Mexico’s Molar City Could Transform Your Smile.

              (Burkhard Bilger’s post from THE NEWYORKER on 28 July 2025.)

Mexico’s Molar City Could Transform My Smile. Did I Want It To? More than a thousand dentists have set up shop in Los Algodones. Their patients are mostly Americans who can’t afford the U.S.’s dental care.

Los Algodones was built on leaps of faith. A short walk from the United States, it’s a place for the poor, the afflicted, the huddled masses without dental insurance. On weekday mornings in late winter, they start to arrive before dawn. They drive in from Arizona or California, catch a shuttle from Yuma, or park their car in a lot in the Sonoran Desert and cross the border on foot.

The path for pedestrians follows State Route 186, past a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses offering free Bible courses, along a twisting corridor of razor wire and chain-link fence, through passport control, and into Los Algodones.

Trafficking of Young Men and Boys in Myanmar

               (Based on the Burmese post from the FACE BOOK in August 2025.)

A destitute family of three in the hellhole called war-ravaged Myanmar. Old mother made and sold Burmese snacks under the big kokeko tree next to their tiny hut on the tiny piece of land they owned. The old father formerly was a carpenter but had a severe stroke and paralysed and ended up permanently in bed.

They have one young son who worked as a bricklayer and, being a good boy, he gave his daily wages to his old parents. Even though they were poor they had a reasonable life together. Then one day the tragedy struck.

On his way back home from work that day the boy was forcefully grabbed by the drafters from Mynamar Army and Myanmar Police, the hellish brutes, universally hated by their own people of Myanmar. They put him in jail and then went to his old parents and tried to haggle for his release.

Give us 10,000,000 Myanmar kyats (about US$ 2,500) if they want their son back, demanded they. Othewise he would be sent to a boot camp for two months and then be fighting the ethnic insurgents at the faraway front lines by the Chinese border.

Chongqing Basket Subway Line for Poor Vege Farmers

The Chongqing basket line refers to Chongqing Rail Transit Line 4, a metro line nicknamed the "Basket Line" because it's used daily by farmers to transport fresh produce in baskets from rural areas to city markets.

This unique system of urban-rural integration allows farmers to sell their goods at higher prices, while providing the city with fresh, local food and fostering a mutually beneficial connection between the countryside and the city center.

Chongqing is a direct-administered municipality in Southwestern China. Chongqing is one of the four direct-administered municipalities under the Central People's Government, along with Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. It is the only directly administrated municipality located deep inland.

The municipality covers a large geographical area roughly the size of Austria, which includes several disjunct urban areas in addition to Chongqing proper. Due to its classification, the municipality of Chongqing is the largest city proper in the world by population, though Chongqing is not the most populous urban area.

AI: The End of The English Essay Writing?

             (Hua Hsu’s post from the NEW YORKER MAGAZZINE on 30 June 2025.)

What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing? The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education. There are no reliable figures for how many students use A.I., just stories about how everyone is doing it.

On a blustery spring Thursday, just after midterms, I went out for noodles with Alex and Eugene, two undergraduates at New York University, to talk about how they use artificial intelligence in their schoolwork. When I first met Alex, last year, he was interested in a career in the arts, and he devoted a lot of his free time to photo shoots with his friends.

But he had recently decided on a more practical path: he wanted to become a C.P.A. His Thursdays were busy, and he had forty-five minutes until a study session for an accounting class. He stowed his skateboard under a bench in the restaurant and shook his laptop out of his bag, connecting to the internet before we sat down.

Turning Point When Your Body's Aging Accelerates

           (Michelle Starr’s post from the SCIENCE ALERT on 28 July 2025.)

Study Reveals Turning Point When Your Body's Aging Accelerates: The passage of time may be linear, but the course of human aging is not. Rather than a gradual transition, your life staggers and lurches through the rapid growth of childhood, the plateau of early adulthood, to an acceleration in aging as the decades progress.

