LINKS - December 13th, 2023
Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting stories that tell us something about what it means to be human. LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.
Is Too Little Play Hurting Our Kids?
By Joseph Polidoro, Scientific American
“Gray: I think that the real crisis is that young people are losing a sense of, ‘I can solve problems, I can deal with bumps in the road of life.’ And the way the children learn to do these things is through play where they are responsible to solve their own problems. They negotiate with their peers. They figure out how to solve quarrels among themselves. If somebody gets hurt, they figure out what to do about being hurt.”
New Cell Atlases Reveal Untold Variety in the Brain and Beyond
By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine
“The findings from the mouse brain preview the kinds of discoveries scientists are likely to make when the human brain atlas is completed. Already, the human work is providing ‘basic facts about brain evolution that no one knew before,’ said Thomas Naselaris, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota who isn’t involved with any atlas efforts. ‘No one has any idea what these new facts imply for the evolution of human cognition. But they are very basic facts that no one knew, so they are probably going to turn out to be important.’”
What colour do you see?
By Gary Lupyan, Aeon
“There is a kind of visceral astonishment that accompanies these types of hidden differences. We seem wedded to the idea that we experience things a certain way because they are that way. Encountering someone who experiences the world differently (even when that difference seems trivial, like the colour of a dress) means acknowledging the possibility that our own perception could be ‘wrong’. And if we can’t be sure about the colour of something, what else might we be wrong about? Similarly, for an aphantasic to acknowledge that visual imagery exists is to realise that there is a large mismatch between their subjective experiences and those of most other people.”
‘I’m not just covering the news – I’m living it’: Gaza’s citizen journalists chronicling life in war
By Ruth Michaelson, The Guardian
“Sixty-three journalists and media workers have been killed in the war since 7 October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The Al Jazeera bureau chief, Wael al-Dahdouh, lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson in an Israeli airstrike on his home. Moamen Al Sharafi, another reporter for the network, lost 22 family members in a single attack.”
An Ancient Roman Population, Without Ancient Roman Ancestry
By Sam Walters, Discover Magazine
“To the researchers’ surprise, no signs of Iron Age Italian ancestry were identified in individuals from each stage of the empire. That being said, ample signs of ancestry from Western Anatolia, Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe, and the Pontic-Kazakh Steppe were identified, revealing a flood of migrations into the Balkan Peninsula from all around the ancient world.”