MetaFilter posts by homunculus.
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Whys of seeing. "Experimental psychology is providing concrete answers to some of the great philosophical debates about art and its meaning."
posted on Jan-15-19 at 10:52 AM
"What Power art thou, Who from below, Hast made me rise, Unwillingly and slow..." (playlist.) "The Frost Scene" from Act 3 of Henry Purcell's 1691 semi-opera King Arthur, or The British Worthy, performed here as a comedy by the French ensemble Le Concert Spirituel. Also called the "Cold Genius Scene", it's probably best known for the "Cold Song," which was reintroduced to modern audiences by Klaus Nomi's haunting rendition.
posted on Dec-30-18 at 3:20 PM
Medusa con la cabeza de Perseo - Medusa holding Perseus’ head (possibly nsfw) The story behind the Medusa statue that has become the perfect avatar for women’s rage: "This vision of a re-imagined Medusa myth is a sculpture by Luciano Garbati, a 45-year-old Argentine-Italian artist based in Buenos Aires who has watched in amazement lately as a piece of art he made in 2008 has gone viral across social media, as the perfect avatar for a moment of female rage."
posted on Dec-27-18 at 10:55 AM
The Dakota Sioux Execution Was The Largest In U.S. History — But America Has Forgotten It.
posted on Dec-26-18 at 8:58 AM
Photographer Laura Makabresku Captures Spellbinding Images Inspired by Fairytales. [Via, nsfw]
posted on Dec-22-18 at 11:11 AM
Machine Politics: The rise of the internet and a new age of authoritarianism. "By justifying the belief that for-profit systems are the best way to improve public life, it has helped turn the expression of individual experience into raw material that can be mined, processed, and sold."
posted on Dec-20-18 at 7:07 PM
The Surreal Art of Italian Visionary Artist Alessandro Sicioldr. [Via]
posted on Dec-19-18 at 2:30 PM
8 Sci-Fi Writers Imagine the Bold and New Future of Work. "[C]harts and white papers only capture so much. Facts need feelings, and for that we turn to science fiction. Its authors are our most humane, necessary futurists, imagining not just what the future holds but how it might look, feel, even smell. In the following pages are stories from eight sci-fi specialists. Some are set in the near term; others, a bit farther out. All remind us that, no matter the inevitable upheavals, we don’t struggle alone—but with and for other people. And robots."
posted on Dec-18-18 at 10:50 AM
Welcome to the trip of your life: the rise of underground LSD guides. "Some Americans searching for alternative paths to healing have turned to psychedelics. But how does one forge a career as a guide when the substances are illegal?"
posted on Dec-14-18 at 9:18 AM
Water · Shapes · Earth "A project that combines power of aerial photography and storytelling to rediscover the beauty of our planet, and to show how water shapes Earth and influences our lives."
posted on Dec-12-18 at 9:32 PM
Emanuel Bronner didn’t just want to make soap. He wanted to unite the world. "In this light, the bottle’s breathless monologue reads more like a doomful love letter from the past. A warning to humanity rising up from the sorrows of loss at the hands of a despot. Woven between incoherent maxims are the raw wounds of a man incapable of communicating just how horrific his pain was. He discloses his grief in a desperate, almost childlike way—on a soap label. A soap label that has become the iconic face of a $120 million soap company. A soap label the Bronner family will never change."
posted on Dec-1-18 at 11:50 AM
How did the rectangle become Western art’s anatomical limit? "This is about the dominance of the rectangular format in a certain tradition of picture making, a dominance that still holds today and extends well beyond the medium of painting. The book, the photographic print, the screen, and the museum—which has tended to favor this format—all guarantee that we encounter most pictures in rectangular frames."
