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Cake day: October 4th, 2023

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  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_(disease)

    Koro is a culture-bound delusional disorder in which individuals have an overpowering belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear, despite the lack of any true longstanding changes to the genitals.[1][2] Koro is also known as shrinking penis, and was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

    EDIT: This is a new one on me. Apparently Russia has a penis-theft disinformation campaign targeting France…in the modern day.

    In the 1970s and early 1980s, newspapers reported incidents of genital shrinking in Western Nigeria. Since late 1996, a small-scale epidemic of genital shrinking was reported in West African nations. Affected individuals in the African outbreaks often interpreted the experience as genital theft, accusing someone with whom they had contact of “stealing” the organ and the spiritual essence, causing impotence. The perceived motive for theft was associated with local occult belief, the witchcraft of juju, to feed the spiritual agency or to hold the genital for ransom. Social representations about juju constitute consensual realities that propose both a means and motivation for genital-shrinking experience.[17]

    The epidemic began in Nigeria and Cameroon, and spread to Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal by 1997.[17] Cases were reported in Cotonou, Benin where mobs attacked individuals accused of the penis theft and authorities ordered security forces to curb the violence, following the deaths of five people by vigilantes.[55] Later reports of outbreak suggest a spread beyond West Africa, including the coverage of episodes in Khartoum, Sudan in September 2003; Banjul, Gambia in October 2003;[17] and Kinshasa, DR Congo in 2008.[56]

    Comparing West African genital-shrinking epidemics with koro in Southeast Asia, the latter has symptoms centered on genital retraction (instead of shrinkage) and fear of death (which is absent in African cases).[17] A study analyzing the West African epidemics from 1997 to 2003 concluded that rather than psychopathology, the episodes were the product of normal psychological functioning in undisturbed individuals, who were influenced by the local cultural models or social representations.[17]

    In 2025, rumors spread in the Central African Republic and Mali that certain people were stealing the penises of men who shook hands with them. A Russian-linked disinformation website attempted to capitalize on these beliefs by claiming that French intelligence services were using handshakes to steal African penises, then shipping the organs to France by boat in order to combat decreasing fertility rates in Europe. This claim was part of an ongoing effort by Russia to supplant French and Western influence in Africa.[57]









  • tal@lemmy.todaytoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Can you post mp3s?
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    4 days ago

    If you mean specifically as the target of a post, you can post a link to whatever you want (well, at least an http/https link…I don’t think that all protocols are supported, though I haven’t checked).

    However, I don’t believe that the img-rs instance that Lemmy instances normally run to allow hosting images will accept mp3s. So you’d have to upload it elsewhere (catbox.moe or something like that) that can accept mp3s and then link to it.

    checks

    At least on lemmy.today, yeah, it doesn’t accept it.

    The only format that I know that supports audio that img-rs will accept is WebM, and only if it has a video component.

    Combining an image and mp3 audio file into a WebM:

    $ ffmpeg -i denver-international-airport-blue-mustang-statue-blucifer-1600x1067.jpg -i 11325622-tr707-crash-cymbal-241376.mp3 11325622-tr707-crash-cymbal-241376.webm
    

    Yields (hosted on lemmy.today’s img-rs):

    The situation may be different for PieFed and for Mbin, and note that not all clients may be able to handle WebM, though the Lemmy Web UI is fine with it.







  • tal@lemmy.todaytoComic Strips@lemmy.world•They haven't aged well
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    6 days ago

    Generally speaking, I remember reading that people usually like the music from when they were young.

    searches

    Not the article I was thinking of, but same idea.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/bring-the-noise/articles/zvfphbk

    Why music from our teens stays with us forever

    The music we listen to during this period has greater lasting impact than songs in later life because of a psychological phenomenon called the reminiscence bump.

    Our memories define who we are and shape our sense of identity, but they are not evenly distributed throughout our life.

    We have fewer memories from birth to about eight-years-old, while at the other end of the scale our minds can easily recall memories that happened most recently, although this does decline with age.

    However, researchers have found there is a key age between the ages of 10 to 30-years-old when the reminiscence bump applies, meaning our memories have a particular affinity for recalling events.

    The reminiscence bump happens for everything – our favourite books, films, sports stars and music, but evidence suggests music features most highly because musical memories are stored in a ‘safe’ area of the brain which is more resilient and protected against age related conditions.

    She found there is a consistently reliable peak in both memory and preference for music people listened to during their teenage years.

    Even when working with people in their eighties she found their strongest musical memories take them back to their youths.

    It’s not necessarily when the music was released that is relevant but rather the time frame during which the music was important to an individual.

    One theory for why this happens is that our minds undergo an intense and rapid phase of development during our teenage years and early twenties so our budding brains and memory systems are at their peak absorbing as much information about the world as they can.




  • tal@lemmy.todaytoComic Strips@lemmy.world•Cancellation awaits
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    7 days ago

    The clue is in the earlier panel where Peter talks about taking a break from fighting crime.

    Hmm…that’s fair. And while I think that Venom can cover only part of a body, normally, I think he does the whole thing.

    And apparently, Peter Parker does have a red-headed love interest, who I guess “the chick” is supposed to be, not actually Poison Ivy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jane_Watson

    Mary Jane Watson is a character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, making her first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #15 (August 1964), and subsequently designed by John Romita Sr. in #42 (November 1966). Since then, she has gone on to become Spider-Man’s main love interest and later his wife (as Mary Jane Watson-Parker). Mary Jane Watson has also served as a supporting character to Iron Man.

    Like I said, I don’t really follow Spider-Man, so don’t know the story terribly well.