Daily Archives: June 1, 2020

Financial planners are now finding it much easier to recommend reverse mortgages after the evolution of the product.Evelyn M. Zohlen, certified financial planner, founder of Inspired Financial and chair of the Financial Planning Association, discussed the evolution of the product during a recent Reverse Mortgage Dailypodcast.

"The last 17 years have brought pretty significant changes In the reverse mortgage and home equity spaces in some really positive ways," Zohlen says. "There have been bumps in the road on that journey, but I would say in the past five years we have seen more positives than bumps."

The product has become more transparent, costs associated with it are better to understand and the usage of the product is easier to explain, according to the report.

"Theres also been a better understanding of how a reverse mortgage does not have to be the solution of last resort, but may actually help the client if its incorporated into their planning process earlier," said Zohlen.

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Evolution Of Reverse Mortgages Make Them Easier To Promote - National Mortgage Professional Magazine

Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases play a fundamental role in protein translation, linking transfer RNAs to their cognate amino acids. But in the hundreds of millions of years that theyve existed, these synthetases (AARSs) have picked up several side jobs. One of these is to manage the development of vertebrate vasculature.

Multiple AARSs play roles in the development of the vertebrate circulatory system. During development, the serine enzyme SerRS downregulates the expression of vascularendothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A), preventing over-vascularization.

In addition, a combo synthetase for glutamic acid and proline, GluProRS, links up with other proteins to form the interferon- activated inhibitor of translation (GAIT) complex to block VEGF-A translation.

A piece of the tryptophan synthetase TrpRS also contributes to dampening angiogenesis by binding and blocking VE-cadherin receptors on endothelial cells so they cant link together to form blood vessel lining.

Meanwhile, a fragment of the tyrosine synthetase TyrRS appears to promote the growth of blood vessels by stimulating migration of those endothelial cells.

According to Scripps Research Institute biochemist Paul Schimmel, the addition of accessory domains that perform such tasks parallels major events in the evolution of circulation. The first blood vascular system, which lacked the endothelium present in modern vertebrates, probably arose in a common ancestor of vertebrates and arthropods around 700 million to 600 million years ago. Around this same time, TyrRS acquired a glutamic acidlysinearginine motif that today is thought to promote angiogenesis. Then, around 540 million to 510 million years ago, an ancestral vertebrate evolved a closed vascular system, with blood pumping through vessels lined by endothelium. At some point around that same time period half a billion years ago, the TrpRS picked up a WHEP domain, which today regulates its ability to block angiogenesis. In addition, SerRS acquired a domain unique to this enzyme, which now prevents over-vascularization in developing zebrafish, and likely other vertebrates.

GluProRSs role in angiogenesis, on the other hand, doesnt seem to be so precisely timed to the evolution of vasculature. A linker protein tied together the AARSs for glutamic acid and proline enzymes around 800 million years ago, before circulatory systems existed.

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Infographic: Synthetases and the Evolution of Circulatory Systems - The Scientist

Cheetahs are majestic cats found in parts of Asia and Africa. Centuries ago, these magnificent runners roamed the Indian subcontinent, before they were forced into extinction by humans. They were hunted, kept captive and used by the Maharajas for hunting other animals, and by the mid-twentieth century, they became locally extinct. Today, in parts of Africa and Asia where these cats are found, the destruction of their habitatgrasslandsare threatening the surviving populations of wild cheetahs. In Iran, for example, the wild population of Asiatic cheetahs are struggling.

In a bid to reintroduce cheetahs in India, suggestions were made to bring in African cheetahs from Namibia to Indian forests. After a prolonged legal battle, in January 2020, the Supreme Court allowed the reintroduction of these foreign cheetahs. This move is thought to bolster conservation and tourism. But such decisions cannot be based on the rule of the land alone. One needs to have sufficient information and understanding of several aspects, including the evolution and genetics of cheetahs in a region, to succeed in such efforts.

