A picture’s worth a thousand words — or a few million molecules of DNA.

Microsoft and the University of Washington have joined a groundbreaking initiative called the Arch Mission, which aims to send a trove of information on human culture — from classic novels to family photos — to the moon.

This ‘Lunar Library’ will include a test of data storage using DNA, a technique that promises to outstrip the most sophisticated silicon-based data storage devices on the market.

Just as programmers use a string of 1’s and 0’s to conjure images and words on a computer screen, geneticists can manipulate the fundamental units of DNA — the amino acids A, C, T, and G — to encode information.

Experts say DNA can store 10 million times the amount of information as the equivalent volume of magnetic tape. After all, we carry the entire human genome — 1.5 gigabytes of data — in every single cell of our bodies.

To date, the most efficient synthetic DNA data storage can hold 215 petrabytes of data per gram of DNA — that’s over 400 times the storage of an iPhone XS in a grain of table salt. And if stored properly, these biological data caches can last for millions of years, unlike temperamental floppy disks that corrupt after a decade or two.

DNA storage would be a boon for a world that generates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data a day, moon library or no moon library. “We are approaching limits with silicone-based technology,” said Luis Ceze, a computer architect at University of Washington.

Creators of the project envision the Lunar Library as humanity’s eternal time capsule — a body of information that will represent us to societies in the deep future and serve as a failsafe of knowledge in case of a catastrophic event on Earth.

Other elements of the carefully curated Lunar Library will include Wikipedia — in its entirety — and countless classic movies.

Ready to jettison some of your data into outer space? The Arch Mission has called for 10,000 photo submissions from the public to fill its extraterrestrial time capsule. To contribute your own images, visit http://memoriesindna.com or email lunarlibrary@memoriesindna.com.

When it comes to their communication abilities, it turns out orcas can speak for themselves.

Early this year, Wikie the orca wowed researchers in France with her spot-on imitations of human speech. The 14-year-old whale was able to parrot back both ‘nonsense’ words — novel sounds she’d never heard before — and phrases in English, often on the first attempt.

Wikie almost sings the words, with the occasional playful ‘raspberry’ thrown in for good measure — but the English is immediately recognizable. Her ‘hello’ is especially crisp.

What’s more incredible is that these sounds aren’t coming from Wikie’s mouth — she’s shunting air in and out of air sacks near her blowhole, which experts say would be analogous to a human talking through their nose. Wikie would be a natural ventriloquist.

Orcas, like their cetacean cousins the dolphins, rely on sound to communicate with their family members — whether to keep the pod close in the big blue or coordinate attacks on prey. Dolphins even have ‘signature whistles’ that serve the function of names.

With such sophisticated acoustic communication, it’s no surprise that cetaceans like orcas are deeply sensitive to other sounds. The acoustic landscape is a vital — and often overlooked — element of the underwater ecosystem, and scientists caution that noise pollution from human activity is creating an environment hostile to marine wildlife.

Mass strandings of marine mammals — including dolphins, whales, and orcas —can be caused by overwhelming auditory stress. Alarmed by an extreme noise, these deep-dwelling animals rise to the surface faster than their lungs can adjust to the pressure change. It’s the same decompression sickness that can cause skin problems, paralysis and even death in unwary scuba divers.

Conservationists say it’s imperative that humans deliberately reduce loud activity in and near the water — before the orcas learn to say “shut up.”

Dr. John Blackshear, a husky black 40-something with the build of a linebacker, swaggers to the front of his classroom and slams a book on the desk.

“White female. 28. Lives alone. Found raped, strangled, and ritually positioned in her apartment.”

He scribbles out a diagram of the crime scene, pausing to curse his iPad at strategic intervals, and spins to face his Duke forensic psychology class on syllabus day. “Now I’m the police, ask me questions. Go.” Blackshear’s students flesh out the details of the case until they finally light upon a man who might have been the serial killer.

And then, record-scratch.

Crazy-eyes and all, Blackshear goes into character as the accused man’s psychotic, pseudo-pimp alter ego for nearly two hours. He refuses to answer to anything other than his client’s street name, Crisspy Shabazz — “Crisspy, two s’s, get it right.”

In addition to his private clinical practice and lecturing at Duke, Blackshear is a forensic psychologist — he’s hired by legal teams for the most horrific of criminals to separate crimes of passion from serial hits, suss out secret abuse, and ultimately help the defendant construct the best defense possible.

As a self-described “big black dude,” he hardly fits the bill of the stuffy academic psychologist his forensic clients expect to see step through the door — and according to Blackshear, that’s part of what makes him so good at his job.

That and Prince.

Blackshear spent his formative years where two worlds intersect — a shotgun house in sweaty Savannah, Georgia, where his grandmother “Baby” still lives.

His grandfather’s backyard crab boils brought together both branches of the Blackshear family tree. “They were all just one big family, so you had people that were starting Ph. D. programs at universities and you had people who were hustlers and gamblers and drug addicts and alcoholics.”

The Blackshear side of the family was remarkably steeped in academia for black people at that time, said Blackshear. “You had these erudite people who gave me books by Kahlil Gibran, gave me books by Socrates…Big on education, they were really high-achieving folks.”

But they could only provide half of Blackshear’s education.

“Now the street people, you also learned another type of intelligence from them. They could read a vulnerable person or they could read a person you shouldn’t mess with” — snap — “instantly.”

Blackshear spent the late 70’s crammed into that two-bedroom house in Savannah with ten relatives. “People slept wherever they found room.” When the 1980’s dawned, so did the crack cocaine epidemic that would come to devastate his community. Blackshear’s earliest memories are of the records constantly playing in his house — “music was always on” — and violence in the streets. Gangs were the law of the land, and even other 6- and 7-year-olds would try to beat him up.

But there was another kind of violence in Blackshear’s life. After enduring sexual abuse as a child, he was harrassed by a racist elementary school teacher. Blackshear credits his grandmother, Baby, with saving him — she believed his horror story and used her position with the school board to get him transferred to a school where a vulnerable 6th grader would be safe.

In retrospect, Blackshear describes himself as a strange child who “didn’t enjoy the typical male things,” which might have been because he was surrounded by female cousins and aunts who liked to dress him up like a “doll baby.” The definition of masculinity was a narrow one in Savannah, Georgia, and many within Blackshear’s family questioned his sexuality (“I was like eight!”). Young Blackshear was afraid he’d be an outsider for the rest of his days.

“And then Prince comes along.”

Blackshear slips into a reverie as he recalls the warm summer night when Prince entered his life. He was about seven or eight, sitting on the porch and wondering who he would one day fall in love with — as 7-year-old boys are often wont to do. Then Prince’s “Still Waiting” came on the radio.

“Then I realized it was a man singing it. Then I realized it was a man who had played all the instruments. Then I go to the store at Walmart and I see that this is the person who’s doing this.”

“And I was like what the fuck is this.”

He begged his mother for the album — thankfully she was young and hip to the Prince phenomenon — and a life-long love affair began.

Next year, eight-year-old John would sneak out to buy “Dirty Mind” — only to be hit by a car running home to listen to it. “I didn’t stop at a stop sign. Very excited.”

“Prince was…I always highlight him in my life because he looked different, he was strange, and he embraced his strangeness. And it was very courageous to a kid who felt like I [was] probably going to be a little different than things around me. And how do you do that and not feel self-conscious about it?

“What I learned by being a big Prince fan was you do that by being excellent. You do that by becoming a master of whatever it is you’re doing.”

Blackshear would spend the next decade pursuing mastery of every instrument he could get his hands on — drums, keyboard, the trombone. His fanatical devotion to the standard Prince set would win him a scholarship spot in the Marching 100 band at Florida A&M University, where Blackshear’s only intention was to play music.

