Just realized it's #RabbitAwarenessWeek, and we've been very watchful of our boy Jack who's almost made it through the horrible London heatwave. He's nearly 99 years old in human time! Go Jack!
Ireland’s is the world’s first permanent basic income program sending direct, unconditional cash payments to professional artists, and it enjoys overwhelming public support – of 17,000 public survey respondents, 97% supported the program becoming permanent... an independent study of the pilot found that artists didn't just get more work done – basic income reduced their levels of anxiety and alleviated depression, too. https://rgmii.org/blog/thousands-more-artists-join-irelands-basic-income-plan/
This paper could be fairly interesting, looking at #Pleistocene symbolic artifacts as socially embedded but 'opaque social instruments'.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/evan.70036?campaign=woletoc
RE: https://mastodon.social/@greenpeace/116815610305068417
Well, the Europeans have brought it on themselves, has to be said. As well as onto the rest of the world.
Striking global similarities: New cross-cultural study reveals that the bond between #humans & #dogs remains remarkably consistent across societies. Study led by Juliane Bräuer @uni-jena.de@bsky.brid.gy & Russell Gray @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy More: tinyurl.com/2hn2dt6b & doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Striking global similarities i...
If the genome is not a blueprint, what is it? My attempt to unravel this particularly knotty question, in @quantamagazine.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy
www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-huma...
Why the Human Genome’s Tangled...
More here on the ancient conserved rhythm, and the greater variability in H sapiens:
'Research on human laughter perception suggests that variable timing is perceived as more socially and emotionally positive than rigid, stereotyped timing. A laugh that shifts and accelerates and varies across its duration reads differently from one that ticks along like a metronome. Humans have developed, it seems, not just faster laughter but more expressive laughter in the purely temporal sense.
https://www.primatology.net/p/the-rhythm-in-ape-laughter-is-15?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Preprint here on Bornean orang utan mums going out of their way, with higher travel costs, to overlap in shared areas with neighbour mums of similarly aged offspring.
'orangutan mothers incorporate their infants' social needs into daily ranging decisions, at a cost to their own energy budgets. This points toward an underappreciated form of maternal investment and illustrates how the social requirements of development can be met even near the solitary extreme of animal social organization.'
Another paper on #bonobo positive responses to bonobo laughter
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-02594-8?fromPaywallRec=false
Looking at the evolution of #laughter in great ape ancestral contexts.
Human laughter has followed a rather distinct trajectory: 'The evolution of laughter’s rhythm reveals a progressive increase in vocal rhythmic plasticity, with humans following the overall trajectory toward enhanced vocal control'.
Well #Morocco has been cutting edge through the whole history of our species.
This is Neolithic, Bronze Age and farming tho...
'The UK could have stopped a #genocidal #massacre in #Sudan’s El Fasher but failed to act over concerns it would anger the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a top war crimes expert has told Parliament.
Human rights investigator Nathaniel Raymond said he provided the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) with intelligence for more than two years warning that the fall of El Fasher would unleash “one of the single largest mass casualty events of the 21st century”'
https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx93fzqjyz6dPfY9XVZmj2kq9Kj3a-d8sx
Why The World Ignores Genocide in Sudan
https://www.vanityfair.com/story/sudan-civil-war?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Top Stories @top-stories-vanityfair
Exeter is doing the fashionable university thing of trashing the arts. A friend of mine who works there shared this petition on FaceAche - if you value the study of humanities please consider signing it: an easy action that might not fail to achieve anything (yes, I am a bundle of optimism aren’t I?), and that whatever the outcome tells the beancounters that understanding ourselves and our past is important, not just “STEM” subjects.
#Petition #Solidarity #Exeter #ExeterUniversity #UniversityOfExeter #History #Classics #Arts #Humanities
'To achieve this, the authors envisage three steps: more than halving average working time from 2,100 hours a year to 1,000 hours, roughly equivalent to a two-and-a-half-day working week; encouraging people to eat less red meat, which is the main driver of deforestation and ecological destruction; and refocusing the economy toward low-consumption activities by more than doubling education spending to €8,400 (£7,250) a person and healthcare spending to €14,400.'
John Hawks explains more here
https://www.johnhawks.net/p/the-first-molecular-data-from-homo
John Hawks explains more here
https://www.johnhawks.net/p/the-first-molecular-data-from-homo
Update from the rebel strongholds of Myanmar
@W_Lucht ha ha, my favourite episode is the Maiden on the Rainbow teasing Väinämöinen.
The Old Man ends up bleeding cosmogonic rivers of blood, which he cannot staunch because he doesn't know the chant for the Origins of Iron (his axe inflicted the wound). He has to find an even Older Man.
This is telling us about shamans being equivalent in power to menstrual girls at initiation, who do it so effortlessly.