Previous studies have shown that the now-extinct Indian cheetah was an Asiatic subspecies. However, we do not know how closely the Asiatic and African cheetahs are related. Now, a study published in the journal Scientific Reports has probed the evolutionary relationship between cheetahs. The study, consisting of a team of international researchers, included those from the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB) Hyderabad, the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow, and the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Kolkata.

The researchers started by sequencing the mitochondrial DNA fragments, present outside the nucleus of a cell in an organelle called mitochondria, of an Indian cheetah and two African cheetahs. The African cheetah samples came from Southeast Africa and Northeasteast Africa, which were imported to India at different times. These three sequences were then compared against 118 published cheetah mitochondrial DNA sequences from various regions of Africa and Asia.

Based on previous studies, it was believed that the Asiatic subspecies of cheetahs diverged from the African subspecies only 5000 years ago. However, the genetic analysis of the current study found that this divergence is older than thought, and may have happened about 72,200 years ago. As a result, the populations today are genetically very different from each other, say the researchers, explaining the genetic uniqueness of Asiatic cheetahs. The study also found that the Asiatic cheetah and the Southeast African are more closely related to one another than to Northeast African cheetah.

The current study also sheds some insights into the origin of all cheetahs using the genetic analysis. It suggests that the common ancestor of all cheetahs is approximately 1,38,900 years olda number that is twice the previous estimate of 67,000 years.

The findings not only inform us about the evolutionary history of the cheetahs but also provides grounds on making an informed choice for their conservation. Phylogenetics, the study of evolutionary relationships, shows the differences in the genetic traits and characters and evolutionary history among species. The unique genetic makeup seen in these subspecies of cheetah not only help differentiate the populations from each other but also help determine their capacity to adapt to changing conditions.

In India, the results of the study have implications on what subspecies of cheetahs should be reintroduced. Some argue that reintroducing cheetahs could be a misplaced priority right now since Indias lions and tigers are in greater peril. Others opine that with the reintroduction, the countrys grasslands may be saved. The debate is still wide open, and science may soon help resolve it.

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New insights on the evolution of cheetahs may help decide the best move on reintroduction - Research Matters

Themurder of George Floyd, at the hands ofwhite police officerDerek Chauvin last Monday,prompted a surge of anger throughout the United States and across the world, as defiant voices spoke up demanding an end to police brutality,institutionalised racism and white supremacy. In the days since, this has spread across social media, calling for tangible action: for people everywhere to get onto the street and protest, donate, and, most importantly, relook at the very systems which allow for these oppressions to take place at both a micro and macro level.

The Black Power movement knew action: through protest, they demanded economic empowerment, their own black institutions and the end to police brutality, using force where necessary. Quotes and videos from some of the founders have circulated on social media, feeling evermore pertinent to our current moment: including one, much-Instagrammed video of Angela Davis citing the importance of revolutionary non-peaceful protest.

OnNOWNESS today, you can find out more about the movement withThe Black Power Mixtape 1967-75, directed byGran Olsson, which examines the evolution of the Black Power movement in American society, featuring archival footage of Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale and Abiodun Oyewole. It is shown on NOWNESS as part of NOWNESS Picks, a selection of films they collate from across the web.

Head to NOWNESS to watch the full film.

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Watch a Documentary About the Evolution of the Black Power Movement - AnOther Magazine

Cheyenne Cuneo Home display. Photo courtesy of the Denver Art Museum, Native Arts Department

We track key moments in the changing relationship between curators and Native American tribes.

As part of its $150 million renovation of the Martin Building, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) held a ceremony in 2019 to install a Haida pole by famed carver Dwight Wallace. To ensure the event honored tribal customs, curators asked Wallaces descendants to help plan the occasionbut local institutions havent always respected Native Americans wishes. Here, we highlight key moments in museums journeys toward enlightenment.

1925: The DAM begins collecting American Indian art, becoming one of the first U.S. museums to focus on artistry instead of ethnography. But it continues to make gaffes, like showing stolen Zuni carvings known as war gods, or Ahayu:da.