Then he met Dana Dennard, a dashiki-clad clinical psychologist who asked Blackshear if he was “ready to fly.” Blackshear said, “What?” Dennard kicked him out of class.

Dennard was a performer, a spiritual outsider like Blackshear. “I’d never seen anything like him — he was Prince doing psychology.” Blackshear begged Dennard to be his mentor. “I wanted to do psychology like Prince, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Meshell Ndegeocello, Nina Simone…like when I do it, that’s what I think about. I love B. F. Skinner, think Freud was incredible, love Kenneth Dodd…but when I think about standing in front of a class, teaching it, I want you to feel what [the musicians] make me feel.”

Now, Blackshear juggles a private clinical practice and lecturing at Duke with work as a forensic psychologist. Defense teams rely on a forensic psychologist to help determine if an insanity plea would be reasonable or necessary — and whether the defendant is competent to stand trial. It’s the forensic psychologist’s job to help the judge and jury understand the psychological history of the accused. It’s also essential for someone in the defense team to form a bond with the accused in case the best option is a hard-to-swallow plea deal — that’s where Blackshear really excels.

Blackshear believes his background helps him connect with his clients — like “Crisspy Shabazz”. Unlike the rest of Shabazz’s lily-white legal team, Blackshear knew the rules of Shabazz’s world.

Slipping back into his Savannah mode with clients never feels disingenuous to Blackshear. “It’s [the] parameters of operating in those spaces. And it’s not an act, it’s just you know how to operate in those spaces.”

According to Blackshear, what he learned from the “street people” and the “traditionally educated side of my family — they were both educated in their own way” are equally valid parts of his identity.

“I was dancing between worlds really young…I think social identity and group fluidity served me well. Prince represents that all day long. Prince danced the line between being a man and a woman all day long — but watching somebody masterfully do that, watching somebody play these different lines with regards to his race identity, with regards to the music he played — I think that really equipped my brain to be able to codeswitch without dissonance.”

Obviously, Blackshear says, he talks differently with Duke’s provost than his childhood buddies back in Savannah.

A man we’ll call Marlowe lived across the street when they were children — in fact, Marlowe was the kid who tried to beat Blackshear up when they were six. Naturally, it evolved into a lifelong friendship.

The gulf between Blackshear and his “street folks” like Marlowe widened as they aged. “When I went to graduate school, he went to prison. And he went to prison for attempted murder.”

Marlowe insisted that he wasn’t trying to kill the guy, it was just a point of principle. But it definitely was Marlowe that shot the man in the butt.

According to Blackshear, Marlowe is “brash, funny, charming…But there’s an intensity to him that if he had to snap your neck, he could probably do it.”

People like Marlowe and Blackshear’s grandfather, a textbook psychopath, help explain Blackshear’s friendly rapport with his forensic clients. He seems to genuinely enjoy some of the serial killers and rapists he’s worked with, sometimes over the course of years — and he’s worked some pretty bleak cases.

How can Blackshear be in the room with people who have abused and murdered their children, much less connect with them and aid in their defense?

“Do you know anybody who’s done some really horrible things?…Some really jacked-up things, maybe not murder someone, but enough to cause people permanent problems…A family member. Screwed up royally. But you still kinda love the person. Why?”

Because they’re not always terrible? Blackshear flashes a toothy grin. “There it is. NEXT!”

“These people didn’t do it to you, and you also walk in with the premise [that] you’re gonna learn about this person when they were a newborn…three…five…nine….There’s so much about them that’s not this incident.”

“That’s my responsibility, to learn that story. And then to figure out how in the hell did you wind up here?”

“I tell people all the time — being a murderer is not a natural part of development. Being a horrible person who rapes people, molests people, beats people, stabs people, shoots people, cheats people…It’s not something that people just grow into.”

“Fucked up people grow into that. So I wanna know what fucked you up.”

