Category: Elsewhere

You should read this for 3/23/2019:

Art and Film

Russell Shorto writing for the New York Times Magazine: Rembrandt in the Blood: An Obsessive Aristocrat, Rediscovered Paintings and an Art-World Feud

Why is the Mona Lisa not the Mona Lisa?

One of the great riddles of modern times is why a 500-year portrait of a Florentine housewife, of no rank or title, is today the most famous painting in the world. But the mystery around that portrait has now deepened. New findings suggest that Leonardo da Vinci’s most celebrated work may not depict M(ad)onna Lisa, wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, at all.

Books, Writing, and Language

Translator of Homer Emily R. C. Wilson on Twitter: So that you can all feel my pain, here are a few more reasons why it’s more or less impossible to translate Homer into English in a satisfactory way.

Letterlocking: The Long-Lost Art Of Using Paper-Folding To Foil Snoops

“Letterlocking” is a term coined by MIT Libraries conservator Jana Dambrogio after she discovered a trove of letters while spelunking in the conservation lab of the Vatican Secret Archives; the letters had been ingeniously folded and sealed so that they couldn’t be opened and re-closed without revealing that they had been read. Some even contained “booby traps” to catch the unwary.

Food and Drink

Via Simply Recipes: Slow Cooker Guinness Beef Stew This freezes really well.

History and Archaeology

H/T Lisa C: L.D. Burnett on Getting the Right History vs. Getting the History Right

H/T PNH: Myke Cole on How the Far Right Perverts Ancient History—And Why It Matters

Hanson’s wildly successful 1989 book on ancient infantry combat, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, advanced the breathtakingly bigoted and utterly false notion that manly, honest, close-combat is the Western legacy of battle, and that perfidy, trickery, and ruse is the Eastern legacy, and that therefore the Western way has rightly come to dominate.

. . .

The right wing’s distortion of the West’s fighting roots in the ancient world – roots that were by any measure polyglot, diverse and multicultural, resonate to the point of vibration with conservative movements that by definition lift up the past.

Science and Nature

H/T Mac: Woman Sets Up Tiny Photo Booth to Capture Birds Eating in Her Backyard There are a lot of fairly large images of birds, so the page may be a little slow to load.

NASA issues space herpes warning as virus reactivates in astronauts “The stress on the body of spaceflight is believed to contribute to suppressing the immune system and helping the virus to grow.”

There are eight known herpes virus, including the strain for chickenpox, which once contracted will stay within their hosts’ nerve cells for their entire life.
They are mostly kept suppressed by the immune system, but if the immune system itself is suppressed by space exploration, then they could pose a significant risks to astronauts travelling to Mars or beyond.

Society

When Not Reading The Fine Print Can Cost Your Soul

‘Everything Just Came Flooding Back’: Sparks Of Teen Romance Rekindled 28 Years Later

In the summer of 1981 in Louisiana, Liz Barnez, then, 16 and Lori Daigle, then 17, shared a secret kiss.

Blame wood-burning stoves for winter air pollution and health threats

The Most Alarming Argument in Jill Lepore’s These Truths

Technology

Via A Book Apart Authors Answer: What Are Your Top Tips For Working Remotely?

H/T O’Reilly — Benedict Evans: Microsoft, Facebook, Trust And Privacy

There are strong parallels between organised abuse of Facebook and FB’s attempts to respond, in the last 24 months, and malware on Windows and Office and Microsoft’s attempts to respond, 20 years ago.

After the porn ban, Tumblr users have ditched the platform as promised Tumblr has lost 30 percent of web traffic since December

Women’s Work

Military Doctors Told Them It Was Just “Female Problems.” Weeks Later, They Were In The Hospital.

Your New Bicycle: Beto, childcare, and the cool

Via NPR: After Years Of Abuse By Priests, #NunsToo Are Speaking Out

“The Vatican is a world of men; some truly are men of God,” says Sister Catherine Aubin, a French Dominican nun who teaches at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome. “Others have been ruined by power. The key to these secrets and silence is … abuse of power. They climb up a career staircase toward evil.”

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

In 1958, a synagogue was bombed. An editor’s response won a Pulitzer — and his words ring eerily true today

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

H/T PNH: Charlotte Sometimes on Twitter about book day and community and making things better for kids: Ok. I have a really long story about World Book Day. Indulge me or mute me, I am a bit emotional this morning….

Cork Statue Pays Tribute To Choctaw Tribe’s Generosity During The Irish Famine

You should read this for 3/9/2019:

Art, Film and Music

Amanda Palmer has a new album coming out and NPR is streaming it for free!

Books, Writing, and Language

Los Angeles Times Wants Rights to Books Written by Staff

One of the nation’s leading newspapers is attempting an unprecedented rights grab, according to its writers. In the midst of contract negotiations with its newsroom staff, the Los Angeles Times, purchased last year by biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, has proposed that its journalists, as a condition of employment, cede control of any books or other creative works made outside of their daily journalistic duties.

Via Ryan Starkey: Every Native British and Irish Language

See also A Brief History of British and Irish Languages

Education

Broken Trust: Texas’ huge school endowment pays out less and less for schoolchildren

The Permanent School Fund has failed to match the performance of peer endowments, missing out on as much as $12 billion in growth and amassing a risky asset allocation, a yearlong Houston Chronicle investigation reveals.