1968: The Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) accepts 500 boxes of tribal objects, the foundation of its Native American collection, from a private collector. Gordon Yellowman, a Cheyenne chief, says such items were often stolen.

1973: The DMNS establishes the Native American Advisory Council, a first-of-its-kind consortium from Denvers tribal community that consults on exhibits. Unfortunately, says Chip Colwell, former curator of anthropology at the DMNS, the councils concerns were typically dismissed.

1980: After a two-year national campaign by the Zuni, public pressure convinces the DAM to return war god figures (its the first institution in the world to do so). Theyre placed in a secure, roofless sanctuary in New Mexico so they can disintegrate naturally, per Zuni custom.

1990: A new federal law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), enacts a system for tribes to request the return of human remains and certain objects. But curators can ultimately decide to keep items.

1991: The DMNS is praised for swiftly returning Zuni war gods found in storage. But the same year, a member of the Alaskan Tlingit tribe files a NAGPRA claim for Ket Saaxw, a ceremonial hat. The DMNS takes six years to give it back and is accused of stalling.

1994: The DMNS hosts Yankton Sioux activist Maria Pearson for its first NAGPRA consultation, inwhich curators display their inventories to tribes. Yellowman, a former NAGPRA official, says such meetings spurred communication by showing both parties cared for the objects.

2012: History Colorado Center opens a Sand Creek Massacre exhibit that draws criticism from the victims descendants, who object to its title, Collision, among other details. The museum admits it failed to adequately consult with the tribes and closes the exhibit indefinitely.

2017: Colorados Ute tribes are given veto power over every word, photo, and item displayed at History Colorados Ute Indian Museum in Grand Junction. The institution uses the same process for 2018s Written On The Land: Ute Voices, Ute History exhibit in Denver.

This article appeared in the June 2020 issue of 5280.

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The Evolution of Colorado's Museums - 5280 | The Denver Magazine

By Donna Keeya June 1, 2020

The University began its journey of remote education in 1953 through its television station, KUHT. | Juana Garcia/The Cougar

When the coronavirus pandemic became widespread across the nation, the University made the decision to enforce remote learning by having all classes proceed online, continuing the distance education efforts that began at UH in 1953.

The University has been a leader in distance learning since KUHT, the Universitys television station, became the first educational television station in the United States in the 1950s, according to UHs Online and Special Programs mission statement.

From there, the University has continued to offer online classes and courses at off-campus instructional sites.

In KUHTs early days, University professors would record classes and then broadcast them for public learning. Some of these classes included biology, poetry and philosophy. The station made educational content intended for primary education as well.

KUHT also collaborated with (Houston Independent School District) to create educational programming for K-12 education like dance and art, said Audiovisual Archivist for UH Libraries Emily Vinson in an email. It was all based on a really lovely vision of making education more accessible.

Additionally, during these times KUHT made specialty content about specific topics for educational purposes. Doctors in Space was a video made in 1956 teaching about safety equipment involving pilots and astronauts. People Are Taught to Be Different was a video from 1958 about different personalities in different cultures.

These werent exactly for grades, like some of the other examples, but were meant for the education of the general public, Vinson said. You have to remember that PBS wasnt created until late 1970, so all other television was commercial. I think these are some of the best examples of educational television.

In the present day, distant learning is more apparent in online courses. The University has academic tips themed around study habits, time management and communication in an effort to help students achieve success in online classes.

Under regular conditions, the University has four undergraduate degrees that students can completely complete remotely. These degrees are psychology ,nursing and retailing and consumer sciences, and are all intended for students who have previously completed at least two years of college.

As far as graduate programs go, there are 27 different programs University students can complete fully online. These programs fall under the categories of business and management, health and social care, engineering and trades and education.

In light of the coronavirus, the University has employed Blackboard and Courseware (CASA) as methods to provide students with educational resources. Both these platforms are accessible through smartphones as well as computers.

