Amanda Johnston is Texas’ first Black woman poet laureate. She spoke to @TexasObserver about how she’s using her platform to build something bigger — a project called Praisesongs for the People. This involves her recruiting poets from throughout the state to write poems for unsung Texas heroes. Sebastian Páramo wrote about his mother, a school lunch lady, who, he wrote, “taught me to season myself.” Mag Gabbert wrote about the oncologist treating her mother for cancer who, in Johnston’s words, “is carrying hope into each of these families' lives.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-first-black-woman-poet-laureate-praise/

#Literature #Poetry #Books #Culture @bookstodon #AmandaJohnston @blackmastodon #USA #Texas #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

The Starlink service has been critical for the Ukrainian military, but owner Elon Musk is far from a reliable partner. @timkmak’s Counteroffensive looks at the search for alternatives. There are currently four in the frame: Luxembourg's SES, Spain's Hisdesat, Britain's Viasat, and France's Eutelsat/OneWeb. “We can successfully defend the country without Starlink. We did it at the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, and we can do it now. It is more difficult, more expensive… but it is possible,” says Volodymyr Stepanets, who works with a group that deals with the repair and procurement of Starlink terminals.

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/can-ukrainian-soldiers-survive-without

#Tech #Technology #ElonMusk #Starlink #Ukraine #UkraineRussia #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

How might stress affect cancer? It’s a question that’s been asked for millennia. @KnowableMag reports on the hundreds of sometimes contradictory studies that have been done on the subject, and how scientists are finding consensus.

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2025/how-stress-affects-cancer

#Health #Medicine #Science #Research #Cancer #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

Postal services in some areas of the USA are unreliable, so it makes sense to have a grace period when it comes to returning election ballots — at least, that’s been the case for a number of years in around half of the states across the political spectrum. @bolts reports on how that’s changing. “This past March alone brought news that two states … will repeal their grace periods; that conservative federal judges are on the brink of killing grace periods in two other states; and that Trump, who for years has falsely alleged rampant mail-voting fraud, wants to pressure the rest of the nation to reject every mail ballot that arrives after polls close,” writes Alex Burness.

https://boltsmag.org/restrictions-on-grace-periods-for-mail-ballots/

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Race isn’t a “biological reality.” For @TheConversationUS, professor John P. Jackson, Jr. looks at the evidence that says race was invented by humans, not nature.

https://theconversation.com/race-isnt-a-biological-reality-contrary-to-recent-political-claims-heres-how-scientific-consensus-on-race-developed-in-the-20th-century-253504

#Race #History @histodons #Science #Anthropology #USPolitics #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

@thecontinent has a guest post this week from the Harare Review of Books. Here’s a review of Freda Epum’s memoir, “The Gloomy Girl Variety Show,” a book about the Nigerian-American writer and artists’s search for belonging in Tucson, Arizona. “Epum may call herself a gloomy girl, but she is cool to hang out with in these pages. Her memoir is lively, sometimes sad, and always vulnerable. And she is upbeat, if somewhat wry. It’s a raw, beautiful and deep work,” the review concludes.

https://continent.substack.com/p/review-gloom-to-manoeuvre

#Nigeria #Tucson #Arizona #Books #Bookstodon @bookstodon #Memoirs #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday

@Flipboard @TheConversationUS @histodons

We knew that in 1990, even before we'd mapped the human genome. I learned it in 9th grade biology.

@Uair Absolutely — though certain people in the U.S. government seem to need a reminder of that! The article references anthropologist Sherwood Washburn, who wrote in 1951: “There is no way to justify the division of a … population into a series of racial types.” @TheConversationUS explains that this is "because doing so would be pointless. Presuming any group to be unchanging stood in the way of understanding evolutionary changes. A genetic population was not 'real'; it was an invention of the scientist using it as a lens to understand organic change."

Last of all, Atlas Obscura’s story about a giant almond that’s driving its way around America, and the uniquely American habit of making massive food vehicles, which @CultureDesk shared earlier this week. They wanted to know if any other countries had Poutine Mobiles, Camembert Camions or Kartoffelwagens. “Keep your wiener and almonds to yourselves,” wrote one commenter.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/promotional-food-vehicles

#Almonds #Food #FoodCulture #PopCulture #OscarMayer #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday