from a comment on "Silver Banner Mine" by ghostsniper

BREASTMILK

She thought she was studying milk.
What she uncovered was a conversation.

In 2008, evolutionary anthropologist Katie Hinde was working in a primate research lab in California, analyzing breast milk from rhesus macaque mothers. She had hundreds of samples and thousands of data points. Everything looked ordinary—until one pattern refused to go away.

Mothers raising sons produced milk richer in fat and protein.
Mothers raising daughters produced a larger volume with different nutrient balances.

It was consistent. Repeatable. And deeply uncomfortable for the scientific consensus.

Colleagues suggested error. Noise. Statistical coincidence.
But Katie trusted the data.

And the data pointed to a radical idea.

Milk is not just nutrition.
It is information.

For decades, biology treated breast milk as simple fuel. Calories in. Growth out. But if milk were only calories, why would it change depending on the sex of the baby?

Katie kept digging.

Across more than 250 mothers and over 700 sampling events, the story grew more complex. Younger, first-time mothers produced milk with fewer calories but significantly higher levels of cortisol—the stress hormone.

The babies who drank it grew faster.
They were also more alert, more cautious, more anxious.

Milk wasn’t just building bodies.
It was shaping behavior.

Then came the discovery that changed everything.

When a baby nurses, microscopic amounts of saliva flow back into the breast. That saliva carries biological signals about the infant’s immune system. If the baby is getting sick, the mother’s body detects it.

Within hours, the milk changes.

White blood cells surge.
Macrophages multiply.
Targeted antibodies appear.

When the baby recovers, the milk returns to baseline.

This was not coincidence.
It was call and response.

A biological dialogue refined over millions of years. Invisible—until someone thought to listen.

As Katie reviewed existing research, she noticed something unsettling. There were twice as many scientific studies on erectile dysfunction as on breast milk composition.

The first food every human consumes.
The substance that shaped our species.
Largely ignored.

So she did something bold.

She launched a blog with a deliberately provocative name: Mammals Suck Milk.
It exploded. Over a million readers in its first year. Parents. Doctors. Scientists. People asking questions research had skipped.

The discoveries kept coming.

Milk changes by time of day.
Foremilk differs from hindmilk.
Human milk contains over 200 oligosaccharides babies can’t digest—because they exist to feed beneficial gut bacteria.
Every mother’s milk is biologically unique.

In 2017, Katie brought this work to a TED stage. In 2020, it reached a global audience through Netflix’s Babies. Today, at Arizona State University’s Comparative Lactation Lab, she continues reshaping how medicine understands infant development, neonatal care, formula design, and public health.

The implications are staggering.

Milk has been evolving for more than 200 million years—longer than dinosaurs walked the Earth. What we once dismissed as simple nourishment is one of the most sophisticated communication systems biology has ever produced.

Katie Hinde didn’t just study milk.
She revealed that nourishment is intelligence.
A living, responsive system shaping who we become before we ever speak.

All because one scientist refused to accept that half the story was “measurement error.”

Sometimes the biggest revolutions begin by listening to what everyone else ignores.

Continue reading →

posted by SK as a comment to "Harold Warp's Pioneer Village"

Listening to Dave Stamey singing about cowboys a little while ago, and looking at this story about “soddies” got me thinking about family. My grandfather, a Scot, was for a time a rancher and a cowboy in Saskatchewan just after the turn of the last century.

I am in the process of cleaning up, sorting, eliminating and distributing the contents of what was my parents home for fifty years. Their small midwestern farm became mine a couple of years ago because no one else wanted it, or the hassle of all that’s required following the departure of old people from this world. It has been quite the project, mostly because of the thousands of books to go through. My father and mother were voracious readers.

My father collected a few things. First and foremost books, but he also liked fountain pens, letter openers, pocket watches and interesting coins. I found confederate bank notes tucked inside a book about the Civil War and old Canadian banknotes in another book. Every box and book has had to be opened. In one of my father’s medical books I found his first letter of recommendation for a job dated 1954. That was just before he left the UK, and socialised medicine, for a job as an outport doctor in Newfoundland where he had his practice on a hospital boat.

Going through drawers and boxes full of old photos, I found pictures of my cowboy grandpa. Photos I had never seen before. His winter wedding in Calgary in the early 1920s. My grandmother in her wedding dress, wrapped in buffalo robes or bear hides, in a sleigh pulled by two horses, surrounded by snow. Pictures of my cowboy grandpa in his chaps, a cowboy hat and big fur lined jacket, standing beside his horse. Those western Canadian winters were not for the faint of heart. My grandparents were tough. Just like those Nebraska homesteaders and Harold Warp, although Harold in front of the automobile in 1924 makes him and Nebraska look more prosperous. We are so spoiled today in comparison in terms of creature comforts. Maybe less so when it comes to personal freedoms.

