Placenta cake

Photo from Pass the Garum, which includes a recipe.   You can read more about placenta cakes at Neatorama or Wikipedia.

Lesson for the day: The Latin word placenta is derived from the Greek plakous ("flat") for thin or layered flat breads.  The placenta of mammalian pregnancy is so named from the perceived resemblance between its shape and that of a placenta cake.

You learn something every day.

And yes, you can find articles like I drank my fresh placenta in a smoothie... if you are so interested.

Addendum:  See also "Save Some Womb for Dessert" ("From the February 4, 1998, episode of TV Dinners, a cooking show that airs on Channel 4 in England.")

"Have a look in here. This is Rosie’s placenta. Waste not, want not. Have a smell. Isn’t it lovely? Lovely and fresh?... Initially, when Mary said that we were going to be eating placenta, I thought, Yech. But then when I thought about it I said, Okay, as long as it’s cooked in onions and gravy like a casserole. Then she said it was going to be a pâté and I thought, Brilliant. Brilliant. Really...."

Anxiety in American children

Excerpts from an article in The Atlantic that will be of interest to parents:

Here are some things that, over the course of the SPACE* training, I heard of parents doing to avoid setting off their anxious children:

Going upstairs to get a child’s backpack before school because the child is scared to be alone in any area of the house and the parent doesn’t have time to argue about it. Driving a child to school because the child is frightened of the bus, with the result that the mother is late to work every single day.

Tying and retying a child’s shoes until they feel just right.

Spending 30 minutes a day, on average, checking and rechecking a child’s homework.

Announcing one’s presence as one moves around the house, so that a child will at all times know where to find a parent (“I’m going to the kitchen, Oliver”). Accompanying a 9-year-old child to the toilet because he is afraid to be alone. Allowing a 9-year-old to accompany a parent to the toilet because he is afraid to be alone. Peeing in a bucket—a mother, not a child—because the basement playroom has no bathroom, and the child is afraid to be alone.

Allowing a child to sleep in the parents’ bed. Sitting or lying with a child while he falls asleep.

Always carrying a plastic bag because a child is afraid she’ll vomit.

Cutting a 13-year-old’s food because she’s afraid of knives.

Ceasing to have visitors because a child is intensely shy. Speaking for a child in restaurants. Asking a child’s teacher not to call on her in class.

Installing the Find My Friends app on a child’s phone so that the child can track the parents’ whereabouts.

Preparing different foods for a child because she won’t eat what everyone else eats.

Buying a new burglar alarm. Buying a new car. Seriously contemplating buying a new house.

The list went on and on. The most disorienting thing about it was not its length, but the way it merged stories that seemed to me bizarre but turned out to be commonplace with stories that sounded familiar but upon further consideration seemed unhealthy. Many of us think nothing of preparing different meals for different family members. Bedtime has become such a protracted affair that parents may now do the work a stuffed animal once did.

I barely suppressed a laugh at the idea of a kid tracking his parents, rather than vice versa, but murmurs of recognition sounded around the room. “That’s common,” one therapist said. The idea of buying a new house must have made my eyebrows go up, because another woman leaned over and whispered: “I have a family that moved to a split-level because the daughter didn’t like to be out of earshot.”...

We all have dreams, and Angela and Seth’s was to stop making turkey loaf.

By the time they sought help from the SPACE program’s Yaara Shimshoni last year, they had served it to their then-6-year-old son, Owen, some 3,000 times. (I have changed parents’ and children’s names.) Put another way, virtually every day for four years—two-thirds of his life—Owen had eaten turkey loaf for both lunch and dinner. For breakfast, he favored dry Cheerios.

Calling Owen a picky eater wouldn’t have captured the extent of the problem. He was terrified of most foods. On those rare occasions when he tasted something new, he would gag. Going out together as a family was a minor ordeal: Either they packed turkey loaf to take with them, or they hurried home before the next meal. Mostly, the family just stayed in. “If we ran out of it, Owen would have an absolute fit,” Seth said when he and Angela spoke with me in February. Once, after a supermarket strike disrupted the local turkey supply, he spent the night driving from store to store, searching for enough meat to get through the week... 

