Jun 16, 2023 | Salon.com
Imagine enjoying a fresh salad, a juicy steak or a fluffy pastry. As your taste buds savor the various flavors, the enjoyable experience is suddenly and unpleasantly interrupted by a loud crunch sound. When you spit out your food and look at the contents, you discover to your horror that there is a credit card embedded within your meal....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 15, 2023 | Salon.com
While the James Webb Space Telescope is a secular achievement, the pioneering telescope nevertheless conjured up that Biblical imagery of “Let there be light!” with its most recent revelation: There could have been hundreds of ancient galaxies at the universe’s beginning, instead of only a handful, and we can still see some of that light that shone at the time....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 14, 2023 | Salon.com
The United States is an unbearably hostile place for transgender children, and the problem is only getting worse. At the time of this writing, there are 20 states where trans minors do not have access to medical experts who specialize in trans health, even though they previously had that right....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 13, 2023 | Salon.com
With the exception of a few Moon landings, as far as Earth-bound life is concerned, our closest neighbor has remained utterly lifeless for as long as we’ve known. As our species overheats and pollutes the planet (but at least can make some entertaining movies about it), our celestial companion has presumably remained as dead as the very Cold War that started the Space Race....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 12, 2023 | Salon.com
Octopus minds are notoriously mysterious. Earlier this year, when scientists published a study on measuring octopus brain waves in the journal Current Biology, they were forced to admit that the results were hard to decipher; some of the waves looked similar to those in mammalian brains, but others seemed entirely alien....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 11, 2023 | Salon.com
At first glance, pigeons may not appear to be the brightest of birds. With their bobbing heads, clumsy gaits and dull-sounding “coo” noises, pigeons are often mistaken for being downright stupid pests. Yet a recent study in the journal Nature Communications suggests that pigeons may be more sophisticated than humans often assume....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 11, 2023 | Salon.com
The so-called “great replacement” theory is all the rage among American right-wingers, from former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson to Republican legislators like Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.) Bluntly white supremacist at its core, it holds that liberal elites (frequently, though not always, a dogwhistle for Jews) are trying to “replace” white Americans with non-whites, particularly non-white immigrants....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 6, 2023 | Salon.com
The history of science is full of tales of unappreciated genius. Indeed, the founder of modern genetics was not fully appreciated for his ideas until decades after his death.
His name was Gregor Mendel — and he loved breeding pea plants.
“People that are in power, they can help you or block you.”
Jun 5, 2023 | Salon.com
Speaking with Salon last month, autistic comedian Fern Brady decided to put neurotypicals on blast.
For the uninitiated: A neurotypical is a person who does not display autistic or other neurologically atypical behaviors. Traditionally, when commentary is made about autism, neurotypicals are the humorists, and neurodivergent people (those on the autism spectrum) are the targets....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 4, 2023 | Salon.com
Troubadours, jesters, minstrels, bards: Whatever you choose to call them, these wandering entertainers captivated medieval Europeans for centuries. Medieval bards possessed imaginations so fertile, and wits so sharp, that Westerners still remember them long after their jokes and tall tales have faded from memory. Indeed, as Cambridge University and Girton College historian Dr....
Originally posted on salon.com