Food and Drink

H/T Scott: Why Washington State’s Wine Scene Has Become So Experimental

Ten Years of Open That Bottle Night

In 2009, a group of people with a love of wine and connections to the University of Puget Sound decided to celebrate Open That Bottle Night. Our wines on that February evening included a sparkling wine and a Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington State, a classic Bordeaux, a Chateauneuf du Pape, a California port-style wine, and a Sauternes. The only “rule” of our gathering was that each participant had to bring a story with his or her wine.

Via Elise Bauer on Simply Recipes: Spicy Vegetarian Chili

History and Archaeology

3,400-year-old human remains at schools’ site

The findings included cremation urns, and in one place small pieces of human bone.
The urns were decorated with finger-tip or fingernail impressions.
The human bone was radiocarbon dated as being 1374 – 1125 BC, up to 3,400 years-old.

First Nations clam gardens at least 3,500 years old, B.C. study finds

First Nations built and maintained shellfish gardens on Quadra Island beginning at least 3,500 years ago, according to a newly published study.
The age and sophistication of this technology for shellfish cultivation is evidence of Indigenous management systems that long predate contact with Europeans, said Simon Fraser University archeologist Dana Lepofsky, a co-author.

Science and Nature

WWF’s Secret War: One Of The World’s Biggest Charities Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People

A second person may be “cured” of HIV A new study tells the story of a man who had HIV, and now doesn’t, after a stem-cell transplant.

H/T Mac: Mysterious new orca species likely identified

These orcas, referred to as type D killer whales, were previously known from amateur photographs, fishermen’s descriptions, and one mass stranding—but never encountered in their natural state by cetacean experts. Unlike the other known types of orcas, they have a more rounded head, a pointier and narrower dorsal fin, and a very small white eye patch. They’re also several feet shorter in length, Pitman says. (See exclusive underwater video of type D orcas.)

Society

Why Facebook Still Seems to Spy on You

Technology

BBEdit 12.6 to Return to the Mac App Store

BBEdit being able to return to the Mac App Store is great news for customers (modulo bugs) and for Bare Bones, but I’m not sure what it means for the store in general. Although there has finally been some progress, this feels like Apple giving up. They can’t or don’t want to really fix the sandbox to work well with pro apps, but they do want them to be in the store, so they’ll just let them ask for blanket permissions. BBEdit gets to be in the store, and Apple gets to say that everything (except Xcode) is sandboxed, even though it’s kind of security theater.

The president just called the CEO of Apple ‘Tim Apple’ “His name is Tim Cook and he’s sitting right there”

See also this and this from Scott Knaster and “Tim Apple” is funny until it isn’t

Women’s Work

The Disturbing True Story Behind the Iconic ‘Afghan Girl’ Photo

What Historians Are Tweeting: The Women Historians Who Inspire on International Women’s Day

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Everyone Is In Love With This Professor Who Stepped In When His Student Couldn’t Find a Babysitter

H/T: Eating with Dignity: A Conversation with Food Forward

Food Forward organizes gleaning activities — called “picks” or “harvests” — on private properties (including homes and commercial farms), in public spaces and at farmers and wholesale markets to “recover” produce. What they collect is donated to “direct-service agencies” that feed the hungry.

Creek Indians donate $180,000 to cover funeral costs for 23 Alabama tornado victims

In Alabama, authorities confirm that The Poarch Band of Creek Indians donated $180,000 to cover all costs for funeral services and interment for the 23 people killed in Sunday’s tornado in Lee County.

You should read this for 3/2/2019:

Art and Film

Star Trek’s Jonathan Frakes Will Direct Patrick Stewart Once More for the Picard Show

Books, Writing, and Language

More from Nora Roberts: How to spot scammers…and raise hell

Food and Drink

Chicken and Dumplings

History and Archaeology

Fetishizing family farms

Given the inhuman scale of ecological crises like climate change and food insecurity, family farming offers a seductive mythology, anchored in a fantasy of permanence and human scale. But it’s a mythology all the same, and one largely disconnected from the history of rural family life in America.

A 2,000-year-old tattoo needle still has ink on the tip Archaeologists found the oldest tattooing tool ever discovered in North America.

Science and Nature

Migrating blue whales rely on memory to find their feeding grounds

On their annual migration, their path takes in the spots that have proven to be the most reliable feeding grounds over the years. In doing this, the whales may bypass hotspots that pop up and fade from one year to the next, suggesting that they rely heavily on memory to find a solid meal. But in a world where “normal” is shifting rapidly, the endangered whales may no longer be able to rely on the abundance of those old, faithful feeding grounds.

Singing mice could offer clues about how human brains manage conversation “One part of the mouse’s brain creates the song, another coordinates the duets.”

Society

Warren Buffett Letter: Full Text

This is the annual letter that Warren Buffett (and Charlie Munger) deliver to Berkshire Hathaway share holders. I started reading these about twenty five years ago, and have learned a lot from them in terms of basic accounting principles for understanding stocks and investments.

