LINKS - May 3rd, 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.
Walking on the Moon
“I read something recently that differentiated between self-presentation and self-disclosure. The kind of work I’m interested in is disclosure, not presentation. I hate the word cringe, because it denotes a judgment. I’m not in the business of judging. We, as a culture, would be a lot better off if we judged a little less and empathized more. But certainly, as an actor, you cannot judge your character. You cannot be above them. You have to find a way to connect with them. If you can do that in an unprotected way and the response is ‘That’s cringe,’ well, fuck it: I’m not gonna stop doing it. And if just one person passes me on the street and says, ‘Thank you. I felt that,’ it means I did my job. I served the thing, and I’m content.”
Spanish Cave Was a Popular Destination in Prehistory
By Archaeology
“The researchers analyzed charcoal and fossilized soot found on stalagmites in the cave, a technique developed by the study’s lead author, Marián Medina of the University of Bordeaux, that has been dubbed ‘smoke archaeology.’ The results showed that people visited the cave over a 35,000-year period, with the earliest visits dating to 41,000 years ago—10,000 years earlier than previously thought.”
What Are Puberty Blockers, and How Do They Work?
By Allison Parshall, Scientific American
“‘These puberty-pausing medications are widely used in many different populations and safely so,” McNamara says. GnRHas are also used in adolescents to treat endometriosis, a condition in which the cells lining the uterus grow in other parts of the body. These hormonal drugs have provided solutions to a number of hard-to-treat conditions. They adjust hormone levels for people with prostate and breast cancer, pause menstruation for those undergoing chemotherapy and help with in vitro fertilization. This host of beneficial clinical uses and data, stretching back to the 1960s, shows that puberty blockers are not an experimental treatment, as they are sometimes mischaracterized, says Simona Giordano, a bioethicist at the University of Manchester in England. Among patients who have received the treatment, studies have documented vanishingly small regret rates and minimal side effects, as well as benefits to mental and social health.”
Enigmatic human fossil jawbone may be evidence of an early Homo sapiens presence in Europe – and adds mystery about who those humans were
By Brian Anthony Keeling & Rolf Quam, The Conversation
“We’re left with two possibilities. Banyoles may represent a hybrid individual between H. sapiens and a non-Neandertal archaic human lineage. This scenario might account for the absence of the chin as well as the lack of any other Neandertal features in Banyoles. However, scientists haven’t identified any such non-Neandertal archaic group in the fossil record of the European Late Pleistocene (129,000-11,700 years ago), making this hypothesis less likely.
“Alternatively, Banyoles may document a previously unknown lineage of largely chinless H. sapiens in Europe. Possible support for this hypothesis comes from the fact that early H. sapiens fossils from Africa and the Middle East show a less prominent chin than do living humans.”
Fossil trove in Wales is a 462-million-year-old world of wee sea creatures
By Laura Baisas, Popular Science
“The fossilized time capsule from Castle Bank is from the middle of the succeeding Ordovician Period, about 462 million years ago. The Ordovician was a critical time in the history of life when extraordinary diversification of animals occurred and more familiar ecosystems like coral reefs began to appear at the end of the period. Until now, a big gap has existed between thes Cambrian and Ordovician eras. Some of the fauna found at Castle Bank dating back to the middle of this time interval will help fill in evolutionary mysteries about animal shifts over time.”