posted on Nov-30-18 at 8:48 AM
Looking Inside My Heart. "Jen Hyde discovered that her heart valve was made by women working in a factory near her childhood home. Getting to know them brought her closer to her own mother." [Via]
posted on Nov-29-18 at 5:58 AM
How the media should respond to Trump’s lies: a linguist explains how Trump uses lies to divert attention from the “big truths.” "George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley ... recently published an article laying out the media’s dilemma. Trump’s 'big lie' strategy, he argues, is to 'exploit journalistic convention by providing rapid-fire news events for reporters to chase.' According to Lakoff, the president uses lies to divert attention from the 'big truths,' or the things he doesn’t want the media to cover. This allows Trump to create the controversies he wants and capitalize on the outrage and confusion they generate, while simultaneously stoking his base and forcing the press into the role of 'opposition party.'" [ViA]
posted on Nov-24-18 at 5:45 PM
Thanksgiving: The National Day of Mourning. "A Native student on why the holiday is a painful reminder of a whitewashed past." [Via]
posted on Nov-22-18 at 1:45 PM
Psilocybin Could Be Legal for Therapy by 2021: The psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms could soon be legal to use in a clinical setting. "For the first time in U.S. history, a psychedelic drug is on the fast track to getting approved for treating depression by the federal government. Late last month, Compass Pathways, a U.K.-based company that researches and develops mental health treatments, announced the FDA granted them what’s called a 'breakthrough therapy designation' for their trials into psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms. Researchers who pioneered psychedelic science agree — this is a landmark moment for their field." Meanwhile, a millionaire couple is threatening to create a magic mushroom monopoly ...
posted on Nov-19-18 at 4:25 PM
The growth of yoga and meditation in the US since 2012 is remarkable: The number of Americans who meditate has tripled. Yoga is up 55 percent. "Yoga and meditation, two ancient practices, are now officially the most popular alternative health approaches in the United States, each used by around 35 million adults. That’s the word from a report (PDF) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention out [last] Thursday, which looked at the changes in the use of yoga, meditation, and chiropractors between 2012 and 2017." Mindfulness Is Going Mainstream Because of Science: Mindfulness has gone from hippie-dippie magical thinking to science-based health hack. What gives? ...
posted on Nov-17-18 at 2:02 PM
Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web, has some regrets. He has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it. "The power of the Web wasn’t taken or stolen. We, collectively, by the billions, gave it away with every signed user agreement and intimate moment shared with technology. Facebook, Google, and Amazon now monopolize almost everything that happens online, from what we buy to the news we read to who we like. Along with a handful of powerful government agencies, they are able to monitor, manipulate, and spy in once unimaginable ways. Shortly after the 2016 election, Berners-Lee felt something had to change, and began methodically attempting to hack his creation."
posted on Nov-14-18 at 7:15 PM
What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us? "On the ineffable magic of four little manuscripts of Old English poetry."
posted on Nov-13-18 at 1:44 PM
In The Concrete Jungle, Wildlife Evolves Astonishingly Fast. "Menno Schilthuizen is a Dutch biologist based at Leiden University, in a country whose population is more urban than rural. In other words, he inhabits the future. His new book, Darwin Comes to Town alerts us to new evidence about the pace of evolution. By watching the evolutionary play as it runs in urban theaters, not just wildish ones, Schilthuizen and some colleagues—you might think of them as postmodern biologists, making the best of highly urbanized twenty-first-century landscapes—have noticed that evolution’s tempo can be surprisingly brisk. Fast evolution in cities is the theme here, unfolding toward a suggestion that perhaps new species are being born in our time, while many older ones are being driven to extinction."
posted on Nov-12-18 at 3:54 AM
CURRICULUM VITAE OF YURI ORLOV (PDF). @davidkelliher: "Wow, this accelerator physicist's CV is something else..." [Note: this is not an obit.]
posted on Nov-10-18 at 3:39 PM
PULSE Nightclub: 49 Elegies is a series by artist John Gutoskey "to honor and commemorate–-with a monoprint–-each of the 49 people massacred at the LQBTQ PULSE nightclub in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016... This exhibit addresses not only the loss, the grief and the aftermath of such a tragic event, but also intersects with the current issues of gun violence, homophobia, Hispanophobia, violence against people of color and the transgender community, and LGBTQ rights. The 49 mixed media monoprints in this series combine woodcut, collage, digital images from photographs and scans, stencil, spray enamel, glitter, colored pencil, art paper, gift wrap paper, and alcohol gel transfer decals."
