Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

'Upworthy was a venture-capital funded startup “that explicitly intended to bend the algorithmic logic of Facebook and other platforms toward socially responsible things.” Pariser is proud of much of Upworthy’s work, he added, “but at the end of the day our impact was constrained by algorithmic choices that prioritized the company’s engagement metrics and the limits of what is possible in a VC backed business.” Now, “New_ Public picks up where that leaves off, in my mind, by attempting to meet some of the same goals — a healthy digital public sphere — through more fundamentally public-spirited ends.”
https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/07/could-social-media-support-healthy-online-conversations-new_public-is-working-on-it/

'One drunken night, a superb painter let me take a brush to a canvas that she said she was abandoning. I tried to continue a simple black stroke that she had started. The contrast between the controlled pressure of her touch and my flaccid smear shocked me, physically. It was like shaking hands with a small person who flips you across a room.'

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/23/the-art-of-dying-peter-schjeldahl

Primitive Baptist?

'Bryan and William Bell Riley both urged the state of Tennessee to enact a law against teaching evolution in the schools. In January 1925, John W. Butler, a Democratic farmer-legislator and Primitive Baptist lay leader, introduced a bill making it a misdemeanor punishable by a fine for any public school teacher “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man had descended from a lower order of animal.”'

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/11/19/darwin-in-dayton/

Probably still better than jagermeister

'The drinkability all depends on how well it was sealed, said David T. Smith, a British drinks writer and consultant who once tasted a shipwrecked gin — with unexpected seawater notes. (“Disgusting.”)'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/world/europe/baltic-shipwreck-champagne.html

'Alguns dos problemas decorrentes de um crescimento excessivo do turismo são evidentes e bem conhecidos de toda a população. A OCDE alerta para aspectos como as pressões sobre os preços do alojamento (que dificultam o acesso à habitação dos residentes e também dos trabalhadores sazonais), sobre as infra-estruturas e os serviços colectivos (traduzindo-se, por exemplo, na sobrelotação dos transportes públicos ou na acumulação de lixo nas zonas mais frequentadas) e sobre o ambiente (aumentando a poluição e pondo em causa a sustentabilidade dos ecossistemas e a biodiversidade). Os crescentes protestos populares em zonas de grande intensidade turística – como Barcelona ou Málaga, para dar dois exemplos recentes – são um sinal de que o excesso de turismo existe de facto e que está a tornar-se um problema político sério em diferentes partes do mundo.'

https://www.publico.pt/2024/07/29/opiniao/opiniao/vamos-assumir-turismo-tornou-problema-2099079

'We demonstrate the first generalizable strategy using a small molecule to selectively kill TP53 mutant cells. This molecule binds the Y220C mutant of p53 and concentrates a PLK1 inhibitor in cells harboring TP53 Y220C mutations.'
#Preprint
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.27.605429v1

'Hungary this month published details of a new fast-track visa system for citizens of eight countries, including Russia and Belarus, to enter Hungary without security checks or other restrictions. Budapest said many would be building a nuclear power plant with Russian technology. '
https://www.ft.com/content/b2a4ebd8-df41-43fe-8d63-602c1d50e899

VONNEGUT
There has to be. Because you can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that person if there’s obviously ignorance here. What’s wrong with so much science fiction is that the science is so lousy that it isn’t worth paying attention to. My brother was a distinguished scientist and I hung out more with scientists than I did with writers, so the one thing I’ve always tried to do was to get it right, make it plausible. Scientifically. How long it takes to get somewhere through space and what you ‘re likely to find there, and you have to figure whether it’s going to be plausible or not. So, yeah, I did a book called Galapagos which was about evolution and it’s used in courses now.

https://www.robertcaro.org/post/an-interview-with-robert-caro-and-kurt-vonnegut

"Old Arabic texts introduce medieval Europe to the significance of foreplay, kissing, and pillow talk."

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/sex-and-female-semen-in-the-medieval-arab-world/

'Our country never made the requisite investments in clean air upgrades for buildings. Despite botching our vaccination campaigns, we have refused to impose universal Covid safety rules for workplaces. Although one of the earliest recommendations from the World Health Organization was to remove financial barriers to care, our country still doesn’t have a universal healthcare system. We have even watched millions of Americans get stripped from the Medicaid rolls, while 10 states still refuse to expand Medicaid eligibility. Meanwhile less than half of states have guaranteed paid medical leave.'
@gregggonsalves
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/why-covid-keeps-winning/

'For many people, a routine blood test is easier to get than a colonoscopy or a fecal sample test. But the blood test, made by Guardant Health of Palo Alto, Calif., comes with a limitation. Unlike other screening tests for colon and rectal cancers, it has a poor record of finding precancerous growths. Removal of those growths can prevent cancer.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/health/colon-cancer-blood-test-shield.html

Botanists vote to change derogatory and racist scientific plant names : NPR https://www.npr.org/2024/07/31/g-s1-14441/renaming-racist-derogatory-plant-names-science-society-inclusion

“The incidence of common arterial thrombotic events (mainly #AcuteMyocardialInfarction and ischaemic #stroke) was generally lower after each vaccine dose, brand and combination. Similarly, the incidence of common venous thrombotic events, (mainly #PulmonaryEmbolism and lower limb #DeepVenousThrombosis) was lower after #vaccination. #COVID19Vaccines #VaccinesWork https://mstdn.social/@erictopol/112881520511875953

‘

"We know that the source of the problem is probably the warming of the sea surface temperature in the Gulf of St. Lawrence because it seems like most of the rivers that run into the gulf are more affected than other rivers."

‘

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-salmon-restrictions-1.7280694

I wrote about physicist Sara Walker's travels in the border zones of life in my 2021 book "Life's Edge." Now she has written a book of her own. Here's my story on "Life As No One Knows It." Gift link: https://nyti.ms/4fueKlU