For more of The Cougars coronavirus coverage, click here.

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Tags: KUHT, Online and Special Programs, Remote learning, UH libraries

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From TV to online: The evolution of remote learning at UH - The - The Daily Cougar

Medium ground finch with its blunt beak. This particular bird has been banded by Rosemary and Peter Grant during their field studies on Daphne Major. Reproduced with permission from K. Thalia Grant, and Princeton University Press, which first published the remaining images in 40 Years of Evolution (P. R. Grant & B. R. Grant, 2014). Credit: Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant

Despite the traditional view that species do not exchange genes by hybridization, recent studies show that gene flow between closely related species is more common than previously thought. A team of scientists from Uppsala University and Princeton University now reports how gene flow between two species of Darwins finches has affected their beak morphology. The study is published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Darwins finches on the Galpagos Islands are an example of a rapid adaptive radiation in which 18 species have evolved from a common ancestral species within a period of 1-2 million years. Some of these species have only been separated for a few hundred thousand years or less.

Rosemary and Peter Grant of Princeton University, co-authors of the new study, studied populations of Darwins finches on the small island of Daphne Major for 40 consecutive years and observed occasional hybridization between two distinct species, the common cactus finch and the medium ground finch. The cactus finch is slightly larger than the medium ground finch, has a more pointed beak and is specialized to feed on cactus. The medium ground finch has a blunter beak and is specialized to feed on seeds.

Common cactus finch with its pointed beak feeding on the Opuntia cactus. Credit: Lukas Keller

Over the years, we observed occasional hybridization between these two species and noticed a convergence in beak shape. In particular, the beak of the common cactus finch became blunter and more similar to the beak of the medium ground finch, say Rosemary and Peter Grant. We wondered whether this evolutionary change could be explained by gene flow between the two species.

We have now addressed this question by sequencing groups of the two species from different time periods and with different beak morphology. We provide evidence of a substantial gene flow, in particular from the medium ground finch to the common cactus finch, explains Sangeet Lamichhaney, one of the shared first authors and currently Associate Professor at Kent State University.

A surprising finding was that the observed gene flow was substantial on most autosomal chromosomes but negligible on the Z chromosome, one of the sex chromosomes, says Fan Han, Uppsala University, who analyzed these data as part of her PhD thesis. In birds, the sex chromosomes are ZZ in males and ZW in females, in contrast to mammals where males are XY and females are XX.

The common cactus finch has a pointed beak adapted to feed on cactus whereas the medium ground finch has a blunt beak adapted to crush seeds. Their hybrid progeny have an intermediate beak morphology adaptive under certain environmental conditions as explained in this paper. Credit: Sangeet Lamichhaney, Rosemary and Peter Grant

This interesting result is in fact in excellent agreement with our field observation from the Galpagos, explain the Grants. We noticed that most of the hybrids had a common cactus finch father and a medium ground finch mother. Furthermore, the hybrid females successfully bred with common cactus finch males and thereby transferred genes from the medium ground finch to the common cactus finch population. In contrast, male hybrids were smaller than common cactus finch males and could not compete successfully for high-quality territories and mates.

This mating pattern is explained by the fact that Darwins finches are imprinted on the song of their fathers so that sons sing a song similar to their fathers song and daughters prefer to mate with males that sing like their fathers. Furthermore, hybrid females receive their Z chromosome from their cactus finch father and their W chromosome from their ground finch mother. This explain why genes on the Z chromosome cannot flow from the medium ground finch to the cactus finch via these hybrid females, whereas genes in other parts of the genome can, because parents of the hybrid contribute equally.

Our data show that the fitness of the hybrids between the two species is highly dependent on environmental conditions which affect food abundance, says Leif Andersson of Uppsala University and Texas A&M University. That is, to what extent hybrids, with their combination of gene variants from both species, can successfully compete for food and territory. Therefore, the long-term outcome of the ongoing hybridization between the two species will depend on environmental factors as well as competition.

