Articles of Distraction

[Angrboda]

A remarkable assemblage of fossils from China is revealing that animal life diversified in Earth's primordial seas millions of years earlier than previously known, with an array of forms including ancient members ​of a group that eventually led to vertebrates including humans.

Paleontologists unearthed some 700 fossils of individual small soft-bodied animals that lived roughly 546 to 539 ‌million years ago during the Ediacaran Period, depicting a dramatic transformation in animal life as it occurred. Many of them are weird and barely recognizable as animals to the untrained eye.

The fossils, discovered in China's Yunnan Province, are known collectively as the Jiangchuan Biota. They are in a form called a carbonaceous film, a dark and two-dimensional layer of carbon left behind after an organism is compressed ​during the fossilization process. This preserved anatomical details such as guts as well as feeding and locomotion structures.

The discovery is particularly significant because it shows ​a rapid diversification of animal life already unfolding during the Ediacaran, predating the well-known burst of evolutionary innovation that occurred during the ⁠subsequent Cambrian Period. By the end of this Cambrian Explosion, early members of most broad animal groups alive today had appeared.

Chinese fossils reveal a primordial burst of animal evolution

[AFTT47]

Interesting stuff. I've always had a fascination for the Cambrian Explosion. This looks like the fuel that led to it.

[Angrboda]

The $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program included in President Donald Trump's tax-and-spending law last year was billed by Republicans as a way to help hospitals in rural areas. Last summer, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted it as the "biggest infusion in history" for rural hospitals and pledged it will "restore and revitalize these communities."

Hospitals and health industry experts have warned that while the fund — $10 billion per year allocated across all states for five years — offers some support to struggling rural hospitals, it won't save them. One reason is that the sum doesn't come close to offsetting the $137 billion that rural hospitals expect to lose over the next decade, according to health research nonprofit KFF. Millions of people are expected to lose Medicaid benefits as a result of new Medicaid work requirements going into effect in 2027 — changes the Trump administration has maintained will crack down on fraudsters rather than cut off eligible enrollees.

Administrators say the new $50 billion fund is not meant to shore up ailing rural hospitals or maintain the status quo, but to transform rural health care through tech, workforce and other innovations. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz in a December video said it "gives states the tools to design solutions that last, not Band-Aids that fail."

The White House echoed that Wednesday, saying the fund is intended to fund "big ideas" to improve rural health care access long-term.

A Nebraska hospital in peril shows how a Republican-led rural health fund is coming up short

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Ray Stevens Breaks Neck

Country music legend Ray Stevens, 87, suffered a terrifying fall in Nashville on Sunday that left him with a broken neck.

The two-time Grammy winner, best known for his hits Everything Is Beautiful and Misty, was briefly hospitalized following the accident but is now back home recovering, according to People magazine.

Doctors have advised Stevens to wear a neck brace for the next four weeks as part of his recovery, the statement from his team confirmed.

Boru

[Paraselene]

Britney Spears officially charged with DUI but will be offered ‘wet reckless’ deal

https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/05/01/b...arge-2026/

[Angrboda]

Krugman: Trump Accidentally Screwed Himself on Iran Very, Very Badly

Before this war, about 15 percent of the world’s oil flowed through that strait. And it’s other stuff too—natural gas, helium, fertilizer—but right now let’s focus on the oil.

So 15 percent of the world’s oil goes through that narrow passageway, which is extremely easy for Iran to block. That 15 percent—there’s really not much of an exit. There’s no real way around the Iranian blockade. A little bit of stuff can go by pipeline, but not much. And that’s a lot of oil being denied to the world market. And of course, the price of oil has gone way up.

But if this continues, he ain’t seen nothing yet. Because the really interesting thing—I cited some numbers from Goldman Sachs in the Substack—although the price of oil is way up, consumption of oil is only down a little bit. And mostly what’s happening is that they’re drawing down inventories of oil, that people who have oil in storage tanks, with oil that was already on tankers, is being used up, which is all happening out of the belief that the strait will reopen soon and prices will come down.

As people start to realize that that’s not about to happen—which has been happening just over the past couple of days—then the prices have to go much, much higher.

Basically, the price of oil has to go high enough to inflict enough economic damage—we have to somehow or other stop, reduce the consumption of oil by another 11 million barrels a day. Convenient thing is that right now, world oil consumption is about 100 million a day. So that’s also about 11 percent. And it takes a huge price increase to do that.

It’s not easy to wean yourself off oil, in the matter of weeks, which is what we’re kind of expecting has to happen. So this can get much—it’s ugly already. It’s ugly politically, obviously, for Trump and the Republicans to have gas hitting its highest level in four years. But it’s going to get a lot uglier very soon unless Trump swallows his pride and accepts that he actually lost this war.

[Paraselene]

Bad Bunny unrecognisable as he arrives at Met Gala dressed as old man



https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/05/05/m...bad-bunny/

[Rev. Rye]

Brace Yourself – THE DEVILS Director’s Cut Is Coming To Theaters

Following yesterday's incredibly exciting news that a 4K home video release of  could be right around the corner, Warner Bros. new speciality label Clockwork has officially announced that Ken Russell's notoriously controversial historical horror masterpiece will be playing in theaters – not just uncut, but the definitive Director's Cut. Yep, you're going to be able to see thatscene, and more, on the big screen.

Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed, The Devils was Russell's take on Aldous Huxley's novel The Devils of Loudun and the story of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft and bewitching a convent of nuns, causing them to commit all kinds of blasphemous acts in the name of sexual hysteria.

[Fake Messiah]

What? Pastor Greg Locke’s son kills himself with an overdose?! But Greg had such a normal relationship with his sons. I mean, who hasn't had their dad crucified him in front of people?

Greg Locke, pastor of Global Vision Bible Church in Lebanon, Tennessee, announced Friday that his 20-year-old son, Evan Roberts Locke, has died.

The pastor's announcement was made on his social media just a few hours after he was told his son had died from a drug overdose.

“Today, words fail us. It’s been a long, hard battle the last few years. In times like this, the sacrifices and the struggles don’t even matter. A few hours ago we received the most earth-shattering news that our 20-year-old son, Evan Roberts Locke, could not be revived after his heart stopped due to an overdose,” Locke said.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/pasto...rdose.html

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^You can tell this guy owns a windowless van.

Boru