Category Archives: Post Human

(Sarah Parnass,Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)

MOSUL Iraqs prime minister showed up Sunday in the city of Mosul to declare victory in the nine-month battle for control of the Islamic States former capital in Iraq, signaling the near-end of the most grueling campaign against the extremist group to date and dealing a near-fatal blow to the survival of its self-declared caliphate.

Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has arrived in Mosul to personally congratulate the Iraqi security forces on achieving victory, a statement from his office said.

The official Twitter account of the prime minister tweeted a photo of him shaking hands and congratulating Iraqi forces for liberating the city.

But air strikes continued as the afternoon wore on, with Iraqi special forces continuing their push against a last pocket of Islamic State territory, thought to be no more than 200 yards deep and 50 wide.

Thousands of civilians had poured out of that shrinking redoubt in recent weeks, many of them in tears as they stumbled to safety. Stuck between the Islamic State and the U.S.-led coalition airstrikes propelling the campaign to save them, many said they had spent weeks with barely any food or water. Without medical care, the wounded had died in or under their homes.

Mosul was the largest city to fall to Islamic State control. It was from the citys medieval mosque that the groups leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the birth of a caliphate spanning swaths of Syria and Iraq.

Three years later, that building lies in ruins, after the Islamist militants blew it up as Iraqi forces moved in. Mosuls recapture comes as the Islamic State has lost more than 60 percent of its territory and 80 percent of its revenue, according to analysis by IHS Markit.

The loss of Mosul means ISIS is no longer the same, for better or worse. Its no longer the quasi-state that it projected itself to be, said Hassan Hassan, a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

The offensive has been grueling. According to aid groups, thousands of civilians have been killed. Much of the western districts have been shattered by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, as well as Islamic State car bombs and shelling.

In the final days of the battle, commanders said militants had sent suicide bombers out among fleeing civilians and used children as human shields in the winding alleyways of the Old City.

Standing in the ruins of what was once a family home, Staff Sgt. Rasoul Saeed said the fight had been incomparable. It is the hardest battle we have ever fought. At the end we are bogged down in alleyways, without vehicles, alone against the enemy, he said. And they have got women in there, they have trapped children.

The city, like others in Iraq, has been devastated by the military campaign to dislodge the Islamic State. The United Nations predicts that at least $1 billion will be required to rebuild Mosuls basic infrastructure. More extensive reconstruction could cost billions more.

In the Old City, streets have been leveled. Rubble and twisted rebar are piled high through the alleyways, burying mattresses, flip-flops and other remnants of the lives Islamic State fighters built there. No one here knows how many civilians also remain under the rubble of their homes.

Liz Sly contributed to this report from Beirut.

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Thousands of Iraqis have fled Mosul, but this American family moved in

Smoke-filled pool halls are back in Mosul. After ISIS, we seek joy.

I thought, this is it: One mans escape from an Islamic State mass execution

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Iraq's prime minister arrives in Mosul to declare victory over ISIS - Washington Post

By New Scientist By New Scientist July 8 at 7:38 AM

Its a sex-laced mystery. If modern humans didnt reach Europe until about 60,000 years ago, how has DNA from them turned up in a Neanderthal fossil in Germany from 124,000 years ago?

The answer seems to be that there was a previous migration of early humans more than 219,000 years ago.

The thinking had been that the ancestors of modern humans diverged from Neanderthals and Denisovans between 550,000 and 765,000 years ago. While Neanderthals and Denisovans inhabited Eurasia, modern humans stayed in Africa until about 60,000 years ago. Then they entered Europe, too.

There is ample evidence of breeding between Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans about 50,000 years ago. Everyone knows Neanderthals gave us genes, says Cosimo Posth at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Leipzig, Germany.

Analysis of mitochondrial DNA from a Neanderthal femur found in southwestern Germany now adds to evidence that there was earlier interbreeding. The DNA in the energy-producing mitochondria in our cells is different from that in our cell nuclei, and is passed down only in the female line.

