Required Studying

​​‣ The world of paleontology is juicier than you may suppose, and New York Journal‘s Kerry Howley offers us the lowdown on the most recent conflict between two researchers concerning the asteroid that devastated the earth 66 million years in the past:

Throughout and DePalma each believed the fish at Tanis died in a violent flood lower than an hour after an asteroid hit the Earth, killing off the non-avian dinosaurs. This is the reason they discovered fish pointing in each instructions, their our bodies damaged and speared with particles; like a pool in an earthquake, the river rocked backwards and forwards, throwing sea life upward to land wherever it would fall and be entombed in layers of mud. “A automobile crash frozen in place,” as Throughout places it, a freeze-frame from 66 million years again. They might each converge on the identical thriller, tunneling towards better precision: In what season had the asteroid struck?

​​‣ 5 girls activists from Haiti share their views on the bottom amid violence persevering with to unfold throughout the nation, writing in Hammer and Hope about their experiences as manufacturing facility employees, musicians, and artists:

This has actually highlighted the Haitian artist’s responsibility to withstand, an obligation of solidarity towards the Haitian individuals and towards ourselves as nicely. As a result of we’re additionally affected by the political local weather, our households are affected. I’ve moved from Pacot to Turgeau, to Laboule, to Dèlma over a brief period of time due to all the violence and armed teams gaining territory. There’s an implicit duty that artists have to withstand by the work we produce. However the context I’ve described implies that there are additionally challenges to this resistance.

‣ Richi Kumar stories for NPR concerning the protests igniting within the wake of the rape and homicide of a 31-year-old feminine physician on the hospital the place she labored. Kumar writes:

“In India, the issue has by no means been that the legal guidelines should not pleasant towards girls. The issue has all the time been the uneven utility of, these legal guidelines,” Kaur says. “There’s little or no that Indian girls can actually hope for if particularly if they’re from traditionally disempowered, communities.

This high-profile case additionally has introduced consideration to India’s low charges of employment of ladies. One motive is that they lack security of their commute and of their workplaces. And but the rape of a health care provider in a hospital, was nonetheless surprising, Kaur says, although a survey from 2015 reported that about three-quarters of medical doctors reported experiencing violence of their office.

‣ I’m all the time studying one thing new from the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, whose distinctive scholarship encompasses marine mammal research, Black feminism, and poetry. For the Nation, she speaks with Marian Jones about her biography of Audre Lorde and the bounds of citation:

Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Survival Is a Promise: The Everlasting Lifetime of Audre Lorde is each a biography and a celebration of the icon’s life and work, which society has principally ignored in favor of repeating her most well-known quotes. Survival Is a Promise explores Lorde’s life, from her childhood as an unloved, disabled baby (practically legally blind, mute, and requiring particular footwear) by her teenage revolt and her grownup years as a celebrated Black lesbian icon (the lover of Frances Clayton and Gloria Joseph), a mom, a most cancers survivor, and a lady who died too younger—at 58 in 1992—from liver most cancers. Crucially, this story isn’t instructed in linear vogue: It leaps ahead and backward in time, connecting the themes of Lorde’s life to the pure world and the cosmos. It affords a deeper understanding of her poetry, highlighting key moments that formed her id and activism, all with the hope of exhibiting how expansive Lorde’s life was. In the end, Gumbs’s ebook argues that Lorde’s legacy lies not simply in her highly effective phrases but additionally in her embodiment of resilience and love within the face of adversity.

‣ Reporter Theia Chatelle has a must-read report on the Israeli army’s concerted efforts to focus on queer Palestinians residing within the West Financial institution. For Dropsite Information, she writes:

Following the assaults of October 7 and Israel’s struggle in Gaza, a picture of an Israeli soldier hoisting a Delight flag above the rubble of Khan Younis went viral on Twitter. Critics described it for instance of “pinkwashing,” or when an establishment deploys pro-LGBTQ+ messaging to distract from or paper over its unsavory actions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has additionally mocked the pro-solidarity slogan “Gays for Gaza” as tantamount to “Chickens for KFC.”

Israeli officers usually level to a British Mandate-era regulation that makes gay acts punishable by demise in Palestine. However that regulation isn’t enforced.

“By contributing to the erasure of Palestinian our bodies and voices, they contribute to the dehumanization of individuals within the West Financial institution and Gaza Strip—each queer and straight—and try and justify the hierarchy of lives that privileges Israelis over Palestinians,” stated Sa’ed Atshan, an affiliate professor at Swarthmore School who research gender and sexuality in Palestine.

In 2014, practically two dozen Israeli intelligence officers revealed a letter declaring their refusal to finish their reserve service within the IDF over its violations of Palestinian rights within the West Financial institution. “The Palestinian inhabitants beneath army rule is totally uncovered to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence,” they wrote. “It’s used for political persecution and to create divisions inside Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving elements of Palestinian society in opposition to itself.”

‣ The Black Polar explorer you’ve by no means heard of, illuminated in a brand new PBS brief:

‣ JK Rowling has left the chat …