Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, learns about drunk elephants, the stoned water buffalo, and the grieving mongoose.
Creatures of Story and Song | Reaktion Books
Discover why a beaver was said to bite off its own testicles, why the baleen of a right whale was prized by medieval knights or why you should give your crush the gift of a great auk.Creatures of Story and Song pieces together evocative legends, poems and historical accounts from a thousand years of history […]
"Paleofantasy": Stone Age delusions
An evolutionary biologist explains why everything you think you know about cavemen (and their diet) is wrong
Johann Hari: Everything We Know About the Drug War & Addiction is Wrong
As President Obama seeks $27.6 billion for federal drug control programs in his new budget, we talk to British journalist Johann Hari about the century-old failed drug war and how much of what we know about addiction is wrong. Over the past four years Hari has traveled to the United States, Mexico, Canada, Uruguay and Portugal to research his new book, “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War of Drugs.” His findings may surprise you — from the U.S. government’s persecution of Billie Holiday, to Vancouver’s success in addressing its heroin epidemic, to Portugal’s experiment with full decriminalization of all drugs.
Human Predators: Groundbreaking insights into the red f…
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On the virtues of eating dog food - in limited quantities
I've been fairly clear at various points that a big part of the reason I wrote Jacquard in the first place was because I was trying to write something else, ...
Dopamine Trap
Dopamine Trap does narrative driven decay. With organic noise, apocalyptic soundscapes, and scathing poetry his productions cast lovecraftian solopsisms on the roof of the skull, dripping with tumors of unresolved inter-generational trauma, resignation and reckless, violent love. He delights in emptiness and the granular implications of percussive silence.
Meet the Lady Carnivores Taking Over TikTok With Butter and Raw Meat
Some women say the carnivore diet has saved their lives — but doctors warn could be harmful.
‘Life or Death:’ AI-Generated Mushroom Foraging Books Are All Over Amazon
Experts are worried that books produced by ChatGPT for sale on Amazon, which target beginner foragers, could end up killing someone.
Meditations On Moloch
I. Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem on Moloch:What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and u…
The psychology of Soylent and the prison of first-world food choices
Why are some repulsed by Soylent, but others desperate to receive their orders?
The understanding that even bees have feelings is changing our view of consciousness | New Scientist
From jays that seem to say "sorry" to insects that play, signs of emotional inner life across the animal kingdom are giving us new perspectives on what consciousness is, and how we might pin it down
Tom Seeley: Honeybee Democracy
Of mice and men, cats and grains
When hunter-gatherers started to settle, they created new ecological niches for rodents, which could become a problem as soon as the residents started to grow cereals and wanted to store grains. Cats took over the pest control job to the extent that humans began to appreciate their presence and spread them around the world, along with their cereals and mice. Bioarchaeology and genetic studies are now beginning to reveal the origins of this curious and now ubiquitous ecological constellation. Michael Gross reports.
Pheromone
A pheromone is a chemical that is secreted or excreted by an organism, which triggers a social response in members of the same species. There are alarm pheromones, food trail pheromones, sex pheromones, and many others that affect behavior or physiology. Pheromones are used by many organisms, from basic unicellular prokaryotes to complex multicellular eukaryotes. Their use among insects has been particularly well documented. In addition, some vertebrates, plants and ciliates communicate by using pheromones. The ecological functions and evolution of pheromones are a major topic of research in the field of chemical ecology.
Misreading as Foraging: How Systems Get Used for Things They Weren't Made For - Astral's Blog