Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #22

June 7-14 2024

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #19

May 17-24 2024

Humans were drinking milk before they could digest it

Our history with milk presents a chicken-or-egg conundrum: Humans couldn’t digest the beverage before they evolved mutations that helped them do so, yet they had to already be consuming milk to change their DNA. “There’s always been the question of which came first,” says University of Pennsylvania geneticist Sarah Tishkoff. “The cultural practice or the mutation.”

Now, scientists have found the oldest evidence yet for dairy drinking: People in modern Kenya and Sudan were ingesting milk products beginning at least 6000 years ago. That’s before humans evolved the “milk gene,” suggesting we were drinking the liquid before we had the genetic tools to properly digest it.

All humans can digest milk in infancy. But the ability to do so as an adult developed fairly recently, likely in the past 6000 years. A handful of mutations allows adults to produce the enzyme lactase, which can break down the milk sugar lactose. Genes that enable what’s called lactase persistence are widespread in modern Africa, which has four known lactase persistence mutations. (European populations rely on just one.) Read more.

“The research also shows dairying in Africa goes back just as far as it does in Europe—perhaps longer. That undercuts a myth, propagated by white supremacists, that lactase persistence and milk drinking are somehow associated with white Europeans. “

Being lactose intolerant and eating dairy anyway is a tradition going back millennia is how I’m going to justify my decisions from now on

i’m sorry but what weirdo looked at a cow and said i wanna drink that AND THEN KEPT DOING IT even though they probably got very sick?

The ones who had no other food, but were keeping the animal as a beast of burden, or possibly giving the milk to a newborn human, since the mother’s milk might have failed, and drank what their child didn’t consume. And it kept them alive.

yeah the thing to remember is that even if you can’t break down the lactose, milk is full of valuable fats, and will get you a lot of calories. made from grass, which you can’t eat. big win. the calcium and other micronutrients are nothing to sneeze at either.

also you’d probably only get a significant degree of sick about it if your gut microbiota could digest the lactose and went wild about it, screwing up your gut. if they couldn’t, then the sugars would go to waste, but milk-drinking probably wouldn’t be all that hard on the body, especially as prehistoric foods go.

#yogurt and cheese externalize the lactose digestion  #so nobody can do it inside you  #producing gasses you don’t want and gaining an inappropriate tactical advantage over the rest of the locals  #sometimes i notice that people really don’t understand  #that foods are made up of Substances  #they’re not platonic articles of Thingness  #so being lactose intolerant doesn’t actually mean there’s nothing for you in milk  #it just means that given a choice of options the side effects of milk  #tend to be unfortunate tags by  ☝️

Read more below

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2- One of my current top posts around the subject

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Achraf Baznani / أشرف بزناني, b. 1979

small my small world the island of solitude Ready to fly Life is puzzle trapped by reality Keeper of Time Paperman Noisiness Photography the Photographer

Morocco (2010s) [Source]

Wikipedia says:

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, b. Nigeria, 1983

The Bridge US (2010) Charcoal, ink, acrylic, xerox transfers, lace and paper collage on paper [Source]

Nyado: The Thing Around Her Neck US (2011) Charcoal, acrylic, colored pencil, lace, collage and xerox transfers on paper [Source]

Rebranding My Love US (2011) Charcoal, acrylic, collage and xerox transfers on paper [Source]

Her Widening Gyre US (2011) Charcoal, acrylic, collage and xerox transfers on paper [Source]

Efulefu: The Lost One US (2011) Acrylic, charcoal, colored pencil, collage and xerox transfers on paper [Source]

Thread US (2012) Acrylic, charcoal, pastel, color pencils and xerox transfers on paper [Source]

Cradle Your Conquest US (2012) Acrylic, collage, pastel, color pencil and xerox transfer on paper [Source]

Nwantini US (2012) Acrylic, charcoal, colored pencil, collage and Xerox transfers on paper [Source]

I Always Face You, Even When It Seems Otherwise (Right Panel) US (2012) Acrylic, pastel, charcoal, colored pencil, collage and Xerox transfers on paper [Source]

Drown US (2012) Acrylic, transfers, colored pencils, and charcoal on paper [Source]

The artist was just named a 2017 MacArthur Fellow! I’ve chosen images of her and her husband, the composer Justin Crosby, because those were the easiest to pick out as self-portraits. (Drown, which sold for over US$1 million, was noted to be a self-portrait of the couple; I’m inferring that the others are too.)

