Who Was the First Named Human?: The earliest named people we know about date back to 3100-3200 BCE.

After writing SF and fantasy, I'm finally trying my hand at Gothic romance. Don't judge me.
(click for full image)#PulpSabotage pic.twitter.com

— Richard Kadrey (@Richard_Kadrey) March 10, 2019

“Space food sticks” were predecessors to today’s protein bars, invented in 1959 as part of a NASA contract to develop food that astronauts could consume while wearing space suits. The sticks were designed to be attached to the space suit, and eaten by passing through a port in the helmet. One fan says they tasted like peanut butter and rubber bands. This is a delightful article.

Nice little biography of Lee, who added a new superpower to superheroes’ portfolio: Angst.

The fault in our stars: Alec Nevala-Lee, author of the excellent history of science fiction, “Astounding,” ruminates on the “Far Beyond the Stars” episode of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” where Sisko dreams that he’s a struggling African-American pulp writer in the 1950s.

I’m thinking a bit about American exceptionalism lately: The belief that America is not just a great nation and civilization, but the greatest that ever was or ever will be.

And that white, Western-European derived, Christian culture is both the foundation and pinnacle of American culture.

According to the soft form of this belief, other nations, races and cultures can become equal to or even exceed individual white Americans, but only if they purge themselves of their original cultures, leaving only a little bit behind for flavor. They need to act white (with a little bit of their original culture remaining, as an accent).

Other forms of bigotry are marginalized in the US — although they’re tragically making a comeback. But American exceptionalism is still going strong; we require our politicians to explicitly endorse it.

Barack Obama is is the pinnacle of the soft form of American exceptionalism.

My colleague Iain Morris on www.lightreading.com

My $0.02: Apple’s magic formula for success has been to find a technology sector where the idea is great, but the technology is hard to use. Apple then wins by coming out with a product that’s easy to use.

TV is certainly ripe for that kind of disruption; cable and streaming services are complicated and confusing.

But one of the main reasons they are complicated and confusing is that there are so many of them, and coming out with one more, even from Apple, is just going to make that worse.

“The iPad mini is super enjoyable to use and is the best size tablet for everything but traditional laptop work.” I still sometimes use my old iPad mini as an e-reader. The screen is cramped for anything else though. techcrunch.com

Brian X. Chen at the New York Times: “”… without Facebook, there wasn’t much I really missed out on — except targeted ads.” www.nytimes.com

Weekend ‘catch-up sleep’ is a lie: You can’t short yourself on sleep during the week and then correct the health damage by sleeping in on the weekend, according to a recent study.

The problem with “women and nonbinary:” The phrase excludes trans men, and assumes that nonbinary people are part of a group with women but excluding men.

Terra Nullius: A thoughtful and enjoyable essay by Cory Doctorow on the tragic fallacy of John Locke’s labor theory of property, which is fundamental to how we think about property in Western society. The labor theory has resulted in the genocide of millions, robbed millions more of financial benefit from their work — which the Locke theory deems as worthless — and also justified a Chicago chain restaurant owner’s attempt to trademark the word “aloha.”

www.huffpost.com

President William McKinley standing tall on the gold standard with support from soldiers, sailors, businessmen, factory workers and professionals, from his 1900 reelection campaign.

Source: reddit.com

Source: reddit.com

Source: reddit.com

www.washingtonpost.com

“A Connecticut woman is suing Harvard University for allegedly profiting from a photo of her family’s patriarch, an African slave who was forced to pose naked in what historians believe is one of the oldest images of enslaved people in the United States.”

www.bostonglobe.com

www.npr.org

That’s what he says today. Don’t count on him sticking with it for even a few hours.

The caper might have been successful had any of the American participants had previous experience conducting a clandestine mercenary mission in a sovereign country. Instead, they were a mixed bag of mostly military veterans, including one former SEAL who had recently been charged with assault for a road rage incident in southern California and another who was a body builder with a sideline as a country music singer….

… while the Americans were well-armed, they lacked other basic provisions of a secret security operation for hire: insurance coverage, a medical evacuation plan, legal authority to bring their weapons into Haiti, or an escape plan if things went bad….

“They had no idea what they were doing”…

theintercept.com

Source: reddit.com

Chimps and other animals have tradition — cultural information passed on by teaching, from one generation to the next — and human development wipes that tradition out even when genetic information is preserved. “These discoveries mean that conservationists need to think about saving species in a completely new way—by preserving animal traditions as well as bodies and genes.” www.theatlantic.com

The Barbie doll turns 60
www.glamour.com