Puzzlingly, the mtDNA in Neanderthal bones is more similar to that of modern humans than it is to that of the Denisovans.

Posth and his colleagues looked at differences between the mtDNA in this femur and in other Neanderthals, and they used mutational rates to calculate that the bone is 124,000 years old. The approach also indicates that this Neanderthal split from all other known Neanderthals sometime between 316,000 and 219,000 years ago. Yet it still contains key elements of early-human mtDNA.

This means that modern human ancestors must have interbred with Neanderthals before 219,000 years ago and hence could have migrated out of Africa and into Europe much earlier than we thought.

We are realizing more and more that the evolutionary history of modern and archaic humans was a lot more reticulated than we would have thought 10 years ago, says team member Fernando Racimo of the New York Genome Center. This and previous findings are lending support to models with frequent interbreeding events.

The team says an earlier migration event is also compatible with evidence of archaeological similarities between Africa and western Eurasia.

Read More

A scientist needed help studying Neanderthal teeth so he asked his dentist

Your Neanderthal DNA might actually be doing you some good

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Early humans and Neanderthals interbred much earlier than once thought - Washington Post

Measures A and B. Anita Bryant. Rev. Marvin Rickard. The Los Gatos Christian Church.

When you say these names today you get blank stares. But in 1980 they were at the center of a battle for local policies protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment, housing, and public services.

Back then, the battle for anti-discrimination protections was fought largely at the city or county level because there were no federal or state laws. Californias first such law wasnt signed until 1992.

One of the first measures was in Miami-Dade County in 1977. Opposition came swiftly from Anita Bryanta Miss American runner-up and Florida orange juice pitchwoman. Bryant founded Save Our Children, which led a highly publicized and successful campaign to repeal the ordinances.

Two years later, pro- and anti-gay forces collided in Silicon Valley when the Board of Supervisors took up the matter. Serving on the board were supervisors Dominic Cortese, Rod Diridon, Dan McCorquodale, Gerry Steinberg and Susanne Wilson.

Opposition quickly emerged. Led by Rev. Marvin Rickard of the Los Gatos Christian Church, hundreds of vocal opponents attended each of the six public hearings, far outnumbering supporters. The vote was 4 to 1 for the ordinance, with Cortese voting no.

With far less fanfare, the San Jose City Council then voted 6 to 1 for a city ordinance.

Opponents wasted no time gathering signatures to stop the ordinances from taking effect. The measures were placed on the June 1980 ballot. A yes vote meant you favored the protections; a no vote signified you wanted them repealed.

The campaign was ugly, with opponents getting funding and advice from the Moral Majority and Anita Bryants campaign. Vote no for the sake of our children, read their literature, adding Dont let it spread.

The San Jose Mercury News came out strongly in favor of the anti-discrimination laws. If the voters vote no, they will be saying, explicitly, that homosexuals in this community do not have legal recourse when they suffer discrimination.

The election was a blowout, with 70 percent of San Jose voters and 65 percent of county voters rejecting the ordinances. The message was clear: gays not wanted.

I was always curious how this could have happened in our progressive community. Did the supervisors not know that across the country such measures were being overturned? Did they not expect the religious right to come out in force to oppose them?

To answer these questions, Terry Christensen and I got the supervisors together for a special one-hour show on Valley Politics.

In brief, they said they were surprised at the fervent hostility the ordinance generated because they saw the issue as one of basic human rights, much like other matters at the time. Moreover, labor, the Democratic Party and liberal churches were in support.

Despite growing opposition, the supervisors never considered rescinding their vote because, as Supervisor McCorquodale said on the show, it would be too disheartening to too many people.

You can watch their conversation on YouTube by searching for CREATVSANJOSE, then go to Valley Politics. Or catch the show on Comcast Ch. 30 Wednesdays at 8 p.m and Sundays at 9 p.m.

Listening to the supervisors conversation, I felt proud of their legacy. They put their careers on the line to make sure that I and others had legal protections.

