"What Is Glitter? A strange journey to the glitter factory."

"The tiny, shiny, decorative particles of glitter we are familiar with today are popularly believed to have originated on a farm in New Jersey in the 1930s, when a German immigrant invented a machine to cut scrap material into extremely small pieces. (Curiously, he did not begin filing patents for machines that cut foil into what he called “slivers” until 1961.) The specific events that led to the initial dispersal of glitter are nebulous; in true glitter fashion, all of a sudden, it was simply everywhere...

The jovial Mr. Shetty told me over the phone that people have no idea of the scientific knowledge required to produce glitter, that Glitterex’s glitter-making technology is some of the most advanced in the world, that people don’t believe how complicated it is, that he would not allow me to see glitter being made, that he would not allow me to hear glitter being made, that I could not even be in the same wing of the building as the room in which glitter was being made under any circumstance, that even Glitterex’s clients are not permitted to see their glitter being made, that he would not reveal the identities of Glitterex’s clients...

I met the elder Mr. Shetty in a conference room in the front of the office, where, beneath a glittering silhouette-style wall hanging of the pre-9/11 New York City skyline, he breezed through several advanced textbooks’ worth of chemical engineering in an attempt to tell me what glitter was...

Researchers and zookeepers sometimes mix glitter with animal feed to track animals (polar bears; elephants; domestic cats) via sparkly feces. Plywood manufacturers insert hidden layers of colored glitter in their products to prevent counterfeiting. Because glitter is difficult to remove completely from an area into which it has been introduced, and because individual varieties can be distinguished under a microscope, it can serve as useful crime scene evidence; years ago the F.B.I. contacted Glitterex to catalog samples of its products."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/style/glitter-factory.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR0wWUJRq3IX354ygALk7FjEfXJfbps7YGDj2OYCX3K3bWGEd_vJxWNKRo8

FB: This was a fun read "Most of the glitter that adorns America’s name brand products is made in one of two places: The first is in New Jersey, but the second, however, is also in New Jersey. The first, the rumored farm site of glitter’s invention, refused to answer any of my questions. “We are a very private company,” a representative said via email. The second is Glitterex."

"Martin Niemöller before the Nazis finally came for him"

"Would Niemöller’s contemporary admirers in the American public embrace the confession so enthusiastically if they knew of the pastor’s wholehearted support for Hitler during his climb to power? Indeed, the Nazis’ stigmatization and persecution of minorities did not initially trouble the nationalist pastor. Born in 1892, Niemöller grew up during the German monarchy’s struggle for world recognition and served proudly as a submarine officer in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Imperial Navy in World War I. After the war and the socialist revolution that overthrew the Hohenzollern monarchy, Niemöller entered the seminary. Ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1924, he remained an archconservative during Germany’s short-lived liberal republic, the so-called Weimar Republic, casting his ballot for the Nazis in 1924 and again in 1933."

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/martin-niem-ller-nazis-finally-came-him

"Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong"

"Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people. Habits, no matter your size, are what really matter. Dozens of indicators, from vegetable consumption to regular exercise to grip strength, provide a better snapshot of someone’s health than looking at her from across a room...

Ask almost any fat person about her interactions with the health care system and you will hear a story, sometimes three, the same as Enneking’s: rolled eyes, skeptical questions, treatments denied or delayed or revoked. Doctors are supposed to be trusted authorities, a patient’s primary gateway to healing. But for fat people, they are a source of unique and persistent trauma. No matter what you go in for or how much you’re hurting, the first thing you will be told is that it would all get better if you could just put down the Cheetos...

Lesley Williams, a family medicine doctor in Phoenix, tells me she gets an alert from her electronic health records software every time she’s about to see a patient who is above the “overweight” threshold. The reason for this is that physicians are often required, in writing, to prove to hospital administrators and insurance providers that they have brought up their patient’s weight and formulated a plan to bring it down—regardless of whether that patient came in with arthritis or a broken arm or a bad sunburn. Failing to do that could result in poor performance reviews, low ratings from insurance companies or being denied reimbursement if they refer patients to specialized care...

in a remarkable finding, rich people of color have higher rates of cardiovascular disease than poor people of color—the opposite of what happens with white people. One explanation is that navigating increasingly white spaces, and increasingly higher stakes, exerts stress on racial minorities that, over time, makes them more susceptible to heart problems...