One scenario is that the two species will merge into a single species combining gene variants from the two species, but perhaps a more likely scenario is that they will continue to behave as two species and either continue to exchange genes occasionally or develop reproductive isolation if the hybrids at some point show reduced fitness compared with purebred progeny. The study contributes to our understanding of how biodiversity evolves, Andersson concludes.

Reference: Female-biased gene flow between two species of Darwins finches by Sangeet Lamichhaney, Fan Han, Matthew T. Webster, B. Rosemary Grant, Peter R. Grant and Leif Andersson, 4 May 2020, Nature Ecology & Evolution.DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-1183-9

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How Gene Flow Between Species Influenced the Evolution of Darwins Finches - SciTechDaily

Humans are mere animals in Darwinian thinking. The same evolutionary mechanisms and selective pressures that make fruit flies cooperate, or fish to swarm, or rams to bash their heads together, cause Homo sapiens to form political parties, revolt against kings, or cheer at baseball games. Human exceptionalism is omitted from their equations. According to Darwinians, every human behavior, as well as every fish behavior or fruit fly behavior or chimpanzee behavior, is a consequence of natural selection. If this premise were scientific, evolutionary anthropologists should be able to model human behavior and make predictions.

Suppose a scientist tells you about his new model. It goes like this:

If we assume X, then Y might result under particular circumstances, as long as we hold A constant, as Dr. Wizard surmised in his widely accepted model of the evolution of human and non-human animal behavior H. But according to our revised model, the situation is more complex. It turns out that B is a function of C, which affects A in unpredictable ways, resulting in chaotic behavior, depending on whether selection is taken into account. When selection is not considered, stable cyclic behavior is a possible outcome, at least in some studies, but those models do not correlate with field observations. Our revised model finds that D(E) has been overlooked, which is likely influenced by F(P), and since A is not always constant, as has been assumed, one might get a stable equilibrium, or a cycle, or chaos, depending on the weather. Its complicated.

Are you impressed by this advance toward the scientific understanding of human nature?

Something very similar to it was just published in PNAS by four scientists from Stanford and Tel Aviv Universities pretending to explain Cultural evolution of conformity and anticonformity. Conformity might be illustrated by a fruit fly imitating its neighbors behavior, or a teen following what the other teens are doing. Anticonformity might be a bird leaving the flock, or a man defying his states coronavirus lockdown guidelines. To Kaleda Krebs Denton, Yoav Ram, Uri Liberman, and Marcus W. Feldman, the subjects in the population make no difference, because Were all in this [Darwinian thing] together.

The evolutionary dynamics of cultural variants under conformist- and anticonformist-biased transmission have implications for humans and nonhuman animals. Humans display both conformist and anticonformist biases, and models of conformist-biased transmission have been proposed to explain large-scale human cooperation. Nonhuman animals have been shown to display conformist biases in mating and foraging decisions. Here, we investigate established mathematical models of conformist and anticonformist bias with and without selection and find complex dynamics, including multiple stable polymorphic equilibria, stable cycles, and chaos. [Emphasis added.]

This paper illustrates two things: (1) Darwinian theory is utterly useless when applied to human behavior, and (2) no amount of mathematical hand-waving can fix bad premises.

Admittedly, there may be a little predictability to human behavior in regard to conformity. When a wave starts in a football stadium, most people (but not all) will cheerfully join in to keep it going. Every parent worries about peer pressure their offspring will face at college. Military recruits are drilled to obey orders, fearing the bad consequences of disobedience. But people are not fish! Papers like this one relegate humans to pawns of evolutionary forces. Its a denial of free will. And its absurd; if a person conforms, natural selection did it. If the person does not conform, natural selection did that, too. Natural selection is Darwins catch-all explanation for everything, even opposite things. Daniel Dennett called it a universal acid, but didnt catch the fact that it dissolves its container, too evolutionary theory itself! In the end, it explains absolutely nothing.