Maybe the way to think about recent parenting is this: All kids today are being overprotected the way only girls used to be. Except the changes in childhood are far broader than that. Even girls, after all, used to get themselves around the neighborhood and have summer jobs and chores. Today, only 10 percent of kids walk or bicycle to school, a steep decline from decades past. Forty years ago, 58 percent of teenagers got summer jobs; today, 35 percent do, and the after-school job is an even rarer species. When Braun Research surveyed more than 1,000 American adults, 82 percent said that as children they’d had regular chores—but only 28 percent said their own children did.

Way more at the longread source article.  *SPACE = Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions program at Yale University's Child Study Center.

Purchasing books by color - updated

I've heard of this for years, but didn't realize it was so popular until I found this Etsy seller and scrolled down the page to see other offerings by other sellers.  Prices apparently vary by color:

Reposted from 2021 to add this information for a Washington Post article:

Chuck Roberts, owner of Wonder Book & Video in Frederick, Md., buys tractor-trailer loads of new, unsold books, known in the trade and dreaded by authors, as remainders. Brokers pick them up for pennies from publishers or bookstores, and Roberts stands ready to make a deal. He recently bought a 44,000-pound load of about 38,000 remaindered books.

Roberts, who sells both used and remaindered books, told me he once provided two miles — yes, two miles — of books as decor for more than 100 locations of Restoration Hardware (now known as RH) in the United States and Canada. ..

There’s something about resuscitating books that produces an irresistible tug in people with an instinct for lifesaving. Like McKim, Pat Oza, who runs O3 Books, a thriving books-by-the-foot business on Etsy and his own website, gave up medical school. “It hurts to see them thrown out,” Oza told me.

At McKim’s warehouse, books arrive in 3-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide circular cardboard crates that weigh about 1,000 pounds and are known as “gaylords,” a box manufacturer name that has become a catch-all, like Kleenex is for facial tissues. A gaylord is a magical and mystifying thing — a grab bag, a treasure hunt. McKim, who made his name selling bundles of children’s books, usually has only the scantest notion about what will be inside...

McKim’s books-by-the-foot designer, Charlotte Tillier, is ever on the lookout for those most-prized book spines: pink and purple. Not many of those out there. She sells three feet of vintage red-spined books for $138; but the same length of vintage pink and purple goes for $300. Tillier has become expert at stockpiling orange- and black-spined books for the requests that come roaring in around Halloween, and red, white and blue ones for the Fourth of July.

Expressing concern about the environment

Let's start with Prince Charles' upcoming trip to Canada:

LONDON (Reuters) - Prince Charles and his wife Camilla will visit Canada next month as part of celebrations to mark his mother Queen Elizabeth's 70th year on the British throne, his office said on Tuesday.

The trip, the 19th the heir-to-the-throne has undertaken to Canada, will see the royal couple travel more than 2000 miles from Newfoundland and Labrador to the Northwest Territories over three days from May 17-19.

"The Prince of Wales has long believed that we need to learn from indigenous peoples around the world how better we should live in and care for nature and the planet," Clarence House said in a statement.

"Canada is seeing the impact of climate change and so this tour will highlight an emphasis on learning from Indigenous Peoples in Canada as well as a focus on working with businesses to find a more sustainable way of living with global warming."

Because nothing says conservation like a transatlantic flight followed by traveling 2000 miles in three days and then flying back home.  Perhaps some of the indigenous elders could suggest that to him.

I can't resist pairing that story with "Yacht to know better," from Harper's:

From “Why yachting families make great climate caretakers,” which was published in November on the website Superyacht Life. The average superyacht is estimated to produce 7,020 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Those on board a yacht become a part of the ocean’s ecosystem, and they are perfectly positioned to assist in the fight to protect our warming earth. Here are five ways yacht-owning families can help our oceans heal:

1. Young yachting families can use their time at sea to bear witness to how the ocean is changing. Photographing marine life and accumulating ocean plastics is not just something adults can do. It is an activity for children too.