Many “failed” obesity interventions are, in fact, successful eat-healthier-and-exercise-more interventions. A review of 44 international studies found that school-based activity programs didn’t affect kids’ weight, but improved their athletic ability, tripled the amount of time they spent exercising and reduced their daily TV consumption by up to an hour. Another survey showed that two years of getting kids to exercise and eat better didn’t noticeably affect their size but did improve their math scores—an effect that was greater for black kids than white kids."

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/

FB: " “For something as emotional as weight, you have to listen for a long time before you give any advice. Telling someone, 'Lay off the cheeseburgers' is never going to work if you don't know what those cheeseburgers are doing for them.”...the decisive factor in obesity care was not the diet patients went on, but how much attention and support they received while they were on it. Participants who got more than 12 sessions with a dietician saw significant reductions in their rates of prediabetes and cardiovascular risk. Those who got less personalized care showed almost no improvement at all."

"To overcome decades of mistrust, a workshop aims to train Indigenous researchers to be their own genome experts"

"He kicked off his effort with a lecture at a reservation in Northern California. It was the first time he had spoken with a Native American community, despite years of studying their genetics. Expecting to gather dozens of DNA samples, "I brought a bunch of cheek swabs with me," he recalls. But at the end of his talk on DNA variation and the importance of filling in sampling gaps, the room fell uncomfortably silent. "Then one person stood up and said, ‘Why should we trust you?’" Malhi remembers. "That's a formative memory. I had not learned about anthropologists going to communities, taking samples, and just leaving."

He got no samples that day... 

SING aims to train Indigenous scientists in genomics so that they can introduce that field's tools to their communities as well as bring a sorely needed Indigenous perspective to research. Since Malhi helped found it at UI in 2011, SING has trained more than 100 graduates and has expanded to New Zealand and Canada. The program has created a strong community of Indigenous scientists and non-Indigenous allies who are raising the profile of these ethical issues and developing ways to improve a historically fraught relationship.

SING grads and professors say the experience has profoundly affected their work. At SING, "you can exist as your authentic self, as both Indigenous and as a scientist, without having to code-switch all the time. It's like coming up for air," says Savannah Martin, a Ph.D. student in biological anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in Oregon." 

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/overcome-decades-mistrust-workshop-aims-train-indigenous-researchers-be-their-own

FB: "researchers working for the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), a major international effort, were collecting samples from around the world to build a public database of global genetic variation. The project publicly emphasized the importance of collecting DNA from genetically isolated Indigenous populations before they "went extinct."

That rationale "was offensive to Indigenous populations worldwide," Gachupin says. "Resources for infrastructure and for the wellbeing of the community were not forthcoming, and yet now here were these millions and millions of dollars being invested to ‘save’ their DNA." The message from the scientific establishment was, she says, "We don't care about the person. We just want your DNA." Some activists dubbed the HGDP "the Vampire Project," believing the only beneficiaries would be Western scientists and people who could afford costly medical treatments."

"How Does Time Work in the Brain?"

"Once the team realized that the signals changed over time, the pieces of the puzzle came together. The brain organized time as events and memories, not merely locations and data points. Moser explained, "Time is a non-equilibrial process. It is always unique and changing. If the network was indeed coding for time, the signal would have to change with time in order to record experiences as unique memories."

https://www.labroots.com/trending/neuroscience/12613/time-brain

"Why Do We Pledge Allegiance?"

"The origins of the pledge cannot be understood apart from the “flag movement” of the 1880s, which itself cannot be understood apart from the Civil War. Just as U.S. (that is, Union) flags became more omnipresent during the war, so “loyalty tests” also spread. People suspected of disloyalty were often arrested, eligible for pardon if they submitted to an “oath of allegiance” swearing to “support, protect and defend the Constitution and Government of the United States against all enemies, whether domestic or foreign,” and to “bear true faith, allegiance and loyalty to the same.” Such oral and signed performances were thought to be rehabilitative, making real Americans out of those whose devotion was questionable or had wavered... 