posted on Nov-1-18 at 11:11 PM
The Class of 1946–2018: Twenty-seven school-shooting survivors bear their scars, and bear witness. "Over a half-century's worth of school shooting survivors share their memories of life-changing trauma, as well as insights from living with the scars — physical and mental — of gun violence."
posted on Oct-29-18 at 8:10 PM
The queen is back: Simone Giertz didn’t let brain surgery stop her. What’s next? "In the six months since the YouTube star and inventor had a large brain tumor [previously] that could have left her paralyzed, blind, or a completely different person removed, Simone Giertz [previously] moved her workshop out of her house, jumped back into vlogging for her nearly 1.4 million subscribers, gave a TED talk, and kickstarted an electronic calendar — all while rocking a silvery 'supervillain scar' that runs down her scalp, flirting with her hairline."
posted on Oct-24-18 at 6:00 PM
Do No Harm. "3am. 1980s Hongjing. In an aging private hospital, a single-minded surgeon is forced to break her physician’s oath when violent gangsters storm in to stop a crucial operation." [SLV, Via]
posted on Oct-18-18 at 5:55 PM
Training compassion ‘muscle’ may boost brain’s resilience to others’ suffering. "It can be distressing to witness the pain of family, friends or even strangers going through a hard time. But what if, just like strengthening a muscle or learning a new hobby, we could train ourselves to be more compassionate and calm in the face of others’ suffering?" Compassion Is Like a Muscle That Gets Stronger With Training: Loving-kindness meditation and compassion training boost empathic resilience.
posted on Oct-17-18 at 10:40 AM
Same-sex mouse parents give birth via gene editing: Scientists delivered pups with genetic material from two moms and two dads. But only pups with two moms survived to have babies themselves "In an important move for both science as well as Women Who Are Over This Shit, researchers in China have just helped a pair of female mouse parents give birth to healthy pups via gene editing and stem cells, no male mice involved."
posted on Oct-13-18 at 10:00 AM
'Sea Nomads' Are First Known Humans Genetically Adapted to Diving. "For hundreds of years, the Bajau (previously) have lived at sea, and natural selection may have made them genetically stronger divers."
posted on Oct-11-18 at 9:40 AM
Deep in Human DNA, a Gift From the Neanderthals. "Long ago, Neanderthals probably infected modern humans with viruses, perhaps even an ancient form of H.I.V. But our extinct relatives also gave us genetic defenses." "The two ancient hominin groups swapped genes, diseases, and genes that protect against diseases, according to a new study."
posted on Oct-4-18 at 8:52 PM
Hallucinations Are Everywhere: Experiences like hearing voices are leading psychologists to question how all people perceive reality.
posted on Oct-3-18 at 8:58 AM
All the Rage: What a literature that embraces female anger can achieve. Rebecca Solnit: "Instead of a theory of male anger, we have a growing literature in essays and now books about female anger, a phenomenon in transition..."
posted on Sep-28-18 at 8:08 PM
Arctic Cauldron. "Across the Arctic, lakes are bubbling and hissing with a dangerous greenhouse gas, methane, as the Arctic thaws. And one lake is behaving very strangely."
posted on Sep-25-18 at 10:22 AM
Inside the Swift, Deadly History of the Spanish Flu Pandemic. "One hundred years ago, the virus infected a third of the world’s population, killing 195,000 Americans in October 1918 alone."
posted on Sep-2-18 at 10:00 AM
The Incredible, Rage-Inducing Inside Story of America’s Student Debt Machine. "Why is the nation’s flagship loan forgiveness program failing the people it’s supposed to help?"
posted on Aug-28-18 at 7:38 AM
RECORD/PLAY. "War, fate, and a broken walkman transcend space and time in this sci-fi love story."
posted on Jul-14-18 at 1:55 PM
Unintended consequences: Inside the fallout of America’s crackdown on opioids.
