Thomas

“The archival record backs up the testimony of the survivors. Neither crop failure nor bad weather caused the famine in Ukraine. Although the chaos of collectivization helped create the conditions that led to famine, the high numbers of deaths in Ukraine between 1932 and 1934, and especially the spike in the spring of 1933, were not caused directly by collectivization either. Starvation was the result, rather, of the forcible removal of food from people’s homes; the roadblocks that prevented peasants from seeking work or food; the harsh rules of the blacklists imposed on farms and villages; the restrictions on barter and trade; and the vicious propaganda campaign designed to persuade Ukrainians to watch, unmoved, as their neighbours died of hunger.”
― Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

“The ideology of kingship required—demanded—a male ruler. Yet Hatshepsut, as her very name announced, was female. Her response to this conundrum was deeply schizophrenic. On some monuments, especially those dating from the time before her accession, she had the images recarved to show her as a man. On others, she had female epithets applied to male monarchs of the past, in an apparent attempt to “feminize” her ancestors. Even when portrayed as a man, Hatshepsut often used grammatically feminine epithets, describing herself as the daughter (rather than son) of Ra, or the lady (rather than lord) of the Two Lands. The tension between male office and female officeholder was never satisfactorily resolved. Little wonder that Hatshepsut’s advisers came up with a new circumlocution for the monarch. From now on, the term for the palace, per-aa (literally “great house”), was applied also to its chief inhabitant. Peraa—pharaoh—now became the unique designation of the Egyptian ruler.”
― Toby Wilkinson, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

“Coming back from the G20 summit, Trump was editing an upcoming speech with Porter. Scribbling his thoughts in neat, clean penmanship, the president wrote, “TRADE IS BAD.” Though he never said it in a speech, he had finally found the summarizing phrase and truest expression of his protectionism, isolationism and fervent American nationalism.”
― Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

“Richard Stouthamer discovered a group of asexual, all-female wasps, which only reproduced by cloning themselves. This trait was the work of a bacterium, Wolbachia: when Stouthamer treated the wasps with antibiotics, the males suddenly reappeared and both sexes started mating again. Thierry Rigaud found bacteria in woodlice that transformed males into females by interfering with the production of male hormones; it was Wolbachia, too. In Fiji and Samoa, Greg Hurst found that a bacterium was killing the male embryos of the magnificent blue-moon butterfly, so that the females outnumbered the males by a hundred to one. Again: Wolbachia. Maybe not exactly the same strain, but all were different versions of the microbe from Hertig and Wolbach’s mosquito.”
― Ed Yong, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life