Taylor Swift’s Alleged Old Myspace Comments Are Pretty Great

PLEASE BE REAL.

Before Taylor Swift was like THE Taylor Swift, she was just a normal-ish teen on Myspace.

This was apparently Taylor’s first Myspace picture…

… and here’s an early selfie reminiscent of most digital camera selfies* of the mid-2000s…

… and here’s just a really random emo pic that screams Myspace but is actually from an appearance on CSI.

BUT… what’s even better than any of her Myspace pictures are the comments she used to leave on her friends’ comment sections or walls or whatever they were called on Myspace.
They’re awesome.

The following were supposedly screencapped a few years ago before Myspace went to complete shit. They can’t be 100% verified so I guess you have to take these with a grain of salt

The comments are mostly random inside jokes like this one where she says “haha fuck sewing machines.”

This New Species Of Australian Spider Will Scare The Pants Off You

Australia and spiders go together sort of like peanut butter and jelly. Which is why it was no surprise to anyone that yet another new species of creepy-crawly was discovered in Queensland earlier this month. This particular species of spider...well, let's just say you're not even safe from it while you're taking a swim.

Meet Dolomedes briangreenei, or just Brian for short. Here he easily strides out onto water looking for a meal.

Officials named the spider Brian after World Science Festival cofounder Professor Brian Greene.

Brian can glide along on the surface of the water. The bugger can even remain submerged for up to an hour as it hunts for insects, fish, and cane toads.

While their bite isn't dangerous to humans, they're certainly an unsettling sight to come across when you're taking a dip in a river or stream.

Yeah, no thanks. As if I needed another reason to stay away from any body of water in Australia. Nature, you scary.

There's A Supervolcano In Yellowstone And When It Erupts, This Is What Will Happen

With today's technological advances, it seems almost impossible to not know when a volcano will erupt...

But when it comes to the one in the northwestern corner of Wyoming, that's exactly the case.

The supervolcano located in Yellowstone National Park known as the Yellowstone Caldera has been waiting to erupt for the past few thousand years...and there's no telling when it will blow.

Scientists are constantly studying the volcano because if it erupts, it could be disastrous for millions of people. Here's what could happen if the caldera were to blow in the near future.

There would most likely be an earthquake, or multiple quakes, before an eruption.

In order for magma and lava to reach the surface, many rocks need to be broken. If the supervolcano were to erupt, we'd have warning signs in the weeks and months leading up to the explosion.

The caldera would crumble.

A sinkhole would then form once the caldera has been sufficiently dismantled. Once the superheated gasses and lava start flowing from the mouth, ash would start spewing. This would cause a major change in temperatures across the country, possibly even the world.

Ash would cover a good portion, if not all of the country.

Most of middle America would have the skies covered in a thick layer of ash, while coastal cities would experience thinner coverage. This would have a massive effect on climate, crop growth, and soils. It would devastate food supplies and pollute the Mississippi River, damaging our water supplies as well.

Thankfully though, scientists estimate that the odds of this happening in Yellowstone are only about 1 in 730,000.

While most scientists agree that a supervolcano eruption in Yellowstone National Park isn't going to happen any time soon, it's still unbelievable to consider the damage and destruction it could have on our country. It's important to prepare and be aware of the warning signs.

Just North Of Area 51 Is Another Bizarre Site Known As Area 6

If you're even vaguely familiar with Area 51, you know that there's something weird happening in Nevada. But what if I told you that there was an even weirder location just 12 miles north of Area 51?

It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but several Google Earth photographs have sparked a pretty serious debate online. Oh, and its existence was recently confirmed by the government.

Below is an aerial photograph of the location known as Area 6.

Area 6 sits within the Nevada National Security Site, formerly known as the Nevada Proving Grounds. In the 1940s and 1950s, several underground nuclear detonations were performed here. The site is currently under the control of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

After the photographs of Area 6 became public, the NNSA repeatedly deflected requests for an explanation.

