It sounds like this fungus is a lot like what Disney does to human children.

Maybe they should call it “Disney Fungus”?

New York Post:

With their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized fungus.

West Virginia University mycology professor Matt Kasson, his 9-year-old son Oliver, and graduate student Angie Macias are tracking the nasty fungus, called Massospora cicadina. It is the only one on Earth that makes amphetamine — the drug called speed — in a critter when it takes over. And yes, the fungus takes control over the cicada, makes them hypersexual, looking to spread the parasite as a sexually transmitted disease.

“They’re zombies, completely at the mercy of the fungus,” said University of Connecticut cicada researcher John Cooley.

This fungus isn’t the type of parasite that kills its host, but instead it needs to keep it alive, Kasson said. Then the infected cicadas attempt to mate with others, spreading the spores to its mate/victim. The males even pretend in their hypersexualized state to be females to entice and infect other males, he said.

The cousin to this fungus which infects annual cicadas out west also makes a psychoactive compound in the cicadas but it is more akin to psychedelics like magic mushrooms, Kasson said. So sometimes people, even experts, mix up the amphetamine that the infected 17- and 13-year cicadas produce with the more trippy compounds of the annual bugs, he said.

You kinda have to wonder if this was not made in a lab, no?

I don’t know that I really believe in virus warfare, but fungal warfare could definitely be a thing.

Even though the show sucked, and the sequel was horrible, the original “The Last of Us” game was the better zombie story, as the zombies were the result of a fungus rather than a virus.

There are several different types of fungus that can take over the brains and bodies of living things.

Punaise de lit metro 7… pic.twitter.com/AOod5aJ8JX

— agent de ben hamouda (@warrkunn) October 6, 2023

Previously: Paris City Hall Finally Talking About Invasion of Bloodsucking Insects

I thought this was a really racist headline, then realized they actually are talking about literal insects.

The Guardian:

France has been forced to shut seven schools over growing concerns over an infestation of bedbugs, the education minister has said.

“Bedbugs were detected at various levels in … I believe 17 institutions, and currently as I speak to you, seven institutions are closed for this reason,” Gabriel Attal told France 5 television.

The French government has held a series of meetings this week to examine surging numbers of reported bedbug cases at a time when France is hosting the Rugby World Cup and preparing to host the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Earlier Friday, the education ministry said in statement to Agence France-Presse that five schools with a total of 1,500 students had been closed.

Earlier this week, authorities announced two schools – one in Marseille and the other in Villefranche-sur-Saone outside Lyon in south-eastern France – had been shut down for cleaning.

…

A tenth of all French households are believed to have had a bedbug problem over the past few years, usually requiring a pest control operation costing several hundred euros which often needs to be repeated.

Oh well.

J’en ai des frissons ptn 😭 #punaisedelit pic.twitter.com/R4VZlkVrXY

— milka dog 🖤 (@laZairoise01) October 1, 2023

@RER_A @RATPgroup vous attendez quoi pour traiter le problème ? Au vu du prix du pass navigo il faudrait agir et d’agir très vite . Respecter les usagers!!!!!! #RATP #punaisedelit pic.twitter.com/9hb6OKefjT

— AntiBlata 2 (@AntiRavet) October 5, 2023

WHAT ARE THESE MINUSCULE WHITE FLIES ALL OVER BROOKLYN?! Not the best video- they’re much more obvious inperson. Literally can’t even open your mouth when walking. I’m not “nature-inclined” lol so forgive me if I should know what these are. Someone tell me more.🤬 #NYC #BK #bugs pic.twitter.com/5d4Grw4tuD

— Kai (@marialens_) June 29, 2023

Clouds of green gnats are taking over NYC. Here is what it looks like in Brooklyn right now. #nyc #gnats #bugs pic.twitter.com/wUIO5Cwl0v

— Tyler Donaghy (@tylerpdonaghy) June 29, 2023

These swarms of bugs are taking over the city. They are in the subway platform too. The city just keeps getting worse. What’s next? #nyc #bugs #gnats pic.twitter.com/JCI0B3greZ

— Olow (@olow) June 30, 2023

This was bound to happen eventually.