‘Not In Compliance’: Wilbur Ross, The Trump Official Who Keeps Watchdogs Up At Night

Ross failed to divest assets when he said he would — despite telling ethics officials he had done so. His inaccuracies and omissions have also prompted serious questions about whether he took official actions that could affect his personal financial interests, which would violate conflict of interest law — something he has repeatedly said he hasn’t done.

PG&E: It’s likely our equipment was “ignition point” for deadly Camp Fire

Technology

The Trauma Floor The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America

The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed. She knows that section 13 of the Facebook community standards prohibits videos that depict the murder of one or more people. When Chloe explains this to the class, she hears her voice shaking.
Returning to her seat, Chloe feels an overpowering urge to sob. Another trainee has gone up to review the next post, but Chloe cannot concentrate. She leaves the room, and begins to cry so hard that she has trouble breathing.

AI won’t relieve the misery of Facebook’s human moderators “The problem of online content moderation can’t be solved with artificial intelligence, say experts”

Moderating content doesn’t have to be so traumatic

How to hear (and delete) every conversation your Amazon Alexa has recorded

Internet trolls forced Rotten Tomatoes to limit comments on new movies

Women’s Work

Carrie Ann Lucas Dies At Age 47, You Probably Haven’t Heard Of Her And That’s A Problem

This photo of Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Tlaib from the Cohen hearing says it all

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

H/T Elizabeth: China approves Donald Trump-branded spas, escort services, hotels and massage parlours without US Congress permission

The President’s lawyers applied for the trademarks in April last year, at the same time the then Presidential candidate Trump was accusing China of “ripping off” the US and deliberately manipulating its currency to its own advantage.

Janet Yellen: Trump Is An Even Bigger Idiot Than He LooksThe former Federal Reserve chair cannot adequately express how dumb our president is.

From NPR: ‘Low IQ,’ ‘SPECTACULAR,’ ‘Dog’: How Trump Tweets About African-Americans

NPR examined Trump’s Twitter feed between June 1 and Labor Day. It provided a snapshot of a president who directs venomous tirades at black public figures who bash him, while singling out black celebrities who support him for praise.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

How New Orleans Reduced Its Homeless Population By 90 Percent

This is the key point:

“You just accept them as they are and you provide the housing first,” Kegel says. “Then, once they’re in their apartment, you immediately wrap all the services around them that they need to stay stable and live the highest quality life that they can live.”

You should read this for 2/22/2019:

Art and Film

Books, Writing, and Language

This Chrome extension lets you learn a new language by watching Netflix

. Language Learning with Netflix is a Chrome extension that lets you watch shows with two subtitles on at the same time so you can visually pair translations with dialogue and learn some new vocabulary in the process. It’s a clever service that makes use of Netflix’s massive catalog and all of the major languages in which it already offers subtitles, including Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

Where Do New Languages Come From?

The WPA’s horseback librariansThe WPA’s horseback librarians

H/T Beth: How Humans Invented Writing — Four Different Times

H/T Patrick: Nora Roberts on serial plaigirist Cristiane Serruya: Plagiarism, Then And Now

Cristiane Serruya, a self-published ‘writer’ based in Brazil seems to have made a living stealing from actual writers. In this case, a reader again (it’s always a reader, and bless you every one) contacted Courtney Milan, a successful romance writer, a smart woman with a strong spine–and a lawyer, to tell her she’d been plagiarized. If you want to know more about this, check out Courtney’s blog–she lays it out really well.

Education

University police warn students to be on the lookout for a helicopter mom

Food and Drink

Himalayan Salt Is Just Salt, But Pink

Soak Your Beans in the Fridge for Faster Meal Prep

H/T Jeff: Some of Portland’s Best Chefs Go Sober “Drugs and booze nearly gutted a generation of Portland’s best chefs. Now they’re setting the table for sober kitchen culture.”

The Last Word, Your First Cocktail Choice

The key to the drink is Green Chartreuse, a French herbal liqueur with a history even more colorful than the cocktail. The original recipe was created in 1605, intended as a medicinal elixir. Today, the spirit is made from 130 plants, the identity of which are only known by two of the Carthusian monks of La Grande Chartreuse, which makes it one of the most closely guarded secrets in the spirits world”

History and Archaeology

Researchers Use AI to Discover Evidence of Unknown Human Ancestor In Our DNA

Last summer, a team of researchers found a bone fragment in Russia that belonged to a child conceived by a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father. This remarkable finding suggested that not only were Homo sapiens interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans, but these two species were also interbreeding with one another. This discovery appeared to point to the hypothetical missing third species that could account for the inexplicable parts of the modern human genome. The obstacle geneticists faced was to map not only Neanderthal and Denisovan interbreeding, but also interbreeding between Homo sapiens and a Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid.

H/T Beth: The Lost World of the Maya is Finally Emerging From the Jungle

Tim Clarkson: Tintagel and the Battle of Camlann

The Lab Discovering DNA in Old Books “Even the beeswax used in seals is rich with data about the past, including the flowers that grew in that region year to year”

Sarah Fiddyment, a postdoctoral research fellow working with Collins, shadowed conservationists for several weeks. She saw that they used white Staedtler erasers to clean the manuscripts, and wondered whether that rubbed off enough DNA to do the trick. It did; the team found a way to extract DNA and proteins from eraser crumbs, a compromise that satisfied everyone.

They should have included Michael Drout.