Blackshear and his wife Kimberly (also a psychologist — she’s a mitigation specialist and the other half of “Blackshear & Blackshear Psychological Services”) are raising their three youngest children in a comfortable apartment. But it’s in Giles Dormitory on Duke’s freshman campus.

The Blackshears’ three children, each endowed with the ample cheeks of their father, roam the halls and mingle with the freshman. “The students stop by and read to them all the time. It’s like having, now, 240 siblings who know you. They see you.”

“I could go home today, leave the apartment door open and let the kids run up and down the hallway. I may not see them for an hour, and they’re up in somebody’s room, kickin’ it. And you don’t have a worry. It’s rolling.”

Blackshear says his colleagues are skeptical when he mentions he lives in a freshman dorm — “they think it’s just chaos” — but Blackshear believes he’s found the best avenue to connect with students. “It has allowed us to be more authentically engaged in students than anything else we’ve ever done. It’s fantastic.”

Blackshear takes Giles dorm residents to concerts, family trips — and weekly small-group dessert outings that allow him to delve into the “real” stuff with his students. “Tell me who in the hell you are, tell me what you wanna do, so I can know you and help you figure it out.”

He’s a fixture in the Giles common room, says freshman Connor Passe. “We play pool pretty regularly. I’m kicking his butt, 27–7. He’s pretty touchy about that.”

“I did not expect to meet a professor like him. I had this idea of professors as like older white guys…so just looking at him I could tell he was going to be different.”

“I was playing “Faded” by Tyga” — an obscenity-laced rap song, look up the lyrics at your own peril — “on the speaker in the common room…He came in, and he just loved it. I never would expect a teacher to like Tyga. Blackshear smokes cigars, he has tattoos, he’s cool.”

Yuexuan Chen, another Giles resident, cites Blackshear as one of the main reasons she’s made it through her first semester at Duke. “In a time of a lot of uncertainty, when you’re trying to figure out what you’re doing with your life, it’s just so nice to hear from an accomplished adult that they are supporting you and supporting your decisions.”

“I feel like their warmth and happiness just rubs off on everybody,” Chen said.

Beyond his cult following of Giles residents, Blackshear has another devoted set of groupies — his forensic psychology students. The class is so sought after that only seniors can get in, and Blackshear boasts an unheard-of perfect “five” on RateMyProfessor, an online platform where students share opinions on instructors.

Blackshear trails students in his wake like the pied piper — and considers his role as a mentor and friend as much a part of his calling as psychology.

“I hope I attract the freaks. And I think just about everybody is a freak, but I used to say that wherever I go I like to know where the off-the-beaten path people hang out…that’s my tribe.” Historically, those places were five-points in Atlanta and literally all of Savannah, Georgia. “Savannah is all freaks. I mean the place was a penal colony!”

“I really like people who embrace their strangeness, their uniqueness, they’re not afraid to express that.”

His goal? “How do I leave people feeling freer to just be. Not to screw themselves up trying to be something they think fits, but like be who they are ultimately, and then make the things fit them.”

On the last day of the semester for forensic psychology, Blackshear wrapped up his lecture and turned to the class.

“If we locked eyes or locked hands, you’re my people. If you ever need anything — anything — come to me.” The tears in his eyes were visible only to the first row.

You’re never alone. Nearly 100 trillion microbes toil in obscurity in your intestines. But don’t start sipping the hand sanitizer just yet — a study from the University of Wisconsin points to the gut microbiome, this rich community of bacteria and microbes that live within the human digestive tract, as a promising opportunity for Alzheimer’s treatment.

We have a commensal relationship with the bacteria in our gut, kind of like the symbiotic relationship between clownfish and sea anemones. We provide the bacteria with a hospitable living environment, while the bacteria provide us with…something. The full extent is still a little unclear.

While the bacteria go through their basic metabolic process — eat, grow, make more bacteria, repeat — they release chemical compounds that modulate a variety of processes in the gut. They help us extract energy from our food, prevent pathogens from taking over, train our immune system, and even synthesize vitamins in the depths of our intestines.