New York Post:

A swarm of tiny, gnat-like insects has taken over New York City — with New Yorkers likening the mysterious infestation to a biblical plague.

Videos of the unidentified bugs shared on social media show the minuscule green insects buzzing through the air Thursday evening.

“Clouds of green gnats are taking over NYC,” one Twitter user wrote alongside a clip of the flying critters.

“These swarms of bugs are taking over the city. They are in the subway platform too. The city just keeps getting worse,” another shared.

Some observers joked that the arrival of the insects at the same time as the return of the wildfire smoke hinted at a sinister end for the Big Apple.

Yeah.

It’s over.

Wrap it up.

NYC is swarmed by bugs right now and the sky looks wild. The end is nigh pic.twitter.com/URgSb30Fxw

— John Haltiwanger (@jchaltiwanger) June 30, 2023

You thought the bug thing was a joke.

Then you thought it was a conspiracy theory.

Then you started to get nervous, but thought any kind of bug-eating was in the distant future.

Now, your school children are eating bugs.

Free West Media:

Insects are supposed to be nutritious and have a lower carbon footprint than regular meat, scientists have claimed. Young children will soon be eating insects to encourage a new generation to switch from meat to insects – and to convince their parents to follow their lead.

Pupils at four primary schools in Wales will be fed “alternative proteins” such as crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, grasshoppers and mealworms. The project to change people’s diets starts this week.

The researchers hope their findings will provide information on how to make British children – and by extension, their parents – believe in the environmental and nutritional benefits of edible insects.

Surveys, workshops, interviews and focus groups will be give feed-back on the experiences of alternative proteins. Researchers have teamed up with teachers in the hope to convince five- to 11-year-old participants to make give up meat and dairy.

“We want children to think about alternative proteins as real things for now and not just foods for the future, so sampling some of these foods is a key part of the research,” said Christopher Bear of Cardiff University.

“Although edible insects are not – yet – sold on a large scale in the UK, they are part of the diet of around 2 billion people worldwide. A large proportion of these live in parts of the world where they are part of a long-standing culinary tradition. And they’re becoming popular elsewhere, too,” he added.

A 2020 study estimated that around 9 million European consumers ate insects in 2019 and predicted a rise to 390 million by 2030, according to the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF), an insect producer.

Carl Evans, Head of School at Roch Community Primary School in Pembrokeshire, which is participating in the project, said that this was an “important link” to “wider global issues around sustainable development” even if it is “often confusing for them”.

Verity Jones of the University of the West of England in Bristol, said young children could “play a big role in family dietary changes”. According to Jones, most of us are already unwittingly eating insects: “Everyone eats insects every day – there are more than 30 parts of bugs in 100g of chocolate… Bread, fruit juices, hops… whatever you eat, you eat insects.”

Jones has tried to reassure children in this way that they would not get sick from eating insects because “all research, both in adults and children, showed that the notion of whole insects were unpleasant, “but crushed insects in food are very acceptable”.

“My research has found that, as with adults, boys are more willing to try new foods first,” she said.

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is expected to allow insects to be temporarily sold in supermarkets and other retailers, with full approval expected next year.

But insects can compromise the nutritional value of many foods, especially those made from plants (like rice or flour). Some common anti-nutrients contained in them are phytic acid, tannins, and lectins. The exoskeleton, or “chitin,” of an insect has been found to contain these anti-nutrients.

Insects could have the same capacity to trigger allergic reactions as do crustaceans (like shrimp and lobster). Also, many insects feed on decaying matter: rotting food, animal corpses, human waste which are full of bacteria and is a common danger associated with wild insects. They can carry parasites which are harmful, or even deadly.

Yeah, this is really unsafe.

These people will always tell you “well, Asians eat bugs!” They don’t tell you that Asians do it as a joke. Asians have a weird sense of humor and they think it’s some funny thing to eat bugs while they’re drinking. They don’t eat them as meals – they’re a hilarious snack for people when they’re drunk.

Asians live on fish and meat. They’re telling you to eat bugs as meals. It’s not the same thing.

Remember when eating bugs was weird?