The Pledge of Allegiance was written only with this specific commemoration in mind, though, and with the express goal of driving sales of the Youth’s Companion. It likely would have fallen into obscurity if not for the intense anxiety about immigrants that began to grip many native-born Americans in the 1880s. More than 2.7 million immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1870s, followed by over 5.2 million in the 1880s and another 14.5 million between 1900 and 1919. Bellamy channeled the alarm many felt when he told the NEA in 1892 that “Americanism brings a duty . . . it must be made a force strong enough to touch the immigrant population which is pouring over our country.” Naturally the use of his pledge in public schools was a key component, he contended, for the inculcation of loyalty to the United States... 

While traditions often engender controversy and resistance, probably no U.S. tradition has sparked more opposition than the pledge (and, relatedly, the U.S. motto, “In God We Trust,” adopted around the same time). Not all of this resistance has come from atheists. Indeed, as Ellis notes, “the most important and enduring sources of resistance to the flag salute and the Pledge of Allegiance were religiously based,” coming from religious minorities with objections to the wording of pledges and mottoes and sometimes to the act of saluting or pledging to a flag."

http://bostonreview.net/politics/jack-david-eller-pledge-allegiance

FB: "It likely would have fallen into obscurity if not for the intense anxiety about immigrants that began to grip many native-born Americans in the 1880s."

"Violence in pre-Columbian Panama exaggerated, new study shows"

"Lothrop's misinterpretations are likely due to the era of "Romantic archaeology," underdeveloped methods for mortuary studies and literal readings of Spanish accounts of indigenous peoples after European contact.

"We now realize that many of these Spanish chroniclers were motivated to show the indigenous populations they encountered as 'uncivilized' and in need of conquering," said Smith-Guzmán, adding that many accounts of sacrifice and cannibalism have not been confirmed by the archaeological record. "Rather than an example of violent death and careless deposition, Playa Venado presents an example of how pre-Columbian societies in the Isthmo-Colombian area showed respect and care for their kin after death."...

Evidence suggests certain people's remains were preserved for long periods of time before being buried in ritual contexts. "At Playa Venado, we see a lot of evidence of adults being buried next to urns containing children, multiple burials including one primary and one secondary burial, and disturbance of previously laid graves in order to inter another individual in association," said Smith-Guzmán.

"The uniform burial positioning and the absence of perimortem (around the time of death) trauma stands in contradiction to Lothrop's interpretation of violent death at the site," said Smith-Guzmán, who also used evidence from other archaeological sites around Panama about burial rites as part of the investigation. "There are low rates of trauma in general, and the open mouths of skeletons Lothrop noted are more easily explained by normal muscle relaxation after death and decay.""

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-09-violence-pre-columbian-panama-exaggerated.html#jCphttps://phys.org/news/2018-09-violence-pre-columbian-panama-exaggerated.html#jCp

"Addiction Doesn’t Always Last a Lifetime"

"As someone who suffered from heroin addiction myself, I’d like to introduce you to a few people who have followed diverse trajectories out of addiction. My own nearly 30-year recovery started with traditional rehab and abstinence, which I practiced for 13 years. Now, however, it includes medical use of antidepressants, exercise, strong relationships, deep commitment to my work and moderate use of some legal substances.

I believe people like me can no longer stay silent — our stories are the only antidote to a picture of addiction that fails to include recovery."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/opinion/addiction-recovery-survivors.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

"Meet the Anarchists Making Their Own Medicine"

"In the last decade, Four Thieves has run afoul of the Food and Drug Administration, billionaire pharma executives, doctors, and chemists at some of the United States’ most prestigious universities. Indeed, Laufer and his collaborators can’t stop pissing off powerful people because Four Thieves is living proof that effective medicines can be developed on a budget outside of institutional channels.

At the pharmacy, a pair of single use Mylan epipens can cost over $600 and the company’s generic version costs $300 per pair, but an ongoing shortage means you probably can’t find them, even if you can afford them. In response, Four Thieves published the instructions for a DIY epipen online that can be made for $30 in off-the-shelf parts and reloaded for $3... 

To date, Four Thieves has used the device to produce homemade Naloxone, a drug used to prevent opiate overdoses better known as Narcan; Daraprim, a drug that treats infections in people with HIV; Cabotegravir, a preventative HIV medicine that may only need to be taken four times per year; and mifepristone and misoprostol, two chemicals needed for pharmaceutical abortions... 

