PICASSO: TWO WOMEN
RUNNING ON THE BEACH
Clothes are too trivial
for such breasts. such knees.
So globed with light.
The sea is blue without
restraint. Cloud-spattered
sky, an open mouth.
The blue air quickens
their gritty steps. Barefoot,
bare-breast, they run.
Not to their lovers.
Not with the wind.
They are
the wind. Hair drunk
on speed, they run
out of nothing into this
primary blue and white.
Their shadows run,
make dark
cross-hatches on the sand.
What I love is that
that the women never
stop. They
run. Toward
us, who do not yet exist.
~ Oriana
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WHAT HAPPENS TO HUMAN BODIES DURING A LONG STAY IN SPACE
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore trained for years to prepare their bodies for space
Spending time in space and having an unrivaled view of planet Earth is an experience many of us dream of.
However, the human body evolved to function in the gravity of Earth. So time in the weightlessness of space can take years from which to fully recover.
Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are back on Earth after their eight-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) unexpectedly became a nine-month enforced stay. Now, their recovery begins.
"Space is by far the most extreme environment that humans have ever encountered and we've just not evolved to handle the extreme conditions," Prof Damian Bailey, who studies human physiology, at the University of South Wales, says.
Entering space changes the human body – and initially that feels awesome.
"It feels like a holiday," astronaut Tim Peake, who went to the ISS in 2015, says.
"Your heart is having an easy time.
"Your muscles and bones are having an easy time.
"You're floating around the space station in this wonderful zero-gravity environment."
Imagine spending weeks lounging around in bed and never having to get up – this is actually one technique scientists use to investigate the impact of zero gravity – and you start to get the picture.
Muscle strength
But when it comes to muscle, it is a case of use it or lose it.
Even the simple act of standing still uses muscles throughout the body to hold you upright.
–nd that is not happening in the microgravity on board the ISS.
Muscle strength takes on a different meaning when everything is practically weightless.
'Accelerated aging'
The heart and your blood vessels also have an easier time as they no longer have to pump blood against gravity – and they start to weaken.
And the bones become weaker and more brittle.
There should be a balance between the cells breaking down old bone and those making new.
But that balance is disrupted without the feedback and resistance of working against gravity.
"Every month, about 1% of their bone and muscles are going to wither away – it's accelerated aging," Prof Bailey says.
And this becomes apparent on the return to Earth.
All of this is why astronauts go up to space in tip-top physical condition.
Then, their daily routine involves two hours of exercise – a combination of treadmill, cycling machine and weights - to maintain as much muscle and bone health as possible.
And now, Suni and Butch will start an intense exercise training program to regain their lost function.
"It will probably take them a few months to build up their muscle mass," Dr Helen Sharman, who was the first Briton in space, says.
Bone mass could take a "couple of years" until it recovers — but even then, there are "subtle changes in the type of bone that we do rebuild after returning to Earth that may never return to completely normal".
But that is just muscle and bone – space changes the whole body.
Even the types of good bacteria living in us – the microbiome – are altered.
The fluids in the body also shift in microgravity.
Instead of being pulled down towards the legs as on Earth, fluid drifts up towards the chest and face.
A puffy face is one of the first noticeable changes in the body.
But this can also lead to swelling in the brain and changes in the eye, including to the optic nerve, retina and even the shape of the eye.
And this "spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome" can lead to blurred vision and potentially irreversible damage.
'Feeling dizzy'
Microgravity also distorts the vestibular system, which is how you balance and sense which way is up.
In space, there is no up, down or sideways.
It can be disorientating when you go up – and again when you return to Earth.
Tim Peake says: "That initial phase of stopping feeling dizzy, of regaining your balance and having strength to walk around normally, that's just two or three days.
"Those first two or three days back on Earth can be really punishing."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1jpyl8g772o?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
more on this:
Gravity may seem like a drag, but spending long periods of time without its grounding force can wreak havoc on your body. On Friday, Nasa and SpaceX will launch the space agency’s Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station to retrieve astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams, after what was meant to be an eight-day stay turned into nine months.
While it is not the most time a human has spent as an extraterrestrial – Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub hold the record, with 374 days – most long space missions are a maximum of six months.
So what happens to a person’s body – and mind – back on earth?
Gravity
The lack of gravity causes significant, and irreparable, bone density loss. It also causes muscles to waste in your arms, legs, trunk and elsewhere, including your heart, which, because it doesn’t have to pump blood against gravity, has to work much less hard.