This week, however, the NNSA finally caved and told the media that Area 6 is used by the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

"They come here to test their own sensors. We do a wide variety of work for others…supporting people with sensor development activities. It evolved from the nuclear testing program. We had to have very good sensors to collect data in a split second before they were obliterated," said Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the NNSA.

Other uncovered documentation about Area 6 describes the site as being a testing ground for drones.

Okay, so it doesn't look like a place that houses alien bodies, which Area 51 very well could be. That being said, who knows if the NNSA is actually telling the truth?

Whether or not this explanation is accurate, at least the government decided to say something this time! If only someone in the government now would go on the record about Area 51...

Are you pre-diabetic? 46% of California adults are, UCLA study finds

For decades, more and more Californians have put on weight and fallen sick with diabetes, prompting warnings that the disease was spiraling out of control.

Now experts have data showing just how bleak the situation is.

Researchers from UCLA determined that 55% of California adults have either diabetes or pre-diabetes, a condition in which blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be considered diabetic, according to a study published Thursday.

Experts already knew that about 9% of people in the state have diabetes. But previous estimates had put the rate of pre-diabetes at about 33%, lower than the 46% calculated by UCLA researchers.

"Our genes and our environment are kind of on a collision course," said Dr. Francine Kaufman, the former head of the American Diabetes Assn., who was not involved with the research. "It's not stopping."

Rates of diabetes have increased more than 175% nationally since 1980, according to federal data. It's now the seventh-leading cause of death in California.

The UCLA researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to create a model that predicts pre-diabetes, based on factors such as race, height and weight. That model was then applied to data from the California Health Interview Survey, determining that 13 million adults in the state have either pre-diabetes or undiagnosed diabetes.

Up to 70% of those with pre-diabetes develop diabetes in their lifetime.

"This study is a barometer that's telling us that the storm is coming," said Harold Goldstein, head of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, a nonprofit that supports public health initiatives and funded the study.

Already, 2.5 million Californians have been diagnosed with diabetes, which can cause kidney failure, amputation and premature death. More than 100 diabetic Californians lose a leg, foot or toe every week because of the disease, according to state data.

But experts say there's hope of curbing the disease's spread. The vast majority of diabetes cases in California — upward of 90% — are Type 2, which is preventable. People can stave off developing diabetes by adopting a healthier diet and increasing physical activity, experts say.

The difficulty is that most people don't take action until it's too late.

"One of the biggest problems with pre-diabetes is that most people don't know they have it," said Dr. Susan Babey, the paper's lead researcher and a co-director of the Chronic Disease Program at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

About 90% of people with pre-diabetes are unaware of their condition, so most don't get any treatment, said Matt Petersen, managing director of medical information for the American Diabetes Assn. There are no symptoms of pre-diabetes, which can be detected only through blood tests.

"If you do intervene, you have a successful outcome," he said. "We just have to have people know they're at risk and get screened."

An often-cited clinical research study found that people with pre-diabetes who were overweight and improved their diet and worked out reduced their diabetes risk 58%. Those who instead took a medicine to treat diabetes reduced their risk only 31%.

The UCLA researchers found that pre-diabetes in California increases with age, from 33% of adults ages 18 to 39 having the condition to 60% in those 55 to 69.

They also found racial and ethnic variation in the rates. About 42% of Asian adults have pre-diabetes, 44% of Latino adults, 48% of white adults, 50% of African American adults and 55% of Pacific Islander adults.

Goldstein says he thinks the high rates of pre-diabetes, especially among younger generations, arise from sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy eating habits. "They've grown up in a world that's designed for the disease," he said.

He wants to increase access to healthy, fresh foods, and reduce junk food advertising. On Tuesday, California state legislators proposed a "health impact fee," which would tax sugar-sweetened beverages by 2 cents an ounce. Bob Achermann, executive director of the California Beverage Assn., on Wednesday called the measure the latest in a series of "misguided tax proposals on sugar-sweetened beverages," and urged leaders to "find real solutions to obesity and diabetes."

In 2014, Berkeley voters approved the nation's first citywide tax on sodas and other sugary beverages.

