LINKS - September 20th, 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.
Inside Mexico City’s Surveillance State
“But this system, designed to deter and prosecute crimes, is a double-edged sword. Video footage is a source of arrests. It also reveals technological weaknesses, inaccurate evidence gathering, and police misconduct. Plus, ethical concerns about social biases and mass filming are leading many people—including some in law enforcement—to question the expansion of the surveillance state.”
The Early Days of American English
By Rosemarie Ostler, Lapham’s Quarterly
Americans repurposed other English words as well. For example, bug, which meant a bedbug in England, broadened to cover any insect, and sick, which referred specifically to a digestive upset, became a general term for any illness. What the British called timber, Americans called lumber. (In England, lumber is old, discarded furniture and other items of the sort usually found in attics.) Americans called a shop a store, as in grocery store (perhaps from an archaic use of store to mean an abundant supply) and said fall for autumn. Fall was short for fall of leaf, once a common phrase in England, but becoming obsolete by the eighteenth century. Americans also said mad for angry, another English usage that died out in the old country.
How to stop your amygdala from hijacking your emotions
“Your amygdala also stores some of your long-term memory, including emotional trauma. And when it receives data from the frontal cortex, it compares your present experience with your past experiences, looking for patterns. Biologically, it’s a good idea to avoid repeating painful experiences. But sometimes it gets a little out of hand. In the amygdala’s search for patterns, it tends to peek over the thalamus’s shoulder to see if it thinks something matches an old and alarming pattern. If so, the amygdala can yank that data straight from the thalamus, bypassing the frontal cortex — and now you’ve been hijacked!”
A catalog of all human cells reveals a mathematical pattern
By Darren Incorvaia, Science News
“Now, after collecting data on all of the major types of cells in the body, researchers have revealed a familiar mathematical pattern in these cells’ relationship. There is an inverse relationship between cell size and number, meaning smaller cells are more numerous than larger cells. What’s more, cells of different size classes all have a similar total mass, such that small, numerous cells such as red blood cells contribute the same amount to the body’s total mass as the largest cells, the researchers report September 18 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
A Northern California tribe works to protect traditions in a warming world
By Chloe Veltman, NPR
“With the loss of their homelands came the loss of their cultural heritage, such as the long tradition of managing forest fires.
“‘One of the first things the government outlawed was cultural burning,’ said the Southern Sierra Miwuk's Lerma.
“State officials made this tribal practice of igniting small fires illegal in 1850. The years of fire suppression that followed have made wildfires worse.”