Your blood volume shrinks, and the way your blood flows changes – it slows in some areas, which can lead to clots. Fluids also don’t come down, or drain, as easily.
While the astronauts are in space, explained Alan Duffy, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University, “Fluids build up in their heads, so they feel like they have a constant cold.”
Olfactory senses are also diminished, “which is probably a good thing, by the way, because it reeks up there,” he said, of an aircraft after two decades of visitors and no windows thrown open.
On the plus side, when they return, they will likely feel like they have finally kicked a nine-month cold. They’ll also struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight.” The build up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision. This is why often you see astronauts wearing spectacles on board, though they’ve started with perfect eyesight. This tends to mostly go back to normal, though they may need glasses for the rest of their lives, said Duffy.
“The brain becomes waterlogged,” said Meng Law, professor and director of radiology, neuroscience at Monash University. This is why the Russian cosmonauts had a device, a bit like a wetsuit, that would suck the fluid and blood away from the head.
Today, Space X and Nasa are working on centrifuges that astronauts could sleep in, which would spin fluid away, said Law.
When they return, their reconditioning is similar to the intense physiotherapy that anyone who has come out of a coma will have been put through, said Duffy.
It is also very tiring, said Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University, which can contribute to the psychological impacts of returning. So the team of doctors has to strike a balance between strengthening the astronauts and not tiring them out.
The astronauts’ return “is itself a research project”, said Duffy. It can help inform how to treat patients on earth who suffer from conditions that involve long stays in hospital – living without gravity has many of the same impacts as being bedridden. Because most research so far is based on six-month stays, Wilmore and Williams will be especially interesting to their team of doctors and scientists.
One more really surprising challenge, Duffy said, was that because clothing floats off your skin, your skin gets “almost baby-like sensitivity”. Back on earth, some astronauts feel like their clothing is sandpaper.
Radiation
Perhaps the most dangerous impact of extended stays in space is being exposed to radiation, which can increase the risk of cancers and rare cancers. Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field shield us from high levels of radiation, but in space, people don’t have that protection.
“Not only will astronauts be exposed to more radiation in space than on Earth,” according to Nasa, “but the radiation they are exposed to could pose increased risks.”
According to Nasa, astronauts are exposed to three sources of radiation. These include particles trapped in the earth’s magnetic field, solar energetic particles from the sun, and finally galactic cosmic rays. The National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center describes these as: “The slowly varying, highly energetic background source of energetic particles that constantly bombard Earth” from outside our solar system, “likely formed by explosive events such as supernova”.
How to protect people against space radiation is one of the problems that scientists are trying to solve as we prepare to send people to Mars or the Moon for longer periods.
Because astronauts tend not to have an obligation to participate in studies once they retire, little is known about how this radiation might impact them later in life, said Tucker. So Williams and Wilmore, who are at the end of their careers, might also offer useful research in this area.
‘The overview effect’
“For anyone who’s been stranded in the wrong airport for a day or two, wanting to get home – imagine you’ve been able to see home that entire time,” Duffy said. Then consider that lasting for nine months. “These people are truly astonishing in terms of their resilience,” he said.
But on returning, anxiety – the result of having been in extreme conditions for so long – and depression are common, said Tucker.
The pair may also experience something called “the overview effect”. Seeing the curvature of the earth, and seeing it from above – as its own kind of space ship, said Duffy – has led some astronauts to report an incredible connection to humanity, an immediate sense of its fragility.
“Some people call it a feeling of inspiration. Some people call it feelings of inadequacy in terms of just how big the world is,” said Tucker.
And then they have to come back down to earth, both literally and figuratively. “They have to make breakfast and they have to drive to work,” said Tucker. “It is a huge transition from living in a very inspiring environment.”
. . . and now if I only knew the source. Apologies for having lost the link.
Charles:
This may be the most disturbing: "[lack of gravity] can also lead to swelling in the brain and changes in the eye, including to the optic nerve, retina and even the shape of the eye." I hope scientists will figure out a way to create gravity in a zero gravity environment.
Oriana:
The only way we know how to produce artificial gravity is by using centrifugal motion, i.e. the spacecraft would need to be spinning. Alas, humans subjected to spinning tend to develop nausea.