Whether gay rights in the 1980s or immigrant rights today, supervisors remain leaders for the underrepresented and disenfranchised, often ahead of public opinionknowing that in time, the public will catch up.

Ken Yeager is completing his final term on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors this year. Previously a San Jose City Council member, he was the first openly gay elected official in the county. He wrote this for The Mercury News.

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Ken Yeager: Remember when Silicon Valley was anti-gay? Not that long ago - The Mercury News

A Taekwondo expert caught up in a horrific blaze while out camping has shared pictures of his painful blisters as a warning to others.

Geoff Bulfin, 47, and his partner Vicky were left with serious burns after a portable stove leaked gas into their tent and it burst into flames.

Geoff, a founding member of Blue Dragon ITF Taekwondo who have a centre in Birkenhead , could now face months of skin grafts at Whiston hospital.

He told the ECHO; It just took me by surprise. All I remember is a bang and big flames and that was it.

I didnt even realise I had burnt myself.

People need to be taught of the dangers of these camping stoves. I dont want to think about what could have happened if a child was nearby.

His friend, Alasdair Walkinshaw, 45 said the tent turning into a blazing fire ball within seconds.

He told the ECHO: I was getting ready when I heard this I heard this whoosh sound. I thought it was an airbed bursting.

Then I heard the screams half a second after.

I stuck my head out of the tent and Geoff was feeling his way out of the tent.

It was like a mushroom cloud of smoke.

Geoff emerged with flames all over him.

The accident happened during a Taekwondo trip to Shell Island on June 30.

Alasadair added: Vicky was still inside and Geoff tried to go back in to rescue her.

I did think she would be in serious trouble.

My daughters fiancs managed to rip the tent and pull her out.

Only the quick reactions of the few of us that had arrived, saved the situation from becoming much worse.

Vic was dragged from the tent with her hair burnt and suffering from burns to her leg.

Geoff on the other hand had taken the full force of the blast and had to lie under to tap of the water point near our encampment.

It was awful but could have been a lot worse. I did not realise Geoff would be the worse one.

Geoff, from Cheshire, decided to use a camping stove inside the tent when it was too windy to make a cup of tea outside.

But he didnt realise it was leaking profane gas into the tent in the moments before the accident.

Now he wants to warn other of the dangers they pose, particularly as people head off on camping holidays this summer.

The deadly explosion happened while around 50 members of the Taekwondo club were arriving to the camping site for the training weekend.

He said: I was wearing a bomber jacket and it melted.

I should have had more burns.

Geoff is recovering in the hospital after his miraculous escape and getting treatment for third degree burns to his hands and face.

His wife Vicky is now at home.

Alasdair said: A week ago he was walking his daughter down the aisle.

Nothing seems to get him down

He now hopes to raise money to help Geoff while he is off work recovering as he needs his hands to work.

You can donate here: https:// http://www.gofundme.com/geoff-vics-support-fund

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'Human fireball' camper shows his painful blisters to warn of tent safety - Liverpool Echo

A Michigan chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is warning thatsomebody is coming to take union jobs. Not immigrants, not robots but goats.

After Western Michigan University renteda crew of 20 goats to clear weeds and brush this summer, AFSCME filed a grievance contending that the work the goats are doing in a wooded lot is taking away jobs from laid-off union workers, according to the Detroit Free Press.

If you haven't been paying attention, goat rentals are all the rage in landscaping right now. With their voracious appetites they can clear weeds and brush in areas that humans have a hard time reaching. They're gentler on the environment than heavy landscaping equipment or chemicals. They will eat literally anything, including poison ivy.

If you're a union representing guys who mow or clear brush for a living, you can see the threat coming from a mile away even if said threat has two horns, four legs and looks adorablein a sweater.

AFSCME's warning got us thinking just how many jobs are really at risk from the rise of goat-scaping? What follows is a heavily simplified, back-of-the-envelope, it's-Friday-afternoon-and-nothing-really-matters estimate of the potential impact of goat labor on the U.S. workforce. Are you ready?

