Rotundus.com

Why Are Plants Green? To Reduce the Noise in Photosynthesis.

"Plants ignore the most energy-rich part of sunlight because stability matters more than efficiency, according to a new model of photosynthesis." Food for thought on solar power?

Why women need male allies in the workplace – and why fighting everyday sexism enriches men too

Overall a silly article, but this was kind of interesting: "Our study found men and women often have differing perceptions of who is an ally. For example, 37% of women whose male colleagues saw themselves as strong allies disagreed with that assessment. And just over half of the men who were perceived as strong allies by women didn’t see themselves that way."

GDPR & European Innovation Culture: What the Evidence Shows

This sounds about right: "The only thing Europe exports now on the digital-technology front is regulation". An example.

Food for thought:

Leading Romans, especially in the 2nd & 3rd centuries AD, saw imprisonment as inhumane. The emperor Antoninus (86-161 AD) said the “penalty can be scarcely imposed [even] on a person of servile condition.” Hadrian (117-138 AD) forbade life imprisonment by provincial governors. pic.twitter.com/4OYqdhCI0M

— manvir singh (@mnvrsngh) December 21, 2021

The larger thread includes other similar evaluations from places like Papua New Guinea, Morocco, and native groups in Alaska.

Or consider this:

Changing moral standards. Child labor was once seen as a good thing pic.twitter.com/ooNRAyBRMa

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) April 29, 2023

I've probably been averaging running a pressure cooker about 5 or 6 times a week when I've been at home, but don't think I've ever said much about that here. Figured that I'd share a few of the recipes and whatnot that I've been rotating through.

• Chicken and black bean chili. For most pressure cooker recipes I'd suggest using chicken thighs rather than chicken breasts, and this one is no exception. But otherwise it's a great recipe.

• Split pea and ham soup. Simple but easy to make with ingredients that I usually have in the house.

• Kenyan Kunde | Black-Eyed Peas with Peanuts. Lots of similar recipes like this in various parts of Africa. Think I was in Zimbabwe the first time I ate greens with peanut butter.

• Chickpea curry rice bowl. Chana Masala is one of the spice blends that I tend to keep around. At least here you need to hit one of a select number of spice shops to find it, but it's available nonetheless.

• Pressure cooking the perfect bowl of oatmeal. A great way to make steel-cut oats completely hands off while really only having to wash the serving bowl. Probably the way I started cooking pot in pot. Usually wind up with apple-cinnamon or cinnamon-raisin in mine.

• Pressure Cooker Risotto. More a template for pretty much any kind of risotto than a recipe.

• Chipotle Cheddar Corn Chowder. Good chipotles are hard to come by where I live and this is where a lot of my imports of the stuff go.

• Pasta with tuna and capers. Tough to find tuna packed in oil here so I just use a water-packed version and toss a bit of olive oil in. I also tend to toss in fish sauce instead of anchovies and it's easier to get ahold of and cheaper.

• Greek lentils and rice. This is here less as a recipe and more as my road to realization that if you soak lentils it'll even out there cooking times with rice so that you can cook both in the same pot at the same time without having to keep an eye on doneness. I frequently wind up with different spices and different kinds of rice when making this this, but this is the recipe that got me started eating a lot more lentils.

• 30 minute Indian butter chicken. Probably not the healthiest but I like to eat it every now and then.

The Disturbing Thing I Learned Studying White Privilege and Liberals

"what we found startling was that white privilege lessons didn’t increase liberals’ sympathy for poor Black people. Instead, these lessons decreased liberals’ sympathy for poor white people, which led them to blame white people more for their own poverty. They seemed to think that if a person is poor despite all the privileges of being white, there must really be something wrong with them."

Why does the CPS report on violence against women include men in the stats?

"Readers might wonder how crimes against women and girls can include men and boys. The answer lies in a curiously bureaucratic definition. Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) doesn’t necessarily mean violence against women and girls. It means a subset of criminal offences that have been categorised as VAWG crimes – rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, human trafficking, forced marriage, etc" ... two examples from a single story: "the murder of six year old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, who died after his father’s girlfriend bashed his head against a hard surface multiple times. Arthur had been left in their care after his mother had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her boyfriend Gary Cunningham."

Indian scientists decry ‘infuriating’ scheme to study benefits of cow dung, urine, and milk

"... some petitioners see the research program as another effort by the Indian government, run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to validate faith-based pseudoscience. The call does not appear to be shaped by 'objective scientific inquiry,' but rather 'aimed at confirming existing beliefs,' says Aniket Sule, a reader at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education". If you're opposed to milking the data to extract a pre-determined, desired result and expect such a process to involve large amounts of bullshit both amongst the inputs and outputs of these studies you should probably adopt a similar approach to a lot of ____ Studies departments in places in the West. (None of this necessarily means everything to come out of such programs is false though). This particular funding program just makes for slightly more amusing references where sacred cows are more than just a metaphor.