Latest Posts by culturalanthropologist - Page 7

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘In The Ruin’", published c. 2017.

The music over the ruins of Aleppo, Syria, 2017 - by Joseph Eid (1976), Lebanese

[ID:

The virus responsible for the Spanish flu set the stage for a wave of Parkinson’s disease decades later. People born during that pandemic had a threefold increased risk of later developing Parkinson’s.

The Epstein-Barr virus, once called the kissing disease, can lead to cancer, diabetes or multiple sclerosis decades later. An innocent flu-like infection can later erupt into a debilitating condition known as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. And so on.

“The idea that a virus that produces acute infections can also cause chronic disease is not new. We just ignored it for 100 years,” said Al-Aly.

End ID]

Why So Quiet about Long Covid?

And speaking of Sophia Tolstoy, her diaries are just so depressing. 

“I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, I am a woman. I try to suppress all human feelings. When the machine is working properly it heats the milk, knits a blanket, makes little requests and bustles about trying not to think […].“

She wrote this when she was 19, one year into her marriage to Leo and as she was pregnant with the first of his 13 children.

A few years later, when she was 25 or so:

“I am so often alone with my thoughts that the need to write in my diary comes quite naturally … Now I am well again and not pregnant—it terrifies me how often I have been in that condition. He said that for him being young meant “I can achieve anything”. For me […] reason tells me that there is nothing I either want or can do beyond nursing, eating, drinking, sleeping, and loving and caring for my husband and babies, all of which I know is happiness of a kind, but why do I feel so woeful all the time, and weep as I did yesterday? I am writing this now with the pleasantly exciting sense that nobody will ever read it, so I can be quite frank with myself […].“

During her 12th pregnancy she wrote about taking scalding baths and jumping from high pieces of furniture to try and miscarry.  And at one point while reading her husband’s diary (which he told her to read) she found the sentence “There is no such thing as love, only the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion.” In her own diary she wrote “They ebb and flow like waves, these times when I realise how lonely I am and want only to cry…”

A few years before her husband’s death, she published a cycle of prose poems titled “Groans”, under the pseudonym “A Tired Woman”.

Tetragonula hockingsi brood structure nest

btw archive dot org is SUCH a treasury when it comes to out-of-print poetry anthologies… i am having the time of my life, truly ❣️

kea feeding on a live sheep, photo by rob morris. article with more detail about this phenomenon.

A girl admires her new shoes from her grandfather’s shoulder. Rawalpindi, Pakistan. 

Photograph by James L. Stanfield. 

The Creature from Frankenstein at Hamburg State Opera

Two elderly women visiting the graves of their dead parents in the Appalachian Mountains sit on the headstones and talk, 1983 - by David Turnley (1955), American/French

you don't need to have cute handwriting girl, Dostoevsky's manuscript drafts looked like this

left- draft of Demons. right- draft of The Brothers Karamazov

The Human Immunome Project: Mapping the Global Landscape of Immune Diversity to Enhance Drugs and Vaccines

The Human Immunome Project aims to revolutionize global health through unprecedented immunology insights and datasets.

In a landmark initiative, the Human Immunome Project (HIP) commenced at a summit in La Jolla, California, bringing immunology specialists together to address the greatest problems in healthcare and develop the largest immunology dataset in history. This ambitious endeavor seeks to revolutionize our comprehension of the human immune system, with the ultimate goal of enhancing global health.

The immune system is our body’s defense mechanism against outside invaders. It resembles a big barrier with numerous defense equipment. It is a whole arsenal of genes and proteins designed to combat disease, which comprises an army of B and T-cell soldiers, antibody shields, and cytokine messengers led by Human leukocyte antigens (HLA). Understanding this complicated system is critical to developing better immunizations, therapies, and even personalized medicine based on your unique immunological fingerprint. The Human Immunome Project is presently exploring this vast environment in the hopes of discovering a path to a healthy future.

The human immunome is a complex web of genes, proteins, and cells, representing our entire body’s defense mechanisms. This advanced network coordinates a multi-layered response to pathogenic threats and accurately protects our health. At the center of the immune system are the courageous B and T lymphocytes, specialist troops capable of recognizing and killing foreign intruders. B cells produce a flood of antigen-specific antibodies, molecular shields that neutralize infections and poisons.

Continue Reading

I wish Americans fucked with more foreign music. You don’t have to know the language to appreciate a good record. Folks in other countries listen to our music and don’t speak a lick of english. Music needs no translator

Inuit doll, made from hide and sealskin, 20th C

Femme appliquant du masonjoany sur la plage, Madagascar

Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira | Ecuador | U.S Diaspora

My mom braiding my hair like her mother did to her from the series Other Stories 1 | 1991 | pigment print 

Naturalist Zoe Lucas has spent most of her adult life on Sable Island transplanting beach grass, observing wild horses, and mapping bees and flowers.

Cause of deaths in London in 1632

Deer skulls with carved eyeholes dating to 11,000 years ago have been discovered at Star Carr Mesolithic archaeological site about five miles (8.0 km) south of Scarborough in North Yorkshire, England. [948x526]

August 2023: Dhaka, Bangladesh Children dressed up as Radha and Lord Krishna during the Janmashtami festival as the community marks the birth of Lord Krishna Photograph: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

This Sudanese woman, now a 1300 year old mummy, has the monogram of St. Michael tattooed on her thigh.

TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries (x)

Mikhail Koptev

Children who spent time in green spaces between the ages of seven and twelve tend to think of nature as magical. As adults they are the people most likely to be indignant about lack of nature protection, while those who have had no such experience tend to regard nature as hostile or irrelevant and are indifferent to its loss. By expurgating nature from children’s lives we are depriving the environment of its champions for the future.

Isabella Tree, Wilding

A philosopher who had retired from the world wrote me a letter full of good advice and common sense. It concluded with these words: “Farewell, my friend; maintain if you can the interests that bind you to society, but cultivate the feelings that cut you away from it.”

Nicolas Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées