Humanities & Cultures
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Afghan Music surviving on Tapes
www.theguardian.com ‘The love for music is still there’: saving the sounds of Afghanistan one cassette at a timeA shopkeeper in Pakistan has collected more than 1,000 rare music tapes in a bid to thwart the Taliban’s cultural vandalism
- phys.org Research group deciphers enigmatic ancient 'unknown Kushan script'
The Kushan Empire in Central Asia was one of the most influential states of the ancient world. A research team at the University of Cologne's Department of Linguistics has now deciphered a writing system that sheds new light on its history.
- www.psypost.org Young adults who embrace "lying flatism" also tend to see romantic relationships as unnecessary for happiness
New research published in BMC Psychology sheds light on the "lying flat" lifestyle movement and its relationship to attitudes towards being single. The findings indicate that young adults who have a positive view of the lifestyle, which emphasizes relaxation and avoiding excessive work or societal p...
> Lying flatism is a trending philosophy that has emerged in China and is practiced by young adults who choose to live a minimalist lifestyle and reject the pressures of society. Lying flatists refuse to participate in consumerist lifestyles, such as pursuing high-paying jobs, purchasing material possessions, getting married, or having children. They believe that personal efforts are no longer effective in improving their lives due to structural and societal factors.
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Can Human Instincts Be Controlled?
I got curious about human instincts and ran into this (delightfully retro even though it's from after 2010) page while googling the subject. Haven't read it fully yet but I've found it interesting and figured I'd share.
> Abstract. Like all animals, humans have instincts, genetically hard-wired behaviors that enhance our ability to cope with vital environmental contingencies. Our innate fear of snakes is an example. Other instincts, including denial, revenge, tribal loyalty, greed and our urge to procreate, now threaten our very existence. Any attempt to control human behavior is bound to meet with resistance and disapproval. Unless we can change our behavior, humans are facing the end of civilization. Our problem has several elements. (1) We have invented economic and social systems that encourage greedy behavior, and we have actually institutionalized runaway greed. (2) We are in a state of complete denial about the growth of human populations. (3) Earth's finite resources simply cannot support 7.6 billion of us in the style to which we’d like to live. (4) We must make a choice between quantity and quality of human life. (5) To head off the inevitable collapse, we can no longer wait and merely react but we must become proactive. We must find ways to control dangerous human instincts, especially denial, revenge, tribal loyalty, greed and our urge to procreate.
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How the U.S. Stole ̶O̶k̶l̶a̶h̶o̶m̶a̶ Sequoya
YouTube Video
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I’m from Oklahoma and can 100% confirm, it’s now just a bunch of squares.
- www.theguardian.com Fostering compassion in polarised times: lessons from psychologists, criminologists, and educationalists
When the world seems increasingly divided, what skills can help us dial down the hostile vibes and become a more compassionate society?
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Mountains in wilderness don't need hardware
The rock climbing community has long found itself at odds with park rangers. Very rarely intentionally! But today there is a silent battle between a small group of climbers trying to reform the wilderness act to allow fixing permanent anchors to rock in the wilderness.
The use of fixed anchors, also called bolting, makes routes far more accessible to the average sport climber. Without fixed anchors, climbers must build their own removable anchors on the wall as they climb (called "trad climbing"). This is difficult enough that the majority of climbers won't do it, only the dedicated few. While fixed anchors in themselves do not have an environmental impact, any route that gets bolted in the wilderness will undoubtedly see a large increase in human activity that would harm the local flora and fauna. The Protect America's Rock Climbers act is a misnomer at best, lie at worst. There are already hundreds of bolted rocks within the US, with more than enough sport climbing to last anyone a lifetime. Furthermore, if anyone wishes to climb in the wilderness, they are allowed to, provided they are dedicated enough to climb it in the trad style. It is far more important to protect the wilderness that we have left than it is to create a few more pretty rock climbing routes.
- www.thenewatlantis.com We can’t rid nature of us, no matter how hard we try
On the myth of wilderness
- solarpunkstation.com Animism and Solarpunk
Photo by zhang kaiyv on Pexels.com by Craig Stevenson Have you ever had that funny feeling where you have the shape of an idea in your head? A notion, or maybe the thread of an idea. Not yet fully …
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ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World
Stanford has a tool to calculate travel times in the Roman Empire. A great resource to get a better perspective of the world they lived in. I like to use it for writing stories in settings with similar technology levels, to get an idea of how quickly people should be able to travel.
