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Okay I swear I'm pulling back from social media and the internet this weekend, just not apparently, tonight...

1. To Fix the NYC Subway System, Fix the Schedule.

One hundred and thirty years ago, North American railroad engineers standardized time zones to impose temporal order over a vast continent, and avoid crashing trains into each other. Not long after, the New York City subway set the world standard for glorious, 24-hour service.

These days, human-driven rail in NYC is feeling its age. In the first four months of 2017, just 63 percent of the city’s subway cars arrived at the end of their lines within five minutes of their scheduled times—bringing “on-time performance” down 21 percentage points since 2012.

The effects on passengers are well documented: Lost time means lost appointments, jobs, and wages, perhaps billions of dollars annually. Crumbling infrastructure, nonstop construction, signal slow-downs, labor costs, and riders themselves are the oft-heard explanations for why the trains can’t run on time.

But there’s another, largely overlooked element that is worth paying attention to, some operators and analysts say. Even in the absence of signal failures, door-holding, and sick passengers creating delays, drivers are struggling more than ever to stick to the scheduled running times on the busiest lines. Not only do timetables measure delays (i.e., whether trains are arriving “on time”), they may also be causing them—because people are not machines.

I hope management looks into this. So far all the governor and management is doing is hiring and creating yet another layer of management. Because, if something isn't working properly, the obvious response is to hire more people at a senior management level to puzzle over how to fix it.

2. Kerfuffle over Diveristy in Roman Britain

In recent years, researchers have turned to ancient DNA from burial sites to better understand ancient populations. Last year, a study of nine ancient Roman skeletons in Britain found a lot of similarity with British Celtic populations. One skeleton, though, showed much more affinity with modern Middle East populations.

This is a more direct picture of the past but it’s still an incomplete one. First, the number of bodies available to sample is often small. Second, the number of samples that yield DNA after hundreds or thousands of years are even smaller. And lastly, the amount of DNA you can get is usually a tiny portion of the genome. “You have to be very careful about what assumptions you bring into your study,” says Jennifer Raff, an anthropologist who studies ancient DNA at the University of Kansas. For example, a recent intriguing study of 90 Egyptian mummies showed they were more genetically similar to modern Middle Easterners than central Africans. But of course only the wealthy were mummified, so it’s not a complete picture of ancient Egypt.

Geary, the historian at the Institute for Advanced Study, is studying ancient DNA from cemeteries around Geary, the historian at the Institute for Advanced Study, is studying ancient DNA from cemeteries around present-day Lombardy in Italy. He is very careful about how he presents his work and avoids speculation in his talks. While his research has turned up two distinct groups of people, he told me he resists giving them names that identify one or the other as the “real Lombards”:

I was talking to one of our board of trustees at the Institute—a billionaire who has an interest in what we’re doing—and I said, “Well, we have this central northern population and this southern.” He said, “No, no, you can’t call them that. You’ve got to give them names. That’s how you’re going to get attention and funding.” But of course that’s exactly what we mustn’t do because then one falls into this ethnic discourse that we are trying to avoid.

Applying these labels—and maybe even the act of resisting labels—is a matter of historical interpretation. Genetic data is subject to interpretation like any kind of data. When something as trivial as a five-minute children’s video can inflame the culture wars, so will any genetics study that even touches on notions of race and ethnicity.

3. The Global Food System Still Benefits the Rich at the Expense to the Poor

Ramen noodles in Sweden, wheat bread in Tanzania and Chilean wines in China. The cross-Atlantic transit of the potato and the tomato from the Andes to Europe, and back again as French fries and pasta sauce. We think of the world as globalised and sophisticated in its food tastes, and our palettes as curious and ever-expanding. Food spreads cultural acceptance and understanding.

But the spread of food also exposes a darker underlying history of globalisation and industrialisation. Patterns in the way that food is distributed around the world follow colonial-industrial trends from the past. And while global trade has helped lift many out of poverty, it has not done so evenly. It has kept a colonialist imprint on the planet in a different way: with differentiated access to nutritious food and the rise of obesity and other food-related health problems.

Beyond adding unusual grains or fancy foods to their palettes, wealthy shoppers might have their pick of green beans imported from Kenya to the UK, or beef and grains grown in Uruguay by US farmers.

Meanwhile, eaters in developing countries are more likely to eat "exotic" foods like white bread, maize or rice. These are less nutritious because of the way in which they are processed. In addition, exotic food crops tend to require unsustainable farming practices, like using more water in places where it's already a scarce resource.

To escape these patterns, a new way of engaging with the complexity of food systems is needed. We need to adopt an approach that recognises that challenges are systemic and that they can't be solved with silver bullet solutions.

A more systemic approach could help shift the global food system because it recognises that food production must become more environmentally sustainable and must be designed in a way that meets the needs of the world's people in an equitable and just manner.

Understanding the food system as a complex system with interlinking social and ecological aspects is an important step that resilience thinking brings to the table of food system governance.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-global-food-benefits-rich-expense.html#jCp

This has been a problem as long as I can remember. When I was in high school and participated in a mock UN (my dream job back then was to be a delegate to the United Nations.), we were the country of Ghana, which meant we didn't get to do much but listen to the other countries bicker. But we did a lot of research on how Nestle was selling a poor milk substitute to Ghana and killing their children as a result. (This resulted in my personal boycott of Nestle products for a very very long time.)
All for the corporate buck.

Remember studying up on it again, when I was considering applying for a job with Bill Clinton's foundation, but alas I'm not an ecologist or a botanist or an agricultural expert. We are a consumptive society though. And when I was broke and unemployed, I realized how hard it was to buy healthy foods. The cheap stuff is the heavily processed, grains, additive laden, and filled with sodium and salt. I couldn't afford my diet back then. Actually my unemployment probably in part lead to my latter illness. For example? A hot dog or a burger is about $1.99 at McDonalds or Burger King, while a salad was $5. At least it was back then.

4. Inhumans is apparently awful

Early reviews are in and the new Marvel Series "The Inhumans" is deemed simply awful. (Not surprising considering how silly the trailer looks.)

A review posted on Spoiler TV absolutely rips apart Marvel’s Inhumans, which is set to be the first TV series to debut in IMAX when it comes out on September 1st (the show will air on ABC starting September 25th). If this is what we’re in for, however, I don’t think many people will be lining up for the pleasure of paying to see it:

Simply awful. I’m so disappointed since I generally love everything Marvel does. But this is absolutely terrible. The dialogue is atrocious. The fight sequences are shockingly choreographed. The sets (or more-so the obvious green-screen) aren’t that crash hot either. It’s only saving grace is Lockjaw who is adorable. As one of the few people that actually liked Iron Fist, I can easily say that this is Scott Buck’s worst work yet.

Well that's a bit disappointing. Although, considering it's by the same guy who did Iron Fist...which I was also among the few who sort of liked it, not all that surprising.

5. New York Public Library Offers Free Streaming of Films From Criterion Collection with Library Card

Now, where did I put that library card?