The LA Times says:

I feel like there needs to be some kind of post for MCU fans on How To Write About Africa because I feel like there’s a lot of people out there who want to write about Wakanda and T'Challa but are worried about being problematic and that makes me sad because there’s SO MUCH GREAT meta to be had about T'Challa and Wakanda but at the same time there’s a lot of legitimate concerns about perpetuating racist stereotypes and yeah.

T'Challa and Wakanda could be such a great way to introduce people to amazing sci-fi concepts that people should know

This is SO needed. 

It’s so easy to be like ‘just try it!’ but the problem with this website is that people don’t think its okay for people to make mistakes. I’ve gotten messages from people who want to write about T’Challa/Wakanda but are nervous about how their work will be perceived and its so sad. 

We really need to gather some people who’d be interested in writing a nice little info post!

I’ll start

How to Write About Africa

How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge

Wikipedia - Afrofuturism

An Afrofuturist Reading List

We Are Wakanda

Writing With Color

You Don’t Know Africa 

also, this post should not be taken as permission to write your white faves having power in Wakada, seducing all the Wakandan charaters because your white faves are just So Irresistibly White, being given free rein in Wakanda, etc. 

I feel like there needs to be some kind of post for MCU fans on How To Write About Africa because I feel like there’s a lot of people out there who want to write about Wakanda and T'Challa but are worried about being problematic and that makes me sad because there’s SO MUCH GREAT meta to be had about T'Challa and Wakanda but at the same time there’s a lot of legitimate concerns about perpetuating racist stereotypes and yeah.

T'Challa and Wakanda could be such a great way to introduce people to amazing sci-fi concepts that people should know

This is SO needed. 

It’s so easy to be like ‘just try it!’ but the problem with this website is that people don’t think its okay for people to make mistakes. I’ve gotten messages from people who want to write about T’Challa/Wakanda but are nervous about how their work will be perceived and its so sad. 

We really need to gather some people who’d be interested in writing a nice little info post!

I’ll start

How to Write About Africa

How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge

Wikipedia - Afrofuturism

An Afrofuturist Reading List

We Are Wakanda

Writing With Color

You Don’t Know Africa 

How To Blend Cultures (Without Making Impossible Mixes)

This is a guide specifically about fantasy worldbuilding. WWC gets a lot of questions around “I’m mixing two cultures together, how do I do that?” and this is to explain both how to do that and when you very much should not.

For starters, you should avoid blending empires with their surrounding properties, especially if there is recent political strife along those lines. This is why Japan/China/Korea (or even China/Tibet) mixes should not be done. For more information on that, take a look at Research:Large to Small Scale, Avoiding Homogenizing East Asian Cultures, & Paralleling Regions Appropriately.

Next up, mixing Greece/Rome with far-flung cultures gets a little bit eyebrow raising. Unless it was a direct trading partner/conquered property, Greek/Roman cultures do not mix with non-European cultures. The Greek empire only went to the Northern regions of India at its very peak, and that is limited to the ancient world. Rome stopped in the Middle East, so, again, you don’t have the cultural backing for a mixing of anything outside of its borders. 

Depictions of Rome and Greece in ancient literature shows other ancient cultures found them quite backwards, and were adverse to mixing with them. By many standards they were very backwards, and it’s only Europe (and, as an extension, America) that revered them to the extent they do. Asia and Africa had no reason to see them as advanced, because they made many more technological advancements than either. North America and Oceanic cultures hardly interacted with either, and had both their own technological advancements+ cultures closer by to borrow advancements from, instead. 

