Each of the 50 states in the United States has a unique history. 13 of them were originally British Colonies. Some of them were former Spanish or French territory. Most of them were officially US territories before they became states.
A few, however, were actually independent countries before they joined the Union…..or at least they sort of were independent countries.
Learn more about the states that were once countries on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Russia’s President Putin announced the registration of a vaccine for coronavirus. This was reported with widespread alarm amid concerns over safety, but as BBC Russian Service’s Sergei Goryashko, tells us the announcement was a political move to capture the headlines.
Investigations by Alexandra Reynolds and Hooman Poor at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Centre have revealed why some Covid 19 patients have low oxygen levels, but don’t have breathing difficulties. The answer came when looking for signs of stroke in the brain.
Nisreen Alwan, a specialist in public health at Southampton University is concerned about the quality of life of people who have had a Covid -19 infection. Being classed as recovered is not enough she says and we need to look more at recurring health problems associated with the disease.
And Cardiff University’s Haley Gomez has news of a tantalising discovery. The detection of a neutron star hidden in a dust cloud for more than 30 years.
Squelching into the science of slime, Chhavi Sachdev seeks to find out why it took so long for listener Helen Tyson to remove slime from her fingers, after she picked up a tiny slug while gardening.
This unfortunate and hugely repulsive experience set Helen to wonder what it is about the structure of slug slime that makes it gloopy, so she sent Chhavi to meet with slug slime expert Professor Andrew Smith who reveals how the complex molecular structure of this pervasive fluid makes it so difficult to scrub off.
Slime is used by all sorts of creatures including the Giant African Land snail, which invaded India by hitching a ride on imported timber. But invasive species biologist Dr TV Sajeev reveals that these snails are themselves giving a lift to another meningitis-causing parasite that can infect people. Chhavi looks for these massive molluscs in her own garden in Mumbai.
Marine biologist Helen Scales describes how animals can use slime for catching food, mating, defence, or even transportation, and Chhavi speaks with Dr Adam Celiz who has been inspired by this slimy adaptability to create a tool that can provide new cells to replace damaged heart cells after a cardiac arrest.
Slugs, snails and even fish keep a variety of useful chemicals in their slime. Some make them taste bitter, and others numb the mouth of predators, but they may also prevent the animals from contracting infections. Dr Sarah Pitt has investigated these compounds in the slimy mucus of a garden snail and discovered an antibiotic that is brand new to science.
Slime is pretty disgusting, but it’s also completely fascinating.
After a Winklevoss encounter highlights Elon Musk’s space mining dreams, maybe we should remind ourselves of the right-here-at-home benefits bitcoin brings.
Earlier this week, the Winklevoss brothers introduced Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy to bitcoin.
One of the notable parts of the recap video was a discussion of how Elon Musk was set to destroy the value of gold on Earth by mining gold from asteroids.
While much meme fun was had, on this week’s Long Reads Sunday NLW has chosen a selection that looks at how fiat beat out gold and how gold beat out silver to provide some – ahem – more immediately relevant lessons on how to explain the benefits of bitcoin.
Autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko claims to have won a landslide in the country?s presidential elections. But how can we know what really happened? Tim Harford delves into the numbers behind the widely-questioned election result, with Dr Brian Klaas and political analyst Artyom Shraibman.
Caracas-based bitcoiner and journalist Javier Bastardo covers the crypto scene in Latin America since 2017 and has been living partially off bitcoin, thanks to BTCPay server and a variety of employers that pay in crypto, like CoinTelegraph Espanol.
“Even when I’m trying to report in an unbiased way, I’m really bullish on crypto,” Bastardo said. “Bitcoin could be useful to other Venezuelans.”
Beyond holding it as savings, many Venezuelansuse cryptocurrency as the fastest way to obtain dollars. Bastardo said there is more in common between crypto readers across the Americas, both Latin America and North America, than similarities within local geographies.