Eric Von Hippel, an economist at MIT that researches “open innovation,” is enthusiastic about the promise of DIY drug production, but only under certain conditions. He cited a pilot program in the Netherlands that is exploring the independent production of medicines that are tailor made for individual patients as a good example of safe, DIY drug production. These drugs are made in the hospital by trained experts."

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43pngb/how-to-make-your-own-medicine-four-thieves-vinegar-collective

This is the most Vice article I've ever read. I'm often intrigued, but I never know how much to believe it... 

FB: "As the group continues to experimenting with synthesizing its own cabotegravir, some Four Thieves affiliates have started purchasing a commercially available PrEP called tenofovir, compounding it with an inert buffer, and then providing it to heroin dealers who can choose to cut their product with the PrEP as a "service" for their customers. For those customers who decide to take the dealers up on their service, "their heroin has a new side effect,” Laufer said. “You don’t get HIV from it any more.”" 

"What the Mystery of the Tick-Borne Meat Allergy Could Reveal"

"meat allergy is upending longstanding assumptions about how allergies work. Its existence suggests that other allergies could be initiated by arthropod bites or unexpected exposures. It also raises the possibility that other symptoms often reported by patients that clinicians might dismiss because they don’t fit into established frameworks — gluten intolerance, for example, or mucus production after drinking milk — could, similarly, be conditions that scientists simply don’t understand yet. Mammalian-meat allergy “really has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of food allergy, because it doesn’t fall under the umbrella of our paradigm,” Dr. Maya R. Jerath, a professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis, told me. “Maybe our paradigm is wrong.”... 

Another unusual aspect of meat allergy is that it can emerge after a lifetime spent eating meat without problems. In other food allergies, scientists think that children’s immune systems may never learn to tolerate the food in the first place. But in meat allergy, the tick seems to break an already established tolerance, causing the immune system to attack what it previously ignored. One way to understand how the parasite pulls this off is to consider its bite as a kind of inadvertent vaccine... 

Another unusual aspect of meat allergy is that it can emerge after a lifetime spent eating meat without problems. In other food allergies, scientists think that children’s immune systems may never learn to tolerate the food in the first place. But in meat allergy, the tick seems to break an already established tolerance, causing the immune system to attack what it previously ignored. One way to understand how the parasite pulls this off is to consider its bite as a kind of inadvertent vaccine."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/magazine/what-the-mystery-of-the-tick-borne-meat-allergy-could-reveal.html

"#IAmSexist"

"For example, before I got married, I insisted that my wife take my last name. After all, she was to become my wife. So, why not take my name, and become part of me? She refused. She wanted to keep her own last name, arguing that a woman taking her husband’s name was a patriarchal practice. I was not happy, especially as she had her father’s last name, which I argued contradicted her position against patriarchy. But as she argued, “This is my name and it is part of my identity.” I became stubborn and interpreted her decision as evidence of a lack of full commitment to me. Well, she brilliantly proposed that we both change our last names and take on a new name together showing our commitment to each other.

Despite the charity, challenge and reasonableness of the offer, I dropped the ball. That day I learned something about me. I didn’t respect her autonomy, her legal standing and personhood. As pathetic as this may sound, I saw her as my property, to be defined by my name and according to my legal standing. While this was not sexual assault, my insistence was a violation of her independence. I had inherited a subtle, yet still violent, form of toxic masculinity. It still raises its ugly head — I should be thanked when I clean the house, cook, sacrifice my time. These are deep and troubling expectations that are shaped by male privilege, male power and toxic masculinity."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/opinion/men-sexism-me-too.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR21ctI4ZFvMlzq6qKM2xbDkkDkkFe_4BfRRUfXanhemf6AEXsWhEBWNKbI

FB: "As early as elementary school, the young boys would play this “game” of pushing one another into girls. The idea was to get your friend to push you into a girl that you found attractive in order to grind up against her. I was guilty: “Hurry up! Push me into her.” He pushed, and the physical grind was obvious. She would turn around, disgusted, and yell, “Stop!” Youthful? Yes. Was it sexist and wrong? Yes. This was our youthful collective education; this is what it meant for us to gain “masculine credibility” at the expense of girls."

