Now We Finally Know What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like

Autumn in the Forest // By John McCann

A friend reminded me to include Dara Dubinet in this blog. Click *here* for her Youtube channel where you can find lots of raw recipes and learn more about the raw lifestyle!

i think the world doesn’t know what it really means to live in a theocratic dictatorship. Let me tell you about our experiences living in the islamic regime of iran.

1. Your parents were born to muslim parents so they’re automatically muslim. You’re automatically a muslim too. You didn’t choose your religion and you can’t opt out of it or you will be executed.

2. The compulsory hijab law makes you a criminal if you choose not to wear hijab even tho you didn’t choose to be a muslim and you don’t consider yourself a muslim but the regime has forced you into that role whether you like it or not. And when you ‘break that law’, they can do with you as they please.

3. little girls as young as 7 yrs old are forced to wear hijab at school even tho the islam itself says the age is 9. and all the schools are gender segregated so imagine how they force you to get used to hijab even when you’re just surrounded by other girls. And all day long at school they tell you horrible stories about what will happen to you in hell if someone sees even a strand of your hair.

4. the regime modifies all the textbooks, story books, cartoons and movies to represent the ideal woman with full on hijab. The iranian media is ordered to photoshop every photo of a woman that may be showing a little skin. And if they’re iranian, no hair is supposed to be seen or that will be photoshopped away. Women are mostly excluded from billboards and tv commercials.

5. imagine going to work or meeting up with a friend when suddenly the morality police kidnap you in broad daylight and force you into a van to take you to a station where they will treat you like a criminal and if you don’t agree to get humiliated and do as they say, they will put you in prison. And in case of Mahsa Amini and so many more before her, they will beat you to death. My sister was barely 18 when she got kidnapped and they didn’t let her call home and she’d been so fucking scared and we had no idea where she was. Imagine all the psychological trauma.

6. If you’re in a car and not wearing hijab they will fine you and seize your car. So when u get into a taxi the driver will ask you to keep your hijab on otherwise they’ll get fined. And if you refuse they’ll ask you to get off the car.

7. And its not just about hijab. In Ramadan, they get even more vicious. If they catch you eating or even drinking water on the street they will give you lashes as punishment and even imprison you for breaking the law. If you work in a state-owned company it’s even worse. They will close the cafeteria and take away the water dispensers. All restaurants are banned from delivering food before iftar. It’s a fucking mess. Everyone has to pretend they’re fasting or they’ll be severely punished.

8. And how could I forget about this! iranian women are banned from singing! the islamic regime prohibits women’s singing voices to be heard by men so imagine the horror of having 50% of the population banned from ever becoming a singer. If they identify a female singer in iran, they will take her to jail and force her to repent her sins in the most humiliating way so that she will never dare sing again.

9. And every time the regime gets wind of a private gathering of men and women trying to have fun and live their fucking private lives, the police crash the party and take everyone to jail bc the Islamic regime bans iranian men and women from having fun.

So if you see Islam has become for many iranians a symbol of oppression and torture and discrimination, that’s why. The regime uses islam as a weapon to silence and punish anyone who opposes them. You can love islam all you want from the safety of your home in a free country and talk about how kind and benevolent the religion is, but in iran, it’s a whole different story.

Our economy is fucked. All govt officials are corrupt as fuck. Most websites are banned in iran. Even tumblr is banned. The world has cut the iranian ppl from many services. We don’t have intl credit cards like visa card. Amazon doesn’t do delivery to iran. We cant get netflix, spotify or even a gamepass subscription. we don’t get any Apple services here. iran isn’t listed as a country you could choose when signing up for a lot of services. and when we decide to leave iran and escape this hellhole, every country out there will make it sooo much harder for us to get a visa just bc we had the misfortune to be born in iran at the wrong time.

This is the story of iran for the past 44 years. Held hostage by a corrupt regime that uses religion to suppress and torture the people and being abandoned by the rest of the world bc our lives don’t matter.

Please be our voice. Once they shut down the internet completely and silence our voice, they will start slaughtering us to stifle the protests just like they did in 2019. Please help us. We want this fucking regime gone.

The Topography of Africa.

by eastofnowhere

Keep reading

Neural Stem Cells Regenerate Axons in Severe Spinal Cord Injury New relay circuits, formed across sites of complete spinal transaction, result in functional recovery in rats In a study at the University of California, San Diego and VA San Diego Healthcare, researchers were able to regenerate “an astonishing degree” of axonal growth at the site of severe spinal cord injury in rats.  Their research revealed that early stage neurons have the ability to survive and extend axons to form new, functional neuronal relays across an injury site in the adult central nervous system (CNS).   The study also proved that at least some types of adult CNS axons can overcome a normally inhibitory growth environment to grow over long distances.  Importantly, stem cells across species exhibit these properties. The work will be published in the journal Cell on September 14. (For a history of spinal cord repair science and the significance of this latest work, read Ohio State University neuroscientist Phillip Popovich’s review here.) The UC San Diego-led team embedded neural stem cells in a matrix of fibrin (a protein key to blood-clotting that is already used in human neuron procedures), mixed with growth factors to form a gel.  The gel was then applied to the injury site in rats with completely severed spinal cords. “Using this method, after six weeks, the number of axons emerging from the injury site exceeded by 200-fold what had ever been seen before,” said Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor in the UC San Diego Department of Neurosciences and director of the UCSD Center for Neural Repair, who headed the study. “The axons also grew 10 times the length of axons in any previous study and, importantly, the regeneration of these axons resulted in significant functional improvement.” In addition, adult cells above the injury site regenerated into the neural stem cells, establishing a new relay circuit that could be measured electrically. “By stimulating the spinal cord four segments above the injury and recording this electrical stimulation three segments below, we detected new relays across the transaction site,” said Tuszynski. To confirm that the mechanism underlying recovery was due to formation of new relays, when rats recovered, their spinal cords were re-transected above the implant.  The rats lost motor function – confirming formation of new relays across the injury.  The grafting procedure resulted in significant functional improvement: On a 21-point walking scale, without treatment, the rats score was only 1.5; following the stem cell therapy, it rose to 7 – a score reflecting the animals’ ability to move all joints of affected legs. Results were then replicated using two human stem cell lines, one already in human trials for ALS.  “We obtained the exact results using human cells as we had in the rat cells,” said Tuszynski. The study made use of green fluorescent proteins (GFP), a technique that had never before been used to track neural stem cell growth. “By tagging the cells with GFP, we were able to observe the stem cells grow, become neurons and grow axons, showing us the full ability of these cells to grow and make connections with the host neurons,” said first author Paul Lu, PhD, assistant research scientist at UCSD’s Center for Neural Repair. “This is very exciting, because the technology didn’t exist before.” Pictured: Artist’s rendering of neurons