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.

9:02 – Mon 18 October 2021

The Freedom to Vote Act Is No ‘Compromise.’ Pass It Now. from OtherWords

This all leads to an inescapable conclusion: Voting rights advocates in Congress must go it alone to protect those rights if necessary, and they must eliminate any procedural obstacles that stand in the way.

This gets to the heart of a critical issue: The current assault on voting rights needs action as soon as possible, to be relevant for the 2022 election in literally a bit more than a year’s time. While it’s admittedly exciting to have politicians who refuse to compromise, that excitement isn’t going to translate to results, if it delays action. In fact, you’ll notice that the political party that gets the most use out of the idea is the party that constantly talks about how opposed they are to governance.

12:03 – Mon 18 October 2021

The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

9:05 – Tue 19 October 2021

Chloroplasts do the darnedest things from Knowable Magazine

Scientists reported an early sign of this chatter between chloroplast and nucleus back in 1979 while studying a mutant form of barley that grew green, white and striped leaves.

Considering that chloroplasts probably originated as cyanobacteria, it’s wild to see how central they’ve become to cellular operation.

12:05 – Tue 19 October 2021

The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

9:04 – Wed 20 October 2021

Providing care across languages from Wellcome Collection

The English lexicon for illness grew through loan words, but local knowledge systems could not keep pace due to colonial subjugation.

It’s hard to imagine a viable solution, at this point, unfortunately, especially coming from a privileged position of English immersion. It’s important, though, and systemic throughout the sciences.

12:02 – Wed 20 October 2021

Just as the track of birds that cleave the air is not discovered, nor yet the path of fish that skim the water, so the course of those who do good actions is not always seen.

the Mahābhārata

9:01 – Thu 21 October 2021

After Docs ‘Show What We Feared’ About Amazon’s Monopoly Power, Warren Says ‘Break It Up’ from Common Dreams

…Amazon provided a written response that did not address the reporters’ questions.

After decades of regulators and legislators who were actively opposed to anti-trust work, it’s good to see an administration and Congress actually considering getting to work.

12:01 – Thu 21 October 2021

To him who in the love of Nature holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language.

William Cullen Bryant

9:03 – Fri 22 October 2021

Death penalty can express society’s outrage — but biases often taint the verdict from The Conversation

But the fact that punishment is an expression of negative attitudes makes it risky.

This is obviously true of all punitive systems, but the difference with the death penalty is that there can’t be any margin for error. It’s theoretically possible to compensate someone for other punishments that they have unfairly received, but we can’t exactly bring people back from the dead.

12:04 – Fri 22 October 2021

A subtle-witted man is like an arrow, which, rending little surface, enters deeply, but they whose minds are dull resemble stones dashing with clumsy force, but never piercing.

Māgha

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.

Imagined jazz improv changes the brain like real singing from Futurity

The new findings reveal that improvisation is associated with a state of weak connectivity to the brain’s executive control network and to a feeling of “flow,” which allows unhindered musical creation.

I wonder if it also works if you imagine imagining the improvisation…

Peter Telfer, the Trinidadian percussionist who made African drumming a church staple, goes to his Creator from Global Voices

A music enthusiast from childhood, when he began playing with his lifelong friend, the exemplary flautist and saxophonist Dawud Orr, who passed away this past August, Telfer was a deeply spiritual man whose Roman Catholic faith was intertwined with every note he created.

The area seems to have been losing quite a few artists, lately. It’s unfortunate, but I guess a fact of life.

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