Now, a new study has identified a turning point at which that acceleration typically takes place: at around age 50. After this time, the trajectory at which your tissues and organs age is steeper than the decades preceding, according to a study of proteins in human bodies across a wide range of adult ages – and your veins are among the fastest to decline.

"Based on aging-associated protein changes, we developed tissue-specific proteomic age clocks and characterized organ-level aging trajectories. Temporal analysis revealed an aging inflection around age 50, with blood vessels being a tissue that ages early and is markedly susceptible to aging," writes a team led by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "Together, our findings lay the groundwork for a systems-level understanding of human aging through the lens of proteins."

Trump’s Rare Earth Deal with KIA?

          (Antonio Graceffo’s post from the MIZZIMA-ENGLISH on 30 July 2025.)

Trump Administration Considers Rare Earth Deal That Could Reshape the Burma Conflict: In a groundbreaking shift, the Trump administration is reportedly considering two proposals for securing rare earth minerals from Myanmar, resources critical to advanced weaponry and battery production.

The first option would involve engaging directly with the military junta, which would carry the side effect of granting it de facto recognition. The second, far more transformative option, would be to bypass the junta entirely and negotiate directly with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the ethnic armed organization that controls most of Myanmar’s rare earth mining territory.

If the U.S. chooses the latter, it would mark a historic break from the longstanding convention of democratic governments only engaging with officially recognized state authorities. Such a move would not only grant legitimacy to the KIA but also offer hope to all of Burma’s ethnic armed organizations, many of which have long sought international recognition and support.

The Living Years by Mike & The Mechanics (1988)

         (Lyrics and the music video of “The Living Years by Mike & Mechanics”.)

Every generation, Blames the one before

And all of their frustrations, Come beating on your door

I know that I'm a prisoner, To all my Father held so dear

I know that I'm a hostage, To all his hopes and fears

I just wish I could have told him in the living years.

 

Oh, crumpled bits of paper, Filled with imperfect thought

Stilted conversations, I'm afraid that's all we've got

You say you just don't see it, He says it's perfect sense

You just can't get agreement, In this present tense

We all talk a different language, Talking in defence.

Trump working on Access to Myanmar's Rare Earths

             (Staff post from the REUTERS on 29 July 2025.)

Trump team hears pitches on access to Myanmar's rare earths: The Trump administration has heard competing proposals that would significantly alter longstanding U.S. policy toward Myanmar, with the aim of diverting its vast supplies of rare earth minerals away from strategic rival China, four people with direct knowledge of the discussions said.

Nothing has been decided and experts say there are huge logistical obstacles, but if the ideas are ever acted upon, Washington may need to strike a deal with the ethnic rebels controlling most of Myanmar's rich deposits of heavy rare earths.

Among the proposals are one advocating talks with Myanmar's ruling junta to get a peace deal with the Kachin Independence Army rebels and another calling for the U.S. to instead work directly with the KIA without engaging the junta. Washington has avoided direct talks with the country's military leaders following their overthrow of the country's democratically elected government in 2021.

Thailand Vs Cambodia Border War?

          (Facebook post from the PHILLIPINES STAR on 25 July 2025.)

Thai and Cambodian soldiers have clashed along the border between their countries in a major escalation that left at least 14 people dead, mostly civilians. The two sides fired small arms, artillery and rockets, and Thailand also launched airstrikes.

Fighting took place in at least six areas on Thursday, according to Thai Defense Ministry spokesperson Surasant Kongsiri, a day after a land mine explosion along the border wounded five Thai soldiers and led Bangkok to withdraw its ambassador from Cambodia and expel Cambodia’s envoy to Thailand.

On Friday, Cambodia’s chief official in Oddar Meanchey province, Gen. Khov Ly, said clashes resumed early in the morning near the ancient Ta Muen Thom temple. Associated Press reporters near the border could hear sounds of artillery from early morning hours.