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Are There Limits to Human Stupidity?
iai.tv Are There Limits to Human Stupidity?Why we’re better off giving up the myth of perfect rationality.
Good read on the attainment of perfection and accepting our flaws.
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Dangerous Dust - a major threat to children’s health in sub-Saharan Africa
stanmed.stanford.edu Beyond climate dread — how the medical community is helpingAmid concerns of a new age of climate cataclysm, myriad projects aim to prevent harm to people and make health care more sustainable.
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New UK bill cracking down on abuse of the legal system by wealthy elites
web.archive.org Crackdown on criminals silencing critics to be added to Economic Crime BillJudges will be given greater powers to dismiss lawsuits designed purely to evade scrutiny and stifle freedom of speech through government amendments to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill.
Legal cases usually referred to as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are often aggressively used by wealthy individuals or large businesses to intimidate and financially exhaust opponents, threatening them with extreme costs for defending a claim. SLAPPs have been used prominently by Russian oligarchs to silence critics including investigative journalists, writers and campaigners to avoid scrutiny, often on bogus defamation and privacy grounds that prevent the publication of information in the public interest.
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"Propagandists may not particularly care about the logic of the content they produce": How the Russian Majority is Adapting to the War
web.archive.org From Apathy to Denunciations: How the Russian Majority is Adapting to the WarKseniya Kirillova writes about Russian propaganda’s effectiveness at generating passive support for the “special military operation.” As a result, the war has become a familiar backdrop to everyday life, though the patriotic upsurge counted on by the Kremlin has failed to emerge.
Social researchers claim there is a fairly large group of Russians who simultaneously support further offensive actions in the war and peace negotiations. At a recent conference hosted in Moscow by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) on the topic of how Russians are adapting to the “geopolitical changes”, even the sociologists who are loyal to the regime painted a picture of the average Russian as apathetic and above all seeking to maintain a sense of “normality,” which had to be discouraging for the Kremlin.
- www.theguardian.com Māori ancestral remains and mummified heads returned to New Zealand from Germany
Remains of 95 ancestors, including six toi moko or tattooed heads, brought home in a move Māori leaders described as ‘healing’
- www.theatlantic.com Winners of the 2023 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition
Some of the winning images, showcasing the natural world, from this year’s contest
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Initiative to Solve the Syrian Crisis
northeast-syria.eu Initiative to Solve the Syrian Crisis | AANESIn 2011, a revolutionary popular movement started in Syria as a result of exclusion and marginalization, which led to an ongoing political crisis that has not been resolved yet. Based on our responsibility towards the Syrian people in all its diversity and pursuant to the principles and political vi...
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The Gross Spectacle of Murder Fandom
subhead: > After four University of Idaho students were killed, TikTok and Reddit sleuths swarmed the campus. The community is still struggling with the wreckage they left behind.
- www.sapiens.org Unearthing Culinary Pasts—With Help From Llama Poop
A food archaeologist investigates eating and lean times among the ancient Moche of Peru through the remarkable discovery of llama “beans.”
- www.livescience.com Mysterious rock art painted by Aboriginal people depicts Indonesian warships, study suggests
Archaeologists may have solved the mystery of the origins of two boat paintings detailed inside a cave in Australia.
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Learning to Be Human Again
Todd Marinovich was "the test-tube QB" the first half of his life, a drug addict since. Closing in on 50, the former USC and Raiders quarterback is struggling to come to terms with his raging beast of a father—and the big lie that he only now can share.
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18th-century botanical illustrator that is said to have pioneered an entire art form near the end of her life.
An interactive collage of her works hosted by The British Museum
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"Because no other known language has a grammar based on the human body or shares cognates with Great Andamanese, the language constitutes its own family."
www.scientificamerican.com This Ancient Language Has the Only Grammar Based Entirely on the Human BodyAn endangered language family suggests that early humans used their bodies as a model for reality
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President Teddy Roosevelt, from “Citizen in a Republic” April 23, 1910
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
-President Teddy Roosevelt, from “Citizen in a Republic” April 23, 1910
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Philosophical quotes that helped me as a young person grappling with existentialism.