"There’s Nothing Virtuous About Finding Common Ground"

"The middle is a point equidistant from two poles. That’s it. There is nothing inherently virtuous about being neither here nor there. Buried in this is a false equivalency of ideas, what you might call the “good people on both sides” phenomenon. When we revisit our shameful past, ask yourself, Where was the middle? Rather than chattel slavery, perhaps we could agree on a nice program of indentured servitude? Instead of subjecting Japanese-American citizens to indefinite detention during WW II, what if we had agreed to give them actual sentences and perhaps provided a receipt for them to reclaim their things when they were released? What is halfway between moral and immoral?... 

Many people understand politics as merely a matter of rhetoric and ideas. Some people will experience wars only in news snippets, while the poor and working class that make up most of our volunteer army will wage war, and still others far and not so far away will have war waged upon them. For the people directly affected, the culture war is a real war too. They know there is no safety in the in-between. The romance of the middle can exist when one’s empathy is aligned with the people expressing opinions on policy or culture rather than with those who will be affected by these policies or cultural norms. Buried in this argument, whether we realize it or not, is the fact that these policies change people’s lives."

http://time.com/5434381/tayari-jones-moral-middle-myth/?fbclid=IwAR29zx_bNXIQnhdH5Qh4k6j_evHubVT_KU40T70wsPeYQV4PGsbYptVe-yU

FB:" "The search for the middle is rooted in conflict avoidance and denial. For many Americans it is painful to understand that there are citizens of our community who are deeply racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic. Certainly, they reason, this current moment is somehow a complicated misunderstanding. Perhaps there is some way to look at this–a view from the middle–that would allow us to communicate and realize that our national identity is the tie that will bind us comfortably, and with a bow. The headlines that lament a “divided” America suggest that the fact that we can’t all get along is more significant than the issues over which we are sparring."

"Fibroblasts become fat to reduce scarring"

"Unexpectedly, it was recently found that hair follicle regeneration in mouse wounds could be stimulated with secreted factors of the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) and Wingless (WNT) signaling pathways (5). Plikus et al. now make the important finding that hair follicles can change the fate of myofibroblasts (a known cellular player in scarring) into adipocytes through a signaling pathway that depends on bone morphogenetic protein (BMP). Therefore, combinatorial WNT, FGF, and BMP treatment could present a biphasic strategy for scarless wound healing by first stimulating regrowth of hair follicles that would then induce differentiation of scarforming myofibroblasts into adipocytes (see the figure). Intriguingly, the authors found that myofibroblasts isolated from keloid patients also could be induced to become adipocytes by exposure to BMP."

http://science.sciencemag.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/content/355/6326/693

"Birth canals are different all over the world, countering a long-held evolutionary theory"

"The idea that women’s pelvises have been shaped by an evolutionary compromise—also known as the “obstetrical dilemma”—has been influential in anthropology, says Jonathan Wells, an expert in human evolution at University College London who was not involved with the work. But recent studies have challenged it, and the new findings add to that research, he says. If the obstetric dilemma held true, one would expect birth canals around the world to be relatively standardized, Wells says. But that’s not what researchers found... 

Betti and Manica also found that there was less variability in birth canal shape in populations farther from Africa, such as Native Americans. That pattern has been seen in other traits, and is thought to simply reflect lower variability in genes and traits among the relatively small bands of people who moved out of Africa to populate the world. Overall, the analysis suggests a population may have ended up with a particular birth canal shape simply by chance, not because of any sort of selective pressure."

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/birth-canals-are-different-all-over-world-countering-long-held-evolutionary-theory?utm_source=6&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=AAAS---The-American-Association-for-the-Advancement-of-Science-%28AAAS.Science%29&utm_term=WebEd&utm_content=AAAS&fbclid=IwAR0SnUPDfLzQZhofUJPcYaQnqovXzVhp5hNOSI-pMKPm4udlgfaw8jGF4-I

HOW is this the first time this has been investigated?? So, so many health implications for pregnancy. 

Related : terrible pregnancy one(s), change to theory about birth canals and women

"China’s Government Has Ordered a Million Citizens to Occupy Uighur Homes. Here’s What They Think They’re Doing."

