LINKS - March 29th, 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.
DNA Confirms Oral History of Swahili People
By Elie Dolgin, The New York Times
“The findings help elucidate the foundations of Swahili civilization, and suggest that long-told origin stories, passed down through generations of Swahili families, may be more truthful than many outsiders have presumed.
“‘The genetics corroborate the Swahili people’s own history that they tell about themselves, not what others were saying about them,’ said Esther Brielle, a geneticist and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard who led the DNA analysis with her adviser, David Reich.”
Rural Children Now Grow Slightly Taller than City Children in Wealthy Countries
By Lauren J. Young, Scientific American
“The change could signify that the gap in health resources between the two populations has been closing. But is it because the health of people in cities is declining or because the health of those in rural areas is catching up? It's also difficult to determine if the changes were caused by socioeconomic factors or population shifts—or a mixture of both, says Mahesh Karra, an assistant professor of global development policy at Boston University, who was not involved in the new study.”
Elon Musk, Other AI Experts Call for Pause in Technology’s Development
By Deepa Seetharaman, The Wall Street Journal
“We’ve reached the point where these systems are smart enough that they can be used in ways that are dangerous for society,” Mr. Bengio, director of the University of Montreal’s Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, said in an interview. “And we don’t yet understand.”
In praise of praise
By Molly Lipson, Insider
“While pay and working conditions go a long way in making people feel more favorably about their jobs, evidence is mounting that job satisfaction really comes down to a more basic human need. A 2023 report by Achievers Workforce Institute found that a staggering 79% of employees would rather stay in a job where they feel valued, even if it meant making less money. People want to feel appreciated for the work they do — telling your employee a simple ‘well done’ might be the difference between whether they stay or go.”
Why Doctors Can’t Name Female Anatomy
“Not exactly. It turns out doctors are not exempt from society’s general lack of understanding around this part of the body. And in medicine, the consequences of such linguistic murkiness can be far worse. Today, some anatomists and women’s health doctors worry that a lack of standard terms for the female genitals may be contributing to worse healthcare and a plethora of miscommunication in medical research—as well as making it harder for billions of women, trans men, and nonbinary people to understand and care for their own bodies.”