The first thing we need to do is figure out how much land a goat and a person can clear in a given period of time. We're going to assume the human is operating a tractor with a Bush Hog BH16 Single-Spindle Rotary Cutter attached. With a cutting width of 72 inches, the Hog can handle tree saplings up to 2 inches in diameter perfect for the kind of rough undergrowth that goats are often deployed to.

We'll assume our employee is running the tractor at about 3.5 mph, the middle-of-the-ground-speed-range recommended in the Bush Hog's manual. According to the mowing calculator at tractordata.com, an information repository for all things tractor-related, that setup should be capable of clearing about 18 acres of land in an eight-hour workday.

There are, of course, literally hundreds of external factors that could influence this number.A worker using only a handheld trimmer say, a guy working for a landscaping company wouldn't be able to clear nearly as much. Rough or varied terrain might require using a smaller cutter. Easier terrain could let you get away with going faster.

But this number seems like a good, middle-of-the-road estimate for what one person could reasonably accomplish. It's also more or less in line with rough estimates for brush-clearing rates given in various online forums by people who do this type of thing for a living.

On to goats then. According to the pamphlet Using Goats for Brush Control as a Business Strategy, published by the Cooperative Extension at the University of Arkansas, a generalruleofthumbisthat 10 goatswillclearanacreinaboutonemonth. Sometimes it takes more goats, sometimes fewer. But that seems to be the average.

Now we need to standardize the time period to make the goat and human numbers comparable. If one person can clear 18 acres in a day, how many acres can they clear in 30?

We're going to assume a normal worker who takes weekends, so call it 20 days of actual labor (or four 5-day weeks). That works out to 360 acres cleared in a month by one person, compared to 1 acre cleared by 10 goats. Multiply 360 by 10 to get the per-goat work equivalent, and you get something like this.

In a month, our typical human can do the brush-clearing work of about3,6oo goats. Take that, goats! Humans rule! But wait: Exactly how many worker-goats are there in the United States?

The unfortunate answer to that question is, we don't know. The USDA does issue annual head counts of the nation's goat population. But it only tracks subcategories such as meat and dairy, the products goats have traditionally been used for.It doesn't include newer innovations such as weeding goats, yoga goats, therapy goats orpack goats.

However, a September 2005 report from the USDA notes that goats can be multipurpose. Since producers can be paid for grazing their goats in troubled areas, there appears to be a synergy to this type of operation with either dairy or meat (market kid) production, according to the report. Producers could receive payment for grazing and then sell kids or dairy products, thereby benefiting twice from their goat herd.

So let's assume worst-case scenario: How many jobs would be at risk if each one of the nation's meat and dairy goats also had a side job clearing brush? Per the USDA there are about 2.5 million meat and dairy goats in the U.S. as of 2017. Divide that by 3,600 to determine how many human brush-clearing jobs they could replace.

Further divide that number by 2, since we assume that brush-clearing only happens duringthe growing season (May through October, or half of the year), and we have an estimate of how many full-time-equivalent human jobs are threatened by goats in a typical year.

That's ... actually not a lot of jobs. If you consider that only some unknown fraction of the nation's meat and dairy goats are actually currently being used to clear brush, the number gets even smaller.

Again, this is a wild,back-of-the-envelope calculation subject to who knows how much error. (If you have a better one I'd love to hear it!)It relies heavily on the assumptions above, which are probably wildly inaccurate in certain circumstances. If tractors aren't available, for instance, humans lose a good portion of their advantage over goats.

Butthe overall degree of magnitude, or lack thereof, of the final number suggests that goats won't be taking a bite out of the national jobs numbers anytime soon.

None of which is any comfort if you're a laid-off union worker in Michigan watching a goat do a job that was once yours.

