Wondering Tank

-Concepts, Humor, Commentary- When known, credit will be given when thoughts are not original.

[Wondering Tank @WonderingTank]

A must read.

[Undisclosed ₿ ✝️⚡ ∞ @BitcoinUndisc]

https://t.co/JbpW09UtDd

[Sensurround @ShamashAran]

I have now read this highlighted sentence seventeen times because I assumed I wan't actually reading what was written. Surely my eyes didn't actually read this. Maybe someone accidentally pasted in dialogue from "The Onion." back when it was funny. But no.

She is saying that she delayed reporting a rape because she agreed with the accused, politically.

This is one of those moments where, if your IQ is over 85, your brain quietly excuses itself from the room.

We have apparently reached a point where politics has become the emotional-support animal for basic human survival instincts. "Yes, this person committed one of the worst crimes imaginable against me, but we both liked the same tax policy. Awkward."

If your political identity has become so central that it can outweigh reporting your own rape, congratulations: you hve joined a cult. Cults are famous for making people subordinate reality, morality, and self-preservation to the interests of the group.

I hate cults. I hate them a lot.
They don't ask you to ignore facts all at once: they ask for one tiny compromise after another until one day you discover you're explaining away things that should be absolutely indefensible.

What's sad isnt just that people end up there. It's that many of them don't even realize it. They sincerely believe they're making a principled decision when, from the outside, everyone else is wondering why the obvious isn't obvious anymore.

At least religious cults usually promise enlightenment, salvation, eternal life, or an alien spaceship hiding behind a comet. Political cults dont even offer that. They ask you to sacrifice your judgment, your relationships, sometimes even your own well-being in exchange for cable-news talking points, in favor of a politician who will sell you out for a pack of gum.

That's a spectacularly bad trade.

At some point, "my team" has to lose to "the person who committed a violent felony against me." That's not supposed to be a close game.

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

Why don’t we pronounce the “meow” in homeowner?

[Jarvis @jarvis_best]

Everyone dunking on NPR because they published fake news on accident but I think it’s a welcome break from their usual practice of publishing it on purpose.

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

“Don’t feed the poor yourselves. Get the Roman government or Herod to do it for you by raising taxes.”

- Things Jesus Never Said

[Wondering Tank @WonderingTank]

🤔

[Owen Gregorian @OwenGregorian]

Exercise May Keep Muscles Fighting Cancer, New Study Finds | StudyFinds

In a Nutshell

- Healthy muscle releases tiny particles that carry a tumor-slowing molecule, but aging muscle largely loses this ability, according to fly and mouse studies.

- The molecule, miR-7a-5p, slows cancer growth by blocking TEAD1, a protein tumors rely on to multiply.

- In older mice, exercise reactivated the Notch-SDC2 pathway that keeps muscle’s cancer-fighting system running.

---

Muscle does more than move the body. It may also act as a quiet defender against cancer, releasing tiny particles loaded with a tumor-slowing molecule. As muscle weakens with age, that defense fades. Encouragingly, exercise switched that defense back on in older mice.

Researchers have long noticed that physically active people tend to face lower cancer risk, but the reason stayed murky. Now, a new study led by scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, published in Nature Communications, offers a possible mechanism. In flies and mice, muscle releases microscopic packages called extracellular vesicles. Healthy muscle packs those vesicles with a molecule that helps keep tumors in check. Aged muscle sends out fewer packages, and the ones it does send carry far less of that cargo.

Because the findings come from animal studies and laboratory experiments rather than people, whether the same effects occur in humans remains an open question. But the study draws a clear line from muscle health to tumor growth, and points to exercise as a lever worth pulling.

How Exercise And Muscle Health Connect To Cancer

At the heart of the system is a molecule called miR-7a-5p, a genetic messenger tucked inside the vesicles that healthy muscle releases. When cancer cells absorbed these packages in lab tests, the molecule slowed their growth by blocking a protein, TEAD1, that tumors lean on to multiply.

Researchers tested the idea in multiple species. In fruit flies, a common model for aging research because of their short lifespans, young muscle held intestinal overgrowth in check while aged muscle did not. Cut off the muscle’s ability to release vesicles, and the gut damage worsened.

In mice, researchers collected vesicles from healthy muscle cells and from cells deliberately damaged to mimic aging, then applied them to several cancer types. Healthy-muscle vesicles suppressed the growth of colorectal, lung, and bile duct cancer cells. Damaged-muscle vesicles did almost nothing. They also showed little or no uptake or effect in prostate cancer and neuroblast cells, suggesting muscle’s protective effects may be limited to certain tissues.

To test living animals, the team implanted human colorectal cancer into mice and compared young animals against mice 12 to 15 months old, an age at which they showed clear muscle loss and weakness. Each group used six mice. Tumors grew far larger in the older animals. When researchers chemically blocked vesicle release in young mice, their tumors ballooned to match those in old mice. Restoring the packages reversed it. In a separate strain bred to develop intestinal tumors on its own, dosing the mice with healthy-muscle vesicles cut both the number and size of tumors.

The Chain Of Command Inside Aging Muscle

Why does old muscle stop producing these packages? Researchers traced it to a protein called SDC2, part of the cellular machinery that builds and ships the vesicles. SDC2 drops sharply in aging mouse muscle. Without enough of it, the muscle cannot assemble the packages, and the cancer-slowing cargo never reaches a tumor.

SDC2 takes orders from a signaling system called Notch, which works like a control switch for cell activity. Young muscle keeps Notch active and SDC2 high. As muscle ages, Notch quiets down, SDC2 falls, and the defense goes dark.

