The History and Mystery of Yemen’s ‘Well of Hell’ - The first-ever expedition to the bottom of a startling desert sinkhole found wonders—but only natural ones, by Sarah Durn October 20, 2021
"...Actually, there was a concern more sinister than reptiles and spirits when Al-Kindi finally reached the bottom: unexploded ordnance. Since 2014, Yemen has been in the midst of a bloody civil war and, Al-Kindi explains, pilots sometimes drop bombs into caves, since people seek shelter inside. “So that got me worried a bit,” he says. “Apart from that, it was a very enjoyable moment.” ...Al-Kindi estimates the sinkhole could be several million years old, but its origin, too, is the subject of local legend. One legend says an ancient king forced jinn to carve the “well” as a place to hide his treasure. In others, the well has always served to contain evil, uncontrollable jinn..."
Plate Tectonics Has a Surprise Silver Lining - Without this restless geologic process, which triggers destructive earthquakes, Earth would not be habitable, by Robin George Andrews May 29, 2024
"...on geologic timescales, plate tectonics ensures that Earth won’t grow so catastrophically hot that its surface becomes unlivable. Without plate tectonics, Earth would turn into Venus. And no planet aspires to be more like Venus.
...And, had it not been for—among other things—our world’s endlessly shifting tectonic plates, Earth could have shared the same grim fate as Venus.
Yes, those tectonic plates buckle and stretch, slip and slide, creating faults that jolt and snap, which generate earthquakes—sometimes devastatingly so. But these tremors are the vital sign of a planet with a beating geologic heart, an orb with a transmogrifying face..."
[I immediately thought of Calvin and Hobbes here, lol.]
The world made by hand, By Brian Kaller, originally published by Restoring Mayberry June 1, 2024
"...All the crafts disappeared in a generation or two – the coopers, wrights, milliners, cord-wainers and thousands more. All the stories handed down through generations disappeared in a few generations, until we all know only the same few pop-culture stories. Almost all the apprenticeships, lodges, clubs, co-ops and guilds disappeared... We are the survivors wandering the ruins of a post-apocalyptic society, but it has been a cultural apocalypse, a mass forgetting, and it’s still going on...
...I realize that we could not build some of these [buildings] now; the crafts to create them are forgotten, along with...[all] these [handcrafted] trades and … everything. The entire human infrastructure.
And I think: None of this world could have been built by the people now living in it."
How the Brain Processes Different Components of Language - Moving beyond neural localization of language. Posted May 28, 2024
"...This is in line with recent ideas about a "cortical mosaic" architecture for linguistic structure within overlapping portions of posterior temporal and inferior frontal cortices for processing demands that bias syntactic and semantic computations, whereby, for example, effects of composition can be found within a narrow strip of tissue within the broader lexicality-sensitive cortical sites (a spatial mosaic), or where different demands of sentence-level inferential semantics can be detected over closely overlapping temporal windows within a small area of cortex (a spatiotemporal mosaic)..."
@shekinahcancook Dr. Suess' phonics is not allowed in mandated schemes which have to be "Synthetic Phonics" strict sound by sound-no rhyme patterns allowed. Interestingly (to me anyway) almost every method of teaching reading works for almost every kid. Just none work 100%. I learnt in the 60s by Look and Say- now banned everywhere as Wrong. But most of my generation learnt to read that way.
The problems occur are 1) when the ideologically fixated believe there is One True Method and 2) when the method becomes more important than the outcome- i.e. the kids actually wanting to read. When in some places in the 80s phonics was an anathema as a specialist teacher I taught phonics where appropriate. And where Synthetic Phonics the current Shibboleth was taught I'd use the other (Dr. Suess compatible) type where appropriate. And a range of other techniques too, for kids having reading problems.
From ChartR: There might soon be a vitamin C-shaped hole in many Americans’ breakfasts: orange juice prices are hitting all-time highs, as a series of poor harvests strain the existing supply of frozen juice futures.
Indeed, while the price of OJ has climbed at an alarming rate in recent years due to reduced production yields, this week saw frozen concentrated orange juice futures ...reach a record price of $4.87 per pound. That’s roughly 5x where they were trading in 2020.
These juiced-up figures have arisen from a blend of bad weather and disease that’s long plagued the world's orange groves...And Florida, world-renowned for its oranges, won’t be able to pick up the slack. The Sunshine State has seen output decline steadily for more than 2 decades, thanks to citrus greening, hurricanes, falling yields, and a booming housing market that’s turned citrus farms into premium real estate.