Science and Nature

This Scary Map Shows How Climate Change Will Transform Your City You can find the interactive climate change map here.

Opportunity did not answer NASA’s final call, and it’s now lost to us

And yet from that moment on, Opportunity and its sister rover Spirit began plugging along the surface of Mars. Originally designed for 90-day lifetimes, the rovers persisted. Spirit lasted until 2010, when its batteries were unable to keep the spacecraft’s critical components from freezing. But Opportunity kept on keeping on amidst the harsh terrain. It roved a staggering 45.16 kilometers across the Red Planet, a distance unmatched by any rover on the Moon or Mars. In 2016, as it climbed a hill, Opportunity’s tilt reached 32 degrees, the steepest ever for any rover on Mars.

H/T Bronwen: World’s largest bee, missing for 38 years, found in Indonesia

Society

Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation in museum building, safety manager says

Technology

Hackers keep trying to get malicious Windows file onto MacOS

Google, Apple Called Out For Hosting Saudi Government App That Allows Men To Track Their Spouses’ Movements

Now available: Kashmir Hill’s final Good Bye Big Five article on blocking all 5 tech giants: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft:

A couple of months ago, I set out to answer the question of whether it’s possible to avoid the tech giants. Over the course of five weeks, I blocked Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple one at a time, to find out how to live in the modern age without each one.
To end my experiment, I’m going to see if I can survive blocking all five at once.

Women’s Work

The Post-it wall outside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office got so big she had to move it

Michelle Obama just shared a glorious text exchange with her mom from Grammys night

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

If Trump Declares An Emergency To Build The Wall, Congress Can Block Him

You should read this for 2/10/2019:

Books, Writing, and Language

Ian Parker via The New Yorker “Dan Mallory, who writes under the name A. J. Finn, went to No. 1 with his début thriller, The Woman in the Window. His life contains even stranger twists.” A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions

Nicola Griffith interviewed by Alexis Smith for Moss

Education

Why study English? We’re poorer in every sense without it

Similarly in the US, a longterm decline in the popularity of humanities courses accelerated sharply after the financial crisis of 2008/09; having accounted for 22% of all US degrees in the late 1960s, they now make up less than 5%. Writing in the Atlantic last year, historian Benjamin Schmidt called this a “crisis”, arguing that the cause is students’ anxieties about the job market and an increasingly instrumental view of higher education as a means to boost future earnings (even if graduate employment statistics provide limited justification for the switch from arts to sciences).

Food and Drink

Should I Drink Red Wine?

It’s from 2015, but it’s still interesting in terms of the potential health benefits of red wine in moderation (resveratrol) vs the calories.

A Winter Garden

Sarah has farmed seaweed for eight years. However, this enterprise, Springtide Seaweed, is her first try at running a complete business. In a licensed 35 acres of mud-bottomed bay, she and her partner puzzle out the best ways to raise their crops, which need cold clean water to thrive. Their seaweeds cling to ropes, horizontal long lines that hang 6 feet down. Each species requires specific light intensities. The trick is to have some of them throw a flickering shade onto others, but not too much, and to allow them all to absorb the amount of light they need, but not enough for the winter sun to scorch them.

Wine could help solve writer’s block, says study That’s not, at all, what teh study actually says, of course.

Dorie Greenspan’s Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rose Levy Beranbaum : The Chewiest, Crackliest Molasses Cookies Have a Genius Little Secret

History and Archaeology

New article ponders the mystery of carved stone balls

Over 200 carved stone balls have been found in Scotland, the size of oranges and each distinctively decorated. They were made in the Neolithic, and no one knows why.

See the pictures and links in the article; these are carefully, often intricately carved from stone.

Science and Nature

Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’

The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.

Society

From Newsweek: Measles Outbreak: Children Of Anti-Vaxxers Are Asking How To Get Vaccinated Without Their Parents Knowing

Ex-CIA and FBI director threatened by scammer, then helps put him in prison

Exclusive: Thousands of Black Votes in Georgia Disappeared and No One Can Explain It

As if it were a too on-the-nose movie plot, Abrams’ Republican opponent in the race for governor was Brian Kemp. As Georgia’s longtime secretary of state, Kemps presided over the state’s elections, voting machines and vote tallying. And as a vote suppressor, Kemp’s record of disenfranchising voters was unmatched.

Technology

How did Apple’s AirPods go from mockery to millennial status symbol?

Will Chinese firm’s stake in Reddit normalise censorship?

The creation of concentration camps for a million Uighurs in Xinjiang has not been enough to persuade any of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs receiving funds from Chinese companies to refuse the cash. Neither is it apparently enough of a deterrent to stop the US companies investing in China to stop their plans to enter the market.

Women’s Work

She made history as a Navy pilot. An all-female squadron just flew over her funeral “Capt. Rosemary Mariner, who died Jan. 24, broke barriers throughout her career, opening doors for other women”

H/T Beth: American women are 50% more likely to die in childbirth than their mothers

Furthermore, while the maternal-death rate has fallen in most developed nations and has improved in many developing ones, it has risen in the US.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

A United States Government (USG) Memorandum Released by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley to NBC News Shows According to Him that the USG: “planned to traumatize children and intentionally create a humanitarian crisis”

Trump appears to mock Elizabeth Warren with genocide joke and people are livid

Trump’s properties routinely employed (and abused) undocumented Latinx workers, including dozens from a single Costa Rican town

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Via WIRED: Meet The Blind Youtubers Making The Internet More Accessible

“Every time I say I’m visually impaired,” says Casey Greer. “someone will try to shut me down, saying ‘Well then how did you type this comment?!’ It feels silly that in 2019, I always have to explain that blind people use and love the internet just as much as anybody else.”