Nave readers of this PNAS paper might be intimidated by the math. You can ignore the following example paragraph, because it is so vague, it has nothing to do with the real world. Human behavior is a subject that matters to all of us, but this Darwinian approach to behavior signifies much nothing (emptiness) about ado (fuss, or busy activity about something that matters). To borrow another line from Shakespeare, it is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The real message is in the theory rescue words between the symbols:

It might be expected that if p=12 is the unique polymorphic equilibrium, then either p=0 and p=1 are both stable and p=12 is not stable, or both p=0 and p=1 are not stable and p=12 is stable, since it is a protected polymorphism. In fact, when p=0 and p=1 are both stable, there is global convergence to one of them; p=12 is not stable, such that [0,12) is the domain of attraction of p=0 and (12,1] that of p=1. However, when both p=0 and p=1 are not stable, then even when p=12 is the unique polymorphic equilibrium, it is possible that p=12 is not stable. For example, following Eq. B8 in SI Appendix, section B, let n=1+(12)n2n1j=kD(j)n(nj)(2jn). From Eq. 4, the lower bound of n occurs when D(j)=j for all kjn1, in which case all of the D(j) s are negative and p=12 is unique by Result 3. SI Appendix, Table S1 presents the lower bounds on n for n=3,4,,20. The bounds on D, namely, j

On and on this paper goes, manipulating symbols this way and that, qualifying every situation with exceptions, ending with a final dramatic letdown:

Our detailed analysis of the two-population case without selection illustrates how complex the relationship between migration and conformist transmission can be. If the conformity coefficients are the same in both populations, two polymorphic equilibria other than (12,12), as well as the fixation states (0,0) and (1,1), can be stable if the migration rate is less than 18 and the conformity coefficient is large enough (Eq. 64). However, if this coefficient is small enough, only the fixation states are stable.

Thus the claim that conformist transmission generates a population-level process that creates and maintains group boundaries and cultural differences through time (ref. 4, p. 231) is not always true.

Does their model make any predictions? No. Is it falsifiable? No. Did it advance human understanding in any measurable way? Certainly not. In fact, it undermined earlier models that tried to do the same thing by noting more exceptions and omissions. Whatever it is trying to model is critically dependent on unprovable assumptions and false premises, namely, that humans are mere animals. It is hard to find any redeeming value in this exercise, and yet the NAS printed it gleefully, because it is Darwinian.

Theres a stronger reason for dismissing this paper. As Nancy Pearcey has shown on ID the Future, Darwinians almost always fail to apply their own models to themselves. If these four authors really believed their own assumptions, the act of writing the paper was a consequence of natural selection, too. They didnt mean any of it. They were not searching for unbiased truth. They merely wanted to boost their own fitness, and the best way to do it was to take the conformist position on Darwinism. One could go further and say their minds were not even involved; the words on the page came about by selection pressure.

Another article in PNAS is downright scary. In an article on Science and Culture (sound familiar?), David Adam advocates spinning fictions by scientists. The title is, Science and Culture: Design fiction skirts reality to provoke discussion and debate. By design fiction, he means that researchers are learning how to create fake realities, in order to watch how humans react. He starts with an example:

In October 2015, researchers presented an unusual paper at a computer science conference in London. The paper described the promising results of a pilot project in which a local community used surveillance drones to enforce car parking restrictions and to identify dog owners who failed to clean up after their pets. Controlled by four elderly retirees, the drones buzzed around the city and directed council officials on the ground.

The paper and its accompanying video generated lively discussion about the ethics and regulation of drone use among delegates at the CHI PLAY conference. But there was a catch: The paper, the video, and the pilot scheme were fictional, as the researchers admitted at the end of both the paper and the presentation.

David Adam doesnt appear to have any ethical qualms about misleading people in this way. It generated lively discussion, thats all. The ethical qualms were about drone use not about the fictional scheme, and fibbing for science. The experiment was provocative by design.

