“Ever notice how Russia’s always the bad guy?” Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted back in March, claiming that Hollywood is responsible for the world’s negative perception of the former USSR. @damemagazine’s Zeb Larson says actually Marj, it’s a bit more complicated than that. He takes us from the 19th century through WWII and the Cold War to today to explain America and Russia’s constantly evolving relationship.

https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/04/08/hasnt-russia-always-been-our-worst-enemy/

#History @histodons #Russia #USA #MarjorieTaylorGreene #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

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