Outside of that, cultures are born out of the environments that made them. As a result, places with wildly dissimilar climates and resources pools will not be able to blend harmoniously unless you’re taking a modern analogue society where globalism has happened. This is plain old because resources only travel so far, and people are more likely to build culture around resources they have easy access to (even well-established trade links can lead to people re-creating things: Han purple and Egyptian blue point to an ancient trade link, but they were made with local materials processed differently).

Roman architecture exists because the Romans had access to copious amounts of concrete materials/marble and lived in the Mediterranean, which got very hot summers, heavy rains, and not a whole lot of cold. As a result they created structures that worked for this, which included open airways, pillars, easy to clean floors, shade, and ventilation. Places that lack these resources will not be able to replicate Rome.

Their resource pool was very specific to their regions, and there’s a reason Rome had the rule that anybody who did’t live like Romans were slaves: it was really hard to live like a Roman, and they wanted their slave pool as large as possible. 

Different cultures with different resources formed in wildly different ways, and might not even have anything similar to Greece or Rome. Because of this, you need to look really close at why culture developed the way it did. If it’s because they had extremely dissimilar resources pools, it’s wise to not blend the cultures (or at least not think they’ll look anything like their original cultures) 

Which brings me to value systems. Cultures put value on different things. Each culture ends up with a base philosophy for what they esteem and how they use resources, which proceeds to influence how it develops. Architecture has meaning to it. So does what colours you use in different applications. Because these things are sacred and/or practical for certain social orders. “Sacred” in cultures ends up becoming a shorthand for “this ritual helps us survive.”

There is no such thing as “aesthetic” when you get down to the root of each single item, because that aesthetic has a practical purpose. There is also no such thing as a “solely religious reason” under the same logic. Cows have become sacred in most varieties of Hinduism— because cows (and oxen) have been the main farming animal in the Indian subcontinent for millennia. They provide milk for sustenance, power for ploughing fields, and dung, which can be used as a floor polish and, when dried, a source of fuel for fire that gives off a more even heat than wood. As a single provider for crucial elements of agrarian life, their sacredness developed from their practicality. Having cows roam freely meant absolutely everyone could have access to an efficient cooking fuel.

Chinese brush painting has meaning. Jade sculpture has meaning. Pagodas and sloped roofs and gates have meaning. The philosophy, environment, history, and present circumstances of a culture is built into every. single. little. thing. about that culture, meaning you cannot just change it out.

Unless you learn the very root of culture, their values and stigmas and honours and shames, you cannot modify it accurately. Cultures survive because that was the best way to respond to the world at the time. A long-standing culture such as China’s has to be functional and incredibly well suited for the environment, otherwise it would not have survived. There is something about Chinese culture that works extraordinarily well for it to perpetuate itself, and you cannot disrespect that.

Learn the “why” of culture. Learn how it came to manifest and the reasons behind its manifestations. Study the geography and resources available to the people at hand. Know a culture so well you can explain how it works in real life and how your world’s history parallels the circumstances that created a similar culture in fantasy.

Only then will you be able to pull it off with respect.

~ Mod Lesya

the president of nigeria is about to fuck boko haram up and cut his own salary in half and criminalized female genital mutilation

the president of guinea built/is building infrastructure and school and wells all over the country and is decreasing youth unemployment exponentially

the president of cote d’ivoire made school mandatory of children ages 6-16 and banned plastic bags while also building ultra modern trasportation infrastructure

the future is for real in africa 

I think this should have a hell of a lot more notes on it than it does. This is what good news looks like folk, and the continent of Africa surely deserves a shed load of it.

Aya  (2007) by Marguerite Abouet

Art by Clément Oubrerie

“Ivory Coast, 1978. Family and friends gather at Aya’s house every evening to watch the country’s first television ad campaign promoting the fortifying effects of Solibra, “the strong man’s beer.” It’s a golden time, and the nation, too–an oasis of affluence and stability in West Africa–seems fueled by something wondrous.

Who’s to know that the Ivorian miracle is nearing its end? In the sun-warmed streets of working-class Yopougon, aka Yop City, holidays are around the corner, the open-air bars and discos are starting to fill up, and trouble of a different kind is about to raise eyebrows. At night, an empty table in the market square under the stars is all the privacy young lovers can hope for, and what happens there is soon everybody’s business.”

Aya tells the story of its nineteen-year-old heroine, the studious and clear-sighted Aya, her easygoing friends Adjoua and Bintou, and their meddling relatives and neighbors. It’s a breezy and wryly funny account of the desire for joy and freedom, and of the simple pleasures and private troubles of everyday life in Yop City. An unpretentious and gently humorous story of an Africa we rarely see-spirited, hopeful, and resilient–Aya won the 2006 award for Best First Album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Clément Oubrerie’s warm colors and energetic, playful lines connect expressively with Marguerite Abouet’s vibrant writing.”

Get it  now here

[ Follow SuperheroesInColor on facebook / instagram / twitter / tumblr ]

coming to america by john landis, ‘88

I remember I watched this movie in my friend’s boyfriend’s room and his white roommate said that this movie was “exaggerated”. That African people couldn’t have palaces like that. My black friend agreed with him. I unlocked my phone so fast and showed them pictures of me and my cousins back home in the Ivory Coast. In their 3 story villa. 4 bedrooms, 3 baths. On their cocoa plantation. Pictures of us playing with their Wii. (Yes, Africans have gaming consoles, cell phones, laptops, etc.) With monkeys hanging off the trees in their backyard. I said, “My family is considered upper middle class in the Ivory Coast. Imagine what kind of homes the wealthy people live in?“ 

I’m tired of Americans assuming that the WHOLE ENTIRE CONTINENT OF AFRICA IS POOR. Like, Africa is literally bigger than most other countries on this planet combined. So how is the whole fucking continent fina be poor???????????????????

How are you going to say that not one person on the whole entire continent of Africa can’t live or own a palace??????? The ignorance is so rampant. Like girl it’s just a google search away! People stay blaming the media and how the only coverage of Africa that western society sees is of extreme poverty. (i.e. the late night commercials featuring babies with the swollen bellies and the flies zooming around their heads) But at which point do you recognize your own faults? It especially kills me when Black Americans agree with this ideal that all Africans are in poverty. Because all you have to do is look into it and see 

( Folorunsho Alakija, Nigeria - World’s Richest Black Woman)

If you don’t believe me just look it up for yourself. Go ahead

We really need to talk about Boko Haram...

They haven’t been covered much in the mainstream media but Boko Haram have been terrorising Africans with devastating, widespread and long-lasting consequences.

Responsible for more deaths than ISIS

According to the Global Terrorism Report, they have overtaken ISIS as the world’s deadliest terrorist group. It should be noted that in March this year, they pledged allegiance to ISIS. The two groups are responsible for more than half of all terrorist attacks in the world.

Who are they?

Boko Haram promotes a version of Islam which makes it “haram”, or forbidden, for Muslims to take part in any political or social activity associated with Western society.

This includes voting in elections, wearing shirts and trousers or receiving a secular education.

Boko Haram regards the Nigerian state as being run by non-believers, even when the country had a Muslim president - and it has extended its military campaign by targeting neighbouring states.

800,000 people have fled their homes since June

Since the beginning of Boko Haram’s attacks in 2009, 2.1 million people have been forced to leave their homes with a staggering 800,000 having fled between June - September 2015.

An estimated 1,100 schools have been destroyed this year alone

The UN have stated that over a thousand schools have been destroyed in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria in 2015 so far.