In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that Germans had not had enough children, and there were not enough young people to work and pay the pensions of the elderly. So instead of encouraging Germans to breed more (or promoting automation?), she declared that she would replace the German people with brown people from anywhere and everywhere. She announced to the world that they could just march on in.

And march on in they did.

Germany will never be the same again. It is now simply a matter of time before the Germans are a minority in Germany, to eventually become extinct, as the brown people breed at an extreme rate and German women often prefer to breed with brown men.

The German race was not worth saving.

But you know what is worth saving?

Insects. 

It is the view of the German government – which is in fact an American occupation government, you might not know that – that insects are more valuable and worth preserving than German people.

AFP:

Germany is planning to ban floodlights from dusk for much of the year as part of its bid to fight a dramatic decline in insect populations, it emerged Wednesday.

In a draft law seen by AFP, the country’s environment ministry has drawn up a number of new measures to protect insects, ranging from partially outlawing spotlights to increased protection of natural habitats.

“Insects play an important role in the ecosystem…but in Germany, their numbers and their diversity has severely declined in recent years,” reads the draft law, for which the ministry hopes to get cabinet approval by October.

The changes put forward in the law include stricter controls on both lighting and the use of insecticides.

Good for the insects, I suppose. It must be nice to have someone looking out for you and trying to preserve you.

I sure wish my species had that.

The headline could actually be BREAKING NEWS: Widespread Substances Meant to Kill Bugs Have Killed Lots of Bugs.

I mean… this is shocking. No one could have predicted this.

Daily Mail:

Approximately half of all insects have been lost since 1970 due to the heavy use of pesticides, which could spell disaster for all life on Earth, a new report suggests.

Conservationists have called for action to be taken to halt the ‘unnoticed insect apocalypse’ in order to prevent a ‘catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems’.

Leading ecologists at the University of Sussex, who carried out the report for the Wildlife Trusts, revealed that 40 per cent of the one million known insect species are now nearing extinction.

The use of pesticides, which has doubled over the last 25 years, has seen 23 species of bees and wasps go extinct.

Without insects, a multitude of birds, bats, reptiles, amphibians, small mammals and fish would disappear, for they would have nothing to eat.

Eighty-seven percent, almost all plants require animal pollination, most of it delivered by insects – meaning the global human population could not be fed without insect pollination.

Put in financial terms the ‘service’ insects deliver to humans by pollinating their crops is worth between £183 billion ($235 billion) and £449 billion ($577 billion) per year worldwide, the study estimates.

The study details how insect populations could be rescued if the agriculture industry stopped the use of all pesticides, routine and unnecessary.

Humans must also foster environments around them to become insect friendly by utilising unused spaces such as road verges, claims the study.

Professor Dave Goulson, at the University of Sussex, UK, who wrote the report said: ‘We can’t be sure, but in terms of numbers, we may have lost 50 per cent or more of our insects since 1970 – it could be much more.

‘We just don’t know, which is scary. If we don’t stop the decline of our insects there will be profound consequences for all life on earth [and] for human wellbeing.’

He states we cannot wait for future research to spell out the catastrophic decline and must act now.

We must act now, you say?

Greta Thunberg looks like Ben Shapiro.

I know just the right fetal alcohol syndrome specimen for the job.

Although the insect decline may not be immediately obvious to humans Professor Goulson writes: ‘The only aspect of insect declines that has impinged on the consciousness of significant numbers of people has become known as the “windshield phenomenon”.

‘Almost everybody over the age of about 50 years old can remember a time when any long-distance drive in summer resulted in a windscreen so splattered with dead insects that it was necessary to stop occasionally to scrub them off.

‘Driving country lanes at night in high summer would reveal a blizzard of moths in the headlights.

‘Today, drivers in Western Europe and North America are freed from the chore of washing their windscreen. It seems unlikely that this can be entirely explained by the improved aerodynamics of modern vehicles.’

Keep in mind that pesticides and other bug-killing poisons are also harmful to humans, but the effects are not immediately seen, mostly due to the differences in body size and exposure levels.

There’s a long-term cumulative effect, but as with many other silent, slow poisons, the blame for negative health consequences is hard to place.

