Our crisis support volunteers response to multiple incidents in our valley each day. At this time, we have not been requested for any events involving the #grasshopperinvasion but thought it would be prudent to share some tips with you. pic.twitter.com/sY5TOqUHFg
— Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) (@tipoflasvegas) July 27, 2019
Whoa! Two years ago, our fabulous Radiotopia colleague Helen Zaltzmanand her husband, Martin Austwick, gave up their London apartment to travel the world. They paid their bills by continuing to produce her two podcasts, The Allusionist and Answer Me This, from the road.
Things were going well until a visit to Tasmania, when Helen got a serious infection in her neck and had to be hospitalized. After nearly a month in intensive care, she was finally released and was, of course, relieved to be alive. But Helen soon discovered that her brain no longer functioned the same way…and her work habits needed to change.... listen
Donnie Humfress loved wade fishing in Hancock County. But he doesn’t do it anymore. An uptick in the number of reported Vibrio cases in recent years has kept him and his family out of the water. “I’m just not willing to risk that, and I’m not willing to risk family members and friends becoming infected with it,” he told the Sun Herald. “Until officials can confirm that the threat is no longer present, neither myself or my family will be in the waters of the (Mississippi Sound.)"
Read more here: https://www.sunherald.com/news/local/article233017462.html#storylink=cpy
Traditional Middle Eastern tattoos were done via a rudimentary method of pricking the skin and then rubbing in a mixture of smoke black or indigo. Mother's milk was used in the mixture, oftentimes, to give an esoteric benefit.
Designs were a combination of tribal identification and amulets to ward off evil or incur blessings. Similar motifs may be found in carpet designs. A vertical line marked along the chin signifies an engagement. When there was a mark on the tip of the nose, it may have signified either marriage or that a child had died and this was their way of protecting the spirit of that child.
Facial tattooing, especially, has gone out of favor in modern times. Usually only older women are seen with tattoos on their chin and forehead.
The reason? One source says, "body art markings, called lousham in Arabic or ahetjam in Tamazight, are no longer considered to be a pious Muslim practice and as a result very few younger women will carry these tattoos.
At one point, these tattoos were tribal markings of status and beauty, symbols that were borrowed from the complicated designs in the rugs; now most Amazigh women consider their tattoos to be a shameful reminder of a pagan practice." In past times in Iran, the upper class women would be tattooed with a beard-like pattern. This practice has passed away as well, but it is reported that "the demand for tattoos among Iranian and other middle eastern women has exploded.
Iranians who are tattooed, however, must keep them under wraps due to the authorities.
Despite the traditions of tattoos for certain tribal groups of Middle Eastern women, their religion, Islam, forbids tattooing. Non-permanent skin decoration in the Arab world in the form of henna decorations is very popular. Not all stories of the tattooed women are benign.
The sad history of the decimation and captivity of Armenians under their Muslim captors holds the story of stolen Armenian girls tattooed by their captors a story told in history and photos in the Genocide Museum.via
I’ve been playing catch-up with one of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible. A recent episode was about the effects of Operation National Sword, China’s initiative to essentially stop being the world’s trash dump, which has left nations scratching their heads while clutching their single-use plastic water bottles. What I loved most was listening to a replay of an older episode in the second half that touched on the strides of Taipei, Taiwan, which is literally cleaning up the city with musical refuse and recycling/compost trucks, binless systems, and the ownership citizens feel over their trash—almost no public garbage cans, people! They pocket that candy wrapper and take it home with them! The episode presents some great lessons we Americans can learn about our own attitude toward consumption. —via
Sandra
A world where artificial intelligence isn’t so artificial.
Helen thought her new job would help her forget her dreary hometown, but working behind the curtain on everyone’s favorite A.I. isn’t quite the escape she expected. via
There will be cursing today. Run away if that bothers you. I don’t mind.
Do you worry what others think about you? Do you sit at your computer screen, paralyzed to type what you really want to say for fear of what your mom, husband, brother, friend, or best friend from second grade might say? Maybe you have shared your writing and been burned, relationships severed, friendships or family relationships strained or even ended.
Or maybe those around you are so threatened by the possibility that you will share your story that they actually threaten you.
Others people’s problems are other people’s problems. Don’t take that shit personally. #WriteWhatScaresYou
Fuck that shit. As Cheryl Strayed says, you need to write like a motherfucker. What does she mean by that? Does she mean write with papers everywhere, cartoon balls of trash flying across the room, keys tapping to the beat of Copacabana? (Let’s hope not. We’ll never get that song out of our heads.)
No. She means that you need to own it. Own your shit. Write your shit. Ignore the voices or others, get in your head, your heart, grab your soul and write the shit out of that shit.
