SCCF is one of four Tennessee prisons currently operated by for-profit contractor CoreCivic, the second-largest private prison operator in the country. For every person it incarcerates, the company makes around $90 per day.

Australia spends the equivalent of over $5 on food per prisoner per day. Canada spends over $6. In the US, especially in the South, many prisons spend under $2. And increasingly outsource operations to private contractors promising to find ways to keep us alive for less. CoreCivic did not respond to Filter‘s inquiry about nutrition standards or food expenditures.

archive link: https://archive.ph/Mn7Ui

Ötzi the Iceman's many tattoos were made by "hand-poking" — a manual version of the tattooing technique usually used today — and not by cutting his skin as some researchers have suggested, according to a new study.

Ötzi died in Europe's Alps about 5,300 years ago, and his body remained mummified there for thousands of years until tourists discovered it in 1991 on a mountain pass near the border of Italy and Austria. Studies have since revealed many aspects of his life, including the tools and weapons he carried, his clothes and his last meal.

There have also been studies of Ötzi's 61 tattoos; but while it's often reported they were made by cutting the skin and rubbing soot into the incision, that doesn't seem to have been the case, according to study first author Aaron Deter-Wolf, an expert on ancient tattooing who works for the state of Tennessee's Department of Environment and Conservation.

Instead, "within reasonable doubt they are hand-poked, rather than being incised or being done in any other style," Deter-Wolf told Live Science.

The cost of specialized farm equipment is one of the biggest barriers for small-scale and beginning farmers. Cooperatives are springing up around the nation to help bridge the gap.

Linguists studying the Southern American Dialect reckon that it ain't what it used to be, y'all. I do declayuh!

Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and finds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fields of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human.

see also: list of rejected female names and list of rejected male names

One of the more distressing qualities of humanity, in my mind, is the emphasis we collectively put on “efficiency.”¹ It saturates our professional existence. It haunts our socioeconomic barometer. And it drives our current approach to both creating and appreciating art. It’s insidious, the inordinate amount of power “efficiency” holds over our daily lives, without even drawing much attention to itself, creeping up in unanticipated ways: the life hacks bombarding us on TikTok; the large language models we use to reduce the amount of effort we need to put into writing an email to our colleague; the Trim Silence feature on our podcast player of choice.

[...]I will admit that this is perhaps a weird hill to die on, but I truly believe that Trim Silence is an abomination that should be fully eradicated from existence, as it not only spits in the face of the people who take the time and effort to produce their shows, but also, more broadly, encourages a way of interfacing with art that can only be described as gluttonous.

Many perfumes and fragrances are unsustainably extracted from plants and animals or made from synthetic chemicals. I wanted to find another way.

"Inalienable Rights: Part I The Basic Argument" Against the Employer-Employee Contract and for Workplace Democracy

https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

@humanities

“The Tale of Genji,” often called Japan’s first novel, was written 1,000 years ago. Yet it still occupies a powerful place in the Japanese imagination. A popular TV drama, “Dear Radiance” – “Hikaru kimi e” – is based on the life of its author, Murasaki Shikibu: the lady-in-waiting whose experiences at court inspired the refined world of “Genji.”

Romantic relationships, poetry and political intrigue provide most of the novel’s action. Yet illness plays an important role in several crucial moments, most famously when one of the main character’s lovers, Yūgao, falls ill and passes away, killed by what appears to be a powerful spirit – as later happens to his wife, Aoi, as well.

Someone reading “The Tale of Genji” at the time it was written would have found this realistic – as would some people in different cultures around the world today. Records from early medieval Japan document numerous descriptions of spirit possession, usually blamed on spirits of the dead. As has been true in many times and places, physical and spiritual health were seen as intertwined.