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THE ECCENTRICITIES OF THE CREATOR OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes series, might seem like the most rational man ever who was capable of coming up with such a logical method of crime-solving. His literary pursuits were not limited to detective stories. Among his other published books were horror stories, history novels, and science fiction pieces. For decades, the writer was also a staunch believer in occult forces, repeatedly stating he was willing to give up his literary reputation for the goal of promoting spiritualism to the masses.
Spiritualism
Before he became a famous writer, Arthur Conan Doyle worked as a well-educated middle-class ophthalmologist. Parallel to his career, he focused on his hobby of studying paranormal phenomena and attending spiritual seances. In itself, this hobby was not entirely unusual for his era. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the Western world lived through a string of mass-scale tragedies, wars, and epidemics that affected almost every family. Doyle himself lost eleven family members near the turn of the century. The desire to connect to the afterlife and see your loved ones at least one more time was understandable.
The demand almost immediately created the supply, with thousands of mediums, telepaths, and fortune tellers ready to provide their services. Numerous psychic societies emerged to study and promote such phenomena. Of course, there was a fair share of skeptics, unwilling to accept the occult explanation, but Arthur Doyle was never one of them.
The famous writer published pamphlets and toured Europe with lectures on the benefits of spiritual knowledge and practice. Raised as a Catholic, he did not see any contradiction in his beliefs, promoting a Christianity-based model of occultism. He participated in several research societies, was a Freemason, and even a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the secret society for occult practitioners. Doyle’s faith in his cause was adamant and stubborn, sometimes landing him in uncomfortable social situations and creating a highly controversial reputation for the writer.
The Cottingley Fairies
Among the most puzzling and ridiculous events in Doyle’s spiritualist life was his role in the infamous Cottingley Fairies Hoax. In 1917, two girls from Yorkshire, England, presented a collection of photographs that supposedly illustrated their communication with fairies. Arthur Doyle was immediately drawn to the case, publishing a series of reports and even an entire volume on Yorkshire fairies. The book The Coming of the Fairies describes the creatures’ social rituals, eating habits, and personalities.
Doyle was absolutely convinced of the existence of the Cottingley fairies, even though the photographs looked revealing enough. The “fairies” looked completely immobile with their wings frozen against naturally moving substances like streams and plants. Doyle became a laughing stock amongst the rationally inclined public and the Catholic church, who accused him of supporting demonic forces.
Several photography experts examined the fairy photographs and proved their authenticity. And they were partially right—indeed, the images had no photomanipulation of any sort. The girls worked with a much more primitive method, simply cutting out fairy figures from a storybook and gluing them to blades of grass.
Only in the 1980s, one of the girls, already in her eighties, confessed to the fraud and explained how Doyle’s book made it impossible to stop the hoax from blowing up. Initially, they created the fairy photographs to prank their family, but their mother took it too seriously, launching a series of events that made it impossible for the young girls to reveal the truth without embarrassing themselves.
Doyle and the Greatest Archeology Hoax
Group portrait of the scientists examining the Piltdown Man skull, by John Cooke, 1915. Source: The Geological Society of London
Doyle’s obsession with spiritualism made him the suspect in one of the most scandalous hoaxes in the history of archaeology—the Piltdown Man fraud. In 1912, archaeologist Charles Dawson claimed to have discovered the missing link between apes and humans. In Piltdown, England, Dawson found a human skull with a jaw similar to those of large apes. Dawson’s discovery was met with great enthusiasm since it finally proved Darwin’s theory of evolution. Only in the 1950s could the scientists prove the forgery, stating that the skull was a puzzle made from the remains of three different beings: a medieval human, an orangutan, and a chimpanzee. During the quest for the forger’s identity, Doyle’s name and his occultist affiliations soon attracted suspicion.
Like many Victorian gentlemen, Doyle was an amateur archaeologist and fossil collector. His keen interest found an expression in the novel The Lost World which dealt with a fictional expedition to a South American plateau still inhabited by dinosaurs. In fact, The Lost World was one of the indirect clues to Doyle’s possible involvement in the Piltdown Man hoax.
In the novel, the characters discuss bone forgery several times. This led some investigators to see it as the author’s discreet confession. The writer also lived near Piltdown, played golf nearby, and occasionally drove Dawson to excavation sites in his car. Doyle even had a motif for playing a cruel trick on the scientists. In the years preceding the hoax, he engaged in a bitter feud with researchers who exposed mediums and felt deeply offended. Although Doyle’s involvement in the case hasn’t been proven, some experts see it as an illustration of his staunch and somewhat aggressive pro-spiritualist position.
