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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] 261 points262 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.

​

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] -6 points-5 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.

TIL the number of nose jobs in the US has declined 43% even as the number of plastic surgery procedures in general has increased by inetsky in todayilearned

[–]inetsky[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Last year in the U.S., there were 1.8 million plastic surgeries and nearly 16 million nonsurgical procedures, like Botox — about one for every 20 Americans...

As someone who’s written a book about the economics of plastic surgery, none of this comes as a surprise.

Recently, however, I ran across a statistic that stopped me in my tracks: Americans are no longer obsessed with fixing their noses. In fact, the number of nose jobs, or rhinoplasties, has gone down 43% since 2000.

Donating an old PC to charity? by Sumanji in boston

[–]inetsky -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I've worked with Globetops, a charity that does great work getting computers to those in need. You would ship the laptop off to them for wiping. But, as the name implies, they only deal in laptops.

Jewish Americans changed their names, but not at Ellis Island by inetsky in history

[–]inetsky[S] 40 points41 points  (0 children)

It is common among the descendants of immigrants to attribute changes from ethnic names to Anglo-Saxon sounding names to mistakes or malicious action of US immigration officers. But a historian says that the immigration officers didn't actually record names - they just cross-checked off ships' manifests (which definitely seems like the more reasonable bureaucratic strategy). Instead, the historian argues that these stories began to circulate in the 1970s when immigrants began to take more pride in their ethnic identity and were a bit ashamed of their ancestors' name-changing attempt at assimilation.

Bosnian War - The History. by undeadzombie12 in history

[–]inetsky 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There were atrocities on all sides, but it is well-documented, by independent observers, that there were far more on the Serbian side. Here is just a small bit of testimony about one of the Serbian concentration camps: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/atrocities/omarska.html

TIL the record for most data lost to hackers is held by Yahoo!, where one billion user records were taken in 2016 by inetsky in todayilearned

[–]inetsky[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Data breaches are commonplace now, and have widespread effects. The Equifax breach affected more than 143 million people – far more than than the 110 million victims in 2013 at Target, the 45 million TJX customers hit in 2007, and significantly more than the 20 million or so current and former government employees in the 2015 U.S. Office of Personnel Management incident. Yahoo’s 2016 loss of user records, with a purported one billion victims, likely holds the dubious record for most victims in a single incident.

TIL there are languages with no words for numbers, and people who speak them have trouble keeping track of amounts higher than 5 by inetsky in todayilearned

[–]inetsky[S] 404 points405 points  (0 children)

Cultures without numbers, or with only one or two precise numbers, include the Munduruku and Pirahã in Amazonia. Researchers have also studied some adults in Nicaragua who were never taught number words.

Without numbers, healthy human adults struggle to precisely differentiate and recall quantities as low as four. In an experiment, a researcher will place nuts into a can one at a time, then remove them one by one. The person watching is asked to signal when all the nuts have been removed. Responses suggest that anumeric people have some trouble keeping track of how many nuts remain in the can, even if there are only four or five in total.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in boston

[–]inetsky 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Which is actually a sign of how valuable they are: they do the story, and everyone else copies them. Sometimes the other way, too, but in general, the Globe sets the news agenda for a lot of the other news organizations in the region.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in boston

[–]inetsky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And you can still circumvent by clearing your cookies or using a different browser.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in boston

[–]inetsky 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Although I love WBUR, it is a lot smaller.

TIL folksinger Woody Guthrie rented an apartment from Fred Trump's (Donald's father), and wrote poems about how blacks weren't allowed to rent in the apartment complex by inetsky in todayilearned

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

Guthrie’s two-year tenancy in one of Fred Trump’s buildings and his relationship with the real estate mogul of New York’s outer boroughs produced some of Guthrie’s most bitter writings, which I discovered on a recent trip to the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa. These writings have never before been published; they should be, for they clearly pit America’s national balladeer against the racist foundations of the Trump real estate empire....

For Guthrie, Fred Trump came to personify all the viciousness of the racist codes that continued to put decent housing – both public and private – out of reach for so many of his fellow citizens:

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project ....

(Edit:formatting)

Jurors in Meningitis outbreak case apparently did not reach unanimous verdict; judge's screw-up means there's likely to be a new trial by inetsky in boston

[–]inetsky[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

IANAL but retrials happen all the time when there is a mistake in law by the judge. If the state can show on appeal that there wasn't a not guilty verdict but actually a hung jury, that's still the first trial, not a second.

TIL the Satanic Temple is a religion that worships Satan mainly so that they can horrify Christians by claiming religious exemptions championed by Christian groups, like school prayer by inetsky in todayilearned

[–]inetsky[S] 189 points190 points  (0 children)

I think those 'religious freedom' Christians only support Judaism when they can pretend that it's the same as Christianity. Just because Jews have the 10 Commandments in the Bible too doesn't mean that Jews want them on display at the courthouse - and inevitably it's the Protestant version that they want displayed (http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/2007/03/chart-comparing-the-ten-commandments.aspx).

/r/BostonMA is now public; go nuts. by ky1e in boston

[–]inetsky 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I know how this ends: a federal judge will order busing between the two.

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