Design fiction is one of a number of overlapping terms that have emerged in the last decade or so to describe the process by which designers, researchers, artists, engineers, and technologists devise and sometimes present or publish scenarios to provoke debate.

Is that not like evidence that Russians are trying to divide Americans by provoking discord from both sides of the aisle? The popular YouTube channel Smarter Every Day spoke with the leading social media giants to show how the Internet is filled with bots using high tech to manipulate public opinion. What if science journals did that? What if they decided never to reveal that their design fiction research was all fictional? Who could trust any research ever again?

Circling around, why not just dismiss the PNAS paper about the evolution of conformity and call it design fiction? If it is fine for the researchers to dissemble, it is fine for their readers to dismiss it as Darwinian fiction. Were onto them. We are human beings. We dont get pushed around by blind, unguided processes like natural selection. We use our minds. If they respond with the claim that natural selection nudged you into the anticonformist position, we can counter with, And natural selection nudged you to write this paper.

Photo: Football fans do The Wave at the University of Michigan, by Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA / CC BY-SA.

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Much Nothing about Ado: The Uselessness of Dehumanized Darwinism - Discovery Institute

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Legend said the two friends and past collaborators are just living their own lives and that the evolution of their relationship is not tied to West's vocal support for President Donald Trump. "I don't think we're less friends because of the Trump thing," Legend said. "I just think we're doing our own thing. He's up in Wyoming. I'm here in L.A. We've both got growing families and I no longer have a formal business relationship with him as an artist, so I think it's just part of the natural cycle of life."

In 2016, West tweeted a screenshot of a text he received from Legend, a Hilary Clinton supporter during the campaign.

"Hey it's JL. I hope you'll reconsider aligning yourself with Trump," Legend wrote at the time. "You're way too powerful and influential to endorse who he is and what he stands for. As you know, what you say really means something to your fans. They are loyal to you and respect your opinion. So many people who love you feel so betrayed right now because they know the harm that Trump's policies cause, especially to people of color. Don't let this be part of your legacy. You're the greatest artist of our generation."

West replied: "I love you John and I appreciate your thoughts. You bringing up my fans or my legacy is a tactic based on fear used to manipulate my free thought."

Following the social media disagreement, the two were cordial.

Legend, who along with wife Chrissy Teigen, was a guest at the rapper's wedding to Kim Kardashian in 2014, insisted that politics was "never a part" of their conversations.

"Our interaction was almost always about creativity and music," he said. "He's also in a different place musically. He's doing gospel music. That's what he's focused on right now, designing his clothes, so we're in different places."

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John Legend says his friendship with Kanye West has evolved - CNN

Look, I get it. We all went onto Disney+ the minute we could and collectively shredded in the most radical fashion by loading up X-Men: The Animated Series and listening to a truly killer Whitney Houston riff. Were all Children of the Atom, and Children of the 90s, at heart. But we couldve been doing something more, my X-Men. We could have should have been watching X-Men: Evolution.

The nostalgic glitz and glamour of access to The Animated Series overshadowed the fact that Disney+ also launched with (alongside approximately one billion other things) X-Men: Evolution, a continued overshadowing the latter has endured pretty much since it first aired in the early aughts. But the chance to revisit Evolution allows us to remember that, in rejecting the nostalgic glee that makesTAS the charmer it is for all its clunkiness at times, it remains a full-throated celebration of 90s X-books at their best and weirdest its reboot sibling did some really interesting things with the X-formula.

When it couldve easily been a way to try and launch a show riffing off the newly-found cinematic successes of the X-Men at the time, Evolution which aired on Kids WB from 200-2003 did something that felt unprecedented instead. It allowed its heroes to, wellevolve. It did so, ironically, by devolving several of them. Well, de-ageing them.

