As discussed previously, this is my weekly Twitter roundup. Note that tweets of articles generally include header images from the articles, which are not included here unless they happen to be available under a free license. Most are not. But I now add most of my commentary here, where I’m not restricted by the message length.

diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week

I also don’t generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.

9:03 – Mon 30 August 2021

Where do Afghanistan’s refugees go? from The Conversation

This includes an unequal sharing of refugees between the developed world and economically disadvantaged countries.

The world really needs to get better at dealing with refugees, since we’re clearly not bothering to get any better at the problems that create refugees.

12:03 – Mon 30 August 2021

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

9:05 – Tue 31 August 2021

SARS survival and Pfizer vax combine for useful antibodies from Futurity

…wanted to understand whether the neutralizing antibodies developed in the SARS-Vaccinated group could wipe out both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 viruses as well as other sarbecoviruses…

If valid, this could be a huge breakthrough.

12:05 – Tue 31 August 2021

Low-minded men are occupied solely with their own affairs, but noble-minded men take special interest in the affairs of others.

Bhartṛhari

9:02 – Wed 01 September 2021

Americans Deserve Publicly Owned Generic Drugs from OtherWords

Their key argument was its role in the country’s pharmaceutical supply chain, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I can’t remember who it was that talked about how a Universal Basic Income is only meaningful—as in, it actually empowers recipients, rather than just propping up exploitative companies—if it’s partnered with Universal Basic Services and Universal Basic Assets. The public domain is obviously one form of the latter, and government could easily work to aggressively expand the category.

12:02 – Wed 01 September 2021

I tell thee Love is Nature’s second sun, causing a spring of virtues where he shines.

George Chapman

9:04 – Thu 02 September 2021

‘Recovering a Central American Native identity is key to stopping our erasure’ from Global Voices

Erasure means vilifying such identities as absurd. Erasure means stealing lands and driving the original peoples to barren or otherwise stressful environments such as urbanized locations with limited connection to the natural environment.

This quote might as well be “colonialism in a nutshell,” and it’s horrible that it’s still happening.

12:04 – Thu 02 September 2021

As if provident Nature, because she would have man circumspect, had furnished him with an account-book, to carry always with him. Yet it neither burthens nor takes up room.

Owen Feltham

9:01 – Fri 03 September 2021

The “work ethic” is a dirty trick we play on ourselves from Pluralistic

Early capitalists demanded leisure for themselves and hard work for the proletariat — but so did their enemies. Marxists valorized work and workers, creating the worker-hero.

It’s easy to see how corrupting the whole concept is, by how it persists to today. Humanity over-produces almost anything that you would ever want, but nobody is ever thought to be doing enough. Worse, you still have writers throwing together worker-hero clichés about how “humans need a schedule;” we actually don’t, but many of us have become addicted to having a schedule, which is a different problem.

12:01 – Fri 03 September 2021

Virtue beameth from a generous spirit as light from the moon, or as brilliancy from Jupiter.

Nizami Ganjavi

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, here are any additional articles that didn’t fit into the week, but too weird or important to not mention.

For Cities, Big-Box Stores Are Becoming Even More of a Terrible Deal from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance

The properties that it offered up for comparison were properties that had been affected by another big-box retail tactic: deed restrictions.

It’s worth reading the entire article. Basically, every promise that big companies have made has always been a lie, including this last batch that have been exposed.

Why students learn better when they move their bodies — instead of sitting still at their desks from The Conversation

To ask students to sit still while performing their work actually increases their cognitive load, or the burden on the mind. It requires them to concentrate on quieting their bodies, which are seeking out avenues for sense-making, as well as on the primary task that fixes them to their desk or digital screen.

I’ve never seen it put this way, but even going back to when I was tutoring in college, we were always told to make sure that students were always working at the chalkboard, because they could focus on the work instead of their hands.

Credits: Header image is Circular diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week from a manuscript drafted during the Carolingian Dynasty.