That is where movement enters. Using treadmill and wheel exercise, the team found that physical activity in old mice reawakened Notch, raised SDC2, restarted vesicle production, refilled the cargo, and slowed tumor growth. Block Notch in those exercising mice, and every benefit vanished, supporting that pathway as a key mediator. Researchers also delivered SDC2 directly into aged muscle through gene therapy and got the same result without a treadmill, suggesting more than one route to the same end.

What The Exercise And Cancer Findings Mean For People

Age-related muscle loss, or sarcopenia, already carries a grim reputation, tied to falls, frailty, and worse outcomes during cancer treatment. A human dataset cited in the study found that people with pre-existing sarcopenia had a higher risk of developing lung, colorectal, gastric, pancreatic, and esophageal cancers, though notably not prostate cancer, the same tissue pattern the lab work showed. That dataset is observational and cannot prove muscle loss causes cancer.

As a next step, the authors suggest the Notch-SDC2 system could eventually be targeted through exercise, drugs, or gene-based therapies to help prevent or treat cancer. They also propose measuring miR-7a-5p in muscle-derived vesicles from people with and without muscle loss to see whether the same mechanism exists in humans.

For now, the takeaway sits in animals and cell cultures: muscle appears to actively fight tumors, that ability erodes with age, and exercise can restore it. Whether the same holds true in people remains the open question, but the study gives a concrete reason to keep muscle strong as the years add up.

https://t.co/lx6PlA8rb0

[🍀Louie Kerr 🇮🇪💚 @LouieKerr8]

😂

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

Communism has always appealed because it offers a morally simple answer to an impossibly complex human problem.

>Life is unfair.
>Therefore someone must be guilty.
>If we punish the guilty, justice will follow.

It replaces responsibility with resentment.

Most importantly, it tells ordinary people they can become virtuous without becoming better.

That is why it returns every generation. Not because it works, but because it flatters.

History’s warning is not that these ideas begin with prison camps. They begin with moral certainty and the belief that society can be perfected if only the “right” people are given enough power to identify the guilty and reorganize everyone else’s lives.

Today, that temptation is more dangerous than ever.

Never before have governments and institutions possessed so much data, so many surveillance tools, so much influence over information, and such extraordinary capacity to shape public life at scale. Every generation inherits more powerful instruments than the last. Whether those instruments preserve liberty or erode it depends on the ideas guiding the hands that wield them.

The lesson of the last century is not merely that communism failed. It is that no society is immune from believing that concentrating power in pursuit of moral perfection will finally succeed.

History has already rendered its verdict; 100 million+ dead.

Our responsibility is to remember it before we convince ourselves that this time will be different.

[Wondering Tank @WonderingTank]

So true.

[ChiefHerbalist @HerbalistChief]

We made so much fun of hantavirus that they deleted the whole storyline.

The disease just pack up and left due to bad ratings.

[Buck Sexton @BuckSexton]

There's been a tsunami of ingratitude from 3rd worlders who've arrived here in recent years, scamming our system and breaking laws day 1, then throwing their weight around, making demands, protesting in our streets

We've finally reached the point where a majority of Americans- the ones who actually built and sustain the greatest nation in world history- are tired of being hectored and lectured by people from shithole countries that they're owed more free stuff, have nothing to learn from our culture, and demand apologies for the 'legacy of colonialist white supremacy'

Ok, go back to Durkadurkistan, lecture us from over there. Good luck keeping power on and water clean.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

[Willis Eschenbach @WEschenbach]

Here's one of Michael Crichton's very finest quotes, especially applicable to climate "science":

"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science.

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right ... In science, consensus is irrelevant."

Best to everyone,

w.

[Wondering Tank @WonderingTank]

😀

[Jarvis @jarvis_best]

Slept outside last night. Turned the AC in the house on full blast and cracked a window near my sleeping bag so that I could catch the breeze coming out of the house.

[Wondering Tank @WonderingTank]

🤔

[Dvorstone @dvorstone]

Women are not suitable for dealing with the amount of violence necessary to maintain civilization.

This is, again, because women are wired to care for babies with whom "zero" violence is the correct amount.

This is why the central problem of Western Civilization is childless women with political power.

Civilization requires continuity, past and future, and thus it belongs only to those that create said future. Allowing childless people authority over civilization is fundamentally suicidal.

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

Yes. It's a rejection of divine grace to dwell on the past. It's a good trick by the demons though. They convince you that, "You're doing the work," by agonizing over what has already been forgiven instead of moving forward.

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

Equality of outcomes requires vast inequalities of power to attempt it and an unending inequality in power to maintain it.

[Wondering Tank @WonderingTank]

A work of art. (And a manual!)

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

"You say you don't go to Church because it's full of hypocrites there? I say you're right, but come anyway, we've got room for one more." - Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

[Peter St Onge, Ph.D. @profstonge]

Totally innocent mistake at the FBI misses 90% of defensive gun use 🤡

[Wondering Tank @WonderingTank]

Important reminder: comparison is the thief of joy.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

The claim that “rape did not exist among native nations prior to white contact” is ahistorical garbage pushed by third worldist ideologues who need the West to be uniquely evil.

The “noble savage” was never real. He was a blood soaked warrior, slaver, and rapist just like every other human who ever lived outside the slow, brutal discipline of civilization.

Pre-Columbian Americas had constant intertribal war, captive taking, slavery, and empires built on mass human sacrifice. Some groups punished adultery with gang rape. Raiding parties seized women as spoils. Mesoamerican civilizations ran on coercion and sexual dominance.

Rape is a human universal tied to power, lust, and tribal competition. The idea that only “white contact” introduced it is the most condescending racism imaginable, stripping indigenous peoples of agency and full humanity to score points in a decolonization fanfic.

History to leftists is some false morality play where non-Western societies were peaceful egalitarians and the West invented sin.

But the noble savage myth is dead. And we’re not playing this bullshit game anymore.