Icons by Symbolon, Gan Khoon Lay, Hamish, Pro Symbols, H Alberto Gongora, Sagit Milshtein and Andrew Doane, the Noun Project.

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Forget robots the goats are coming for our jobs - Washington Post

Scientists in Canada have used commercially available genetic material to piece together the extinct horsepox virus, a cousin of the smallpox virus that killed as many as a billion human beings before being eradicated.

The laboratory achievement was reported Thursday in a news article in the journal Science.

The lead researcher in Canada, David Evans, a molecular virologist at the University of Alberta, told The Washington Post that his efforts are aimed at developing vaccines and cancer treatments. There is nothing dangerous about the synthetic horsepox virus, which is not harmful to humans.

He has not yet published his findings in a scientific journal how to report this kind of research is necessarily fraught for the editors of such journals but he did discuss them at a meeting on smallpox research last November at the World Health Organization in Geneva. A report on the meeting published by the WHO noted that Evans had received approval from regulatory authorities for his work, but the report added that those authorities may not have fully appreciated the need for regulation of the steps involved in synthesizing a virulent horse pathogen.

Evans said he has applied for a patent and is collaborating with a commercial company, Tonix Pharmaceuticals. In a news release, Tonix said it hopes to use horsepox virus to develop a new vaccine for smallpox that is safer than the one currently available, which can have serious side effects.

Evans said he was not trying to prove a point, but he acknowledged that he has long argued that it would be possible to synthesize a pox virus through laboratory techniques.

Smallpox, the deadliest disease in human history, was formally declared eradicated in 1980. Government officials and virologists have long debated whether to destroy the existing samples of smallpox kept under close guard at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as in government facilities in Russia. One argument against doing so, advanced by Evans and others, is that destroying the known stocks would not conclusively get rid of smallpox, because there could be unknown caches of the virus hidden somewhere, and that, in any case, modern techniques would be able to synthesize the virus based on already published genetic sequences.

Evans's experiment, according to Science, required about $100,000, a relatively modest sum, and used commercially available genetic material. Companies sell scraps of cloned DNA that scientists stitch together. Laws restrict access to smallpox genes, however, and Evans said that even a highly credentialed researcher would not be able to obtain such material: Youd probably get a call from the FBI if you tried.

Evans said the creation of synthetic horsepox isn't trivially easy. He said he was not seeking publicity and wished that news organizations would not make a fuss about his work.

Whether you can make the virus, or whether there are these hidden stocks of virus, doesnt change the fact that in the case of smallpox, we have to be prepared for it, he said. I dont know whether the risk has gone up or not. The fact were talking about it is to some extent increasing the risk.

Tom Frieden, former head of the CDC, said the breakthrough was not surprising but probably makes the debate over destroying the existing smallpox stockpiles less relevant. He said it highlights the need to monitor more closely dual-use experiments research that could be used either for protective purposes or, in theory, to create a deadly pathogen.

It is a brave new world out there with the ability to re-create organisms that existed in the past or create organisms that have never existed, said Frieden, who favors limiting the number of such experiments and institutions where they can take place.

Frieden said this research should spur improvements in laboratory safety to prevent the accidental release of microbes something that has happened a number of times in American facilities and others around the world. The broader story here, Frieden said, is that the U.S. and other countries need to be prepared for emerging pathogens, which can and will appear naturally no laboratory necessary.

That sentiment was echoed by Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The danger of naturally evolving microbes, like Zika, like pandemic influenza, like Ebola, that naturally evolve, are much more of a threat to civilization than the possibility that someone might be able to synthesize a microbe, Fauci told The Washington Post. People should concentrate on what weve been talking about for a long time: getting ourselves prepared for the natural emergence in nature of microbes that could threaten us.

Smallpox vaccination programs ceased several decades ago after the smallpox virus stopped circulating widely. Today, a majority of Americans have never been vaccinated against smallpox. That's a straightforward example of risk analysis: The potential side effects (including, in rare cases, death) from smallpox vaccination have been viewed as greater than the risk of anyone becoming infected with the virus once it stopped circulating in the population.