Kaufman, a pediatrician and endocrinologist, agreed that soda and fast food are a problem.

When she began her medical training at Children's Hospital Los Angeles in 1975, she almost never had young patients with Type 2 diabetes. Now she sees children with the disease regularly.

She said the state needs to target the causes of the obesity and diabetes epidemics with the same vigor it did tobacco usage several decades ago. The work that's been done in California so far hasn't done much to stop the increase in diabetes cases, she said.

"It just isn't enough to make any kind of dent," she said.

BREAKTHROUGH: The food you eat determines which genes get activated or suppressed, controlling disease vs. health throughout your life (the Health Ranger was right!)

(NaturalNews) Everyone says you are what you eat, but, for some reason, the majority of the world's population seems completely oblivious to this fact. Yet pure science and simple experiments have managed to definitively prove what naturopaths have been saying for centuries: What you eat changes you, down to your very DNA. As it turns out, our diet can influence what genes are more active or suppressed. Basically, it can determine whether genes associated with conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes or heart disease are hyperactive or functioning within parameters.

It's particularly easy to ignore that our diets directly affect our health when the foods around us taste so good. General practitioners who don't take food into consideration when treating their patients certainly don't make it any easier. In this context, new studies that point to the relevance of food in connection to our DNA are an essential step forward.

We don't even know the half of it

The nutrients that the human body receives in utero, as well as the ones it feeds on after being born, invariably affect our genes. The prevalent opinion is that our genes determine how nutrients are broken down and then absorbed by cells. Scientists thought that all information other than the pure genome is deleted when a new embryo is formed. However, in 2013, when the human DNA was completely mapped, a lot of variables were still missing. This much was clear because the genome on its own could not explain all of the physiological processes we are currently familiar with.

Obviously, more things were going on with our genome than we were able to see. Until now, the separate field of epigenetics was associated with the changes that our DNA undergoes as a result of outside forces, i.e. our diet or the environment we live in. The separation of the fields was necessary because scientists thought that the genome itself does not change – only its surroundings do. Now, evidence shows that the characteristics of these surroundings, chemicals and enzymes, can irrevocably affect our bodies as they develop.

For instance, in mice, the risk for chronic diseases and radical differences in weight and metabolism are greatly affected by the mother's diet during pregnancy. A study conducted in 2006 concluded that, even if the mother is obese and has an increased chance of developing certain diseases, such as diabetes or cancer, the majority of her offspring are born healthy and with normal health risks, provided that her nutrition is appropriate during gestation. Thus, almost no disposition for chronic diseases or body constitution was inherited as a result of her DNA but rather as a result of eating habits during pregnancy. In human beings, a well-balanced diet has a definitive impact upon our genetic disposition to certain diseases.

The domino effect

Recent studies have proven that an unbalanced diet has a domino-like effect upon the health of the entire organism. In order to maintain ourselves as disease-free as possible, it's imperative that we have a diet with equal intakes of carbohydrates, protein and fat, according to researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. When either of these categories dominates over the other, the nutrients we get from food become the prevalent chemicals our DNA has in its surroundings. A good example is that of a diet that contains 60% or more carbs. Lab research has found that, in these circumstances, the genes associated with cardiovascular diseases and diabetes start to speed up their processes.

Sometimes, the changes that occur as a result of eating habits are simply astounding. Dr. Markus Ralser, a biochemist from the University of Cambridge, indicates that almost all of a cell's genes are directly influenced by the nutrients it has access to. All it takes is for a few substances to go missing, and the regular metabolic profile becomes altered in a significant way. Although researchers have yet to exactly pinpoint which food does what, experienced nutritionists have formed a few hypotheses based on the amount of nutrients each food item has.

It's never been this obvious that current medical practice has a lot to integrate in the fields of nutrition and genetics. Until things change for the better, it's up to the people who stay informed to take action and ensure that their health, along with that of their families, is headed in the right direction.