2. By ferrying scientists to and from remote locations, yachting families can take a hands-on approach to ocean conservation. By working with scientists at sea, children can develop a love of climate protection.

3. Families can sponsor and track their own sea creatures. “My whale is called Luke!” laughs Dr. Vienna Eleuteri. “I adopted him when my nephew was born.”

Two more equally ridiculous examples at the link.

Morel mushrooms successfully cultivated

The morel mushroom is known as one of the world’s most coveted edible mushrooms. During the last hundred years, it has only with limited success been possible to cultivate black morel mushrooms under controlled, indoor conditions. We are therefore very pleased to announce that we finally, after many years of intensive research at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University and the University of Copenhagen, have invented and developed a method for controlled indoor cultivation of black morel mushrooms all-year-round under well defined conditions in climate chambers. We are able to produce 4.2 kilos of first-class morels per square metre within a total cultivation period of 22 weeks, corresponding to an annual production of 10 kilos of morels per square metre. The method is so well developed, that a commercial production can be started after an appropriate automation of the cultivation process.

More information and a brief video at The Danish Morel Project.

Related: Pig is an excellent movie.

How an authoritarian state implements lockdown

The drone footage embedded above is not from the start of the pandemic two years ago - it's from this month.  Americans who bitch about wearing a mask might do well to ponder what it's like to live in a country under the type of authoritarian rule that some right-wingers admire.

And that shutdown in China is going to affect American pocketbooks; the resulting inflation will be blamed on Biden.

Widespread covid outbreaks in China have bought entire cities to a standstill and hobbled manufacturing and shipping hubs throughout the country. An estimated 373 million people — or about one-quarter of China’s population — have been in covid-related lockdowns in recent weeks because of what is known as the country’s zero covid policy, according to economists at Nomura Holdings. There are also fears that new lockdowns could soon take hold in the capital city, Beijing, escalating the threat to the global economic recovery.

Anxiety over new disruptions has already caused the Chinese stock market to fall sharply, weighing on U.S. stock indexes as well.

And there are signs things could only get worse. Continuing lockdowns in Shanghai — a major hub for America’s semiconductor and electronics supply chains — has set up automakers, electronics companies and consumer goods firms for months of delays and higher costs.

Addendum:   see this brief video of extreme lockdown measures being undertaken, seemingly locking people into hotel rooms or apartments.

"Spark arrestor" explained

The locomotive on the left has a spark arrestor; the one on the right does not.  Discussed in the explainlikeimfive subreddit thread.  Photo via.

Human brain (left). Dolphin brain (right).

Note the impressive folding of the gyri and sulci that increase the surface gray matter, and look at that awesome cerebellum.

As some of you have pointed out, "the two halves aren't connected." In reality, they are connected, but the corpus callosum is very thin. Dolphins do that thing called unihemispheric slow‐wave sleep, and are able to remain vigilant even with only one hemisphere awake. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans during this type of sleep show that there's also lateralization in cerebellar activity. However, the fact that dolphins can remain vigilant even with one hemisphere asleep implies that there is no extreme lateralization of function that would cause severe impairment.

One of the theorized reasons why "the cerebellum is massive" is because dolphins rely so heavily on auditory input. In both humans and dolphins, the cerebellum coordinates voluntary movements such as posture, balance, coordination, and speech, but in dolphins the sensorimotor information is much more heavily influenced by auditory input. In directing echolocation trains and responding to this information, the dolphin must adjust its body quickly and precisely according to echolocation signals, and the corresponding lobules are much larger in dolphins than in humans.

Via.  Reposted from 2019.  I'm still in awe of that cerebellum.

Related:  Shark brain vs. dolphin brain.

Bill for a 1.8 mile ambulance ride in the U.S.

Image cropped for size from the original at the MildlyInfuriating subreddit, where the comment thread includes lots of horror stories (and a defense of the ambulance drivers, who are not the financial beneficiaries of this extortion).

Michigan lawmaker eloquently and vehemently defends herself

"McMorrow, a Democratic state senator in Michigan, delivered an epic takedown of a GOP colleague on Tuesday that continues to go viral. It included forceful pushback against Republicans over laws stigmatizing gay and trans children and families, and a searing moral defense of treating them respectfully... It might prod Democrats to rethink their responses to GOP attacks along these lines.