Species of animal who rely on the presence of flying insects for food have also struggled, such as the spotted flycatcher bird, whose populations have drastically fallen by 93 per cent since 1967.

He states that today’s children will grow up in a world with fewer birds, flowers and insects than we have now – and will be told of a time when hedgehogs were once common.

You don’t want hedgehogs to die, do you?

“Do it for me, human. Save Earth.”

I’m more interested in keeping bees alive though. No hedgehog ever defended the American border with the dedication and valor of bees.

This is a far more serious issue than the weather. Greta Thunberg should start a Save The Bees campaign demanding that we switch our farming approach to one friendlier to life and health.

But talking about farming approaches would inevitably bring up the “but how do we feed these many niggers though?” subject, and that may result in people realizing that maybe feeding billions and billions of ever-reproducing blacks isn’t a good idea.

Touchy subject.

Bees are pretty cool.

They:

• Can add, subtract, and perform other simple math operations
• Patrol the American border and attack invaders
• Do the pollination thing
• Can count up to 5
• Understand “less than” and “greater than” rules
• Understand the concept of zero
• Don’t turn your cities into chimp ghettos
• Appreciate flowers
• Respond well to education and training

Can you say the same about blacks and browns? We should be giving American citizenship to the bees instead.

Daily Mail:

Honey bees are able to do simple maths and reach the correct answer much faster if they’re punished when they get it wrong, scientists have discovered.

With brains the size of a sesame seed and with only 0.01 per cent of the brain cells humans have, they might not seem like born mathematicians.

But faced with a Y-shaped maze puzzle, with one side offering the sweet reward of sugar water and the other a punishing bitter quinine drink, bees were trained to distinguish between different values up to a maximum of five.

The bees given both the trick and the treat during their training became adept at choosing the right number on a card more quickly than those which weren’t.

Scientists previously thought the insects were among the collection of animals who are able to count objects in groups of four but no higher.

The ability to count past five is a marker that differentiates animals with higher cognitive ability.

Now researchers from the University of Toulouse in France and RMIT University in Australia have discovered that bees have more of an understanding of basic arithmetic than believed, and even understand the concept of zero.

Historians believe zero was not even understood by humans until the 1600s.

If you tell a group of bees “no free stuff for you, zero free stuff for you,” they’ll be like “yes, zero, we understand zero,” and go back to pollinating and doing their other bee stuff.

If you tell that to blacks or browns, on the other hand…

For some reason we’re flooding our countries with blacks and browns though. I guess they do something more important for us than pollinating the planet.

Leader of the study Dr Scarlett Howard, who moved to France so she could continue her experiment during the Australian winter, said: ‘The honey bees were very cooperative, especially when I was providing sugar rewards.

‘Recently, honey bees were shown to learn the rules of “less than” and “greater than” and apply these rules to evaluate numbers from zero to six.’

Speaking to The Times, the scientist explained that when reprimanded the bees ‘slow down and seem like they pay more attention’.

But why must a bee be good at maths? Researchers think the skill could be used by the insects to navigate gardens and landscapes for their favourite plants by counting landmarks.

Understanding how bees process information could help scientists when building computer systems using basic numeracy.

Professor Adrian Dyer, from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia said: ‘If bees can perceive zero with a brain of less than a million neurons, it suggests there are simple efficient ways to teach AI new tricks.’

Earlier this month scientists revealed how honey bees are able to retain memories of good and bad social encounters, storing them in distinct clusters in their brains just like we do.

Studying bees is likely to help with the development of better artificial intelligence… can you say the same about blacks and browns?

This wearable chair could change how we work and travel pic.twitter.com/KO8QoUcrut

— Tech Insider (@techinsider) September 18, 2019

Are people turning into insects?

The Guardian:

On Wednesday night, the Tech Insider Twitter account made a simple statement: “This wearable chair could change how we work and travel.” The text was accompanied by a short video advertising the LEX bionic chair, a pair of £200 foldable aluminium legs that you strap to your bum and lean against whenever your legs get a bit tired. In the video, a man uses the LEX while sitting at a desk, waiting for a bus, and taking photos. It really does it all.

