People Ate Pork in the Middle East Until 1,000 B.C.—What Changed? - "long before the emergence of the Old Testament and the Qur’an, people in the Middle East had largely cut the meat from their diets. But why? As New Historian reports, Richard W. Redding, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan recently published a study attempting to decipher the historical origins of this cultural trend. He writes that archeological and anthropological evidence shows that between 5,000 and 2,000 B.C., the domesticated animals were common in the Fertile Crescent, likely used as “a household-based protein resource”—in other words, they were kept on hand as a tasty, nutritious food source. Then, around the 1,000 B.C., the keeping and eating of pigs sharply declined. Pigs need a fair amount of water to survive, which makes them poor travel buddies when a family needs to move—and this could be one factor informing their disappearance from the dinner table. But Redding doesn’t think that’s the primary reason. The blame for the change, his research suggests, can be placed on chickens, which took over pork’s role as a food source... 'Chickens have several advantages over pigs. First, they are a more efficient source of protein than pigs; chickens require 3,500 litres of water to produce one kilo of meat, pigs require 6,000. Secondly, chickens produce eggs, an important secondary product which pigs do not offer. Third, chickens are much smaller and can thus be consumed within 24 hours; this eliminates the problem of preserving large quantities of meat in a hot climate. Finally, chickens could be used by nomads. While neither chickens nor pigs can be herded in the same way as cattle, chickens are small enough to be transported.' And, Redding argues, it wouldn’t make sense to keep both pigs and chickens, since their food and care needs are similar. “Under these circumstances, the chicken becomes a major protein resource,” he writes, concluding that “If the pig had been integral to the subsistence system in the Middle East, it would not have been prohibited” by religious edicts... the pig never fully disappeared from the region. Pig husbandry continued in some woodland and marsh areas where more abundant feed options meant the animal could pig-out without challenging chickens’ survival."
Scientists Played Music to Cheese as It Aged. Hip-Hop Produced the Funkiest Flavor - "hip-hop, for example, gave the cheese an especially funky flavor, while cheese that rocked out to Led Zeppelin or relaxed with Mozart had milder zests... the cheese exposed to music had a milder flavor compared to the non-musical cheese. They also found that the hip-hop cheese had a stronger aroma and stronger flavor than other samples."
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a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-commas-that-cost-companies-millions?utm_source=pocket-newtab">The Commas That Cost Companies Millions - " In one extreme example, a misplaced comma was at the heart of a death-penalty trial.Roger Casement, an Irish nationalist, was hanged in 1916 under the 1351 Treason Act. He had incited Irish prisoners of war being held in Germany to band together to fight against the British. The debate over whether Casement was guilty hinged on the wording of the 14th Century Treason Act and the use of a comma: with it, Casement’s actions in Germany were illegal; without it, he would get away with it"
Many People Don’t Care About What’s True Anymore. That’s Dangerous. - "San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) employee Emmanuel Cafferty was in a company truck driving near a Black Lives Matter rally. His left hand was hanging out the open window. A fellow traveler on the road photographed him and posted it to Twitter. The Twittersphere concluded that, based on the positioning of Cafferty’s hand and fingers, he was making a gesture that some consider a sign of allegiance with white power. Shortly after the incident became public, Cafferty was fired.Did SDG&E do the right thing? After all, no one wants an avowed white supremacist in their midst. However, Cafferty says he wasn’t aware that the positioning of his fingers might be construed as signifying support for white power. He says he was simply cracking his knuckles. And, as he noted in an interview, “If I was a white supremacist… I would literally have to hate 75 percent of myself.”Merriam-Webster defines true as “being in accordance with the actual state of affairs.” So what was true here? The reporting on Cafferty has not surfaced evidence that he actually held any of the ideologies that were attributed to him. There do not appear to have been any old racist tweets or Facebook posts or accusations of racism rattling around in his past... why would SDG&E choose this path? One grim possibility is that they simply decided it didn’t matter what was true.Public perception carries an outsized amount of weight and, in the current climate, outcome #2 (or the perception of outcome #2)—letting a racist continue as an employee—has become something to be avoided regardless of the cost. From an organizational or business standpoint, being viewed as weak on issues of race is perilous. However, an organization that would rather fire a man with a strong claim of innocence rather than face down a Twitter mob that has issued a rushed judgement of guilt has decided that what’s true no longer matters.SDG&E isn’t alone in prioritizing public perception over truth. A similar dynamic played out in the same month in Oakland, CA when five ropes were found hanging from trees in a city park. When asked about the ropes, the mayor of Oakland, as quoted by ABC affiliate KCRG news, said “Intentions don't matter when it comes to terrorizing the public…The symbolism of the rope hanging in the tree is malicious regardless of intent. It's evil, and it symbolizes hatred.” However, the same KCRG news article continued: “Victor Sengbe, who is Black, told KGO-TV that the ropes were part of a rigging that he and his friends used as part of a larger swing system. He also shared video of the swing in use.” Sengbe was then quoted as saying, “Out of the dozen and hundreds and thousands of people that walked by, no one has thought that it looked anywhere close to a noose. Folks have used it for exercise. It was really a fun addition to the park that we tried to create.”Should the ropes have been left up? Insisting that their true purpose didn’t matter is perilous"
When the demand for racism exceeds the supply of it
Meme - "Plus-Sized Women Admit They Aren't Attracted To Overweight Men"
"Hold on, how come the women get to be plus- size but the men are overweight?"
