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Author: By Paul Woodward

The depletion of the human microbiome and how it can be restored

The depletion of the human microbiome and how it can be restored

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Tobias Rees and Nils Gilman write: It is a crisis some scientists believe has similar proportions to climate change, but it gets much less coverage: Microbes are disappearing from our bodies. You may have heard that trillions of microbes — bacteria, fungi, viruses, protists — live on every surface of your body as well as inside your mouth, other orifices and your gut. You may have also heard that these microbes make up the majority of your body’s cells. But…

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Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

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Frans de Waal asks: are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? Just as attitudes of superiority within segments of human culture are often expressions of ignorance, humans collectively — especially when subject to the dislocating effects of technological dependence — tend to underestimate the levels of awareness and cognitive skills of creatures who live mostly outside our sight. This tendency translates into presuppositions that need to be challenged by what de Waal calls his “cognitive ripple rule”:…

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The immobilization of life on Earth

The immobilization of life on Earth

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One of the defining characteristics of life is movement, be that in the form of locomotion or simply growth. What is inanimate is not alive and yet humans, through the use of technology, are constantly seeking ways to reduce the need to move our own limbs. We have set ourselves on a trajectory that, if taken to its logical conclusion, will eliminate our need to possess a fully functioning body as we reduce ourselves to a corpse-like condition sustained by…

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Facebook gave Russia everything it needed to help Trump become president, but we gave Facebook its power

Facebook gave Russia everything it needed to help Trump become president, but we gave Facebook its power

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By the admission of Facebook’s own VP of advertising, Rob Goldman, Russia’s goal of sowing division in America has been served “incredibly well” through its use of Facebook: The main goal of the Russian propaganda and misinformation effort is to divide America by using our institutions, like free speech and social media, against us. It has stoked fear and hatred amongst Americans. It is working incredibly well. We are quite divided as a nation. — Rob Goldman (@robjective) February 17,…

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Quinn Norton and how anti-fascists are helping bring fascism to America

Quinn Norton and how anti-fascists are helping bring fascism to America

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How fascism is coming to America: It’s happening when people decide the ideal society is one where everyone thinks the same way. And it’s happening when people who know better, kowtow to the dictates of social media instead of doing the right thing. I didn’t know the New York Times hired Quinn Norton until I saw news they’d parted ways. Without question, this is a greater loss to the Times and its readers, than it is to Norton — although…

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Why people love animals

Why people love animals

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  When Yashar Ali tweeted this elephant video recently, the comments it solicited bemoaned the lack of love that humans show one another. Pets, on the other hand, are generally experienced as fountains of unconditional love. Is this why people love animals: because, to some degree, they make offset a love deficit? No doubt that’s part of the picture, but just as important is the role animals have in allowing people to express their own love. In a world filled…

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Paleolithic parenting and animated GIFs

Paleolithic parenting and animated GIFs

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The creation of the moving image represents a technical advance in the arts comparable with the invention of the steam engine during the industrial revolution. The transition from static to moving imagery was a watershed event in human history, through which people discovered a new way of capturing the visible world — or so it seemed. It turns out, however, that long before the advent of civilization, our Paleolithic forebears figured out that movement seen in living creatures around them…

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Plants, people, and decision-making

Plants, people, and decision-making

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Laura Ruggles writes: Plants are not simply organic, passive automata. We now know that they can sense and integrate information about dozens of different environmental variables, and that they use this knowledge to guide flexible, adaptive behaviour. For example, plants can recognise whether nearby plants are kin or unrelated, and adjust their foraging strategies accordingly. The flower Impatiens pallida, also known as pale jewelweed, is one of several species that tends to devote a greater share of resources to growing…

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With the very best technology, humanity is digging its own grave

With the very best technology, humanity is digging its own grave

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Technology is generally thought of as extending human capabilities by facilitating everyday actions more easily or allowing us to do things that would otherwise be impossible. From this expansive perspective, technological advance has become synonymous with human progress. Conversely, the less technology populations possess, the more they are viewed as developing or even less evolved. What these views mask are the multiplicity of ways in which technology feeds human regression. The regressive mechanism built into technology in most of its…

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Britain First and the first Britons

Britain First and the first Britons

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  The white supremacists who chant “blood and soil” (borrowing this phrase from the Nazis’ Blut und Boden) think white-skinned people have a special claim to the lands of Europe and North America. This is an arrogant and ignorant belief to hold on this side of the Atlantic where every white person has immigrant ancestry originating from Europe, but European whiteness in terms of origin (not superiority) is a less controversial notion. That is to say, even among those of…

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A new year — a new direction

A new year — a new direction

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The greatest thing you’ll ever learn Is just to love and be loved in return. “Nature Boy” by eden ahbez “I don’t think she’s getting the attention she needs,” a nurse told me as my wife remained in the Emergency Room six hours after doctors said she needed to be transferred to the Intensive Care Unit. On Christmas Day I almost lost the love of my life, Monica — we’ve been married for 17 years. Over the holidays we were…

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