One of Evolutions biggest risks to the X-Formula was giving us a show that truly embraced that Xaviers abode was a school for mutant education, not just a cool base for the X-Men to hang out in between missions. The vast majority of the cast in Evolution is presented as teens only relatively recently awakened to their mutant powers, rather than X-heroes in their prime. While a few familiar mutant favourites, like Cyclops and Jean Grey, were slightly older than the main crew (initially including Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Rogue, and newcomer Spyke), only Storm, Professor X, and Wolverine remained a similar age as to how they were presented in the comics. Although they were all X-Men, they were no longer just teammates and colleagues, but teacher and mentors to this next generation of mutants.

It was the best of both worlds in the younger cast, Evolution balanced storylines about acceptance and teen angst with these kids just hanging out and being friends with each other, slowly but surely coming into their abilities as they became more assured in themselves and their relationships with the kids around them. In the older crew, there was now a new dynamic, not just leaders on the battlefield but people who had to teach the kids around them lessons theyd learned long ago as seasoned superheroes.

X-Men storytelling has always been about the future fighting not just for acceptance in the now, but to secure the safety and prosperity of new mutants for generations beyond their own to avoid the struggles the X-Men and mutantkind at large have long endured. Evolution took that dynamic and made it less about generational storytelling on a societal level, and more on a personal one. The characters and their relationships with each other drove Evolutions heart more than the action of the week, even if that was made compelling by watching these accurately bratty teens work with each other and their elders to be forged into an effective superhero team.

But this focus on examining new, younger iterations of the X-Men also worked in tandem with another thing that made Evolution so compelling: unlike TAS before it, which dove headfirst into the ephemera of X-Men comics sagas to tell its own definitive versions of beloved tales, Evolution was initially very hands-off with tackling the larger X-Mythos while it set up this new take on its familiar cast. Although the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was the primary antagonist of the first few seasons (its members de-aged to match the X-Men, creating a fascinating recruitment arms-race between the heroes and villains), prominent villains like Mystique and Magneto were left to linger in the background.

Mystique eventually became a major foil for Rogues arc in particular in later seasons, challenging her uncertain path to the side of heroism after initially joining the Brotherhood. Magneto only really shows up in a major way at the climax of the second season, making his status as a major threat feel that more tangible, but also one that feels much more appropriate for a cast of young X-Men whove had the time to come into their own. It meant that instead of leaning on familiar stories, Evolution got to deal with its own ideas beyond examining the intrapersonal drama of its heroes: its why we got, after all, the creation of X-23, before she became a fundamental aspect of the X-Mens comic book history.

It makes the last two seasons tonal shift away from the school drama and into more traditional X-Men storytelling avenues after Magnetos attack exposes mutantkind on a societal level, feel that much more earned, because youre actually invested in the stakes of these characters at that point. Theyre more than just the X-Men, theyre characters youve watched develop and flourish as they accept who they are, so when the time came for the show to tackle Apocalypses resurgence on the scene in its final, truncated season, the scale and scope of the story had an added weight more than if these were just the X-Men we knew and loved, and Apocalypse threatening the end of all things was just another week of cartoons.

Not all of these bold changes were for the better, admittedly. The first few seasons where theres more of a focus on standalone hijinks with the students, as the larger mutant worldbuilding develops in the background, meant that the expanding roster of X-Kids left some characters getting the short shrift. Spyke, in particular, was also often the weakest beneficiary of that. Although an interesting vector for a lot of Evolutions core ideas not just as the face of the younger main cast, but his role as an entirely new character, allowing for a new lens to examine both the established heroes and the bonds between both the older and younger X-heroes alike as the show progressed, that same newness also left him underdeveloped. Pushed back to the sidelines even when he was ostensibly the focus, we never really got to delve into what made him stand on his own two feet outside of being the new character until Evolution was arguably much more interested in its wider narratives.

But X-Men: Evolution, for all its bold changes to what we knew and loved about the animated interpretation that came before it, still understood what makes the X-Men as a concept so appealing and that makes it worth revisiting now more than ever.

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X-Men: Evolution Is the Mutant Cartoon You Should Be Bingewatching Right Now - Gizmodo Australia