Comment (elsewhere): "ladies, i thought big was beautiful?"
Young female Japanese biker is really 50-year-old man with luscious hair using FaceApp - "In one of the photos, it was revealed in a side mirror that the person behind the camera looked nothing like the one in the photos"
From balti to bhuna: the ultimate guide to curry
The best explanation of different types of curry I've seen
Facebook - "A kangaroo is having sex with a pig while being watched by a duck and also by what appears to be a tall indigenous man holding a spear standing on a hill...What the hell is going on in the Australian outback?"
No spiders though
Laurence Fox launching political party to 'reclaim' British values - "Fox insisted the media coverage of the Duchess of Sussex was not rooted in racism, labelling the allegations about Meghan’s treatment “boring”. He then said it was “racist” for an audience member to call him “a white, privileged male”. The row landed him on the front page of the Daily Mail.Later that month, Fox said it was “odd” to show a Sikh soldier in the first world war film 1917. Following widespread criticism including from historians underlining the contribution of about 130,000 Sikhs in the British army during the war, Fox apologised for expressing himself in what he described as a “clumsy” manner.In January, the actor attacked black and working class actors for criticising the industry once they have “five million quid in the bank”."
'Jesus' told me to treat him as son: teacher accused of molest - "A teacher accused of molesting his former male student testified that Jesus had come to him in a dream and told him to treat the alleged victim as a son.The 35-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the then 12-year-old boy's identity, said that he had decided to take on the role of a father to the boy after the dream, even though he was not a Christian himself then.During his trial on Tuesday (2 March), the teacher also claimed that he had touched the boy's penis only once over his shorts, in order to check on the boy's injured digit as a concerned father. The boy had given him permission to do so... The man identified the figure in his dream as Jesus due to the presence of a hole in his hand. He told the boy's mother – a Christian – about the dream and she agreed that it was Jesus."
