Alex Tanzi and Catarina Saraiva, Reporters - Bloomberg
Stephan: Our economy is a disaster for 90% of the people in America. The rich have increased their wealth by more than a trillion dollars in the last year. Meanwhile, 40% of American families could not write a $400 check in a crisis, and one in eight have food issues. Other than climate change there are two things I want to see this year: first, reversal of the Republican tax cut for the rich. Second, universal birthright single-payer healthcare.
Despite improvements in the overall poverty rate since the middle of the 20th century, Black Americans had been about three times as likely to be poor as White Americans for most of the past 60 years. The gap started to narrow after the financial crisis, during the longest economic expansion in history.
These December poverty estimates are based on survey data collected late in the month after some government relief measures expired. The researchers found that the stimulus checks the federal government issued in the spring helped forestall the poverty rate from rising even faster.
In late December, $900 billion in addition federal relief aid was passed, and President Joe Biden is asking Congress for an additional $1.9 trillion in stimulus.
Stephan: We are only a week into the Biden administration and already I see a new gestalt in the media, and it allows me to return SR to a balance that has been four years gone. Now I don't have to fill SR with what seemed a never-ending string of stories about Trumpian grifters, schemers, crooks, and hustlers. We have returned to integrity in government, and I can cover other trends, as I have done today.
Stephan: This is excellent news. Over the past four years, I have found the recurring reports of hunger, particularly child hunger, in the United States to be monstrous. The richest nation in the world and one in eight people report that in the last year they have had inadequate food. Meanwhile, billionaires are growing richer literally by the minute; it's obscene. Good for President Biden.
New Yorkers in need receive free produce, dry goods, and meat at a Food Bank for New York City distribution event at the Barclays Center on July 30, 2020 in New York City. Credit: Scott Heins/Getty
Social justice organizations and Democratic lawmakers on Friday welcomed President Joe Biden’s expected executive actions boosting federal food aid as part of a broader and immediate coronavirus relief effort.
“As someone who has relied on food stamps and works in Congress to make sure we continue to fund SNAP benefits, I’m grateful the president is taking steps to make sure struggling families and workers can put food on the table during this pandemic,” tweeted Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), Biden’s pick to lead the Interior Department.
SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, has faced surging demand in the economic fallout triggered by the pandemic.
The White House, in a statement, framed the actions as components of “equitable emergency economic relief” that would “help Americans persevere through the pandemic.”
Stephan: You have probably seen images of the Willendorf venuses, but this article gives them a new context, a new meaning.
Willendorf venuses
A new theory about the iconic Venus figurines has suggested that the sculptures represent how climate change affected humans over 30,000 years ago.The Venus figurines are statuettes depicting obese women that, up until now, were thought to have been associated with fertility and beauty. A recent study published in “Obesity” has suggested instead that the figurines are totems of survival in extreme conditions.Unlike the challenges of global warming people face today, humans 38,000 to 14,000 years ago struggled with colder temperatures due to advancing glaciers. This made it harder for people to meet their nutritional needs, and population sizes began to dwindle, according to the study.Selena Gomez: How beauty can influence our mental healthFat is a form of stored energy, said study author Dr. Richard Johnson, Tomas Berl professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and that fat can be lifesaving when food is not available, especially to pregnant women.”Our studies suggest these figurines did not represent sexual totems, or a representation of male desire, but rather as […]
Stephan: Did you ever wonder where racism came from? Genetically all humans are 99% the same. So why is racism so programmed into so many cultures? It is my view that racism arises from the fact that for thousands of years, far longer than our recorded history, there were multiple hominid species living at the same time. When you came over a hill and saw people on the hill across the river, how would you know whether they were one of yours or one of theirs? Should you embrace them or be afraid of them? Skin tone, facial features? After thousands of years "the other" just got programmed in. But that doesn't mean we cannot reprogram ourselves. I think our future depends on doing that.
An Australopithecus skull Credit: Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Getty
We Homo sapiens didn’t used to be alone. Long ago, there was a lot more human diversity; Homo sapiens lived alongside an estimated eight now-extinct species of human about 300,000 years ago. As recently as 15,000 years ago, we were sharing caves with another human species known as the Denisovans. And fossilized remains indicate an even higher number of early human species once populated Earth before our species came along.
“We have one human species right now, and historically, that’s really weird,” said Nick Longrich, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. “Not that far back, we weren’t that special, but now we’re the only ones left.”
So, how many early human species were there?
When it comes to figuring out exactly how many distinct species of humans existed, it gets complicated pretty quickly, especially because researchers keep unearthing new fossils that end up being totally separate and previously unknown species.
“The number is mounting, and it’ll vary depending on whom you talk to,” said John Stewart, an evolutionary paleoecologist at Bournemouth University in the […]