posted on Jun-29-18 at 9:02 AM
The Neuroscience of Pain: Brain imaging is illuminating the neural patterns behind pain’s infinite variety.
posted on Jun-27-18 at 3:20 PM
Why Is Beethoven's Allegretto So Completely Captivating? The second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7—the Allegretto—has captivated listeners since the symphony’s 1813 premiere, when it was so popular that the orchestra used it as an encore. WRTI’s Susan Lewis has more on why this particular movement continues to engage us.
posted on Jun-11-18 at 4:20 PM
Ancient Rome’s Collapse Is Written Into Arctic Ice. "Scientists can finally track the civilization’s economic booms and recessions—thanks to the exhaust of its massive coin-making operation, preserved for centuries in Greenland’s ice sheet."
posted on May-17-18 at 11:40 PM
The other opioid crisis: Hospital shortages lead to patient pain, medical errors. The flip side of the opioid crisis is just as dark. "Even as opioids flood American communities and fuel widespread addiction, hospitals are facing a dangerous shortage of the powerful painkillers needed by patients in acute pain, according to doctors, pharmacists and a coalition of health groups."
posted on Mar-17-18 at 1:42 PM
Spiritual hyperplane: How spiritualists of the 19th century forged a lasting association between higher dimensions and the occult world.
posted on Jan-18-18 at 6:55 PM
What Happens If China Makes First Contact? "As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose."
posted on Nov-8-17 at 7:42 PM
The Samhuinn Fire Festival of 2015. Every year on October 31 the Beltane Fire Society (previously) celebrates the Celtic holiday Samhuinn (aka Samhain, aka Halloween) with a fire festival performance in Edinburgh’s Old Town.
posted on Oct-31-17 at 1:00 PM
Study finds pollution is deadlier than war, disaster, hunger. "Environmental pollution—from filthy air to contaminated water—is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015—about 9 million—could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses—or about 6.2 percent of the global economy."
posted on Oct-23-17 at 10:05 AM
Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? It's just hit the US appeals courts. But the crested black macaques of Sulawesi have more immediate concerns than copyright law: they are hunted for meat, kept as pets, and threatened by a shrinking habitat. For these monkeys, it’s a fight for survival.
posted on Jul-15-17 at 7:15 PM
The Great. Red. Spot. "On July 11, 2017, at 00:55 UTC, the armored tank of a space probe Juno reached perijove, the closest point in its orbit over the mighty planet Jupiter. Screaming above the cloud tops at over 200,000 kilometers per hour — fast enough to cross the continental Unites States in a minute and a half — it took eleven minutes and 33 seconds to reach the Great Red Spot. Looking down from its height of a mere 9000 km above the clouds, what it saw was ... glorious."
posted on Jul-14-17 at 3:36 PM
A stunning vocal rendition of Elgar’s Nimrod. "VOCES8, considered to be one of the world’s most versatile and best-loved a cappella groups, performed ‘Nimrod: Lux Aeterna’ [YT] from the English composer Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations as a tribute on Armistice Day 2016."
posted on Jul-6-17 at 11:22 PM
How to Mourn a Space Robot. "NASA’s Cassini probe will soon plunge into Saturn, ending its 13-year mission to the ringed planet and triggering a wave of grief among scientists, engineers, and an adoring public."
posted on Apr-7-17 at 1:28 PM
The Spirit of Standing Rock on the Move. "People from more than 300 tribes traveled to the North Dakota plains to pray and march in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux. Back home, each tribe faces its own version of the “black snake” and a centuries-old struggle to survive."
posted on Jan-24-17 at 1:10 PM
A ‘Stonehenge,’ and a Mystery, in the Amazon. "The conventional belief is that only small tribes could have inhabited the Amazon jungle, but new discoveries call that into question."
