Read A Profoundly Beautiful Letter Einstein Wrote To His Daughter About The Universal Force Of Love

WATCH THE FULL SPEECH: Caitlyn Jenner Takes ESPYs By Storm: ‘Trans People Deserve Something Vital. They Deserve Your Respect’

Life in Technicolor: Glasses for the colorblind

With so much of our world color-coded, life can be quite tricky without the ability to see the full range of the rainbow.

For the 13 million Americans (and 300 million people worldwide) with color vision deficiency or blindness, living with the inability to detect red, blue, green or a mixture of these colors means having to learn to discern traffic lights or subways lines based on order and patterns rather than color, or having to ask someone whether the piece of meat they’re about to ingest is actually well-done.

However, EnChroma, one of several emerging startups founded by University of California alums, is changing the way people with color vision deficiency experience the world. They make eyewear that corrects for the most common color blindness. 

According to Marc Levin, a neuro-ophthalmologist at UCSF, the lenses work by changing how light is received by the brain for those whose eyes lack sensitivity to red and green light wavelengths. It filters out light that the red and green light-absorbing molecules/photopigments in our eyes sense most similarly. This helps the brain receive more distinct color wavelength information.

While their glasses currently only work for people with red-green color blindness, the company hopes to eventually create lenses that will also help individuals with more severe color vision deficiencies.

GIF source: Valspar Paint

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وجمعة مباركة للجميع

While these may be controversial & provocative, Muslims have no right to be offended by it. What’s offensive is that atheism is punishable with the death penalty in Saudi Arabia & many other Muslim-majority countries both in the middle east & outside of it. Not all Muslim-majority countries have the death penalty, but there are other punishments like prison, lashes, annulment of marriage, loss of child custody & family inheritance, seizure of property, loss of employment, & others.

Even if these laws didn’t exist, atheists still experience oppression from society. Most will not come out to their families for fear of being disowned, kicked out, or even worse, killed. If the apartheid laws weren’t bad enough, you still have to worry about how your family, friends, & neighbours will react to your lack of faith. So these pictures aren’t offensive, they’re resistance against oppression & apartheid. When you oppress a group of people so much & take away their right to live, expect the frustration to be released one way or another, even if it pisses off your oppressors.

While one can try to argue that the death penalty has nothing to do with Islam, the politicians & clerics who advocate the law use Sharia, verses from the Quran, & hadiths to support it. Only a tiny minority of clerics & fiqh experts oppose it, & they are constantly being accused of apostasy themselves.

Thirteen countries punish atheism with the death penalty. These are Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Qatar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, & Sudan. All are Muslim-majority & use Sharia to varying degrees, except for Nigeria but the death penalty only applies in certain Muslim-majority states in the north.

Until these laws no longer exist & atheists can finally live, Muslims have no right to be offended by legitimate resistance & our response to oppression.

Testimonies from Saudi atheists I personally know:

“It’s hell. Religion is always pushed down our throats. We’ve worked so hard to get rid of the brainwash we’ve been receiving all our lives just to put on a mask every fucking day in front of people. A socially acceptable mask. It’s like we’re in a zombie apocalypse & we’re disguising as zombies to not have our brains eaten. You MUST agree with them. You MUST wear that mask every fucking day of your life. You start to get less & less chances in life of taking that mask off & relaxing for a bit & the more you wear that mask the more painful it gets because that fucking mask is poisonous. But you wear it anyway because the alternative is getting killed.”

“The first thing I’d start with is how hard it is to live a double life. Religion & the place I’m living in are some of the reasons why I’m suffering from severe depression. Religion haunts me. I’m always having nightmares that I’ve been caught & will face beheading. My life is in danger 24/7.”

“In Saudi Arabia, god is your judge, jury, & executioner. God is not in the sky but on the ground in the form of long bearded men with evil in their eyes. God wanted me dead but now god can’t reach me (thanks to getting asylum). How godly of him.”

“Being an atheist single mother is terrifying. I’m always paranoid someone will find out & take my son away from me because I’m an “unfit mother”. It breaks my heart that I have to lie to him about god & religion because he’s too young to realize how dangerous speaking the truth is.”

“I can’t think of anything that would describe it better than hell. It’s way too risky to say anything.”

“I seriously don’t want to think about this shitty place we live in becuse I’m already depressed as fuck.”

As a child, I once touched an untouchable. For this infraction I was forced by my grandmother to swallow cow dung as a punishment. I was also made to drink cow urine and bathe in Ganga water to purify myself. This experience ingrained in me what untouchability was in the minds of my community. These women here with me once cleaned human excrement from toilets, and this made them untouchables. They had to wear bells around their necks to warn families of their approach. They were forbidden from going to the temple, doing puja, even bathing in the Ganga. Their children could only play with the pigs and not with children of higher castes.

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International, an India-based social service organization (via brahmaanda)

Solar System: Things to Explore on Your Phone This Week

Let our apps lead you on a journey of exploration across the Earth, through the solar system and beyond. Here are some to download today:

1. Actually, it is rocket science Rocket Science 101 let’s you select your favorite mission and build a rocket to take you to destinations near and far. Learn how launch vehicles are configured and how their boosters and other component parts work together to successfully launch spacecraft. 

iOS Google Play

2. Go to Mars (sort of) Be A Martian lets you experience Mars as if you were there! Join an international community of explorers. See the latest images of the Red Planet! Learn about Mars, ask questions, and check out behind-the-scenes videos of the missions.

iOS Google Play

3. All the Earth science With Earth Now, watch Earth science satellites in real time as they gather data about our home planet. Get real-time images of the places we call home. Check out global climate data, including surface air temperature, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, and sea level variations.

iOS Google Play

4. Pretty pictures Discover stunning images and videos of our planet Earth, space, stars and planets with Space Images. Find your favorite galaxies and explore our celestial neighborhood.

iOS Google Play

5. Ch-ch-ch-changes Images of Change give you a close-up view of our ever-changing planet. Inside this app, before and after image pairs show areas that have been subject to natural disasters or seen significant change over time.

iOS

Last but not least: NASA on the go With our official NASA app, explore and discover the latest images, videos, mission information, news, feature stories, tweets, NASA TV and featured content from across America’s space program.

iOS Google Play

Our apps let you explore our latest images, videos,and mission news.

Discover the full list of 10 apps showcasing our solar system this week HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Eye Study Underscores the Long Lasting Benefits of Controlling Diabetes

NIH-funded study shows less diabetic retinopathy progression among those who underwent intensive glycemic control.

The research is in Diabetes Care. (full access paywall)

Stephen Hawking’s quote speaks to the heart of why basic income has become such a popular idea in one vital industry in recent years.

Follow @the-future-now​

Watch Powerful Spoken Word Poem “Black Joke” By Taylor Steele

In her poem “Black Joke” poet Taylor Steele highlights the most common jokes White people throw at Black people. She perfectly explains how unthoughtful it is of people to say such things and how an intention to come off as funny turns you into a racist. Next time you come up with a witty remark, think twice before letting unwholesome word proceed from your mouth.

Full poem

#BlackLivesMatter

Sources:

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