"Had a Uighur host just greeted a neighbor in Arabic with the words “Assalamu Alaykum”? That would need to go in the notebook. Was that a copy of the Quran in the home? Was anyone praying on Friday or fasting during Ramadan? Was a little sister’s dress too long or a little brother’s beard irregular? And why was no one playing cards or watching movies?

Of course it was possible they were doing their home visit in a “healthy” secular family. Perhaps there were posters of Xi Jinping or Chinese flags on their walls. Maybe the children spoke Mandarin even when they hadn’t been prompted.

Not all the most important evidence would be immediately visible. So the visitors were instructed to ask questions. Did their hosts have any relatives living in “sensitive regions?” Did anyone they knew live abroad? Did they have any knowledge of Arabic or Turkish? Had they attended a mosque outside of their village? If the adult little brothers and sisters’ answers felt incomplete, or if they seemed to be hiding anything, the children should be questioned next... 

The manual instructs the relatives to tell their “little brothers and sisters” that they have been monitoring all Internet and cell phone communication that is coming from the family, so they should not even think about lying when it comes to their knowledge of Islam and religious extremism.

The manual also instructed them to help the villagers alleviate their poverty by giving them business advice and helping out around the household. They were told to report any resistance to “poverty-alleviation activities.”... 

Two civil servant “relatives” and two friends and family members of “relatives,” the four of whom identified as “locals” (bendi ren) or “Old Xinjiang People” who had grown up in the region, expressed reservations about their participation in the “United as One Family” project. They complained about having to adjust to conditions in Uighur and Kazakh villages; that the work was boring and they missed the excitement of city life. They repeatedly mentioned that it was inconvenient to be apart from their families. One of the relatives who was sent in the first wave of long-term relatives, and was tasked with living full time in Muslim villages for a year or more, said he was only permitted a 10-day leave every 90 days.

They told me, repeatedly, that they felt they were being asked to sacrifice significant portions of their lives to this effort. They wanted to get back to their work as bureaucrats in state-owned enterprises and government bureaus, or their work as doctors and editors in state-run institutions. Two of those I interviewed told me that they, or their friends who had been asked to go down to the villages, would have lost their jobs if they had refused to participate in the monitoring program, but they also said that by participating they had been guaranteed promotions upon the completion of their tour of duty... 

The main focus of all of this training, she told me, was to introduce secular values into Uighur society. To her mind, this was an unquestioned good. She said the main problem in Xinjiang was that people did not communicate effectively. Education in both Chinese language and Han secular values would change this. She told me, “Xinjiang could be another Yunnan, where people from outside the province are attracted to the province and those from the province are assimilated.”... 

Sent-down workers who identified as “Old Xinjiang” locals had a less sanguine view of the camps. They said that when Uighurs were sent to a “reeducation center,” it was probably because there was no one to protect them. This was how the system worked. And it was also why “locals” like them had to participate. “There is nothing we can do to protect Uighurs,” a middle-aged Han woman who grew up with Uighur classmates in Urumchi told me, “so we have to try to protect ourselves.”

Several Han workers said that politics in Xinjiang were polarized to a degree that recalled the Cultural Revolution. Everyone had to agree with the Party line or be ostracized and face time in prison. Of course, they said the primary target of the current human engineering project was Uighurs and Kazakhs. If they, as Han, kept their heads down, they thought they would be fine."

http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/postcard/million-citizens-occupy-uighur-homes-xinjiang?fbclid=IwAR2jfKCaRVanNw6Bp5Um5fqRIgMgkvl-x2OatyWLfNBD9HghgH4wLnLsxoE

FB: "Many Uighurs told me that perhaps the most painful part of the “United as One Family” program was the way it undermined the authority of Uighur parents and destroyed families. They described the “relatives” as trying to take away their future. Families and their faith, many explained, were the last space of refuge and security in Uighur society. The same middle-aged Uighur man said, “Now they are taking our families and our faith. We have nothing left.”"

"The War Inside 7-Eleven"

"All’s fair in the bitter, protracted war between 7-Eleven and its franchisees. The tensions have built steadily in the years since DePinto, a West Point-educated veteran, took charge and began demanding more of franchisees—more inventory, more money, more adherence in matters large and small. Some franchisees have responded by organizing and complaining and sometimes suing.