Well, that's the end of that. My now ex-friend and I had a huge falling out this morning. It's been a while coming. Somehow it's my fault that everything she was supposed to be doing for the last year didn't get done. She just stops in the middle of things and gets all bent out of shape when you call her on her unfulfilled promises. So we're done. I don't need that kind of crap right now.
@shekinahcancook can I ask a question about the situation to try and understand it better or maybe to offer a different point of view? I don't want to impose if you're not up for it. ❤️
Apparently cats have been our overlords longer than we thought.
Were Egyptians Really the First to Domesticate Cats? Try Cave Men - A map shows the spread of felines by Egyptians, Romans, Vikings—and prehistoric ancestors. by Frank Jacobs, Big Think May 24, 2024
"...major advances in paleogenetic analysis have helped illuminate the deep past of one of mankind’s favorite pets. In the last 2 decades, it has been established that the Near Eastern wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica) is the common ancestor of all domesticated cats, and that they were first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 years ago.
It also could be said that cats domesticated themselves; they were attracted to the rodents that feasted off the harvests of the earliest farmers. They chose us, not the other way around. In turn, those early farmers appreciated this welcome form of pest control. ...They arrived as a “ready-made” symbiotic species, so to speak..."
I didn't really want to know this. Yes, spiders are good neighbors and helpful and all that. But...I don't want them landing on me. Just saying.
Baby Spiders Are ‘Addicted’ to Flying With Mini Balloons - From Himalayan jumping spiders to brown widows, arachnids love to float over your head. by Cara Giaimo May 24, 2024
Join the Workers Circle and the Center for Common Ground for this month’s training on how to be an effective citizen advocate. No experience is necessary!
Led by Andrea Miller co-founder of the Center for Common Ground, and Workers Circle Director of Social Justice, Noelle Damico, this once-a-month, hour-long training is divided into two parts.
During the first 30 minutes of "How to be an Effective Citizen Advocate," we review pending legislation.
The second 30 minutes are a legislative visit training so that you can learn or brush up on how to impactfully engage your senators, representatives, and their staff.
Come for all or part of the program! All registrants will receive a video of the training, slides, an advocacy toolkit, and additional background information.
How extreme weather will affect the insurance and energy sectors - By Matthew Wright, Matthew Priestly, originally published by The Conversation May 29, 2024
"...Insurance companies evaluating risks must account for a combination of the most extreme weather systems, and those affecting built-up, developed areas. The most risk-prone areas are quantified by examining historical events and assessing other possible scenarios that are generated by models. Risk experts also consider what impact historical events would have today. Increases in risk may be due to increases in population, density of the built environment, or GDP. For example, Hurricane Katrina’s impact would be $40 billion higher if it occurred today..."
Neoliberal economics is killing the arts
By Tim Lutton, originally published by Red Pepper May 28, 2024
"...As a society, we must resist art-as-capital, where it is reduced to pure exchange value in a market of commodities. There, any politically-charged and counter-hegemonic content is rendered powerless, constituted as a stable harmonisation of the dominant socio-political order and drowning out all contradictions.
...In the present era, the tendency towards total marketisation of artistic production accompanies perpetual austerity and an atomised rentier economy that is shrinking public and social life. Without a rupture from neoliberal capitalism in general, the means to make new, generative and disruptive art disappears, and much else that is meaningful in our lives will follow after. The rest is silence."
@shekinahcancook My wife and I try to donate a large chunk of our yearly income to the performing arts. And we have also volunteered our time.
It makes us very happy when we bring a person who has never seen a live play to the theatre and have them recognize that the experience is quite different, and often much more emotional, than TV and film.
Why Do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty?
Blame Tolkien and time - by Eric Grundhauser December 7, 2016
"...Tolkien would create languages first, then write cultures & histories to speak them... In the case of the ever-present Elvish in his works, Tolkien took inspiration from Finnish and Welsh. As the race of men & hobbits got their language from the elves in Tolkien’s universe, their language was portrayed as similarly Euro-centric in flavor.
For the dwarves, who were meant to have evolved from an entirely separate lineage, he took inspiration from Semitic languages for their speech, resulting in dwarven place names like Khazad-dûm & Moria.
“When dwarves actually talk, they don’t sound Scottish at all,” says Olsen. “They sound like Arabic or Hebrew.”...As radio & film adaptations of Tolkien’s works were released in later decades, you can see the slow evolution of the dwarven accent..."
Yeah, I know. My father's family was Scottish (Clan Crawford) and the men were not very tall, low to average height. My husband is 6'4" and his family was Welsh, and the Elves were supposed to be tall, so I thought that was interesting.
If you watched the Banshee of Inisherin or Netflix's Bodkin and wondered if they really say "that" pretty much every other word in small Irish towns, apparently the answer is yes.