You should read this for 2/2/2019:

Art and Film

Stunning Trailer for Apollo 11 Brings Us Never-Before-Seen Footage of the Moon Mission

Last year, the filmmakers behind Apollo 11 were discussing making a documentary to mark the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, when an archivist informed them that extensive, unseen 70mm footage of the mission existed at the National Archives. The footage became the basis for the documentary Apollo 11 and now we’re getting our first look at it with a new trailer.

H/T Sylvia: These Australian artists are making waves with work that explores the complex, contested issue of identity

Books, Writing, and Language

Frederick Douglass’s Irish odyssey

In spring 1845, Douglass published his first book– Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. The memoir stirred fresh hostilities. To avoid physical harm or being forcibly returned (by bounty-hungry “slave-catchers”) to his bondage in Maryland, it was decided that, until things cooled down, he would leave the United States for a while, for a hastily and incompletely planned lecture tour of the British Isles.

Education

In a Children’s Theater Program, Drama Over a Peanut Allergy

The conflict over accommodating a child’s allergy turned into a legal battle that highlights the isolation that people with food allergies often face

Food and Drink

Blend This Crazy-Looking Citrus Right Into Your Booze

Buddha’s hand—so called because it looks like a hand with (too many fingers)—is a fragrant fruit that’s pretty much all zest and pith, making it good for infusing (and zesting) and not much else.

But it’s wonderful for enhancing gin or vodka, and making your own infusion.

H/T Jeff: Lifelike ‘Succulent Cakes’ Turn Prickly Plants into Delicious Desserts

History and Archaeology

New Thoughts on Neolithic Artifacts From England

The Folkton Drums, a set of 4,000-year-old decorated chalk cylinders discovered more than 100 years ago in a child’s grave in northern England, and a similar carved chalk cylinder recovered more recently near England’s southern coast, may have been replicas of wooden measuring devices employed by Neolithic monument builders, according to a Live Science report.

European colonizers killed so many Native Americans that it changed the global climate, researchers say

European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate. The increase in trees and vegetation across an area the size of France resulted in a massive decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, according to the study.

Before this study, some scientists had argued the temperature change in the 1600s, called the Little Ice Age, was caused only by natural forces.
But by combining archaeological evidence, historical data and analysis of carbon found in Antarctic ice, the UCL researchers showed how the reforestation — directly caused by the Europeans’ arrival — was a key component of the global chill, they said.

You can find the study Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 at Science Direct.

Science and Nature

Here it is, the high resolution photo of MU69 We’ve all been waiting for.

On December 31st, 2018, NASA’s New Horizons mission made history by being the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) named Ultima Thule (2014 MU69). This came roughly two and a half years after New Horizons became the first mission in history to conduct a flyby of Pluto. Much like the encounter with Pluto, the probe’s rendezvous with Ultima Thule led to a truly stunning encounter image.

Society

Warren Apologizes To Cherokee Nation For DNA Test

Technology

Goodbye Big Five

Reporter Kashmir Hill spent six weeks blocking Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple from getting my money, data, and attention, using a custom-built VPN. Here’s what happened.

This is week 3 of the six weeks of Blocking the Big 5: I Cut Google Out Of My Life. It Screwed Up Everything

Apple Shows Facebook Who Has the Power in an App Dispute

The situation stemmed from a dispute after Facebook violated Apple’s rules by publicly distributing a research app that allowed it to snoop on users’ online activity. When Apple discovered the transgression this week, it revoked Facebook’s special access to apps and updates that run on its iPhone software.

See also:

Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps and from TechCrunch’s Josh Constine: We dismantle Facebook’s memo defending its “Research” See also this solid piece with a timeline by TidBITS’ Josh Centers: Certificate Wars: A Quick Rundown of Apple’s Dustup with Facebook and Google

Women’s Work

H/T Bronwen: Hidden women of history: Kathleen McArthur, the wildflower woman who took on Joh Bjelke-Petersen

The unlikely leader of this campaign was a wildflower painter named Kathleen McArthur, who led the Caloundra branch of an environmental group the Australian newspaper called “the most militant of conservation cells”.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

See this Twitter thread from Incredible reporting by @partlowj @Fahrenthold provides the best look yet at how Trump’s private business has relied on the labor of undocumented workers — even as he railed they were stealing jobs from Americans.@mateagold of the Washington Post: https://twitter.com/mateagold/status/1089283908208902145

Incredible reporting by @partlowj @Fahrenthold provides the best look yet at how Trump’s private business has relied on the labor of undocumented workers — even as he railed they were stealing jobs from Americans.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Patton Oswalt brings help to ailing man who trolled him on Twitter

H/T Lisa C: Meet the Chicago woman who rented hotel rooms for the homeless during deep freeze

You should read this for 1/27/2019:

Art and Film

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the History of Dance, Gender, and American Identity

But while many in the media celebrated the sight of a youthful Ocasio-Cortez and her Boston University pals dancing together, missing from these conversations was an appreciation of the role that dancing bodies have long played in American political life.