posted on Dec-15-16 at 3:47 PM
posted on Jan-15-19 at 10:52 AM
"What Power art thou, Who from below, Hast made me rise, Unwillingly and slow..." (playlist.) "The Frost Scene" from Act 3 of Henry Purcell's 1691 semi-opera King Arthur, or The British Worthy, performed here as a comedy by the French ensemble Le Concert Spirituel. Also called the "Cold Genius Scene", it's probably best known for the "Cold Song," which was reintroduced to modern audiences by Klaus Nomi's haunting rendition.
posted on Dec-30-18 at 3:20 PM
Medusa con la cabeza de Perseo - Medusa holding Perseus’ head (possibly nsfw) The story behind the Medusa statue that has become the perfect avatar for women’s rage: "This vision of a re-imagined Medusa myth is a sculpture by Luciano Garbati, a 45-year-old Argentine-Italian artist based in Buenos Aires who has watched in amazement lately as a piece of art he made in 2008 has gone viral across social media, as the perfect avatar for a moment of female rage."
posted on Dec-27-18 at 10:55 AM
The Dakota Sioux Execution Was The Largest In U.S. History — But America Has Forgotten It.
posted on Dec-26-18 at 8:58 AM
Photographer Laura Makabresku Captures Spellbinding Images Inspired by Fairytales. [Via, nsfw]
posted on Dec-22-18 at 11:11 AM
Machine Politics: The rise of the internet and a new age of authoritarianism. "By justifying the belief that for-profit systems are the best way to improve public life, it has helped turn the expression of individual experience into raw material that can be mined, processed, and sold."
posted on Dec-20-18 at 7:07 PM
The Surreal Art of Italian Visionary Artist Alessandro Sicioldr. [Via]
posted on Dec-19-18 at 2:30 PM
8 Sci-Fi Writers Imagine the Bold and New Future of Work. "[C]harts and white papers only capture so much. Facts need feelings, and for that we turn to science fiction. Its authors are our most humane, necessary futurists, imagining not just what the future holds but how it might look, feel, even smell. In the following pages are stories from eight sci-fi specialists. Some are set in the near term; others, a bit farther out. All remind us that, no matter the inevitable upheavals, we don’t struggle alone—but with and for other people. And robots."
posted on Dec-18-18 at 10:50 AM
Welcome to the trip of your life: the rise of underground LSD guides. "Some Americans searching for alternative paths to healing have turned to psychedelics. But how does one forge a career as a guide when the substances are illegal?"
posted on Dec-14-18 at 9:18 AM
Water · Shapes · Earth "A project that combines power of aerial photography and storytelling to rediscover the beauty of our planet, and to show how water shapes Earth and influences our lives."
posted on Dec-12-18 at 9:32 PM
Emanuel Bronner didn’t just want to make soap. He wanted to unite the world. "In this light, the bottle’s breathless monologue reads more like a doomful love letter from the past. A warning to humanity rising up from the sorrows of loss at the hands of a despot. Woven between incoherent maxims are the raw wounds of a man incapable of communicating just how horrific his pain was. He discloses his grief in a desperate, almost childlike way—on a soap label. A soap label that has become the iconic face of a $120 million soap company. A soap label the Bronner family will never change."
posted on Dec-1-18 at 11:50 AM
How did the rectangle become Western art’s anatomical limit? "This is about the dominance of the rectangular format in a certain tradition of picture making, a dominance that still holds today and extends well beyond the medium of painting. The book, the photographic print, the screen, and the museum—which has tended to favor this format—all guarantee that we encounter most pictures in rectangular frames."
