The Greatest Invention in the History of Humanity | Can Stimulating the Vagus Nerve Improve Mental Health? - The New York Times | Food companies are freaking out about Ozempic, but it's 'hardly an existential threat' | How to Thrive in a Dying World

View online | Unsubscribe (one-click). For inquiries/unsubscribe issues, Contact Us

� � � � � � You Might Like � � � � � � � � � The Greatest Invention in the History of Humanity - The Atlantic    A sallow light rises over the land at the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the most celebrated movies of the 20th century. Stanley Kubrick’s shot pulls in on a band of furry man-apes gathering around a watering hole; no women, no children—or at least none easily discerned. The scene shifts to a young male, who pulls a large bone from a skeleton. He stares at it for a moment before beating the ground, slowly at first, then furiously. He soon runs off and uses it to bludgeon another hominin to death. Prehistoric man has invented the first weapon. This is the story of what I call “tool triumphalism”: Man invented weapons, claimed dominion over his peers and the rest of the animal kingdom, and all of our achievements flow from there. As a culture, we still tell ourselves that this special cleverness is why we’ve succeeded as a species. And maybe that’s true—but not in the way you might think. Among our ancient ancestors, the most prolific tool creators probably weren’t male. And I propose that the most important early invention people came up with probably wasn’t a weapon, fire, agriculture, the wheel, or even penicillin. Humanity’s greatest innovation was gynecology. Among paleoanthropologists, primatologists, comparative ethologists, cognitive scientists, and even the more ape-interested historians, there’s agreement that humanity’s predecessors were avid tool users and clever problem solvers. This isn’t uncommon: A variety of animals wield tools, octopus and crow alike. And primates frequently use tools in lab settings, although it’s true that primatologists aren’t really sure how many would do so in the wild—labs are weird places, and human scientists are hardly normal troupe-mates. But the archaeological record shows that, for example, capuchin monkeys have been modifying stone tools for 3,000 years. So, in the broad sense, tool use is associated with many different clever beasts. It was certainly true of whatever human forerunner Kubrick was going for—as a researcher who’s studied the evolution of cognition, I’d guess it was Homo habilis, but it could have easily been Homo erectus. Even earlier in the hominin line, with australopithecines (like the famous specimen commonly known as Lucy), who lived roughly 3 million years ago, our ancestors’ fossilized bones are already associated with stone tools. That means that Lucy’s creations, and those of habilis after her, were hardly triumphant. Those very smart primates were using everything they could to survive. Continued here Can Stimulating the Vagus Nerve Improve Mental Health? - The New York Times -     On social media, exercises that aim to “tone” one of our body’s longest nerves have been touted as a cure-all for anxiety and other psychological ailments. Here’s what the research says. In recent years, the vagus nerve has become an object of fascination, especially on social media. The vagal nerve fibers, which run from the brain to the abdomen, have been anointed by some influencers as the key to reducing anxiety, regulating the nervous system and helping the body to relax. TikTok videos with the hashtag “#vagusnerve” have been viewed more than 64 million times and there are nearly 70,000 posts with the hashtag on Instagram. Some of the most popular ones feature simple hacks to “tone” or “reset” the vagus nerve, in which people plunge their faces into ice water baths or lie on their backs with ice packs on their chests. There are also neck and ear massages, eye exercises and deep-breathing techniques. Continued here Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium Food companies are freaking out about Ozempic, but it's 'hardly an existential threat' -     Executives at America's biggest food companies can't stop talking about Ozempic. But beyond the chatter, the impact these drugs will have on sales is still unclear. To be sure, sales of these weight-loss drugs have exploded. Novo Nordisk, the maker of semaglutide or GLP-1 products, including Ozempic and Wegovy, reported about $5 billion in North American sales in the first six months of 2023. And early data suggests that Ozempic sales will have some impact on the food industry. But any impact will be far enough down the road that these companies have time to prepare, analysts say. Continued here How to Thrive in a Dying World - The Atlantic    The opening pages of C Pam Zhang’s second novel, Land of Milk and Honey, imagine a planet facing crisis after crisis—an extension of our own. Climate change has devastated the land: the Earth is covered in smog; crops have withered; countries are caving to famine. Zhang joins a number of other writers who have recently used their work to ask how to live in a dying world. But her curiosity is more pointed: She seems to be asking how we might still find pleasure amid collapse—and whether it’s moral to do so when so many are just trying to survive. The novel’s narrator is an unnamed 29-year-old American chef working in England who finds herself trapped when the U.S. closes its borders as smog spreads and geopolitical tensions rise. On the same day that she receives notice that her late mother’s apartment in Los Angeles has burned down in a riot, her boss cuts pesto from the restaurant’s menu because there’s no more basil, “not even the powdered kind.” Zhang splices the two events together in the same breath, suggesting that for the chef, they are equally significant. She pays lip service to the famine’s severity in Southeast Asia and the Americas, and debates over which superpower is most to blame. But what she really seems to mourn is the disappearance of peridot grapes and buttery mangoes and “the bitter green of endive.” Even catastrophe, we’re reminded, is bookended by the needs of the present, interrupted by the cravings of one’s palate. Throughout, Zhang, who wrote the novel after her first transformative post-pandemic meal at a restaurant, employs food as a stand-in for gratification (at one point, her central character refers to strawberries “as yielding as a woman’s inner thigh”). Continued here

You are receiving this mailer as a TradeBriefs subscriber. We fight fake/biased news through human curation & independent editorials. Your support of ads like these makes it possible. Alternatively, get TradeBriefs Premium (ad-free) for only $2/month If you still wish to unsubscribe, you can unsubscribe from all our emails here Our address is 309 Town Center 1, Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri East, Mumbai 400059 - 433006120