As detailed in a series of lawsuits and court cases, the company has plotted for much of DePinto’s tenure to purge certain underperformers and troublemakers. It’s targeted store owners and spent millions on an investigative force to go after them. The corporate investigators have used tactics including tailing franchisees in unmarked vehicles, planting hidden cameras and listening devices, and deploying a surveillance van disguised as a plumber’s truck. The company has also given the names of franchisees to the government, which in some cases has led immigration authorities to inspect their stores, according to three officials with Homeland Security Investigations, which like ICE is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security."

https://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek

FB:" franchisees, after years of conflict with the company, went from suspicious to paranoid when word spread that ICE had shown up at stores run by men and women who were in legal disputes with 7-Eleven or were prominent critics of DePinto. Bloomberg has documented raids on four such people, including Sandhu, who’s been involved in two lawsuits against the company. That’s why he can’t stop wondering: Why him? Of hundreds of 7-Eleven stores in Los Angeles County alone, why his?"

"The Stepping Stones of Integrating Emotions into Practicing Science"

"This kind, gentle man shared with me how powerless he felt when he left behind his home and irreplaceable belongings after many exhausting hours spent moving equipment and farm animals. Listening to his story was the first time I became acutely aware that the intellectual rigors of my scientific training did not prepare me for the strong bouts of emotions that come with research that has immediate meaning in people’s lives. Speaking with him inspired a decade of work (so far) to understand how science and emotion can be integrated — for myself and others... 

Rationality and objectivity — often seen as opposites of emotionality — are idealized in modern science, and there is a deep-seated fear that moving away from that norm will ruin the profession.

On the other hand, not recognizing the emotional context of topics such as climate change, species loss, or natural disasters can be both stifling for individuals and prevent scientists from connecting with affected communities on these kinds of issues. It can even become dangerous when we intellectually distance ourselves from the emotional implications of our research by ignoring or dismissing feeling-based reactions. It can cause us to miss out on the valuable role emotions can play as a source of information in our work."

https://onbeing.org/blog/the-stepping-stones-of-integrating-emotions-into-practicing-science/

FB:" Historian Naomi Oreskesargues that scientists should express more alarm about climate change. She recalls a conference presentation where an audience member stood up and said, “You are telling us that we have a very serious problem, but you don’t sound at all worried. You don’t even sound upset!” Oreskes argues that expressing concern would help convey the seriousness of the issue, that it’s difficult to get excited about something when the experts themselves seem dispassionate."

"How the Ghana ThinkTank Challenges the White Savior Complex"

"According to Ghana ThinkTank, the Moroccan think tank, made up of a donkey-pulled cart that toured villages looking for participants, suggested that many US problems stem from architecture that exacerbates social isolation. The American dream of the single-family home, for example, encourages separation between neighbors. As a potential solution, they provided examples of architecture that helps strengthen community — specifically, the Moroccan riad, an interior courtyard that joins disparate areas of a single dwelling, or fills in spaces between structures with a communal gathering place."

https://hyperallergic.com/472685/ghana-thinktank/?fbclid=IwAR00OvwOGk_pzH3MoNqKxwbkE_XyPdy2Rf5b0cS4nTjoAdMjiLsprTYPU70

FB: “People in my neighborhood are learning construction skills,” said Newkirk, in an interview that took place at Red Door Studios, a neighborhood institution where he and Robinson work. “How do we live in a country where we have one of the most necessary segments of people — [those who know how to do skilled labor] — aging out of service and dying? How stupid are we? The skill-share and training is doing a lot to bring together a really diverse group of people.”

"Woman who inherited fatal illness to sue doctors in groundbreaking case"

"The woman – who cannot be named for legal reasons – says she would have had an abortion had she known about her father’s condition, and is suing the doctors who failed to tell her about the risks she and her child faced. It is the first case in English law to deal with a relative’s claim over issues of genetic responsibility... 

In effect, lawyers say the definition of a patient is facing change. In future, a patient may be not just the person who provided a genetic sample, but may be defined as also those affected by that genetic sample.

“The outcome is potentially very important,” said a spokesman for Fieldfisher, the London law firm representing the woman. “Should clinicians be legally obliged to consider the interests of anyone they are reasonably aware of who could be affected by genetic information – or is the protection afforded by current professional guidance enough?”"