The Treasure Behind the Wall

Books, Writing, and Language

I’ve been reading and enjoying the Phryne Fisher murder mysteries by Australian writer Kerry Greenwood. They’re fun well-written well-researched historic post World War I mysteries set in Australia (mostly) featuring a female detective who has been favorably compared to a feminist Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy Sayers).

Education

Who Wants to Be a College President?

Food and Drink

Via Wirecutter: Everything You Need to Start Baking Bread

History and Archaeology

What I’m Reading: An Interview With Historian Stacy D. Fahrenthold

A Tyrant’s Temper Tantrum

King Charles I of England, frustrated at the limitations of his otherwise powerful position, decided to dissolve Parliament in March of 1629 and to clap several of the opposition’s leaders in irons. The monarch had come to an impasse over issues as lofty as religious conformity and as mundane as the regulations concerning tonnage, eventually finding it easier to simply dissolve the gathering than to negotiate with them. Historian Michael Braddick explains that the “King was not willing to assent to necessary measures” in governance, and that Charles was intent on “upholding his right to withhold consent” as he saw it, believing that “without that power he was no longer a king in a meaningful sense.” Charles was a committed partisan of the divine right of kings, truly believing himself to be ennobled to rule by fiat, and regarding legislators as at best an annoyance, and at worst as actively contravening the rule of God.

Science and Nature

An Indian researcher uncovered why some lizards have stripes and others don’t

Gemologist Finds Insect Trapped in Opal Instead of Amber

Society

Socially conscious investing has quadrupled in the past decade

In short, what constitutes socially responsible investing is often in the eye of the beholder. Acceptable criteria is subjective and broad, spanning the gamut of investors’ personal values. But stringency may be an effective insurance policy in the long run: environmental or governance disasters often come with high associated losses—not least in terms of public relations.

Atlantic Readers Respond to Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’ “In the August 1963 issue, The Atlantic published King’s famous letter under the title “The Negro Is Your Brother.” Readers’ responses were largely positive.”

H/T Jeff Carlson: This Seattle concierge has secrets he won’t tell

Technology

Via Stephen Hackett of RelayFM and 512Pixels:  Twitter is Over 

I like my little community on Twitter, but I know it is a hellscape of abuse for many. I use it to promote my work and to talk with my audience, but every time I open my replies, I brace myself for something terrible to be there, waiting for me to see it.

Digital detoxes are a solution looking for a problem

Research often tends to treat all technology use as equal. This assumption overlooks the fact that we have a different experience with each kind of technology we use. For example, mindlessly scrolling Instagram is very different to chatting on WhatsApp, or using a fitness tracker.

Women’s Work

The night I was mistaken for a call girl

They had relegated me to the corner by the loos simply because I was an unaccompanied woman.

Via Alison Smith for Granta: Her Left Hand, The Darkness

H/T Bronwen: The two Lucys: Kiwi botanists in their brothers’ shorts “Two trailblazing women, both called Lucy, explored some of New Zealand’s most remote places in the name of botanical knowledge.”

California’s new surgeon general changed the way we understand childhood trauma

Years of treating underprivileged kids in Bayview-Hunters Point, one of San Francisco’s poorest neighborhoods, had shown her that the kids with the most severe history of trauma often exhibited the worst symptoms.

That realization would lead her to change the way she treated patients—and to become one of the chief advocates in the US medical community about how screening kids for early adversity can help them become healthier adults.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Via Medium: Vicky Alvear Shecter What Happened When a Trump Supporter Challenged Me About the Wall

The US bought $108,000 worth of ammunition to fend off an unarmed migrant caravan

There’s More Here Than People Realize

With Michael Cohen’s decision to postpone his testimony before Congress, people are starting to focus on President Trump’s repeated attacks on Cohen’s unnamed “father-in-law”. It is outrageous that a sitting President would repeatedly threaten anyone with legal action, especially in a case when it is done with the intention of squelching testimony against him. But this isn’t just out of the blue character assassination.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Librarian Honors a Dying Tree by Turning It Into a Little Free Library

H/T Lisa Carnell: How to assist federal workers impacted by the shutdown

Hundreds of thousands of government employees — many still required to come into work — are turning to food banks and other programs to make ends meet.
The national park system, airports, and even the space program have all been impacted. Meanwhile, average citizens are stepping up to help those in government service who are not getting paid. They are also volunteering to take care of national institutions that ordinarily rely on government employees.
There are many opportunities for you to make a difference.

Half a million rank-and-file Marriott employees are now watching for sex traffickers

You should read this for 1/20/2019:

Art and Film

Books, Writing, and Language

Extraordinary photos of Jane Austen’s family are discovered in old photo album bought on eBay – and their lives were just as dramatic as some of novelist’s most famous characters

Food and Drink

Via WGBH Boston: Julia Child’s Quiche Loraine

What America Hears When The Press Makes Fun Of The Way Trump Eats Maybe the press should focus more on the fact that Federal workers aren’t being paid. Instead we get this:

As much as Trump genuinely enjoys burgers, this born-and-bred member of the elite knows this kind of absurd “man of the people” posturing endears him to a certain US demographic. The same demographic most likely to be afflicted by the out-of-control global obesity epidemic, leading to potentially life-threatening conditions, most of which won’t be covered by their healthcare plans and which the likes of Trump would condemn as self-inflicted. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem quite so charming that Trump served junk food at the White House.