Wipe Out: When the BBC Kept Erasing Its Own History - "Because shows weren’t often repeated, there was no long-term need to retain them. And because videotape was an expensive storage medium at the time, it was far more sensible to reuse cassettes rather than buy new ones.The company kept a bulk-erasure machine on hand to systematically wipe out shows that were believed to have exhausted their usefulness. Reams of paperwork indicated a large chunk of their content was rubber-stamped into destruction using just three words: “no further interest.”" As Malden tried to corral the wastefulness, she decided to use Doctor Who as a research guide to track the steps of how the BBC went from filming a series to ordering its demise.Out of 253 produced episodes of Doctor Who, the BBC had not a single original copy left... While the practice would later be vilified as a kind of cultural vandalism, there was no malice on the part of employees. For most of the programming, talent contracts prohibited more than one or two airings; relying on public funds for support meant tight budgets. No one really considered the programs could have a life decades into the future. “Had they kept those tapes, and newspapers found out they were sitting on hundreds or thousands of hours of programs they couldn’t show, they’d be accused of wasting public money,” Dick Fiddy, a consultant to the British Film Institute (BFI), tells Mental Floss. “What they did was good housekeeping.” By Molesworth’s estimate, 60 to 70 percent of all BBC programming produced between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s was deleted... To try and restore the BBC’s past, Malden and other historians had a remarkable resource: the foreign territories where the BBC had sold off several programs. Some didn’t bother either returning or destroying the 16mm film reels they had been supplied with. In writing to these stations, Malden discovered episodes of Doctor Who and other material that had survived the intervening years as a discarded and forgotten canister in a storage room. In other instances, various BBC departments had retained Doctor Who episodes after they had been returned by buyers. By 1981, Malden wound up securing 116 of the 253 episodes... 50 years ago, television was simply a diversion that wasn’t supposed to endure"
The Legendary Chinese Poison Made by Forcing Snakes, Scorpions, and Centipedes to Fight - "In the mid-18th century, accepting the hospitality of women in the southern mountain regions of China presented an unusual risk. People told tales of women who seduced travelers, feeding men meals laced with a powerful poison known as gu poison to keep their lovers from returning to their homes in the north.Gu poison, so the stories went, was collected by sealing venomous snakes, scorpions, and centipedes in a jar and forcing them to fight and devour each other. The surviving creature containing a concentrated toxin. Gu poison was considered a slow-acting poison. It was said to have no taste, allowing unsuspecting victims to go about their normal lives for as long as 10 days before they started feeling ill. In the mountains, if a man was poisoned with gu and managed to return to his lover’s home within the time he had promised, his lover would treat him with an antidote. But if he did not, he would be consumed from the inside out, the gu poison causing, “his heart and abdomen to swell and ache because the poison gnaws him from within”... Dating as far back as 610, gu is also described as a form of black magic and witchcraft with the poison being a central part of the practice. Concocting a strong formula of gu poison required the “five poisonous creatures” in China: the viper, centipede, scorpion, toad, and spider. The poisonous insects, worms, and reptiles, referred to as “chong,” were thought of as evil spirits or demons that possessed a vessel, or the human body. Gu poison has been associated with several regions and peoples in China throughout history, but was most commonly linked to the Lingnan and Miao women, minorities of the south—creating stigmas based on northern prejudice."
Diversity in Horror (they/them) on Twitter - "The implication that flat butts are more attractive to round ones always felt racist to me as it implies that a common characteristic among Black women is undesirable. Much like saying straight hair is better than natural hair."
Logic, Empathy, Honesty - Posts | Facebook - "I used to be criticized for being a 'free speech absolutist'."You have to draw the line at incitement to violence" they say.Well what has been proven beyond doubt in the last few weeks is this just forces those hostile to free speech to simply change the definition of incitement, shift the overton window, and shut down speech they don't like regardless.I draw the line at violence, not at words that you think may make people violent.If I used your standard, the entire mainstream of left wing politics would be banned for being sympathetic to socialism."
BAME people are 'over-represented' on TV, new research suggests - "People from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds accounted for more than 22 per cent of all on-screen TV contributions last year, while representing just 12.8 per cent of the UK population... Though people who identify with Asian ethnic groups make around 30 per cent of BAME programme contributions, this is comparatively low given that Asian ethnic groups account for more than half of the country's BAME population.Off-screen, people who identify with Asian ethnic groups are particularly under-represented across all genres, and those from Black and Other ethnic groups are under-represented across the majority of genres... Overall, people who identify with Black and Mixed ethnic groups are less well represented in senior production roles compared to their representation in other roles, particularly junior and entry level roles... The report also found there is a lack of ethnic diversity across the majority of senior production roles: BAME contributions account for less than 10 per cent of the contributions made in the role of Production Executive (2.4 per cent), Series Producer (4.4 per cent), Head of Production (8.3 per cent) and Production Manager (9.3 per cent).The exception is Commissioning, where some progress appears to have been made with regards to ethnic diversity: 16.5 per cent of Commissioning Editor contributions were made by someone who identified with a BAME group. Meanwhile, there is a 'considerable lack of diversity' in technical and craft roles across UK TV production, with fewer than 5 per cent of programme contributions in Costume and Wardrobe, Hair and Make-Up and Set Design are by those from a BAME group. Fewer than 10 per cent of programme contributions in Sound and Post Production are made by people who identify with a BAME group."
Damn white supremacy!
It's amazing how much you need to slice and dice to grievance monger