Ethicists have struggled with the question of how to handle dual-use biomedical research.

We are still struggling with how to manage the dual-use dilemma. How do we get the benefit of the research without the risk of it being turned against us? said Alta Charo, a law professor and bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin who has followed the debate closely.

She cautioned against overreaction to Evans's research. Creating a pathogen is not the same thing as weaponizing one, she said.

Peter Jahrling, director of the NIH Integrated Research Facility, praised Evans's work: I think he did a terrific service. You had a lot of people saying this can't be done. And he said yes it can. Jahrling added, If he had done it with smallpox virus, that would be a real [tempest]."

Jahrling and other experts noted that a synthetic polio virus was built in a lab some years ago. The pox viruses are much larger, and their synthesis represents a breakthrough. But Jahrling said this kind of work could be replicated by other researchers.

Maybe not some guy in a cave, Jahrling said. But a reasonably equipped undergraduate microbiology lab could repeat this trick.

The smallpox virus's complete genome has been known since the 1990s. Scientists and government officials debated whether the genomic information should be published, but synthetic biology was such a primitive field at the time that few people expected anyone would be able to reconstitute the virus.

Since then, biotechnology has advanced at a stunning rate. The global health community has known for roughly a decade that synthesis of pox viruses, including smallpox, was possible, said Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and author of Synthetic Biology: Safety, Security and Promise. The Evans experiment, she said, had no technical breakthrough.

Still, restrictions are in place to prevent smallpox DNA from falling into the wrong hands. In the United States, experiments that are identified as Dual Use Research of Concern go through an additional round of review by funding agencies and must include a risk mitigation plan in their design.Last year, the World Health Organization recommended that no institution be allowed to posses more than 20 percent of the smallpox virus's genome. Companies that produce DNA for research are required to screen customers' orders for matches against known pathogens.

You couldnt have somebody just order smallpox DNA to a P.O. box, Gronvall said.

This is not the first experimental work on engineered pox viruses. In 2001, Australian researchers manipulated the genetic code of mouse pox and showed that it could be deadly even to those who had been vaccinated or naturally immune. A researcher in St. Louis demonstrated similar alterations in mouse pox in 2003, inciting alarms about the potential misuse of biomedical experiments.

Such concerns spiked after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks of that autumn. The controversy flared again in 2011 when researchers in Wisconsin and the Netherlands conducted experiments on bird flu virus. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity urged the journals Science and Nature to refrain from publishing the research, and the journals initially complied. But the researchers later revealed that their experiments did not create any killer pathogens, and publication went forward.

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the breakthrough with horsepox suggests that similar work is likely to be occurring around the planet.

The question is how many other people have done it. We never thought or expected it to come from a place like Alberta, he said. It's not one of the leading universities in the world for microbiology and synthetic biology. If it came out of there, how many other places like this are also doing the same work right now? He said the U.S. government is unprepared to handle an emergency involving a synthetic pathogen particularly given that many senior positions haven't been filled yet by the Trump administration.

This has been the storm coming for years, Osterholm said. Weve known about it, but unfortunately, were not ready.

Ariana Eunjung Cha and Sarah Kaplan contributed to this report.

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Scientists synthesize smallpox cousin in ominous breakthrough - Washington Post

You've heard this one before. It's a classic tale of romance, really. Your biological parents, presumably one of which is a sex robotand/or doll sent back in time from the year 2030 to put their simulated procreation abilities to good use, have probably told you a similar version of this story a million times. Boy meets robot, robot moves in with family, and everyone lives synthetically ever after.

Anyway, just in case your heart needs further warming this Friday, let's meetMasayuki Ozaki of Tokyo, who told AFP in a recent interview that a sex doll namedMayu is, no exaggeration here, the "love of his life."