The scientific community has long realized that irregularities in the gut microbiome — changes in the kinds of bacterial species present or their relative proportions — were associated with diseases as disparate as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and multiple sclerosis. At first, it seemed easy to write off bacterial imbalance as just another symptom of these chronic illnesses.

But in recent years, it became clear that changes to the bacteria in our gut might be thecause of some of these conditions, not just collateral damage. Studies in rodent and primate models suggest the gut microbiome can hack into the vagus nerve, an information superhighway that runs from the base of the skull down to the colon, in order to communicate with the brain.

Some species of bacteria in the gut directly produce neurotrophic factors, little packets of chemicals that neurons in the brain exchange to communicate information. Those bacteria- produced neurotrophic factors signal the vagus nerve to modulate brain activity — preclinical evidence suggests it can even affect our mood and responses to stress.

In other words — there’s an army of germs stewing around in your half-digested food capable of telling your brain what to do. That’s not in itself a problem. The issue arises when the bacteria start talking crazy.

A University of Wisconsin team explored what happens when the chorus of bacterial voices communicating with the brain changes. Studies with rodents had already demonstrated that manipulating the gut microbiomes of mice can result in the formation of amyloid plaque — tangles of protein in the brain that (we think) disrupt the flow of neurotransmitters and serve as the calling-card for Alzheimer’s disease in humans. But no one had confirmed whether this research in rodents translated to the human microbiota.

Led by Dr. Nicholas Vogt, the team examined fecal samples from people affected by Alzheimer’s — since 60% of the dry matter in feces is bacteria, it’s a ready-made (though

unglamorous) census of who’s living in the distal gut. Vogt and his colleagues compared the flora and fauna inside with fecal samples from healthy individuals the same age.

The University of Wisconsin team found that not only were there fewer species of bacteria present in the feces samples from Alzheimer’s patients, but the relative proportions between those species were also out of whack.

The Bacteroides phylum, a class of bacteria that can cause inflammation and immune system dysfunction when too concentrated, flourished in Alzheimer’s patients while levels of the natural anti-inflammatory Bifidobacterium took a nosedive. Vogt and his team believe this perfect storm for inflammation may have devastating consequences for the brain — but it also highlights a possible path for treatment.

Bifidobacterium — the “good guy” anti-inflammatory bacteria that Alzheimer’s patients seemingly have too few of — has already been tested as a probiotic. That’s a bacteria introduced to the gut intentionally in an effort to restore balance among microbial species and ameliorate symptoms. But while most probiotics are prescribed for gastrointestinal discomfort (think “Activia,” the digestive yogurt brand), Bifidobacterium shows promise at ameliorating symptoms of dementia.

A previous study tested cognitive impairment in patients with severe dementia. After 12 weeks drinking a daily probiotic “smoothie” that included Bifidobacterium, dementia patients performed better on short-term memory and basic speaking tasks.

This research suggests dementia due to Alzheimer’s may be reversible, at least in part — reason for hope for the 5.5 million Americans that suffer from the disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association’s 2017 report. One in 10 Americans over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s dementia.

On the morning of Nov. 14, children were both weapon and shield in domestic violence cases, violation of probation, and, of course, custody cases — their fates and those of their parents decided in rooms they won’t be able to set foot in for the better part of a decade.

Orange-clad and handcuffed, James Beverley insisted he only sawed off his ankle bracelet in order to go get medicine for his daughter — that, and the monitor had given him a “blister size of a water bottle.”

This time, Beverley had landed in probation for breaking-and-entering and assault on a female. His priors reveal him to be a man of varied interests — theft, possession of drug paraphernalia, multiple counts of domestic abuse, and a hit-and-run and high-speed car chase with the police. Probation officers were duly concerned when they received a ping that something was wrong with Beverley’s monitor, but when they arrived at his home, he was long gone.

