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About 56,000 people control three times as much wealth as half of humanity. Here’s one way to illustrate that

The human body naturally creates small amounts of hydrogen sulfide to help regulate functions throughout the body, from cell metabolism to blood vessel dilation. The rapidly burgeoning field of gasotransmission shows that gases are major cellular messenger molecules, with particular importance in the brain. However, unlike conventional neurotransmitters, gases can’t be stored in vesicles. Thus, gases act through very different mechanisms to rapidly facilitate cellular messaging. In the case of hydrogen sulfide, this entails the modification of target proteins by a process called chemical sulfhydration, which modulates their activity, says Solomon Snyder, D.Phil., D.Sc., M.D., professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-corresponding author on the study.

Ambedkar Jayanti: Here is a look at the differences Dr Ambedkar had with Mahatma Gandhi over caste and untouchability.

Some terms from this article:

SC - Scheduled Castes, groups that have historically faced social discrimination, “untouchability,” and exclusion based on the caste system. They are often referred to as “Dalits.”

ST - Scheduled Tribes, communities that are recognized as indigenous or tribal populations. They are typically characterized by their distinct culture, language, and social practices.

OBC - Other Backwards Classes (yes, this is the official government term) - communities that are socially and educationally “backward” but do not fall under the SC or ST categories.

Brahmin and Shudra - Two of the four main social classes (Varna) in the Hindu caste system. Brahmin were historically superior, intellectuals and priests. Shudra were servants and laborers.

Would hate to have to clean up that mess.

You've probably never heard of the overclass, which is just how its members like it; they have a lot to answer for. They are the people who put Jim Carrey on magazine covers, who renamed blue-green "teal" and keep loaning money to Donald Trump--not out of any sinister conspiracy to ruin the country but because, well, it's their job. As "professionals" and "managers" they lay claim to an increasing share of the national income, but they wind up spending most of it at mirror-walled restaurants where they have to eat $10 arugula salads. They're famous for having opinions, but it's hard to know what these are, since they never call talk-radio shows. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent them, because otherwise we'd have no answer to the question, whatever happened to all those Yuppies we used to see running around, anyway?

We are witnessing an epochal moment in American sociology, the birth of a new class. There is, obviously, nothing new in the fact that some people in America have mo

It’s been a productive year for Carlo Ratti Associati, an Italian architectural firm known for blending man-made construction with natural environments. The company recently unveiled a sophisticated mountain shelter that will soon find its permanent location in the Italian Alps. Now, CRA has collaborated with American creative studio Höweler + Yoon and Italian steel construction company Cimolai on a new experiment. The result of their five-month effort is a 400-square-meter (4,306-sq-ft) floating plaza – AquaPraça.

lifted

Humans can take it back.

The native bee was found near a rare wildflower, prompting scientists to call for the area to be protected.

Collins Dictionary has named "vibe coding" its 2025 word of the year -- a term coined by Andrej Karpathy for when a user makes an app or website by describing it to AI rather than writing programming code manually. The term, which is confusingly made up of two words, was "one of 10 words on a shortlist to reflect the mood, language and preoccupations of 2025," reports the BBC.

Researchers say well over 100,000 spiders from two different species coexist in this remarkable underground metropolis for arachnids

The receiving computer crashed as it couldn’t cope with the transmission speed of 5,000 characters per second.

Rick Bright is an immunologist who was fired for being a whistleblower during the pandemic under Trump's first administration.

The article gives an overview of his concerns for public health should Trump win the (then) upcoming 2024 election. Unfortunately, we can't take advantage of Bright's warning in hindsight:

For the well-being of our nation, the safety of our loved ones and the security of future generations, we must reject Donald Trump and any other candidate who threatens to undermine our public health institutions.

However, I'm posting this article that he wrote one year ago for an important reason. Yesterday, the CDC published a review article, which reported multiple cases of confirmed asymptomatic bird flu outside of the U.S., and likely person-to-person transmission.

This finding contradicts the common belief that most human infections will be symptomatic and severe.

**Bright and a public he

Link without paywall: https://removepaywalls.com/4/https://thedailyrecord.com/2020/06/18/how-emergent-biosolutions-became-the-us-go-to-biodefense-contractor/

2020 article about a small Biodefense company with a very shady history and multiple government contracts.

Emergent has long been the government’s sole provider of BioThrax, a vaccine for anthrax poisoning. But over the past decade, the company has acquired biodefense competitors and treatments for smallpox, botulism and other threats for which there is no market outside of government.

Now, Emergent is the only maker of multiple drugs the government deems crucial for the Strategic National Stockpile, and the government is the company’s primary customer, accounting for most of its revenue, according to interviews with current and former government and company officials as well as government and corporate records.

A Washington Post examination found that Emergent’s strategy has been rewarded with a series of large contracts

Link without paywall: https://removepaywalls.com/4/https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/the-next-epstein-is-probably-already-here-hidden-in-plain-sight

Officially, Epstein's death in a Manhattan detention center in 2019 closed the criminal proceedings against him. Yet the more important question for U.S. banks is whether the conditions that enabled his financial operations have truly been dismantled. On close inspection, the answer remains troubling. The uncomfortable truth is that the vulnerabilities exposed by his case were not unique. This was not a mere oversight or the failing of a rogue employee; it was a systemic breakdown in which the normal rules of compliance were suspended for a VIP client. They are rooted in a banking culture that too often gives ultra-wealthy individuals a pass on the very controls imposed on everyone else. That leaves a sobering conclusion: The financial system is probably still vulnerable. This is why the key vulnerabilities deserve closer at

Just came across this interview of Epstein regarding his interest in Bitcoin circa 2017. What's most interesting is that it seems Epstein may have been heavily influenced by Peter Thiel around the time he gave the interview.

Since forming an eponymous foundation in 2000, Epstein has found a role as science philanthropist, sharing his resources to beneficial, unlikely ends. His money has funded research related to quantum computing, genetics, artificial intelligence, and beyond. As a result, the 64-year-old tycoon holds court with A-list names from the academic community, like theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, cosmologist and author Lawrence Krauss, or MIT’s quantum computing pioneer, Seth Lloyd.

In addition to Peter Thiel's obsession with genetic manipulation, the second Trump administration's focus on AI and cryptocurrency, has been steered by [Thiel's former