The dollalong with three othersreside with Ozaki in the same house he shares with his wife and teen daughter. "Even when things don't go well at work or even if I had a bad day, I feel safe knowing that shes always awake, waiting for me,"Ozaki said, seemingly unaware of the immediate existential quandaryhe was likely thrusting viewers into upon hearing such comments about a doll.

But there's more, so prepare thy heart.Ozaki, described by AFP as a 45-year-old physiotherapist, said it was "love at first sight" when he spotted Mayu in the showroom. "After my wife gave birth we stopped having sex and I felt a deep sense of loneliness," he said. Now, he takes Mayu on wheelchair-assisted dates. Sex dolls, miraculously, are unable to walk around. Probably because they're dolls.

Speaking of not being alive, Ozaki is already making plans to bring Mayu and the other dolls with him for some post-existence hangouts. "In Japan, people are cremated," he explained, "but I'm told I wouldn't be allowed to be cremated with them." Bummer. Instead, he's considering just getting buried with all four dolls, as one does.

These particular silicone dolls run about $6,000 and move around 2000 units a year. In other words, jump right into the nightmare of post-human dystopia. The water's warm!

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This Story of a Man and the Sex Doll He Calls the Love of His Life is the Creepiest Shit You'll Read Today - Complex

A few months ago I had an interesting, albeit brief, conversation with a father of a daughter and son. I was fascinated to hear him say that he exerts energy on "protecting" and teaching his daughter about the perils of dating boys, but doesn't do the same with his son.

Hearing that was rather interesting to me as a mother to three young women. I had always assumed that parents of boys were putting the same amount of energy into teaching their sons about being good partners as my friends and I were putting into telling our girls about how to not only pick a great partner, but how to be one.

It seems to me that the world is still a bit behind in teaching young boys how to treat young women. In fact, judging by some of the stories I've come across in recent weeks of escalating violence against women, I think it is a perfect time to address the elephant in the parenting room.

Boys don't raise themselves. Boys don't learn how to respect, honour and treat women as their equals if they're not taught it at home. Forgive me for saying it, or for coming across as old-fashioned, but I truly believe that young men who are being "raised" on a steady stream of video games and social-media porn are not learning how to be decent members of society at all.

Now, before I offend all the parents of boys out there, I would like to say that obviously this doesn't fall on the shoulders of all the parents raising young men out there. I happen to know a fair few who are doing an excellent job in teaching their boys how to be responsible global citizens.

Also, I'm in no way, shape or form excluding the poor parenting that some parents are also doing with their girls. Poor parenting is not gender specific: the trend toward lazy parenting applies to parents of both sexes. This is a trend that needs to be nipped in the bud. The world needs all of us to be giving our parenting our all, at all times. Parenting is not a part time gig, it is 24 hours, seven days a week for LIFE.

I like to think that if I had a son, I would have raised him in the same way I raised my girls. Everything I did as a mother was with one desired outcome in mind: I wanted to be able to enjoy the company of my own kids as adults. If I didn't parent them when they were younger to be kind, respectful and thoughtful individuals, how would they grow into those sort of human beings on their own?

The answer is, which I'm confident you already know: They wouldn't.

Meaning the onus falls on us, the parents, to raise them into this. This includes the parents of boys. I suppose it is a given that we want our little girls to be polite, kind and respectful, but don't we want the same for our sons? I'd say since we still live in a time where the bulk of leadership roles and jobs are held by men, we need to raise them with these qualities even more so than our daughters.

Nothing about being a decent human being "just happens" -- these are all qualities that are taught, so if up until this point you've been the parent of a young boy who has had more of a "he'll figure it out on his own" approach, I invite you to rethink your parenting strategy.

Take a more active role in raising your son. Invest the same energy teaching your son how he should act in the world as you would in your daughter, rather than letting the world show him how it's done. You won't be disappointed. You'll end up having a son who is one of your favourite people on this earth. You can trust me on this, I have three adult daughters who are my favourite people.