Revolutionary Stem Cell Surgery Restores Sight In Children With Cataracts

There are many causes of blindness, but over half of all cases are caused by cataracts. Normally, a risky operation is needed to restore sight to those afflicted with them, but a pioneering new surgery that took place in China may make this a thing of the past. As the groundbreaking Nature study reveals, 12 children have been saved from blindness after surgeons activated stem cells within the eye to grow a completely new lens.

Stem cells are often touted as being a potentially revolutionary pillar of medical science, and for good reason: Various types of stem cells have been shown to restore damaged heart tissue and generate insulin-manufacturing cells in a malfunctioning pancreas. Although researchers are still some way off restoring humanity’s ability to completely regenerate destroyed tissue in organs, they are certainly advancing along the path to that game-changing goal.

With this in mind, this team of researchers turned their stem cell know-how towards cataracts. Around 20 million people are blind because of these cloudy lenses, which can occur for a number of reasons. They tend to affect older people, but it is possible to develop them shortly after birth.

Conventional cataract surgery is inherently risky, and even more so when performed on the very young. Large incisions are made at both the back and front of the eye; the cloudy lens is then removed and replaced with a clear, artificial one. Although this restores sight, the artificial lens does not grow with the child, meaning that additional future surgery is highly likely. Inflammation around the incisions is also common with this type of operation.

Earlier experiments on rabbits and macaque monkeys investigated the stem cells lining part of the eye called the lens capsule, which surrounds the lens itself. These so-called lens epithelial stem cells (LECs) were shown to be frequently destroyed during conventional cataract removal surgery, but if left intact, they were able to regenerate healthy lenses.

Twelve children under the age of two were chosen for a new type of minimally-invasive cataract removal surgery based on these LECs. Surgeons made 1.5 millimeter-long incisions in both their eyes, and the cloudy lenses were removed as before. This time, care was taken to leave the lens capsules and their LECs intact.

Remarkably, within a month, the incisions were fully healed, and in just three months the children had regrown fully operational, naturally-grown lenses. Their sight was completely restored within eight months, when their new lenses grew back to the size of the original cloudy ones.

Compared to conventional surgery, these 12 children had clearer lenses, far less inflammation, and had a far shorter healing period. Significantly, this surgery was specifically aimed at children: Their LECs are more youthful and far more likely to successfully regenerate a new lens than adult LECs.

“This illustrates that there a can be a new approach. We can turn on our own dormant stem cells,” said Kang Zhang, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of California, San Diego and the coordinator of the research, as reported by the Guardian. “Just imagine how powerful this could be if we can do it for heart attacks, or turn on neuronal stem cells in the brain?”

Study Confirms Half of What We Eat Is Junk

Nearly 60 percent of what Americans eat is junk — ultra-processed foods loaded with sugar, salt, fat and all the other stuff we are not supposed to snack on, a new study finds.

The data pretty clearly explain why two-thirds of Americans are obese or overweight, and why rates of diabetes and heart disease are soaring, the team of Brazilian and U.S. researchers said.

"The most common ultra-processed foods in terms of energy contribution were breads; soft drinks, fruit drinks and milk-based drinks; cakes, cookies and pies; salty snacks; frozen and shelf-stable plates; pizza and breakfast cereals," Dr. Carlos Augusto Monteiro of the University of São Paulo and colleagues there, and at Tufts University in Boston, wrote in their report.

"Meat, fruit and milk provided the most calories among unprocessed or minimally processed foods," they added.

Fresh fruits and vegetables should make up most of what we eat, nutritionists and public health officials alike say. But the study found they contribute just under 650 calories a day in the average 2,000 calorie-a-day diet.

Starchy, fat-laden, processed foods raise rates of heart disease and diabetes, as well as cancer, studies show. People who eat more fruits and vegetables have lower rates of all these diseases.

The researchers used information from a large national study of U.S. health that includes a detailed food diary. They focused on 9,300 adults and children.

"Ultra-processed foods comprised 57.9 percent of energy intake, and contributed 89.7 percent of the energy intake from added sugars," the team wrote in the British Medical Journal's online publication BMJ Open.