This is a list of their major attacks so far in 2015:

Although the figures of deaths are numerical, please remember that these are people who had jobs, lives, families, dreams, hobbies, just like you. They are more than numbers on a screen.

January 3 - 7th: The town of Baga in the north-eastern state of Borno is attacked.  Bodies lay strewn on Baga’s streets with as many as 2,000 people having been killed.

January 9th: Following the Boko Haram massacre, 7,300 flee to neighbouring Chad while over 1,000 are trapped on the island of Kangala in Lake Chad.

January 18th: Boko Haram militants kidnap 80 people and kill three others from villages in north Cameroon.

January 28th: Boko Haram fighters killed 40 people while on a rampage in Adamawa State.

February 15th: A suicide bomber kills 16 and wounds 30 in the Nigerian city of Damaturu.

February 20th: Boko Haram militants kill 34 people in attacks across Borno State and 21 from the town of Chibok.

February 24th: Two suicide bombers kill at least 27 people at bus stations in Potiskum and Kano.

March 7th: Five suicide bomb blasts leave 54 dead and 143 wounded in Maiduguri.

March 18th:  A mass grave of 90 people is discovered in the city of Damasak .

March 29th: Voting in the Nigerian general election is delayed for a second day. 25 people have died in Boko Haram attacks.

June 12th: Several days of nighttime raids on six remote villages that left at least 37 people dead in Northeastern Nigeria

June 16th:  Twin Suicide Bomb attacks in Chad capital killed 24 people and wounded more than 100.

June 17th: Bombs found at Boko Haram camp kills 63 people in Nigeria

June 23rd: Twin female suicide bomb attacks at busy fish market in Maiduguri kill 30 people.

June 28th: Five dead in suicide blast at Nigeria hospital

June 30th: Militants attacked Muslim residents after they had finished prayers, leaving 48 men dead.

July 1st: Attacks on Muslims praying in Mosques before breaking their Ramadan fast kills  97 people in Kukawa.

July 2nd:  Two female suicide bombers attack a village in Borno state killing at least 10 people

July 3rd: Militants slit the throats of 11 people

July 3rd: Several suicide bombers killed dozens of people in Zabarmari village.

July 7th: Bomb attack kills at least 25 people and wounded 32 others in northern Nigeria’s Zaria city

July 11th: At least 14 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack at a crowded market in Chad’s capital 

July 17th: Suicide bombs have killed more than 60 people in multiple blasts in the north-eastern towns of Gombe and Damaturu.

July 22nd: A double suicide attack killed at least 11 people in the far north of Cameroon

July 25th: A child and a middle-aged woman detonated suicide vests in two separate attacks, killing 34 and wounding over 100 people

Aug 2nd: 13 people killed and 27 injured in an attack on Malari village in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state

Aug 3rd: Eight people were killed and about 100 others were kidnapped in an overnight raid on a village near Cameroon’s northern border

Aug 5th: Militants behead a policeman in Nigeria

Aug 7th: Boko Haram attacks on two villages in Yobe kill nine people

Aug 11th: A bomb attack on a packed market in north-eastern Nigeria killed about 50 people.

Aug 17th: Insurgents raided a village in Borno state, Nigeria, near the border with Niger, killing 7 people

Aug 18th: Up to 150 people drowned in a river or were shot dead fleeing Boko Haram gunmen who raided a remote village in Nigeria’s north-eastern Yobe state

Aug 23rd: Army Chief’s convoy attacked, 11 people killed, 5 injured

Aug 25th: Extremists killed 28 people during attacks on remote farming and fishing villages in northeast Nigeria.

Aug 30th: 56 villagers are killed in in Baanu village of Nganzai 

Sept 1st: Gunmen on horseback kill 79 in trio of attacks

Sept 3rd: Militants killed about 30 people and wounded 145 others in attacks on a market and infirmary in northern Cameroon

Sept 20th: More than 100 people were killed in northern Nigeria in a quick succession carefully coordinated bombings

Sept 24th: 15 people killed in an attack by Boko Haram militants on a border village in south-eastern Niger

Sept 27th: 9 people killed in attacks on Mailari Village 

Sept 27th: Militants attacked the town N’gourtoi, a Nigerien village, killing the village head and 14 other civilians.