Also on HuffPost:

Things I Never Said Until I Had A Son

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To Parents Of Boys: Please Raise Them To Be Decent Human Beings - Huffington Post Canada

Lena Dunham is caught-up in what shes calling, unironically, a micro-scandal.

An animal shelter in Brooklyn claims the 31-year-old creator of HBOs Girls series lied about her dog Lamby, who she recently gave away because, she said, it has behavioral problems. (Shes previously tweeted about Lambys Prozac prescription).

The shelter where Dunham got her dog, meanwhile, told Yahoo News this week that Lamby did not have a traumatic past. Dunham hit back, as they say, with another Instagram post Thursday night, insisting she did not lie. I will not apologize, she said, explaining that as the dogs mother she did what was best.

The whole incident is like 85 percent of the reason why people hate millennials,so-called coastal elites and the blackhole that is celebrity social media in 2017.

But beyond that trifecta of horror, and overlooking the question of whether or not Dunham told the truth, the real vexation of the Lamby situation is the way Dunham talks about her relationship with the dog, continuously referring to herself as Lambys mom.

This isnt just a Dunham quirk either. Shes just another annoying dog-person whos confused having a pet with raising a human child.

I did what I thought the best mother would do, which was to give him a life that provided for his specific needs, Dunham wrote in herInstagram post this week. Hed been with me for nearly four years and I was his mom- I was in the best position to discern what those needs were.

Lena Dunham is a lot of things: Creator of a truly funny and original show that changed the way women are portrayed on the small screen. She is a talented comic actor. A skilled essayist.The creator of a cool email newsletter. A provocateur even.

She is not, however, a mother.

The relationships adult humans have with their pets are indeed complex, loving and beautiful. I do not doubt there was a real canine to human bond here, as Dunham aptly demonstrated with many cute photos on her Instagram (and on Lambys personalInstagram) over the years. Alas, a dog is not a human child.

Would the mother of a human child explain why she gave away her kid after four years by writing this? Shout out to @jennikonner for listening to endless hours of Lamby pain, and especially my partner @jackantonoff for loving him even when he ruined floors and couches and our life.

Dunham owned her dog for a few years, and apparently it peed on the floor a lot and didnt always act the way it was supposed to. (I mean, its a dog.) So, she gave it up.

We can leave the shelter and Dunham and the rest of the internet to quibble about why the dog was annoying, I guess.

None of this is typically how parenting works. Parents of young children clean up kid pee, vomit, poop and god knows what other horrors from our homes and our bodies. We deal. We learn that we cannot have nice things. Theres typically not another option.

Also, its worth noting: Dunham saw this coming.

Nothing about my life these days makes me an especially good candidate for having a dog. For starters, Im never home. I work all the time, and when Im not working Im asleep in a pile on my couch, Dunham wrote in a New Yorker essay about getting Lamby in 2013. She also says that her boyfriend is allergic to dogs and not especially interested in getting one.

She recounts her first nights with the dog, how it kept her awake with its barking. Still, by the end of the essay at least, she makes her peace.

He is mine, and I am old enough to have him, she writes.

Its possible that was the biggest lie of all.

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Link:
The Real Problem With Lena Dunham And Her Dog - HuffPost

We dont normally associate online sports coverage with pushing the boundaries of multimedia fiction, but Voxs SB Nation blog dropped a fascinating, mind-bending treat on the internet last night, in the form of Jon Bois speculative 17776, or What Football Will Look Like In The Future. Consisting (so far) of scrolling text interludes interspersed with pictures and video, Bois serial story is still in progress, but seems largely concerned with the why of sports. That is, given the massive resources, time, and information at our disposal (not to mention those available to our descendants), why does communal game-playing still hold such an important place in society? To say more would be to risk spoilers on a truly innovative piece of work, so if youve got an hour to spend thinking about football, consciousness, hope, despair, and the absolutely staggering amount of creative latitude SB Nation apparently allows its premiere writers, you can start the story right here.

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The future of football is post-human despair (and fascinating sports meta-fiction) - A.V. Club