When small fish start to decay, the bacterial flora in their guts burst through cell walls, initiating the process of autolysis. The fish essentially digest themselves, liquefying the proteins in muscle tissue. The presence of salt slows this fermentation process, promoting lactic acid bacteria that defeat pathogens and such foul-smelling toxins as cadaverine and putrescine. (Too much salt stops autolysis altogether; too little invites botulism.) Palacios’ team found that the result, after 25 days, was a paste of dissolved fish bones and flesh topped by a salty, amber-hued liquid, which smelled like a “mixture of dried fish, seaweed and spices.” The sauce proved to be a protein bomb, especially rich in glutamic acid, the same amino acid that gives Parmesan cheese, tamari sauce and cooked mushrooms their savory, umami intensity.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/recoving-the-recipe-for-garum-180978846/
Bodily fluids ever enjoyed a high prestige as curative agents. Holy Scripture informs us that Jesus’ method of restoring a blind man’s sight included spitting on his eyes, either directly (Mark 8:23) or indirectly, by first preparing a paste of saliva and mud, then anointing the blind person’s eyes with it (John 9:6). It is true that interpreters are quick to point out that Our Savior did this only for the form, so to speak, since divine might had no need to resort to any physical means. But such means He did use, because the people, the Romans, and the Jewish rabbis expected it, saliva being then considered a legitimate agent in ophthalmological therapy.
As I thought, a story broke. The United States’ fertility rate was declining. But this wasn’t actually news, the reporters informed us. The birth rate had been down for several years, which was good, and also bad. Fewer births meant fewer teen pregnancies and more accessible contraception. The planet couldn’t support more people anyway, some pundits said.
At the same time, many women who wanted to have children had been delayed, even deterred. They had student debt. The rents were too high. Childcare was unaffordable, but a one-income household wasn’t feasible. These problems could be helped, other pundits argued, by universal preschool, paid parental leave, remote work and the child-tax credit. As I read, I found myself in agreement. Children shouldn’t be a luxury good.
Human infants as young as just five months old tend to be more threatened by images of spiders than those of other organisms, suggesting that our aversion to them is partly innate, perhaps having evolved to prevent us from casually picking up ones that are venomous.
This natural wariness is then thought to be compounded by cultural factors, such as having parents who describe them as frightening as we grow up. Alarmist news articles and other depictions are likely to add an extra frisson of panic – some experts have linked the irrational fear many people have for sharks to the 1975 film Jaws, and it’s possible that the villainous spider trope is also having an impact.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211004-why-so-many-of-us-are-casual-spider-murderers
Although individual enslaved people were often brought to Britain by the people who claimed to own them, for most Britons, mass enslavement was something that happened ‘over there’ – in the colonies, especially the sugar-producing islands of the Caribbean. This fact of geography shaped British antislavery. The ‘mother country’ could also be the stern but benignant ‘father’, correcting children in the ‘infant colonies’. In the slave colonies, opposition to slavery could be a revolutionary threat to the social order. In Britain, antislavery affirmed Britain’s superior virtue in relationship to its empire.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-british-empire-was-built-on-slavery-then-grew-by-antislavery
View and Listen
Showing up in food, cosmetics, fuel, medicine, and even the air we breathe, corn has become one of the most ubiquitous presences in our lives. In this episode of The Broken Nature Series, host Paola Antonelli talked to Bex, who runs the blog Corn Allergy Girl, cultural anthropologist Alyshia Galvez, and community organizers Yira Vallejo and Jonathan Barbieri about the proliferation of corn and its consequences for our health, environment, and communities.
https://lnns.co/NIeU8_EnkKs