A COVID-19 Breakthrough, Women Who Support The Taliban, and The Other Side of the Story - Dinner Table Digest № 17
The Dinner Table Digest is an intermittent collection of interesting material from around the internet, curated by Peter Thurley at Dinner Table Don'ts. Subscribe today!
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The Other Afghan Women - Anand Gopal, The New Yorker
As we learned in a previous Digest, the questions around the failed war in Afghanistan are often far more complicated than our news reports or politicians indicate. Not surprisingly, then, there are women in the Afghani countryside who prefer Taliban rule to that of the coalition forces. Where coalition forces drop bombs, make deals with oppressive warlords and ruthlessly destroy property in their quest to root our extremism, the Taliban provides peace. For many in rural Afghanistan, the strict obedience required in exchange for peace is preferable to the death visited on villagers by coalition forces.
The Taliban takeover has restored order to the conservative countryside while plunging the comparatively liberal streets of Kabul into fear and hopelessness. This reversal of fates brings to light the unspoken premise of the past two decades: if U.S. troops kept battling the Taliban in the countryside, then life in the cities could blossom. This may have been a sustainable project—the Taliban were unable to capture cities in the face of U.S. airpower. But was it just? Can the rights of one community depend, in perpetuity, on the deprivation of rights in another? In Sangin, whenever I brought up the question of gender, village women reacted with derision. “They are giving rights to Kabul women, and they are killing women here,” Pazaro said. “Is this justice?” Marzia, from Pan Killay, told me, “This is not ‘women’s rights’ when you are killing us, killing our brothers, killing our fathers.” Khalida, from a nearby village, said, “The Americans did not bring us any rights. They just came, fought, killed, and left.”
Moroccan-British comedian Fathiha El-Ghorri jokes about being a good Muslim woman… who is twice divorced. The format is a bit weird, as she’s performing for a screen-based audience, but it’s COVID, so what are ya gonna do?
Researchers discover hidden SARS-CoV-2 'gate' that opens to allow COVID-19 infection - National Science Foundation
Now, Amaro and colleagues at UC San Diego, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have discovered how glycans -- molecules that make up a sugary residue around the edges of the spike protein -- act as infection gateways.
Published in the journal Nature Chemistry, a U.S. National Science Foundation-supported study by Amaro, along with Lillian Chong at the University of Pittsburgh, UC San Diego researcher Terra Sztain and UC San Diego scientist Surl-Hee Ahn describes the discovery of glycan "gates" that open to allow SARS-CoV-2 entry.
"We essentially figured out how the spike actually opens and infects," said Amaro, senior author of the new study. "We've unlocked an important secret of the spike in how it infects cells. Without this gate the virus basically is rendered incapable of infection."
Amaro believes the team's gate discovery opens potential avenues for new therapeutics to counter SARS-CoV-2 infection. If glycan gates could be pharmacologically locked in the closed position, then the virus is effectively prevented from opening to entry and infection.
The Other Side of the Story - Jenny Kutner - Texas Monthly
Through this piece, published in 2013 and written by a woman who was groomed into a sexual and emotional relationship with a male teacher, we learn, as much as one can through writing, what it feels like to be a 14-year-old girl who has fallen in love with her teacher. And it's not what you might think. Reader Discretion is Advised - While the physical assault is never described, author descriptions may be triggering to some.
I used one simple fact to justify the lies: neither Trace Lehrer nor I had committed a crime. We spent afternoons chatting and caressing and concealing ourselves in a truck, but nobody broke any laws in the beginning. All the lies I told about Trace Lehrer seemed vaguely harmless then. I would store each deception mentally as if it were money in a swear jar. The untruths built up as that uncountable mass of coins does, a jumble of bad behavior contained in glass with a lid.
But, just as a swear jar can’t eliminate obscenities—and just as it hardly prevents their future use—I kept storing up more and more lies without ever thinking that I should consider telling the truth. The faint, rational voice in my head told me that I couldn’t hide a grown-up love affair under the roof of my childhood home. I might have been a naive, insecure fourteen-year-old, but I knew that Trace Lehrer was only safe in secret. And so I kept hold of the jar full of lies. Some other voice in my head told me that my parents would find the jar someday, not necessarily because they went looking for it. Instead, they would finally notice it sitting out in the open.
All-female death metal bands are very, very rare. This song captures many of the thoughts and feelings I had as I moved through my deconversion experience.
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