inside the house. Nobody wondered out loud what had become of the owner.

Not until this week, when a worker sent by the bank to repair a hole in the roof made a grisly discovery.

The woman's mummified body was sitting in the backseat of her car, parked in the garage. The key was halfway in the ignition.

Authorities say they believe the woman died at least six years ago. They're still trying to figure out what happened.

"I've been doing this 37 years. Never seen anything like this before," said Undersheriff Mike McCabe of Oakland County, Michigan, just outside Detroit.

Dr. Bernardino Pacris, the county deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, told the Detroit Free Press that the woman's skin was still intact, but that the internal organs had decomposed.

Thanks, Tiffani, for adding this to my list of fears. That's a sarcastic thanks, btw.

Speaking of the Great Barrier Reef...

Sigh. Ever since I did my 6th grade Endangered Species Report on the Galapagos Penguin, I've wanted to go to the Galapagos Islands. And now I learn that tourists are ruining the island...what a conundrum!

Via

All Men are Mortal, and All Fruit Flies Are Boozers

Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't particularly cheered up as of late...I even flew myself all the way to California in the hopes that a change of pace (and some friend time) would make me feel better, and I continued to mope while I was there because everything is terrible and we're all gonna die and I'm gonna die alone and I am the worst. But I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to make life a little more enjoyable and I guess a good start is some edjumucation. I do like learning me some new things! Like these random tidbits I've stumbled across lately:

• Fruit flies seek fermenting fruit to keep wasps away.
• There is a contest for Oddest Book Title, and one of the books on the shortlist this year is God's Doodle, and I'll let you click on that link to find out what "God's doodle" is.
• Crying in space is hard to do.
• Thomas Edison invented LOLCats?
• The world is in need of portable fish authenticity tests...beware your sushi!
• Oh god, prairie dogs have the black death.
• Dolphins might call each other by name. Amazing.
• Holy moly look at these giant bird nests! I wouldn't want to stand under any of those...
• Note to self: do not store your gun magazine (should you ever be in possession of one) in the oven.
• OMG the world's soil is running out.
• And the pièce de résistance: Can you eat your own poop? Spoiler alert: Yep. Second spoiler alert: there is a word meaning "eating poop" and this word is "coprophagy." 

In some more existential crisis news, I recently read All Men are Mortal, by Simon de Beauvoir. It was an odd book that I don't particularly recommend, but I mention it because it was more or less a meditation on immortality, and therefore on mortality, and on what makes a life meaningful. The main message I took from the novel is that individual lives are relatively meaningless and can make little impact (even immortal ones) and in the aggregate humans are constantly repeating their errors...but at least humans are mortal and get to die. So let this serve as a note to self: life might be pointless, but at least you'll die some day!

And hey look, this is topical:

As is this (from one of my favorite new (to me) blogs).

And this:

Via

Finally, to finish this long ramble, I can't wait to teach my nephew about what goats actually sound like:


1:24 is obviously the best part of this compilation.

It's all a bunch of noise anyway

By wendy macnaughton