Meanderings, 15 April 2023

Good morning from Oklahoma City. Kris and I are here for my speaking engagment on “Revelation for the Rest of Us.”

Photo by Gerson Repreza on Unsplash

Eating disorders rewire the brain:

Anyone who has ever had a bad habit knows how vexingly difficult breaking it can be. The reason is the repeated action, initially linked to some type of real or perceived reward, over time changes the way our very brains are wired to work. The bad habit becomes automatic, even when the action does us harm or we no longer wish to do it.

Now an intriguing new study shows that the same bundled nerve fibers, or brain circuits, involved in habit formation also can go awry in people with eating disorders. The findings may help to explain why eating disorders are so often resistant to will power alone. They also may help to point the way to improved approaches to treating eating disorders, suggesting strategies that adjust the actual brain circuitry in helpful ways.

These latest findings, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, come from the NIH-supported Casey Halpern, University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, and Cara Bohon, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA [1].

Halpern, Bohon, and colleagues were interested in a growing body of evidence linking habitual behaviors to mental health conditions, most notably substance use disorders and addictions. But what especially intrigued them was recent evidence also suggesting a possible role for habitual behaviors in the emergence of eating disorders.

To look deeper into the complex circuitry underlying habit formation and any changes there that might be associated with eating disorders, they took advantage of a vast collection of data from the NIH-funded Human Connectome Project (HCP). It was completed several years ago and now serves as a valuable online resource for researchers.

The HCP offers a detailed wiring map of a normal human brain. It describes all the structural and functional neural connections based on careful analyses of hundreds of high-resolution brain scans. These connections are then layered with genetic, behavioral, and other types of data. This incredible map now allows researchers to explore and sometimes uncover the roots of neurological and mental health conditions within the brain’s many trillions of connections.

In the new study, Halpern, Bohon, and colleagues did just that. First, they used sophisticated mapping methods in 178 brain scans from the HCP data to locate key portions of a brain region called the striatum, which is thought to be involved in habit formation. What they really wanted to know was whether circuits operating within the striatum were altered in some way in people with binge eating disorder or bulimia nervosa.

Who gets to be “evangelical”? With John Hawthorne.

Behind Barack Obama’s book lists:

As a journalist covering the book-publishing industry, when an editor reaches out to me about a story, it’s usually because there’s something dark lurking under the cover. The (now failed) Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster merger was a messy game of corporate maneuvers with the potential to leave employees and authors in the dust. The New York Times best-seller list is calculated with a secret formula that authors and publishers regularly attempt to cheat.

I usually have anonymous sources falling all over themselves to spill industry secrets, so you can imagine that when I was assigned to investigate the methodology behind Barack Obama’s annual lists of book recommendations, I set out to expose a secret apparatus of industry shenanigans. What I found was much more shocking…..

Imagining that a political consultant might have picked that book for him broke my heart, but it turns out I didn’t need to worry. After weeks of reaching out to publishers, authors, and book insiders, I could not find a single source with knowledge that the former president’s book recommendations are engineered by anyone other than himself. I may have set out to write an exposé, but what I found was so much more shocking: a positive publishing story filled with authenticity.

For one moment, I give you permission to forget about book bans, unlivable industry salaries, and diversity problems. For one minute, I give you permission to be grateful that one of the most influential people on the planet makes it a priority not just to promote books but to be personally moved by them.

I, for one, can’t wait to find out what he’s reading this summer.

Joey Cochran:

Second amendment rights is about protecting white supremacy.

The right to possess a firearm long has been considered a sacred idol in the history of the United States. While this right has been enshrined in our constitution’s Bill of Rights as the second amendment, this does not mean that every inhabitant has had this right during our long history. Rather, when Europeans first arrived and “others” were forcibly brought to America, white colonists intentionally withheld firearms from people thought to be a viable threat to civil society. You see, among the vital technologies of Empire, guns were among the most formative technologies employed to gain and maintain European, Christian, and White power. …

ou see, ingrained in the historical memory of our nation is the notion that some people had the right to possess firearms and “others” ought to be deprived of that right. Firearms ought to be possessed by property owners who defended their property. Firearms could only be possessed by citizens. If “others” possessed firearms, it was to the advantage of those in power. Firearm possession, historically, was a racialized phenomenon.

Unless it furthered the purpose of white power, it was undesirable for Amerindians to possess firearms, for that made it more difficult to progressively dispossess them of their property across the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Once African-Americans possessed the right of citizenship, they then had the right to possess firearms. Thus, it was crucial to create a system of mass incarceration in order to continue to deprive them of their right to firearms. In other words, gun policy and citizenship held hands in a symbiotic effort to protect white supremacy.

The crisis of domestic terrorism from mass and school shootings is so terrifying for many U. S. citizens because it is also a racialized phenomenon. The preponderance of shootings that occur are perpetrated by young, white men—the kind of people who have historically had the right to possess firearms. Protecting and maintaining this right is one of the symbols of historic white supremacy that can yet be preserved.

Repurposing a semi:

(NewsNation) — It sounds like a dream — retire, hit the open road and explore the country in a mobile home. Well, one British Columbia couple did just that, but with a twist.

Clayton and Teresa Balabanov dreamed of selling their taxi businesses and traveling in an RV.

Five years ago, they bought a used 53-foot semi-trailer and spent $180,000 creating a spacious home that they call the “Nomad Monster,” which includes a library, a full kitchen, a movie theater and even a hot tub.

“The library was the one thing that I asked for, and the other thing was to separate the toilet room from the tub room,” Teresa said.

This actually wasn’t their first renovation, Clayton said they previously flipped a bus.

“I did the bus many years ago and we enjoyed that, but we didn’t have the time. Now we’re retired and we have the time, and we just put it together piece by piece, and as the budget allowed,” Clayton explained.

A small carbon footprint was important to Clayton.

“The whole roof is solar. We found that water is an issue, so revamping things right now and putting in the whole reverse osmosis filter system so we can filter the gray water. So we’ll use less water, we’ll recycle the whole water system, and it’s super insulated and run on solar and recycled water,” Clayton explained.

Ecommerce packaging waste:

No one questions the fact that ecommerce packaging waste is a major problem, clogging the planet with yet more plastic and cardboard. The twofold question then becomes, what is being done about it, and what more can be done?

After falling for four months along with ecommerce demand, the price of corrugate used for cardboard packaging stabilized in March, the Wall Street Journal reported. Volume and prices hit a pandemic-fueled peak in March 2021, but demand is expected to remain low through 2023.

Some reusable packaging solutions have popped up, but they are few and far between. There are also advanced smart machines that can custom fit either polybags or cardboard to help reduce waste. Reducing the cube of each item with these solutions also saves on transportation costs as well as packaging material needed.

Retailers and brands are finding that an actual sustainable approach – which can include reducing packaging waste – and not mere greenwashing pays dividends in terms of market perception and loyalty.

We’ll discuss the scope of the issue, and steps that are being taken by retailers, suppliers and governments to reduce the amount of ecommerce packaging waste, saving money and reducing the environmental impact.