Oct 1st: An attack on a village in south-eastern Niger killed two soldiers

Oct 3rd: 15 killed in bombings in Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja

Oct 4th: Militants killed three civilians and a soldier in a double suicide attack in Niger

Oct 6th: 11 Chadian soldiers killed in a surprise attack near Lake Chad

Oct 10: Five suicide bombers targeted a market and a refugee camp in Chad killing 36 people and wounding 56 others.

Oct 6th: Suicide attacks in northern Nigeria kill at least 17 people, injuring 11

Oct 7th: At least 12 worshipers have been killed in set of twin suicide attacks on a mosque in Borno State

Oct 22nd: 20 people were shot dead outside the Jingalta village Borno state, Nigeria

Oct 23rd: 23 people were killed in a bombing in a mosque in Borno State

Oct 28th: Thirteen people were killed and three injured in an attack on village in south-east Niger 

Oct 29th: Many killed and houses burnt to the ground in Bara town of Gulani 

Nov 8th: A twin suicide bombing near Lake Chad on Sunday killed two people and wounded 14 others

Nov 11th: 25 dead in raid on a village in southern Niger 

Nov 12th: The government of Chad has imposed a state of emergency on the northern region by Lake Chad

Nov 17th: At least 32 people have been killed and 80 injured in a night-time suicide bomb attack at a truck stop in Yola, Adamawa state, Nigeria

I’ll be updating this list as events progress. Please let me know if I have missed anything and I’ll add it in.

What the fuck

Source For more facts follow Ultrafacts

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Those are the countries. It will be drought-resistant species, mostly acacias. And this is a brilliant idea you have no idea oh my Christ

This will create so many jobs and regenerate so many communities and aaaaaahhhhhhh

more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall

it’s already happening, and already having positive effects. this is wonderful, why have i not heard of this before? i’m so happy!

Oh yes, acacia trees.

They fix nitrogen and improve soil quality.

And, to make things fun, the species they’re using practices “reverse leaf phenology.” The trees go dormant in the rainy season and then grow their leaves again in the dry season. This means you can plant crops under the trees, in that nitrogen-rich soil, and the trees don’t compete for light because they don’t have any leaves on.

And then in the dry season, you harvest the leaves and feed them to your cows.

Crops grown under acacia trees have better yield than those grown without them. Considerably better.

So, this isn’t just about stopping the advancement of the Sahara - it’s also about improving food security for the entire sub-Saharan belt and possibly reclaiming some of the desert as productive land.

Of course, before the “green revolution,” the farmers knew to plant acacia trees - it’s a traditional practice that they were convinced to abandon in favor of “more reliable” artificial fertilizers (that caused soil degradation, soil erosion, etc).

This is why you listen to the people who, you know, have lived with and on land for centuries.

^ The bold.

Oh wow!

Ijeoma Umebinyuo (via meggannn)

African Canvas Margaret Courtney-Clarke

The Art of Africa is a casualty of colonial exploitation, surviving principally in the museums of other countries. ~ Nadine Gordimer

”My objective in this work is to document an extraordinary art form - vernacular art and architecture in West Africa - that is not transportable and therefore not seen in museums around the world. It is an attempt to capture the unseen Africa, a glimpse into the homes and into the spirit of very proud and dignified peoples. In much the same way as I photographed the art of Ndebele women, I have drawn on my personal affinity for the art itself, for methods, design and form, rather than the socio-anthropological or political realities of a people or continent in dilemma. These images portray a unique tradition of Africa, a celebration of an indigenous rural culture in which the women are the artists and the home her canvas.”

The sass is strong in this one.