While I was attending university I was able to start the long process of recovering from the childhood abuse that I had suffered. There was a particular author that helped me tremendously in those early years.
Namely, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote a book entitled God in Search of Man - A Philosophy of Judaism
Here are some quotes:
> Theology starts with dogmas. Philosophy sees the problem first; theology has the answer in advance. Philosophy is a kind of thinking that has a beginning but no end; the problems outlive all solutions.
> We teach children how to measure and weigh, but fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. Modern man fell into the trap of believing all enigmas can be solved and wonder is a form of ignorance. Mankind will not perish for want of information, but for want of appreciation.
> What is, is more than what you see; we are unable to attain insight into the ultimate meaning and purpose of things. We live on the fringe of reality and hardly know how to reach the core. Inaccessible to us are the insights into the nature of ultimate reality. Even what is revealed is incomplete and in disguise.
> Awe is an act of insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe is the awareness of transcendent meaning; loss of awe is a great blockage to insight.
> “The ineffable” is a synonym for hidden meaning rather than for absence of meaning, a dimension so real and sublime that it stuns our ability to adore it. All creative thinking comes out of an encounter with the unknown. It is a fact of profound significance that we can sense more than we can say.
> The world as scrutinized and depicted by science is but a thin surface of the profoundly unknown.
- bigthink.com The unsolved mystery of Europe's oldest language
For linguists, the uniqueness of the Basque language is an unsolved mystery. For native speakers, long oppressed, it's a source of pride.
- www.chalkbeat.org School clinics can improve students’ worsening mental health. So why aren’t there more?
School-based health clinics have been around for roughly half a century, and provide everything from flu shots to behavioral services. Nearly half the states now fund them, but some say the $50 million Congress earmarks for the clinics isn’t enough amid growing concerns about student mental health.
- restofworld.org How Chile’s stolen babies are finding their biological families after decades apart
Thousands of Chileans, illegally adopted during the Pinochet dictatorship, are now relying on tech to trace their biological families.
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Toward a Leisure Ethic: How people spend their time is a fundamental mark of civilization.
hedgehogreview.com Toward a Leisure EthicWhat if the work-week were fifteen hours a week? What if it were zero?
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The Dark Side Of Antarctica
YouTube Video
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A ~20min YouTube "documentary" (I really don't know what to call these) by Barely Sociable on crime in Antarctica.
It's interesting to see what isolation in extremely harsh conditions does to humans. I wonder if there's anything being done to mitigate the problems, or are things still just being swept under the rug? The companies running the bases didn't seem too inclined to pay attention to emotional wellbeing
- www.psychologytoday.com Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction. You Should, Too
What does it mean that religion, not porn use, predicts porn-related problems?
- www.smithsonianmag.com Mosul Cultural Museum to Reopen in 2026
Traveling to the ancient Iraqi city, the Smithsonian’s ambassador at large reports on the international efforts to aid recovery
- phys.org Archaeologists discover 4,300-year-old copper ingots in Oman
A tip from the local population had led the archaeologists from Frankfurt to the area near the city of Ibra in Oman, where they found several settlements. Irini Biezeveld and her fellow doctoral researcher Jonas Kluge were staying in the country in the east of the Arabian Peninsula for six weeks of ...
- phys.org Why our news consumption might be more worrisome than misinformation
Misinformation and echo chambers are often used to explain polarization and political divides between people. New research, however, finds there is another factor we should worry about, namely our online consumption of quality news, or exactly the lack of it. Most people do not read misinformation o...
- www.livescience.com Ancient Egyptian queen's bracelets contain 1st evidence of long-distance trade between Egypt and Greece
The silver used to make an ancient Egyptian queen's bracelets came from Greece, a new analysis finds, offering insight into the Old Kingdom's trade networks.
- nautil.us Finding the Color of an Empire
What a particular shade of black can teach us about an ancient civilization.
- phys.org Mystery of the desert: The lost cities of the Nigerien Sahara
A long trek across the desert of northeastern Niger brings the visitor to one of the most astonishing and rewarding sights in the Sahel: fortified villages of salt and clay perched on rocks with the Saharan sands laying siege below.