Elsewhere for September 20, 2020

You should read this for 9/20/2020:

Art, Music, and Film

Neolithic paintings in Spain reveal art was social activity for both sexes

“We looked at the number of fingerprint ridges and the distance between them and compared them with fingerprints from the present day,” he told the Guardian.
“Those ridges vary according to age and sex but settle by adulthood, and you can distinguish between those of men and women. You can also tell the age of the person from the ridges.”

Three Years After Tom Petty’s Death, His Dream Project Finally Emerges

Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language

H/T Less: Why Goodreads is bad for books

H/T Lisa C.: Addressing The Claims In JK Rowling’s Justification For Transphobia
Edition of Shakespeare’s last play found in Scots college in Spain

The Two Noble Kinsmen, written by Shakespeare with John Fletcher, was found by a researcher investigating the work of the Scots economist Adam Smith.
The 1634 volume could be the oldest Shakespearean work in the country.

Coronavirus | COVID-19

Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19

The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals.

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The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation’s public health work for decades.
But since Michael Caputo, a former 💩🔥💰 campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the Health and Human Services department’s new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with 💩🔥💰’s statements, including the president’s claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Maine “superspreader” wedding linked to 170 Covid cases and seven deaths

That single event on 7 August is linked to coronavirus outbreaks in at least two other locations in Maine, with more than 170 people contracting the virus and seven deaths since.

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The “superspreader” event started with wedding attendees in the Katahdin region and spread to the community at large and to a nursing home in Madison.
An attendee worked at the York county jail, 220 miles away, where there are more than 70 cases. The state is also investigating an outbreak at a church in Sanford, home of the wedding’s officiant.

Food and Drink

H/T Mac: How to Grow Mushrooms in Coffee Grounds

But for those who want to get a little more experimental and expand your horizons past fruits and vegetables, growing your own oyster mushrooms can be a fairly low-budget and simple avenue to pursue.
One cultivating method used by a number of urban farmers and “do-it-yourself” growers involves taking freshly used coffee grounds and a little bit of boiled straw as substrate (the soil) and mixing it with spawns of the mushrooms to grow into a new batch.

Coffee Is Under Attack “Coffee plants were supposed to be safe on this side of the Atlantic. But the fungus found them.”
tangy braised chickpeas

History and Archaeology

Roman Caistor: ‘One of largest’ Roman Britain temples revealed in Norfolk
‘Viking’ was a job description, not a matter of heredity, massive ancient DNA study shows

It was a Viking saga written in genes. In 2008, construction work on an isolated Estonian beach near the town of Salme uncovered the skeletons of more than 40 powerfully built men. They were buried around 750 C.E. in two ships with Viking-style weapons and treasure—apparently the aftermath of a raid gone wrong. DNA from the bones has now added a poignant detail: Four of the men, buried shoulder to shoulder holding their swords, were brothers.

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The results tell dramatic stories of individual mobility, such as a pair of cousins buried in Oxford, U.K., and Denmark, separated in death by hundreds of kilometers of open ocean. The genetic details may also rewrite popular perceptions of Vikings, including their looks: Viking Age Scandinavians were more likely to have black hair than people living there today. And comparing DNA and archaeology at individual sites suggests that for some in the Viking bands, “Viking” was a job description, not a matter of heredity.

The DNA has raised new questions, too. Study co-author and National Museum of Denmark archaeologist Jette Arneborg says DNA recovered from burials in Greenland shows a mix of Scandinavian men from what is now Norway and women from the British Isles. Yet the artifacts and burials look completely Scandinavian. The women “have British genes but we can’t see them in the archaeology,” she says. “The DNA is going to make us think more about what’s happening here.”

Science and Nature

Possible rare “seven-armed octopus” found on Whidbey beach

Society

QAnon Website Shuts Down After N.J. Man Identified as Operator

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Women’s Work

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87 See also: A 5-Decade-Long Friendship That Began With A Phone Call

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Despite DeJoy’s vows to halt changes, serious problems persist, postal workers say

n Chicago, postal employees say backlogged mail is stacked so high in some facilities that workers barely have space to walk by. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, mail handlers tell NBC News first class and priority mail is still running several days a week behind schedule on average.
And in Tacoma, Washington, multiple postal workers said new mandates mean many mail trucks per week are being ordered to set out on their routes five minutes early — often entirely empty.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

When Your Best Friend Gives Birth to Your Babies—All 4 of Them

Something Wonderful

Artists Crochet Giant Sea Urchin Installations That Interact with Their Surroundings