🔗 Articles: Monday 15.Apr.2024
NYT: On Himalayan Hillsides Grows Japan’s Cold, Hard Cash
But life can be tough. Wild animals destroyed the corn and potato crops of Pasang Sherpa, a farmer born near Mount Everest. He gave up on those plants a dozen years ago and resorted to raising one that seemed to have little value: argeli, an evergreen, yellow-flowering shrub found wild in the Himalayas. Farmers grew it for fencing or firewood.
Mr. Sherpa had no idea that bark stripped from his argeli would one day turn into pure money — the outgrowth of an unusual trade in which one of the poorest pockets of Asia supplies a primary ingredient for the economy in one of the richest.
Japan’s currency is printed on special paper that can no longer be sourced at home. The Japanese love their old-fashioned yen notes, and this year they need mountains of fresh ones, so Mr. Sherpa and his neighbors have a lucrative reason to hang on to their hillsides.
Wales Online: New warning to pregnant women over even small amount of alcohol
Even a small amount of alcohol whilst pregnant can cause birth abnormalities, a new paper has suggested. New research shows that no amount of drinking during pregnancy is safe as even low to moderate alcohol use can cause babies to be smaller and premature.
The study, published in the journal Alcohol Clinical & Experimental Research, also discovered that the effects of drinking can differ based on the sex of the developing baby. Boy babies were seen to be more likely to be premature, whereas girl babies were more likely to be smaller.
NYT: Lindsay Ryan: Many Patients Don’t Survive End-Stage Poverty
Safety-net hospitals and clinics care for a population heavily skewed toward the poor, recent immigrants and people of color. The budgets of these places are forever tight. And anyone who works in them could tell you that illness in our patients isn’t just a biological phenomenon. It’s the manifestation of social inequality in people’s bodies.
The recent attempted XZ Utils backdoor (CVE-2024-3094) may not be an isolated incident as evidenced by a similar credible takeover attempt intercepted by the OpenJS Foundation, home to JavaScript projects used by billions of websites worldwide. The Open Source Security (OpenSSF) and OpenJS Foundations are calling all open source maintainers to be alert for social engineering takeover attempts, to recognize the early threat patterns emerging, and to take steps to protect their open source projects.
Failed Credible Takeover Attempt
The OpenJS Foundation Cross Project Council received a suspicious series of emails with similar messages, bearing different names and overlapping GitHub-associated emails. These emails implored OpenJS to take action to update one of its popular JavaScript projects to “address any critical vulnerabilities,” yet cited no specifics. The email author(s) wanted OpenJS to designate them as a new maintainer of the project despite having little prior involvement. This approach bears strong resemblance to the manner in which “Jia Tan” positioned themselves in the XZ/liblzma backdoor.
NYT: Lake Mead Ancient Rocks Toppled by Vandals
After a video was widely shared online of two men pushing over a rock formation at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada, the authorities are asking for the public’s help to identify them.
They wanted to show their children how brainless their dads are?
NYT: ‘Eldest Daughter Syndrome’ and Sibling Birth Order: Does it Matter?
On X, a viral post asks: “are u happy or are u the oldest sibling and also a girl”?
Firstborn daughters are having a moment in the spotlight, at least online, with memes and think pieces offering a sense of gratification to responsible, put-upon big sisters everywhere. But even mental health professionals like Ms. Morton — herself the youngest in her family — caution against putting too much stock in the psychology of sibling birth order, and the idea that it shapes personality or long term outcomes.
Of course she says that: she’s the youngest!
Last Updated: 15.Apr.2024 22:14 EDT