History and Archaeology

Europe’s Largest Hoard Of Copper Age Axes, Ax Hammers Discovered In Northeast Bulgaria

22 copper axe heads; they appear to be unused, which suggests that they may have had ritual or prestige value.

The tools are dated to the Late Chalcolithic (Late Copper Age), more specifically, 4,500 – 4,200 BC.

Science and Nature

The oceans are warming faster than we thought, and scientists suggest we brace for impact

H/T mrsmig Video: Fox, romping in the snow

Society

A third of US workers have left a job due to caregiving responsibilities

Women’s Work

This is what the Women’s March actually wants

The Women’s Agenda details 24 federal policy priorities for which the organization will advocate. They include universal healthcare, passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, ending war, the expansion of voting rights, ending the student debt crisis, protecting the rights of trans women, and a move toward renewable energy.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Via Dan Balz, Correspondent The Washington Post: ’Would you like to speak to the president?’

PARIS — “Would you like to speak to the president?

That was about the last question I expected from a stranger on a Friday night in Paris.

Via The Atlantic: Impeach Donald Trump

On january 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise.

Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.

See Also: Unthinkable: 50 Moments That Define an Improbable Presidency

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

H/T cbenoi1: Canadian Air Traffic Controllers Buy Pizza For American Colleagues Affected By U.S. Government ShutdownIf employers aren’t acknowledging the demands their workers face at home, they probably aren’t managing the fallout very effectively.

You should read this for 12/12/2019:

Art and Film

Books, Writing, and Language

H/T Lisa Carnell: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

I’ve got no interest in establishing any personal connection between their culture and mine. That’s for the historians and the fantasists. I’m just interested in the words. There are ways of expressing feeling in the Old English kennings that do not exist in the formal English of today. 

Original Drawings by J.R.R. Tolkien Are Coming to New York’s Morgan Library

A collection of British fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien’s original drawings and illustrations will make a rare appearance in the U.S. this month. As AM New York reports, works from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries will be traveling across the pond to New York City, where they’ll go on display at The Morgan Library & Museum.

This is a really wonderful opportunity; go if you can. January 25 to May 12, 2019.

Does It Pay to Be a Writer? “The decline in earnings are largely because of Amazon’s lion’s share of the self-publishing, e-book and resale market.”

Writing has never been a lucrative career choice, but a recent study by the Authors Guild, a professional organization for book writers, shows that it may not even be a livable one anymore. According to the survey results, the median pay for full-time writers was $20,300 in 2017, and that number decreased to $6,080 when part-time writers were considered. The latter figure reflects a 42 percent drop since 2009, when the median was $10,500. These findings are the result of an expansive 2018 study of more than 5,000 published book authors, across genres and including both traditional and self-published writers.

7 Publishing Insights Revealed By Last Year’s Top 100 Bestselling Books See also The 100 bestselling books of 2018 which partly inspired the previous link; it’s an article about 2018 publishing trends based on Nielsen Bookscan 31/12/17-8/12/18

Food and Drink

Real Maine Baked Beans

Baked beans, cooked slowly in the oven for hours in a covered bean pot, are a Maine tradition. So are yellow-eye beans.

First, let’s just say that Yellow Eyes won the most votes, if you will, for the best bean to use. In Maine, those come from State of Maine Beans in a two pound bag at most grocery stores. There were a smattering of Jacobs Cattle, Soldier Beans, Great Northerns, and a few will favor Marafax. A couple mentioned pea beans, but for the most part, Mainers like big beans.

History and Archaeology

Bath Tiles “Brightly colored tiles have been uncovered during excavations in advance of restoration of England’s Bath Abbey.”

Easter Island statues: mystery behind their location revealed

Researchers say they have analysed the locations of the megalithic platforms, or ahu, on which many of the statues known as moai sit, as well as scrutinising sites of the island’s resources, and have discovered the structures are typically found close to sources of fresh water.

Science and Nature

VIA NPR’s Bird Note (H/T Anne B): House Sparrows Can Open Doors

Clues into early development of autism spectrum disorder Neurons from people with autism exhibit different patterns of growth and develop at a faster rate”

Society

One easy New Year’s resolution to help save democracy in 2019: Go to the library

Technology

Via Nieman Lab: Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A Long, Slow Slog, With No One Coming To The Rescue

“Much of the news currently published online is simply not worth paying for. Some of it is hardly worth our fleeting attention, let alone hard-earned cash.”

How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.

“I love my Mac!” Zoë Smith’s spouse is a new Mac user and as she writes:

I love my Mac, of course. But seeing someone else fall in love too, again, today? Pretty sweet.

Facebook Shared User Data with Other Tech Giants

Women’s Work

Via NPR: What It Looks Like To Have A Record Number Of Women In The House Of Representatives

I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman

“Black babies in the United States die at just over two times the rate of white babies in the first year of their life,” says Arthur James, an OB-GYN at Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University in Columbus. When my daughter died, she and I became statistics.