More than 20 percent of calories in the ultra-processed foods came from sugar. Federal eating guidelines say people shouldn't get any more than 10 percent of calories from sugar and some nutritionists say it should be even less than that.

California Lawmakers Vote to Raise Smoking, Vaping Age to 21

California lawmakers voted Thursday to raise the legal age for purchasing and using tobacco and e-cigarettes from 18 to 21, putting the nation's most populous state on the brink of becoming only the second after Hawaii to bar teenagers from lighting up, dipping or vaping.

Before it can become law, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown must sign the legislation, which has already passed the state Assembly. His spokesman said the governor generally does not comment on pending legislation.

Only Hawaii has adopted the higher age limit statewide, although dozens of cities, including New York and San Francisco, have passed similar laws of their own.

"We can prevent countless California youth from becoming addicted to this deadly drug, save billions of dollars in direct health care costs and, most importantly, save lives," said Democratic Sen. Ed Hernandez, who wrote the bill.

The higher age limit, part of a package of anti-tobacco bills, won approval despite intense lobbying from tobacco interests and fierce opposition from many Republicans, who said the state should butt out of people's personal health decisions, even if they are harmful.

The six bills that passed both houses represented California's most substantial anti-tobacco effort in nearly two decades, according to the American Cancer Society.

"With California having such a huge population, it's going to be very impactful nationwide," said Cathy Callaway, associate director of state and local campaigns for the society.

Advocates noted that the vast majority of smokers start before they are 18, according to data from the U.S. surgeon general. Making it illegal for 18-year-old high school students to buy tobacco for their underage friends will make it more difficult for teens to get the products, they said.

Opponents said American law and custom has long accepted that people can make adult decisions on their 18th birthday and live with the consequences. Eighteen-year-olds can register to vote, join the military, sign legally binding contracts, consent to sex and do just about any legal activity besides buying alcohol.

In response, Democrats changed the bill to allow members of the military to continue buying cigarettes at 18.

"You can commit a felony when you're 18 years old and for the rest of your life, be in prison," Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes said. "And yet you can't buy a pack of cigarettes."

Another bill would classify e-cigarettes, or "vaping" devices, as tobacco products subject to the same restrictions on who can purchase them and where they can be used.

The Food and Drug Administration has proposed regulations for e-cigarettes, but none has taken effect.

Anti-tobacco groups fear that vaporizers are enticing to young people and may encourage them to eventually take up smoking.

"All the progress we've made since 1965 to educate people about the hazards of smoking may be for naught as vaping has started a new generation of nicotine junkies that will be helplessly addicted and will ultimately graduate to smoking cancer sticks," said Sen. Jeff Stone, a Republican.

Others say the devices are a less harmful, tar-free alternative to cigarettes. They have not been extensively studied, and there is no scientific consensus on their risks.

A vaping industry group, the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, urged Brown to veto the bill, saying in a letter that it could pose problems for vape shops.

"The stigma of being equated with tobacco has many negative consequences," the group wrote.

The bills would also expand smoke-free areas to include bars, workplace break rooms, small businesses, warehouses and hotel lobbies and meeting rooms. Smoking bans would apply at more schools, including charter schools, and counties would be able to raise their own cigarette taxes beyond the state's levy of $0.87 per pack.

The legislation would take effect 90 days after the governor signs it.

The Senate vote came just over a week after San Francisco officials opted to raise the tobacco buying age to 21, making it the largest city to do so after New York. Nationwide, more than 120 municipalities have raised the smoking age, according to Tobacco 21, a group that advocates the policy shift nationally.

Hawaii was first to adopt the higher age limit statewide. New Jersey's Legislature voted to raise the smoking age from 19 to 21, but the bill died when Republican Gov. Chris Christie decided not to act on it before a January deadline.

Anti-smoking groups are collecting signatures for a November ballot initiative that would raise the cigarette tax to $2 a pack and direct the money to health care, tobacco-use prevention, research and law enforcement.