posted on Nov-30-18 at 8:48 AM
Looking Inside My Heart. "Jen Hyde discovered that her heart valve was made by women working in a factory near her childhood home. Getting to know them brought her closer to her own mother." [Via]
posted on Nov-29-18 at 5:58 AM
How the media should respond to Trump’s lies: a linguist explains how Trump uses lies to divert attention from the “big truths.” "George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley ... recently published an article laying out the media’s dilemma. Trump’s 'big lie' strategy, he argues, is to 'exploit journalistic convention by providing rapid-fire news events for reporters to chase.' According to Lakoff, the president uses lies to divert attention from the 'big truths,' or the things he doesn’t want the media to cover. This allows Trump to create the controversies he wants and capitalize on the outrage and confusion they generate, while simultaneously stoking his base and forcing the press into the role of 'opposition party.'" [ViA]
posted on Nov-24-18 at 5:45 PM
Thanksgiving: The National Day of Mourning. "A Native student on why the holiday is a painful reminder of a whitewashed past." [Via]
posted on Nov-22-18 at 1:45 PM
Psilocybin Could Be Legal for Therapy by 2021: The psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms could soon be legal to use in a clinical setting. "For the first time in U.S. history, a psychedelic drug is on the fast track to getting approved for treating depression by the federal government. Late last month, Compass Pathways, a U.K.-based company that researches and develops mental health treatments, announced the FDA granted them what’s called a 'breakthrough therapy designation' for their trials into psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms. Researchers who pioneered psychedelic science agree — this is a landmark moment for their field." Meanwhile, a millionaire couple is threatening to create a magic mushroom monopoly ...
posted on Nov-19-18 at 4:25 PM
The growth of yoga and meditation in the US since 2012 is remarkable: The number of Americans who meditate has tripled. Yoga is up 55 percent. "Yoga and meditation, two ancient practices, are now officially the most popular alternative health approaches in the United States, each used by around 35 million adults. That’s the word from a report (PDF) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention out [last] Thursday, which looked at the changes in the use of yoga, meditation, and chiropractors between 2012 and 2017." Mindfulness Is Going Mainstream Because of Science: Mindfulness has gone from hippie-dippie magical thinking to science-based health hack. What gives? ...
posted on Nov-17-18 at 2:02 PM
Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web, has some regrets. He has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it. "The power of the Web wasn’t taken or stolen. We, collectively, by the billions, gave it away with every signed user agreement and intimate moment shared with technology. Facebook, Google, and Amazon now monopolize almost everything that happens online, from what we buy to the news we read to who we like. Along with a handful of powerful government agencies, they are able to monitor, manipulate, and spy in once unimaginable ways. Shortly after the 2016 election, Berners-Lee felt something had to change, and began methodically attempting to hack his creation."
posted on Nov-14-18 at 7:15 PM
What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us? "On the ineffable magic of four little manuscripts of Old English poetry."
posted on Nov-13-18 at 1:44 PM
In The Concrete Jungle, Wildlife Evolves Astonishingly Fast. "Menno Schilthuizen is a Dutch biologist based at Leiden University, in a country whose population is more urban than rural. In other words, he inhabits the future. His new book, Darwin Comes to Town alerts us to new evidence about the pace of evolution. By watching the evolutionary play as it runs in urban theaters, not just wildish ones, Schilthuizen and some colleagues—you might think of them as postmodern biologists, making the best of highly urbanized twenty-first-century landscapes—have noticed that evolution’s tempo can be surprisingly brisk. Fast evolution in cities is the theme here, unfolding toward a suggestion that perhaps new species are being born in our time, while many older ones are being driven to extinction."
posted on Nov-12-18 at 3:54 AM
CURRICULUM VITAE OF YURI ORLOV (PDF). @davidkelliher: "Wow, this accelerator physicist's CV is something else..." [Note: this is not an obit.]
posted on Nov-10-18 at 3:39 PM
PULSE Nightclub: 49 Elegies is a series by artist John Gutoskey "to honor and commemorate–-with a monoprint–-each of the 49 people massacred at the LQBTQ PULSE nightclub in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016... This exhibit addresses not only the loss, the grief and the aftermath of such a tragic event, but also intersects with the current issues of gun violence, homophobia, Hispanophobia, violence against people of color and the transgender community, and LGBTQ rights. The 49 mixed media monoprints in this series combine woodcut, collage, digital images from photographs and scans, stencil, spray enamel, glitter, colored pencil, art paper, gift wrap paper, and alcohol gel transfer decals."