H/T: Lisa Carnell via NPR: A Blue Clue In Medieval Teeth May Bespeak A Woman’s Artistry Circa A.D. 1000

Work pants and my fight for pocket equality.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Medievalist Matthew Gabriele: Trump says medieval walls worked. They didn’t. And from another historian, David Perry: Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Muslim youth group cleans up national parks amid government shutdown

Across the country, dozens of their colleagues in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association were doing the same at national parks closed or partially closed by the shutdown. They cleaned up litter, emptied garbage cans and swept the grounds — from the Everglades National Park in Florida to Joshua Tree, California and the Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio.

Via NPR: Florida Law Restoring The Vote To Former Felons Takes Effect Before the referendum passed

more than 10 percent of Florida’s adult population was not eligible to vote. Desmond Meade who helped organize the referendum campaign says that changed Nov. 6. “We had over 5.1 million voters that voted yes on Amendment 4,” he says. “Not one of those votes was based on hate. Not one of those votes was based on fear, but rather votes of love.”

You should read this for 1/5/2019:

Art and Film

Chip By Chip, Restoring The Damaged Washington National Cathedral

H/T Heather: Wabanaki basketmakers try to save our state’s ash trees — and their traditional craft — from the emerald ash borer.

Books, Writing, and Language

Why you should surround yourself with more books than you’ll ever have time to read An overstuffed bookcase (or e-reader) says good things about your mind.

See also: Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones

Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales

Agents and authors say part of the problem is that publishers and retailers have become more risk averse. Publishers are printing smaller first runs, partly because retailers are ordering fewer copies initially, waiting to see which titles take off to avoid making the wrong bet and getting stuck storing unsold inventory. In the past, it was often easy to get another batch of books printed in a week or two if a title sold unexpectedly well, but these days some publishers say it can take one or two months.

For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain

What the Earliest Texts Say About the Invention of Writing

Food and Drink

The Original Hot Buttered Rum Recipe

This is one version; it makes a batter of sorts. I prefer a much simpler version, that’s about six ounces of hot water, a dash of rum, a sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg, a small 1/2 teaspoon or so of butter, and a teaspoon of brown sugar or honey.

Top 10 Wines Under $10 For 2018

History and Archaeology

The Modern History of Ornithology Starts With This Inquisitive Medieval Emperor “Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor born on this day in 1194, is remembered for fighting with the Pope so much he was excommunicated, for promoting literature and science in Sicily and for his fascination with birds.”

Science and Nature

More than 50 Australian plant species face extinction within decade ‘Study finds just 12 of the most imperilled species are listed under national environment laws as critically endangered”

The scientists concluded that 55 species were at high risk of extinction within the next 10 years, with fewer than 250 individual plants or only a single population remaining. They found just 12 of the most imperilled species were listed under the EPBC Act as critically endangered and 13 had no listing at all.

Risky business: linking Toxoplasma gondiiinfection and entrepreneurship behaviours across individuals and countries See also: Toxoplasma gondii

H/T Frances: We Need a New Christmas Bird

An ant colony has memories that its individual members don’t have

Society

Those End-Of-The-Year Charitable Donations May Not Help Your Tax Bill

Rick Cohen, with the National Council of Nonprofits in Washington, D.C., estimatesthat charities and nonprofits such as churches, will see big drops in donations in the coming year. The drop in charitable giving could top 20 billion dollars nationwide because more people will take the standard deduction as opposed to itemizing.

‘It’s not fair, not right’: how America treats its black farmers

“The tactics are to strangle the life from all the black farmers, and it’s being done in multiple ways,” says Sanders. “And the US government is as much in on the strangling as any other entity … and has generally been complicit in running hundreds of thousands of black folks off the farm, and destroying their way of life.”

Women’s Work

H/T Frances: The 97-Year-Old Park Ranger Who Doesn’t Have Time for Foolishness “As the oldest career National Park Service ranger, Betty Soskin is unabashed about revealing all of America’s history—and her optimism about our future.”

She also offers a blueprint on how not to despair about our times. “Democracy has been experiencing these periods of chaos since 1776. They come and go,” she says. “And it’s in those periods that democracy is redefined.” When everything seems to be crumbling, we can remold and reset, she believes: “History has been written by people who got it wrong, but the people who are always trying to get it right have prevailed. If that were not true, I would still be a slave like my great-grandmother.”

H/T Jasmin: The female powerhouse who developed 1920s Downtown LA

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Splitting With Trump Over Syria, American Leading ISIS Fight Steps Down

Mr. McGurk, a seasoned diplomat who was considered by many to be the glue holding together the sprawling international coalition fighting the terrorist group, was supposed to retire in February. But according to an email he sent his staff, he decided to move his departure forward to Dec. 31 after Mr. Trump did not heed his own commanders and blindsided America’s allies in the region by abruptly ordering the withdrawal of the 2,000 troops.

Trump EPA Says Mercury Limits On Coal Plants Too Costly, Not ‘Necessary’

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

The ‘angel’ who secretly pays patients’ hospital bills

“That’s why I call this the Angel Project,” he says. “Be the angel you hope to meet.”