The LEX began as a Kickstarter project last September, which claimed the chair was designed to enhance “posture, comfort and life”. It has already been fully funded – according to the Kickstarter, more than $143,000 (£115,000) has been pledged, smashing the $50,000 goal – which proves that there is a market for it, but the Tech Insider tweet provoked less positive reactions. “I’m not sure ass prongs was the invention the world was waiting for,” replied one user. Another simply stated: “LAME”.

It looks like a parody.

But then again, most things today look like a parody.

It certainly doesn’t look like something able to hold the weight of the average American.

Why are they discriminating against Blob People?

The LEX website offers the tempting prospect of being able to sit down anywhere, whenever you want. Wear it on a hike and you can stop for a breather with minimal fuss. Wear it on your commute and you’re guaranteed a seat at the platform. It will stop you crouching down uncomfortably during DIY.

More than that, though, the LEX is a nifty posture-correction tool. Used standing up or sitting down, it’s in essence an exoskeleton that helps to keep your back in good alignment whether you’re sitting or standing. It even comes with something called a “load distribution module”, a little platform that you can rest your backpack on as you wear it, significantly lowering the burden on your spine. When you think about the money that the NHS spends on treating back pain each year – not to mention the effect on the economy of days lost to back pain – then the LEX could become more than just a nifty little seat; it might even help fix a broken nation.

People should spend more time standing than sitting, but if we’re going the muscle atrophy route, couldn’t they at least make it look cool?

The answer to postural problems isn’t to sit “properly” but to kick the chair out and stand up.

Most people in the West have trouble standing up for more than 20 minutes because their muscles are so weak that they can’t keep their skeleton straight.

Adding an exoskeleton won’t improve anything — but it will make everyone more like insects.

Quite a fitting destiny for people already living in concrete hives and working in cubicles.

A decorator almost lost his leg and will have to learn to walk again after he suffered a horrific bite from Britain’s most poisonous spider.

Ricki Whitmore, 39, was injured when he disturbed a nest of flesh-eating false widows while working at a school and will be off his feet for six months.

Surgeons were forced to slice open his leg and flush out the venom after his thigh swelled to twice its normal size.

Experts said today that 10million of the spiders – a cousin of the deadly black widow – could be swarming around Britain and heading into homes to escape the cold.

Mr Whitmore, from Romford in Essex, will now have to undergo six months of specialist physiotherapy and admitted: ‘I am just lucky to still have my leg’.

‘There was a really sharp pain and then my leg started to throb,’ he told the Daily Star.

‘I managed to get home, but by the time I arrived my thigh had swollen to twice its normal size.

‘They tried to put a drain in his thigh. The skin ruptured and pus oozed out. It was revolting – it smelt like someone had died.’

He is one of a number of people across the UK to suffer nasty bites from the spideramid fears that numbers are soaring.

With temperatures outside plummeting as the winter months approach, millions of the spiders could make their way into homes across the country to escape the cold.

Traditionally they were only found in the south of England, but there nests being found in Wales and Scotland.

Mr Whitmore told how he was attacked by the spider, which can bite when threatened, because he never normally kills the creatures and instead tried to brush it out of the way as he worked.

His wife Carrie said that she was horrified when her husband staggered through the door of the family home looking pale and sweaty.

Once surgeons had initially flushed the poison out of his leg, Mr Whitmore had to have his thigh ‘washed’ eight times in the ensuing weeks.

Read More

Chew on this.

A team of MBA students were the recipients of the 2013 Hult Prize earlier this week, providing them with $1 million in seed money to produce an insect-based, protein-rich flour for feeding malnourished populations in other countries. The product is called Power Flour.

“It’s a huge deal because we had a very ambitious but highly executable five-year plan in place,” said team captain Mohammed Ashour, whose team hails from McGill University in Montreal. “So winning this prize is a great step in that direction.”

Ashour, along with teammates Shobhita Soor, Jesse Pearlstein, Zev Thompson and Gabe Mott, will be immediately working with an advisory board to recruit farmers and workers in Mexico, where a population of roughly 4 million live in slum conditions with widespread malnutrition.

Read more