I also found a large colored poster with my grandfather’s photo from when he signed up to “The European War, for King and Empire”, to join the 1st Canadian Contingent, British Expeditionary Force, Divisional Artillery, First Artillery Brigade. He enlisted at Netherhill, Saskatchewan in August 1914. He was nineteen years old and, at six feet six inches, very tall for his generation. He never spoke about ww1 and everyone knew it was because it was too awful.

He taught my father cowboy songs, and while ww2 was raging my grandmother taught him the then popular “Don’t Fence Me In”. My father taught the cowboy songs to me and my brothers. We know the words to many. My dad also learned to love Newfoundland fishing songs when he was on his boat…”I’se the Bye that Builds the Boat” and many others. We can all sing those too by heart.

A cowboy singer called Sagebrush Sam (real name Omar Blondahl) who was born in Wynyard, Saskatchewan to Icelandic parents stopped in Newfoundland one day in 1955 on his way to Iceland to see his father. He heard the Newfoundland folk and fishing songs. He thought they were beautiful and went on to become much more famous singing those than cowboy songs as Sagebrush Sam. I’ve put a link at the bottom to one called “The Little Blue Hen”.

As I’ve gone through this family history, stored in boxes and books, I’ve reflected on the fact that being born late mid 20th century, I am in personal touch with lives that reach back to remote times and places in the 19th century where everyday life was incredibly hard, into the war torn early 20th century, and then from the comfortable part of the 20th century well into the 21st where, with AI, our future as humans with humanoids may be very different. Seems remarkable really.

Also remarkable that my grandfathers on both sides survived active duty in two world wars but my brothers and I, by luck of birthdates and birthplaces, have never been personally threatened by war. We all learned how to handle machines and boats, fishing rods, guns and horses. We all love open spaces and own land. We all grow things and can defend ourselves. It must be something in our DNA because we’ve all taken very different paths in life. I like to think it is a strong cowboy strand.

Looking at old letters and photos, clothes and shoes, jewelry and little, personal, things that had been treasured and kept, reinforces the notion that every person is actually a whole world unto themselves and that everyone’s life, no matter how ordinary it may seem, is interesting and important. When any person dies a whole world disappears with them. When there is no one left who remembers us, and we are only names in a graveyard, there is still the DNA that carries us all forward into the future.

I’m hoping for future cowboys when I’m gone.

Continue reading →

For some reason, this office layout has appealed to me. I don't know why, it certainly wouldn't be practical for my work ... but there it is.

Looks like a gas lamp; between that and the phone, this could be anytime between 1880s-1910s. I don't remember in which museum I found it.

I have used phones like the one here - service was cancelled in 1965. Spin the crank to get the operator's attention, tell her the number you want, and presto - there you go talking to someone down the street. I still have the phone I used but my father threw the guts away because they were too heavy - the guts being essentially a magneto generator that creates quite a spark. It now hangs neutered on my dining room wall.

Continue reading →

Sgt Schultz - John Banner's Birthday

Also the day of his death - on his 63rd birthday.

John Banner was born in Vienna on January 28, 1910 as Johann Banner. He died at Sofien Hospital in Vienna on January 28, 1973 of an abdominal hemorrhage. Although married for 30 years, he had no children. Like many of the actors and staff of Hogan's Heroes, John Banner was Jewish.

Originally planning on studying law, he instead became interested in theatre. He was with an acting company in Switzerland when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938. Unable to return home, he emigrated to the US as a political refugee. He appeared in several films as a Nazi, often in uncredited roles - later finding the real Nazis had killed his entire family. In 1942, he enlisted in the US Army Air Force as a supply sergeant until war's end.

He claimed it was his wife's good cooking that caused him to gain 100 pounds.

He had appeared in over 70 TV shows such as Hazel, Mr Ed, Lucy, Red Skelton, Alias Smith & Jones, and The Partridge Family but it was Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971) that made him known internationally: "I know nothing!". He was one of six actors that appeared on every episode. After Hogan's Heroes was cancelled, he starred in a much less successful show that was cancelled after 3 months. In 1972, he retired after a final appearance on The Partridge Family and moved to France, his wife's native land. He died while visiting friends in Vienna where he is buried.

Continue reading →