{"id":263436,"date":"2024-09-09T08:50:17","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T13:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=263436"},"modified":"2024-09-09T08:50:27","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T13:50:27","slug":"how-a-journalist-became-the-talibans-portrait-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/09\/09\/how-a-journalist-became-the-talibans-portrait-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"How a journalist became the Taliban’s portrait artist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From The Economist<\/a>: “One winter morning in 2022 I found myself being pushed, blindfolded, into a Taliban interrogation room in Kabul. A guard I couldn\u2019t see shoved me into a chair. I heard the door close, then nothing. I had no idea why the Taliban had taken me. One possibility was that they might be trying to use me as a bargaining chip in their dealings with the West. My speculation was interrupted by a voice to my right telling me, in English, to remove my blindfold. When I did so I saw a powerfully built man sitting at a desk. He wore a black skullcap, and a bulky camouflage jacket which made him look even larger. For the next hour the man grilled me, trying to get me to admit I was a spy. Had I been to Iran? Which was my favourite Bond film? He wrote down my responses. Suddenly he looked up from his notes and said: \u201cYou\u2019re going to be hanged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists made the skin of mice transparent using a common food dye<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Scientific American<\/a>: “In mere minutes, smearing mice with a common food dye can make a desired portion of their skin almost as transparent as glass. In a study published in Science, <\/em>researchers spread a solution of the dye tartrazine, a common coloring for foods, drugs and cosmetics, onto living mice to turn their tissues clear\u2014creating a temporary window that revealed organs, muscles and blood vessels in their body. The procedure\u2014a new form of a technique known as \u201coptical tissue clearing\u201d\u2014has not yet been tested in humans, but it may someday offer a way to view and monitor injuries or diseases without the need of specialized imaging equipment or invasive surgery. The fats and proteins in skin typically have higher refractive indexes than the water, which creates a contrast that you can\u2019t see through. In the study, Ou and his colleagues looked for light-absorbing molecules that could make the various refractive indexes within the layers of skin more similar\u2014reducing the amount of light scattered throughout.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can\u00a0see other issues\u00a0and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Can the stranded Boeing Starliner astronauts vote from the space station?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Ad Astra<\/a>: “In 1997, Texas passed a law that allowed astronauts to vote from space. NASA\u2019s astronaut program is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, so that\u2019s where the astronauts live, work, and are registered to vote. Some astronauts are registered to vote elsewhere, and NASA has worked with their local county election offices as well. In order to vote from space, astronauts have to fill out what\u2019s called the Federal Post Card Application or FPCA. This is the tricky part though: For astronauts, it HAS to be submitted in person before departure. And it\u2019s likely Butch and Suni didn\u2019t go through this process because they didn\u2019t know they\u2019d be in space come November 5. After the astronaut on the ISS completes their ballot, it\u2019s sent back to NASA through the Near Space Network, which is managed out of NASA Goddard in Maryland.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why top Olympic athletes use baking soda to boost performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Outside<\/a>: “It was a very fast Olympics. Half of the distance running events\u2014six of the 12 men\u2019s and women\u2019s races between 800 meters and the marathon\u2014saw new Olympic records. The newest supershoes had something to do with it, and the fancy new track probably did too. There\u2019s also a new, more aggressive approach to racing that seems to be spreading. But there\u2019s something else, too, according to Canada\u2019s Marco Arop, whose silver medal performance in the 800 meters, a mere hundredth of a second behind Emmanuel Wanyonyi of Kenya, made him the fourth fastest man in history. Just a week before the Olympics, Arop decided to try something new\u2014something that he\u2019d never tried before but that, according to an anonymous Olympic runner quoted in the Telegraph<\/em>, at least 80 percent of elite runners are now using: sodium bicarbonate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cold War was the peak of offbeat Arctic research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Undark<\/a>: “At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, as the fear of nuclear Armageddon hung over American and Soviet citizens, \u00adidealistic scientists and engineers saw the vast Arctic region as a place of unlimited potential for creating a bold new future. Greenland emerged as the most tantalizing proving ground for their research. Scientists and engineers working for and with the U.S. military cooked up a rash of audacious cold-region projects \u2014 some innovative, and most quickly abandoned. They were the stuff of science fiction: disposing of nuclear waste by letting it melt through the ice; moving people, supplies, and missiles below the ice using subways, some perhaps atomic powered; testing hovercraft to zip over impassable crevasses; making furniture from a frozen mix of ice and soil; and even building a nuclear-powered city under the ice sheet.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How traditional Romanian culture created a whirlpool for washing clothes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Traditional Romanian washing machines used the flow of rivers to create a whirlpool effect. pic.twitter.com\/TgkthXj6GG<\/a><\/p>— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) September 8, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>