Ali

Escudos de clubes con vibes de los 2000s:

I think I unlocked a new Persian character this week. My Iranian tailor is decked out in tattoos, from his wrist to his neck. This includes a tattoo of the Faravahar on his chest (naturally, his first four buttons are unbuttoned), and of Zarathustra and his son’s face on his arms. He goes by a white name and wears a gold Sky-Dweller. He even drives a white German made car. He’s also married to an East Asian woman. Everything about this man pointed to ex-Muslim Pahlaviist. But then he told me (very, very proudly) that he’s going to heaven for sure because he got his wife to convert to Islam. He mentioned this multiple times, in fact. It almost had me wondering if he was saying this because he thought this is what a Pakistani might like to hear. He also really respected Pakistan for getting nuclear weapons, while expressing frustration at Iran’s inability to acquire nukes. “The best thing about Pakistan is they got the nuclear. Nobody messes with you when you get the nuclear. Iran is stupid. If we had it we wouldn’t be in this position.” Suffice to say I did not have a pro-conversion Persian man with the Faravahar tattooed on his chest rooting for the Islamic Republic on my bingo list for this year. The most intellectually diverse ppl.

Tommy Robinson is due to speak at the Oxford Union on May 28 in a debate about Islam. 5Pillars understands that the Islamophobes Laurence Fox and Calvin Robinson will also participate. The right wing Tory politician Jacob Rees Mogg will be opposing Robinson in the debate, while Muslim representatives are also being sought. Oxford Union President Arwa Elreyyes, who is Palestinian, has been heavily criticised for inviting Robinson to speak at the prestigious institution and is coming under pressure from Muslim students as well as women's rights groups. But she has defended the decision on free speech grounds. Protests are expected to take place on the day of the debate.

Researchers in Stockholm put a woman's egg in a dish next to sperm from two men: her partner and a stranger. Half the time, the egg pulled in more sperm from the stranger than from the man she'd chosen. This was a 2020 study from Stockholm University and the University of Manchester, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Until then, nobody had shown a human egg doing this. The fluid that surrounds an egg in a woman's body releases chemicals that act like a scent trail. Sperm follow the scent. The team put samples in thin glass tubes and counted how many sperm from each man swam in. All the eggs and sperm came from real couples going through IVF treatment. The pull was uneven. Eggs attracted 18 to 40 percent more sperm from one man over another, and inside the egg's fluid, sperm built up about 10 times more than in a plain comparison liquid. The team ran the experiment over and over, and the same pattern came out every time. The bigger finding came in who got picked. In half the cases, more sperm got pulled toward a stranger than toward her partner. The same sperm performed differently depending on which woman's fluid it was in. Sperm tails have a tiny gate on them. When the gate detects a hormone called progesterone (the same hormone tied to a woman's monthly cycle), it opens and the sperm kicks into a higher gear. Each woman's fluid has its own chemical mix, so different men's sperm respond differently. Some sperm get a strong push. Others barely react to the same fluid. Roughly 1 in 4 UK couples in fertility treatment have no idea why they can't have a baby. Every standard test comes back normal. If the egg and sperm reject each other chemically, no test catches it. The cycle fails. They get no answer, and they have to go through the entire thing again. In fertilization, the egg gets its own vote. The woman never feels it happen. Half the time in this study, that vote went to a stranger.

Today is World Donkey Day.