posted on Nov-1-18 at 11:11 PM
The Class of 1946–2018: Twenty-seven school-shooting survivors bear their scars, and bear witness. "Over a half-century's worth of school shooting survivors share their memories of life-changing trauma, as well as insights from living with the scars — physical and mental — of gun violence."
posted on Oct-29-18 at 8:10 PM
The queen is back: Simone Giertz didn’t let brain surgery stop her. What’s next? "In the six months since the YouTube star and inventor had a large brain tumor [previously] that could have left her paralyzed, blind, or a completely different person removed, Simone Giertz [previously] moved her workshop out of her house, jumped back into vlogging for her nearly 1.4 million subscribers, gave a TED talk, and kickstarted an electronic calendar — all while rocking a silvery 'supervillain scar' that runs down her scalp, flirting with her hairline."
posted on Oct-24-18 at 6:00 PM
Do No Harm. "3am. 1980s Hongjing. In an aging private hospital, a single-minded surgeon is forced to break her physician’s oath when violent gangsters storm in to stop a crucial operation." [SLV, Via]
posted on Oct-18-18 at 5:55 PM
Training compassion ‘muscle’ may boost brain’s resilience to others’ suffering. "It can be distressing to witness the pain of family, friends or even strangers going through a hard time. But what if, just like strengthening a muscle or learning a new hobby, we could train ourselves to be more compassionate and calm in the face of others’ suffering?" Compassion Is Like a Muscle That Gets Stronger With Training: Loving-kindness meditation and compassion training boost empathic resilience.
posted on Oct-17-18 at 10:40 AM
Same-sex mouse parents give birth via gene editing: Scientists delivered pups with genetic material from two moms and two dads. But only pups with two moms survived to have babies themselves "In an important move for both science as well as Women Who Are Over This Shit, researchers in China have just helped a pair of female mouse parents give birth to healthy pups via gene editing and stem cells, no male mice involved."
posted on Oct-13-18 at 10:00 AM
'Sea Nomads' Are First Known Humans Genetically Adapted to Diving. "For hundreds of years, the Bajau (previously) have lived at sea, and natural selection may have made them genetically stronger divers."
posted on Oct-11-18 at 9:40 AM
Deep in Human DNA, a Gift From the Neanderthals. "Long ago, Neanderthals probably infected modern humans with viruses, perhaps even an ancient form of H.I.V. But our extinct relatives also gave us genetic defenses." "The two ancient hominin groups swapped genes, diseases, and genes that protect against diseases, according to a new study."
posted on Oct-4-18 at 8:52 PM
Hallucinations Are Everywhere: Experiences like hearing voices are leading psychologists to question how all people perceive reality.
posted on Oct-3-18 at 8:58 AM
All the Rage: What a literature that embraces female anger can achieve. Rebecca Solnit: "Instead of a theory of male anger, we have a growing literature in essays and now books about female anger, a phenomenon in transition..."
posted on Sep-28-18 at 8:08 PM
Arctic Cauldron. "Across the Arctic, lakes are bubbling and hissing with a dangerous greenhouse gas, methane, as the Arctic thaws. And one lake is behaving very strangely."
posted on Sep-25-18 at 10:22 AM
Inside the Swift, Deadly History of the Spanish Flu Pandemic. "One hundred years ago, the virus infected a third of the world’s population, killing 195,000 Americans in October 1918 alone."
posted on Sep-2-18 at 10:00 AM
The Incredible, Rage-Inducing Inside Story of America’s Student Debt Machine. "Why is the nation’s flagship loan forgiveness program failing the people it’s supposed to help?"
posted on Aug-28-18 at 7:38 AM
RECORD/PLAY. "War, fate, and a broken walkman transcend space and time in this sci-fi love story."
posted on Jul-14-18 at 1:55 PM
Unintended consequences: Inside the fallout of America’s crackdown on opioids.