Judge Pat Evans decided on jail time since it certainly “wasn’t his first rodeo.” But Beverley’s lawyer, a beleaguered-looking public defendant who dabbed the sweat from his forehead whenever his client attempted to interject, invoked the felon’s children to lighten the sentence.

If Beverly could find a job to help support his two daughters, would the judge recommend work release instead of jail time? He had a contractor friend at Burger King.

The judge would.

Andre Elder-Spencer looked like he had stepped from a Monaco catwalk into his domestic violence trial. A sculpted beard and a well-fitting blazer made the dapper 33-year-old seem polished and in control — his tone didn’t.

Elder-Spencer was charged with injury to personal property and threatening his ex-girlfriend at the house where she lives with their children.

Elder-Spencer loudly explained to the judge that his ex-girlfriend is a “very vindictive female.” The phone calls to police, the barrage of domestic violence charges — it was all posturing for a custody trial in December. The mother of his children kept her face carefully passive, but indulged in the occasional eye roll whenever Elder-Spencer elaborated on the kind of “female” she is.

As he stepped out of the courtroom, the bailiff and another court official converged on Elder- Spencer. To his confusion, he was given a summons for yet another domestic violence case brought forward by his ex-girlfriend — and served a restraining order. “These females,” Elder- Spencer cursed. He let out a barking laugh and half-paced, half-danced around for a moment, an oversized cross swinging from his neck. “She use that system really good.”

It seemed important to him that the bailiff understood and believed that it wasn’t really domestic violence, it was all about the kids — always about the kids. The charges were just a “strategic move” for her to win sole custody.

“Smile! Be happy!”

Ron Inman’s lawyer had to remind him to celebrate as he came down off the adrenaline rush that had propelled him through a custody battle that took nearly a year. Still braced for a fight, Inman seemed unable to believe it was over and cracked a sweet but effortful smile. “See, good fathers can get custody,” his lawyer chided.

A site manager at a local pharmaceutical company, Inman filed for custody of his two young daughters at the end of January. Though the girls had already been living with him for months by the time the court date arrived, formal custody was another matter in Inman’s mind — there’s “always that stigma that it goes more in favor of the ladies,” and Inman couldn’t help letting that sink in.

Moving through the custody system as a father, Inman always had to provide proof of ties to his children — a clerk would demand extra documents from Inman, but give the same form to the mother next in line without a second thought, Inman said. On the whole, though, Inman said he had “gotten more kudos than anything” from court officials since many fathers just aren’t that interested in their children.

The lawyer flitted between the mother, ensconced in a closed room, and where Inman sat in the hallway to hash out details about holiday plans and bedtime quiet hours. The judge stamped her approval and the mother passed by without a glance at Inman, who didn’t seem to mind. All he was worried about was finishing work for the day and getting home to his girls.

Paralegals and felons alike had to wade to get to the elevators that Wednesday morning — through a sea of green-shirted second graders on a courthouse fieldtrip. They were there to learn about fairness and were treated to a mock trial, a make-believe whodunit about a smashed jack- o-lantern, starring a real judge.

The kids picked up on the mood of the courthouse despite this light-hearted introduction to “consequences.” “People were scared who were there,” one little girl observed. “Or they just knew they weren’t going to have a good day.”

In a fieldtrip retrospective later that week, this precocious second grade class shared their perspectives on kids in the courthouse.

Generally, they thought that people who have kids shouldn’t receive lighter sentences than those who don’t, but were concerned about what happened to the children of the convicted. “Like if they went to jail it wouldn’t be fair to the kids, but if they didn’t it wouldn’t be fair to the community.” Another mused, “It depends on what they do — if they bumped into somebody or if they’re eating drugs or. . . drinking alcohol while you’re driving, I would probably say jail because that’s a law, even though you have kids.”

According to these 7-year-olds, people should never use their kids as an excuse for a crime, even if it’s the truth — just accept the consequences. “You should just take your medicine. That’s what Mr. Block says,” and “the judge said that the person who does the bad thing puts theirself in jail by theirself.”

