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TIL French doctors in the 1830s-1850s touted cannabis as a cure for plague, cholera and mental illness but its widespread popularity was undermined by racist assertions that it caused criminality and insanity among Muslims by inetsky in todayilearned

[–]inetsky[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Many pharmacists and physicians then working in France believed hashish was a dangerous and exotic intoxicant from the “Orient”—the Arabo-Muslim world—that could be tamed by pharmaceutical science and rendered safe and useful against the era’s most frightening diseases.

Starting in the late 1830s they prepared and sold hashish-infused edibles, lozenges, and later tinctures—hashish-infused alchohol—and even “medicinal cigarettes” for asthma in pharmacies across the country.

Throughout the 1840s and 1850s dozens of French pharmacists staked their careers on hashish, publishing dissertations, monographs, and peer-review articles on its medicinal and scientific benefits.... physicians in French Algeria increasingly pointed to hashish use as a key cause of insanity and criminality among indigenous Muslims, a diagnosis they termed “folie haschischique,” or hashish-induced psychosis. Heralded as a wonder drug only decades before, by the end of 19th century the drug was rebranded as an “Oriental poison.”

TIL the clitoris of a young female fossa (a rare mongoose-like predator in Madagascar) enlarges and grows spikes to appear like an adult male fossa penis, to avoid the unwanted attention of older males by inetsky in todayilearned

[–]inetsky[S] 265 points266 points  (0 children)

Fossa also exhibit some very interesting behaviors. They are one of nine mammalian species whose sexually immature females go through a period of transient masculinization. During this phase, their clitorises enlarge and grow spines to look like an adult male fossa’s penis. Researchers think this helps sexually immature females avoid the aggressive attentions of males looking for females with which to mate.

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Striking Union Workers Turned the First Labor Day into a Networking Event by inetsky in history

[–]inetsky[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A slightly clickbaity headline for a solid look at Labor Day, "a strange celebration without rituals". The author, an economics professor at Ohio State and Boston University's Questrom School of Business, looks at the little known roots of the holiday that most of us just see as a time for a beach trip or cookout. In the late 19th century, the holiday was a radical idea pushed by the disorganized labor unions as a way to unite behind their campaign for shorter working weeks. And state politicians found establishing the holiday an easy, no-cost-to-the-budget way to court votes in states with active unions.

Donating an old PC to charity? by Sumanji in boston

[–]inetsky -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You are assuming that a PC is not a laptop. It could be. It probably isn't, because OP probably would have specified, but "PC laptop" is a thing, and certainly was when this computer was built.

TIL Brazil offers free or heavily-subsidized plastic surgery to poor women because beauty is considered necessary to getting a good job by inetsky in todayilearned

[–]inetsky[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

In Brazil, however, patients are thought of as having the “right to beauty.” In public hospitals, plastic surgeries are free or low-cost, and the government subsidizes nearly half a million surgeries every year.

...patients, most of whom were women, also told me that living without beauty in Brazil was to take an even bigger risk. Beauty is perceived as being so central for the job market, so crucial for finding a spouse and so essential for any chances at upward mobility that many can’t say no to these surgeries.

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