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/25/woman-inherited-fatal-illness-sue-doctors-groundbreaking-case-huntingtons?utm_content=80440474&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

FB: SUPER interesting question "The woman’s father shot and killed his wife in 2007 and was convicted of manslaughter. Two years later, doctors at St George’s Hospital in south London found he had Huntington’s disease and asked him to tell his daughter about his condition and her risk of developing it. But he refused to do so because he thought she might abort the child she was carrying. The doctors accepted his decision."

"‘Landmark study’ shows brain cells revamp their DNA, perhaps sparking Alzheimer’s disease"

"Scientists have seen hints that such genomic reshuffling—known as somatic recombination—happens in our brain. Neurons there often differ dramatically from one another. They often have more DNA or different genetic sequences than the cells around them.

To look for definitive evidence of somatic recombination in the brain, neuroscientist Jerold Chun of the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in San Diego, California, and colleagues analyzed neurons from the donated brains of six healthy elderly people and seven patients who had the noninherited form of Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for most cases. The researchers tested whether the cells harbored different versions of the gene for the amyloid precursor protein (APP), the source of the plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. APP’s gene was a good candidate to examine, the researchers thought, because one of their previous studies suggested neurons from patients with Alzheimer’s disease can harbor extra copies of the gene, an increase that could arise from somatic recombination.

The scientists’ new analysis, reported online today in Nature, shows the neurons seem to carry not one or two variants of the APP gene, but thousands."

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/landmark-study-shows-brain-cells-revamp-their-dna-make-new-proteins-perhaps-sparking?utm_source=6&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=News-from-Science-%28ScienceNOW%29&utm_term=SciMag&utm_content=AAAS&fbclid=IwAR15q42sQB2XWFxicjDmaRtK0jX8cJ7g7vntWBs1lSIdJ0AmBDmr5i7HLJE

This! There is evidence that neurons do this a little bit during development, but I (and, obviously, lots of people) have thought that there must be changes later on too. 

FB: this is really, really cool "“Rather than having one constant blueprint that stays with us throughout life, neurons have the ability to change that blueprint,” Chun proposes. That capability may benefit neurons by enabling them to generate a medley of APP versions that enhance learning, memory, or other brain functions. On the other hand, somatic recombination may promote Alzheimer’s disease in some people by producing harmful versions of the protein or by damaging brain cells in other ways, the scientists conclude."

"THE COSTS OF THE CONFEDERACY"

"we spent months investigating the history and financing of Confederate monuments and sites. Our findings directly contradict the most common justifications for continuing to preserve and sustain these memorials.

First, far from simply being markers of historic events and people, as proponents argue, these memorials were created and funded by Jim Crow governments to pay homage to a slave-owning society and to serve as blunt assertions of dominance over African-Americans.

Second, contrary to the claim that today’s objections to the monuments are merely the product of contemporary political correctness, they were actively opposed at the time, often by African-Americans, as instruments of white power.

Finally, Confederate monuments aren’t just heirlooms, the artifacts of a bygone era. Instead, American taxpayers are still heavily investing in these tributes today. We have found that, over the past ten years, taxpayers have directed at least $40 million to Confederate monuments—statues, homes, parks, museums, libraries and cemeteries—and to Confederate heritage organizations."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/costs-confederacy-special-report-180970731/?fbclid=IwAR2VDxpd7P5v_Wms-Ulkw_LWxoPlwD_6D9JzZrg9pabv6ISU3yo6U4ctoTI#oADIdDIAFzjr82Lk.01

The little baby boy in the cover photo. 

I just had this weird cognitive dissonance, like I can't call him a small child, small children don't experience these kinds of psychological assaults. I guess that's the subconscious reasoning that leads people to look at a black child and conclude that they are adult-like. 

But anyway. This nation. Our country is behaving in contradictory and self-defeating ways and should really be seeing a therapist to sort them out. 

FB:  "It’s difficult to imagine that all the Confederate monuments and historic sites dotting the landscape today would have been established if African-Americans had had a say in the matter... In today’s debates about the public display of Confederate symbols, the strong objections of early African-American critics are seldom remembered, perhaps because they had no impact on (white) officeholders at the time. But the urgent black protests of the past now have the ring of prophecy."