What should decision-makers keep in mind for cases about kids? “Where they’re gonna live, if they’re gonna be as smart as other kids.”

The second graders think that the judge usually gets things right, “but he might get it wrong like once or twice.” One child reflected, “The people at the court, they have to work hard at their job and try to make it fair…but sometimes it’s just not.”

With one foot in the college bubble and another in the “radical protest community,” Sharp is privy to a side of Duke and Durham totally foreign to most of her classmates. While most students shy away from the rougher side of “Dirty Durham,” Sharp runs toward the fraught ethical battlegrounds of mass incarceration, police brutality, and hate groups.

I met with Sharp on the second floor of Duke’s West Union. I found her perched in a conference room chair, her narrow shoulders swallowed by an oversized flannel shirt and a velvet coat she picked up at a consignment shop. She’s got a bit of a baby face, her blue eyes framed with fiery red hair — Sharp was mistaken for a tween well into her college career. That ended when she buzzed half her head.

Every Friday afternoon, Sharp makes the weekly pilgrimage from her “Theories of Social Change” class on East campus to the Durham County jail, or as some of her radical compatriots call it, “the great white slave ship of Durham county.”

A typical Friday draws a crowd of about fifteen — mainly “people who have family inside, grad students, and other abolitionists,” said Sharp. These demonstrations are organized by the Inside-Outside Alliance, a Durham based group that “supports prisoners on the inside and participates in struggles on the outside against our system of injustice,” according to its Facebook page.

Chants of “One, two, three, four, open every cell door! Five, six, seven, eight, America’s a prison state!” are interspersed with the occasional group guttural scream to make sure the prisoners inside can hear the crowd gathered in solidarity. “Somebody counts to three and everyone just yells,” admits Sharp. Some chants are less poetic but no less powerful — “One, two, three, Andrews is a liar! Four, five, six, Andrews is a liar!”

That’s Michael Andrews, Durham County sheriff. On the county website (“Live. Grow. Thrive.”), Andrews is unsmiling, his brow slightly furrowed beneath hair more salt than pepper. “Personally, I hate him,” Sharp said. Durham County Jail — and Andrews in particular — have drawn national controversy over the past several years with mounting accusations of neglect and outright abuse of inmates.

Reports from Durham Health and Human services fault the Durham County Jail and its contractors for a string of unnecessary deaths — the charges include fatal neglect of inmates with epilepsy and diabetes, refusal to administer Narcan (the life-saving rescue drug that blocks opioids during an overdose), and failure to monitor inmates at risk of self-harm. Each case is damning evidence of police brutality to the Inside-Outside Alliance and groups like them.

As Inside-Outside Alliance demonstrators invoke the names of people who died in Andrews’ care — Dennis McMurray, Matthew Lamont McCain, Terry Demetrius Lee, and most recently, 17-year-old Uniece Fennel, who completed suicide in March — it’s little wonder that radicals face the prospect of jail time with anxiety, if not outright fear.

Sharp regularly provides “jail support” for Durham’s radical organizers — when protestors get taken downtown after an event, she follows the squad car and plants herself in the Durham Jail’s lobby or on the concrete ground outside. Aside from bringing essentials for once the bird is sprung (a change of clothes, snacks, the occasional cigar for some of her frequent fliers), she’s there to provide emotional support and wait for the bail bondsman.

“We have a bondsman that gives discounted rates for protesters, because he knows we’re going to keep coming back,” Sharp confessed with a characteristic bubbling laugh.

The Freedom Fighter Bond Fund, a pot of money managed by local nonprofit Durham Solidarity Center, provides a safety net for the Bull City’s radical community — Durhamites arrested while protesting can reach out to the Durham Solidarity’s Rapid Response Team to post their bail. The Rapid Response Team, by charter “majority…people of color and majority women and/or gender non-conforming persons” according to its website, sometimes arrives with an envelope full of cash, Sharp said.