“We’re talking to a very specific audience, even if I’m writing in Spanish and you’re writing in English,” Bastardo said, referring to CoinDesk writers in New York and California. “We are more connected than I would be with a person who writes about politics in Venezuela...The way they [crypto audiences] look for information is very particular to the types of viewers that we have.”
When it comes to the media, in Venezuela it is more clear to readers that journalists can be activists and that corporate media is often governmentpropaganda. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least five journalists were murdered for doing their jobs in Venezuela over the past few decades. In this context, censorship isn’t merely about ad policies or social pressure. It comes from the government and is applied directly to the communications infrastructure.
Despite the struggle to identify reliable narratives, many readers make financial decisions based on media reports and social media trends. Media production and financial markets have always been intertwined, for better or worse. This is especially true of cryptocurrency markets.
“They [crypto readers] are already against journalism, against the information industry. They have more anger about the information,” Bastardo said, describing the challenge of making media for this niche audience. “They need the narrative to keep going about adoption, about mainstream, yea, bitcoin will save us. It’s weird, because we have an active scene but it’s little.”
While the outrage associated with crypto coverage may be unique, the dynamic of media-driven markets is hardly new. After all, the financial outlet Bloomberg reportedly gave bonuses to reporters for “market-moving” stories and many American outlets offer bonuses for web traffic, which may incentivize sensationalism. These policy decisions come from the top, as with most business models, and rarely originates from the newsroom itself.
From his perspective, Bastardo said it’s unclear whether North American media, including but not limited to crypto journalism, is deliberately biased.
“I really don’t know if the things we see on CNN or CNBC are identified with some party,” he said. “We have those narratives that show Trump is a really good narratives and others that show him as a really bad President. This is a problem in the whole media industry.”
In particular, he said some crypto content creators might be “aligned” and “trying to push some agendas,” but that it’s unclear what is really going on with the overlap between journalism and cryptocurrency marketing. For example, he said people overhype and sensationalize stories of bitcoin usage in Venezuela, which can be both dehumanizing and misleading. It becomes even harder for readers to decipher because some of the most trusted sources in the crypto industry are individuals without journalistic training or oversight. This creates even more opportunities for freelancers with bold personalities, but a more challenging environment for readers seeking relatively objective information.
“We have a similar way to get information in Venezuela, but it’s worse, because we don’t really have open media,” he said. “But the crypto-related media, I don’t know if the writers are biased...I don’t know if this is true. This is only an opinion.”
Ask most Muslims what the holiest site is in Islam, and they would all obviously tell you it is the Kaaba at the Great Mosque of Mecca.
Ask most Christians what the holiest site is in Christianity, and you might get a blank stare or at least several different answers.
Through most of Christianity, there has been one place that has been agreed upon as the holiest site, and it has been the cause of wars and disagreements which have continued to this day.
COVID-19 Update; News Items: Quackery in Afghanistan, The Russian Vaccine, CNO Neutrinos, TESS Exoplanet Mission, Huge Lave Tubes; Your Questions and E-mails: Benford's Law; Science or Fiction
This podcast series tells how the Crusades were inextricably linked with the Byzantine Empire. In this episode, we hear about the creation of the fourth Crusader state - called the County of Tripoli. It would in future play a vital role in the history of the Crusades, linking the Crusaders of Antioch and Edessa, in the north, with those of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the south.
Please take a look at my website nickholmesauthor.com where you can download a free copy of The Byzantine World War, my book that describes the origins of the First Crusade.
On this edition of The Breakdown’s Weekly Recap, NLW looks at the strange melange of realities interacting in the new emerging bull market.
On the one hand, bitcoin has found narrative relevance and technical importance in a world of social unrest and increased state involvement in economies and citizens’ lives.
On the other, insane financial engineering experiments are seeing three-quarters of a billion dollars in value locked up within hours before a bug sees it all go away.
In the middle, agents of chaos like new bitcoiner (and LINK-holder) Dave Portnoy.
This is going to get weirder before it gets more normal.