The 35-year-old McMorrow’s ire was triggered by a Republican colleague’s fundraising pitch describing McMorrow as a “groomer.”..

You’ll note that McMorrow didn’t sound defensive or offer mealy-mouthed, hairsplitting fact-checks. She didn’t capitulate to the Republican framing of these matters for a second.

Instead, McMorrow laid bare her deepest convictions and explained how they lead her to her positions on gay and trans rights, and why basic human decency demands them. Importantly, she made this about what Republicans are doing.

Many Democrats do profess outrage about the GOP’s use of the “groomer” slander. But you rarely hear Democrats go beyond casting themselves as mere victims of a vile smear, and instead hammering those pushing it for their rhetorical degeneracy, phony piety about protecting children, profound lack of rectitude, and all around sleazy and debased public conduct.

McMorrow’s description of herself as a White, Christian, suburban mom — one who wants her children to respect and empathize with non-Christian, non-White, gay and trans kids and families — gets at this. It turns the “identity politics” debate on its head.

Lots more commentary and analysis at The Washington Post.

Sports word for the day: collective

Excerpts from a Chip Scoggins column in the StarTribune:

HELP WANTED: Individual, group of people or company to serve as a third-party entity known as a "collective" that facilitates sponsorship and marketing opportunities for University of Minnesota athletes under name, image and likeness (NIL) provisions allowed by the NCAA. Oh, and do it fast. This train is barreling down the track.

Anyone interested? Because it's necessary to the future of Gophers athletics. Do it or get left behind in the brave, new NIL world.

The university is not permitted to handle NIL deals for athletes. That job is increasingly being outsourced to collectives, a term that fans should get familiar with because collectives are popping up around the country by the week and securing endorsement deals and other moneymaking opportunities for college athletes.

The Gophers need one.

Collectives typically are formed by boosters and supporters of programs. They act independently of the athletic department, though compliance offices provide education in explaining NIL rules and what forms of income opportunities will be deemed permissible.

Nearly 40 schools have at least one collective, and industry experts expect that all Power Five schools will have one by the end of the year. A few schools already have multiple collectives.

Why is everything unfolding so quickly? Recruiting, as always, and the pressure to keep up with rivals.

The NCAA prohibits using NIL as enticements in recruiting (wink, wink), but surprise, that's a rule being ignored.

One Division I coach told me that recruits are asking about NIL opportunities and whether the school has a collective. It's become part of the courtship between coach and player, particularly with transfers in the portal who might either have NIL options at their current school or are shopping for the most lucrative opportunity when choosing a new school.

This is the new reality of college sports. People might not like this new reality or the direction that things are headed, but NIL is here to stay.

Athletes are making money off their success and popularity — rightfully so — and schools realize that NIL has become a fundamental part of selling their programs. Boosters everywhere are rushing to form collectives in what has been referred to as the "wild, wild West."..

One University of Texas collective will give every Longhorns offensive lineman on scholarship $50,000 annually to make charitable appearances...

What an amazing change in recent years.  

What would Pachelbel think?

Some explanatory comments at Neatorama.

The #1 cause of death among American children

Not cancer or any disease presented in public service announcements...

"The previous analysis, which examined data through 2016, showed that firearm-related injuries were second only to motor vehicle crashes (both traffic-related and nontraffic-related) as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents, defined as persons 1 to 19 years of age. Since 2016, that gap has narrowed, and in 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death in that age group. From 2019 to 2020, the relative increase in the rate of firearm-related deaths of all types (suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined) among children and adolescents was 29.5% — more than twice as high as the relative increase in the general population. The increase was seen across most demographic characteristics and types of firearm-related death."

Chart and text from the New England Journal of Medicine.  And these from a BBC article entitled America's gun culture - in seven charts:

Several of the countries in that list have compulsory military service, which results in weapons being kept at home.

A swan's nest in Serbia

via

alt - sport

For those who believe sports should be fun.