Sharp also attends court hearings, where her team is easy to spot. The radicals’ in-house lawyer is Scott Holmes, a cowboy hat-wearing Quaker who refuses payment for his services — except in the form of muffins. A professor at NCCU and former member of the now-disbanded UNC Office for Civil Rights, Holmes himself faces misdemeanor charges for pulling down the Confederate statue on Aug. 14.

Another close friend of Sharp’s finds himself in legal hot water — Duke professor Rann Bar-On allegedly assaulted a police officer during a counter-rally of a North Carolina neo-Confederate hate group’s ‘Confederate Memorial Day.’

Bar-On was attempting to set fire to a Confederate flag when police formed a ‘v’ and pushed their way into a cluster of counter-protestors. Alamance County alleges that Bar-On struck an officer with the flag’s pole when approached.

Sharp was standing less than 20 feet away when Bar-On was tackled by police. She was swept backwards as police began “putting their hands on whoever they could see.” Four more protestors were arrested that day, each charged with a handful of misdemeanors to Bar-On’s felony.

On Tuesday, Sharp will make the trek to Alamance County for the trial of Gregory Southall Williams, a doctoral student at Duke’s Divinity School accused of misdemeanor resisting a public officer during the May 20 anti-ACTBAC rally. According to his Facebook page, Williams is a self-described “anarchist…[and] all-round anti-American commie pinko Jew” — he opens shared posts with “from a comrade” and insists, “It’s not a joke or a political slogan. Cops and Klan go hand in hand.”

Sharp will attend at the request of Williams’ defense, organized by Scott Holmes’ team, and may be called to testify. She stopped short of describing the exact nature of her testimony — in a community accustomed to doxing from Nazis and neo-Confederates, personal details and court information are closely guarded.

Sharp rarely fears for her own safety at rallies and protests. She’s lily-white with one un-buzzed shock of fiery red hair (her mother’s); she’s small, and from a distance can look like a child. Conscientious of her role as a white woman advocating for disadvantaged communities of color, she’s constantly “navigating how to not take up too much space advocating for my own ideological shit,” said Sharp. “But [my appearance] also plays out tactically in what I can sign up to do.”

Sharp recalled an August organizing against ‘Silent Sam,’ the statue of a Confederate soldier that presides over the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. She and a friend, “both white ladies,” chanted at the front of the group of demonstrators. “We’re like, two feet in front of the cops, so I was clapping in their faces.” Sharp was keenly aware of how her appearance protects her — “cops have interpreted that as an assault on a police officer before, but they decided not to arrest me.”

“Because I obviously couldn’t assault a police officer,” Sharp said, lacing her fingers under her chin with a Cheshire-cat smile.

Frequent clashes make for a tense relationship between the protest community and local law enforcement. Monday morning, Durham Sheriff Mike Andrews responded via email to accusations of abuse and neglect of inmates. “Any loss of life at the detention facility is a loss for all of us, and it weighs heavily on the Sheriff’s Office. Operating a safe facility is always the goal and helping the public understand the complexities of detentions services is another goal,” Andrews said.

Sharp and her compatriots would likely contend that Andrews is the one who needs help “understanding the complexities of detention services.”

Andrews also cited several ongoing or proposed projects — “[improvements to] the detainee mental health screening process, opening a mental health pod continuing efforts to modify cell windows and air vents, closer supervision of routine cell checks, and hiring a new detention facility director” — as “steps to prevent in-custody deaths.”

Responding directly to the Inside-Outside Alliance’s weekly jailhouse protests, Andrews said, “The Sheriff’s Office appreciates the activist spirit of Durham and the feedback it receives from the community. All elected officials are subject to scrutiny, and the Sheriff’s Office is no exception. This is a critical time in our nation’s history, and the Sheriff’s Office realizes it is not exempt from participating in the robust discussion of very serious issues.”

For Sharp, “robust discussion” is just the beginning.