Chronic pain patients, such as Stewart, are driving extraordinary distances to find or continue seeing doctors. They are flying across the country to fill prescriptions. Some have turned to unregulated alternatives such as kratom, which the Drug Enforcement Administration warns could cause dependence and psychotic symptoms. And yet others are threatening suicide on social media, and have even followed through, as doctors taper pain medication in a massive undertaking that Stefan Kertesz, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who studies addiction and opioids, described as “having no precedent in the history of medicine.”
posted on Jun-29-18 at 9:02 AM
The Neuroscience of Pain: Brain imaging is illuminating the neural patterns behind pain’s infinite variety.
posted on Jun-27-18 at 3:20 PM
Why Is Beethoven's Allegretto So Completely Captivating? The second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7—the Allegretto—has captivated listeners since the symphony’s 1813 premiere, when it was so popular that the orchestra used it as an encore. WRTI’s Susan Lewis has more on why this particular movement continues to engage us.
posted on Jun-11-18 at 4:20 PM
Ancient Rome’s Collapse Is Written Into Arctic Ice. "Scientists can finally track the civilization’s economic booms and recessions—thanks to the exhaust of its massive coin-making operation, preserved for centuries in Greenland’s ice sheet."
posted on May-17-18 at 11:40 PM
The other opioid crisis: Hospital shortages lead to patient pain, medical errors. The flip side of the opioid crisis is just as dark. "Even as opioids flood American communities and fuel widespread addiction, hospitals are facing a dangerous shortage of the powerful painkillers needed by patients in acute pain, according to doctors, pharmacists and a coalition of health groups."
posted on Mar-17-18 at 1:42 PM
Spiritual hyperplane: How spiritualists of the 19th century forged a lasting association between higher dimensions and the occult world.
posted on Jan-18-18 at 6:55 PM
What Happens If China Makes First Contact? "As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose."
posted on Nov-8-17 at 7:42 PM
The Samhuinn Fire Festival of 2015. Every year on October 31 the Beltane Fire Society (previously) celebrates the Celtic holiday Samhuinn (aka Samhain, aka Halloween) with a fire festival performance in Edinburgh’s Old Town.
posted on Oct-31-17 at 1:00 PM
Study finds pollution is deadlier than war, disaster, hunger. "Environmental pollution—from filthy air to contaminated water—is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015—about 9 million—could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses—or about 6.2 percent of the global economy."
posted on Oct-23-17 at 10:05 AM
Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? It's just hit the US appeals courts. But the crested black macaques of Sulawesi have more immediate concerns than copyright law: they are hunted for meat, kept as pets, and threatened by a shrinking habitat. For these monkeys, it’s a fight for survival.
posted on Jul-15-17 at 7:15 PM
The Great. Red. Spot. "On July 11, 2017, at 00:55 UTC, the armored tank of a space probe Juno reached perijove, the closest point in its orbit over the mighty planet Jupiter. Screaming above the cloud tops at over 200,000 kilometers per hour — fast enough to cross the continental Unites States in a minute and a half — it took eleven minutes and 33 seconds to reach the Great Red Spot. Looking down from its height of a mere 9000 km above the clouds, what it saw was ... glorious."
posted on Jul-14-17 at 3:36 PM
A stunning vocal rendition of Elgar’s Nimrod. "VOCES8, considered to be one of the world’s most versatile and best-loved a cappella groups, performed ‘Nimrod: Lux Aeterna’ [YT] from the English composer Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations as a tribute on Armistice Day 2016."
posted on Jul-6-17 at 11:22 PM
How to Mourn a Space Robot. "NASA’s Cassini probe will soon plunge into Saturn, ending its 13-year mission to the ringed planet and triggering a wave of grief among scientists, engineers, and an adoring public."
posted on Apr-7-17 at 1:28 PM
The Spirit of Standing Rock on the Move. "People from more than 300 tribes traveled to the North Dakota plains to pray and march in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux. Back home, each tribe faces its own version of the “black snake” and a centuries-old struggle to survive."
posted on Jan-24-17 at 1:10 PM
A ‘Stonehenge,’ and a Mystery, in the Amazon. "The conventional belief is that only small tribes could have inhabited the Amazon jungle, but new discoveries call that into question."
posted on Dec-15-16 at 3:47 PM
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