Doyle and Harry Houdini: A Friendship Ruined
Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini in the US, 1923. Source: Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
Arthur Conan Doyle’s stubbornness in the context of his spiritualist beliefs best revealed itself in his relationship with the famous performer and illusionist Harry Houdini. Houdini was a skeptic, highly critical of spiritualist practices, yet interested in them. He believed that mediums were preying upon the grief and pain of families who lost their loved ones, and he aimed to expose as many of them as he could.
The friendship between Doyle and Houdini was based on rivalry and keen interest in each other. For a while, Houdini saw Doyle as a smart yet confused man and attempted to guide him back to rational thinking. Doyle, curiously, believed Houdini had spiritual powers he preferred to hide from the public. He aimed to expose the illusionist and make him another important asset in his battle to legitimize spiritualism.
Their unlikely friendship came to an end after Doyle’s wife, a self-proclaimed medium, attempted to contact the ghost of Houdini’s mother. In the state of trance, the medium produced fifteen pages of written text, supposedly sent from mother to son. Houdini was not convinced since the letter was completely meaningless and superficial and it contained numerous Christian blessings, despite the fact that his mother lived her entire life as a follower of Judaism.
The incident grew into a public feud, with both sides attacking each other in the press. Houdini became the anti-spiritual activist who called Congress to ban fortune-telling in the USA, and frequently exposed famous mediums. Even after Houdini’s tragic and mysterious death in 1926, Doyle did not stop referring to his deceased friend as a hypocrite who was hiding his mystical power. Perhaps, as a spiritualist, Doyle came to see death as a minor inconvenience rather than a tragedy that put an end to one’s existence.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Crusade to Legalize Spiritualism
Spirit photograph taken by Albert de Rochas with the medium M.A., 1909
In 1922, Doyle found himself amidst yet another scandal. A group of psychic researchers exposed a fraudulent spirit photographer William Hope by providing evidence of his method of capturing “spirits” on camera. Unwilling to accept this, Conan Doyle flew into a rage and even threatened the researchers by suggesting they might meet the same fate as Harry Houdini. In fact, some historians believe that Houdini’s death was a murder arranged by offended spiritualists.
In 1926, Arthur Conan Doyle published a two-volume book The History of Spiritualism. Dealing with the most remarkable and influential ideas of the movement’s history, it conveniently omitted any research that could have planted a seed of doubt into readers’ heads. At the end of his life, he became increasingly political and aggressive, finally rejecting his Catholic faith and inviting anti-spiritualist theologists to heated debates. He had an ambition to legalize spiritualism as a full-blown and legitimate religion, later turning it into the official religious doctrine of Great Britain. He never came close to realizing his plans. He died in 1930 from a heart attack, with his last notes expressing a concealed yet evident hint of doubt in his life-long beliefs.
https://www.thecollector.com/arthur-conan-doyle-eccentricitties-fairies-apes-spiritualism/
Charles:
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THE GUARDIAN ARTICLE ON SUBURBAN SPRAWL AS THE AMERICAN “MAGALAND”
In 1941 Dorothy Thompson American journalist who reported from Germany in the lead-up to the second world war, wrote an essay for Harper’s about the personality types most likely to be attracted to Nazism, headlined “Who Goes Nazi?” “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t – whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi,” Thompson wrote.
Talia Lavin, a US writer, recently gave Thompson’s idea an update on Substack with an essay of her own: “Who Goes Maga?”
The essay has since been taken down (I’m not sure why), but in it Lavin reimagined Thompson’s original dinner party setting, with various archetypes in attendance, offering in one or two paragraphs a brief but empathetic explanation for why each person has or has not “gone Maga”.
Eventually arriving at Mr I, an academic and a frequent traveler to France with family money, Lavin wrote: “Nonetheless, he will never go Maga and would spend his days in exile even if he got cut off from the family purse … because … he is a true devotee of beauty.” He finds in Maga “a hatred of things that are beautiful and strange, as all the things he loves are. Power holds no attraction for him, only beauty.”
Of course, power often tries to use aesthetics, and its own definition of beauty, to further its own purposes. Fascists and authoritarians are deeply aware of the ability of art to propagate ideas or oppose them. From architecture to rallies, Hitler and Mussolini favored a type of massiveness, an imposing nature and uniformity to evoke a sense of the imperial eternal.
Soviet aesthetics – though meant to be futurist rather than focused on a glorified past – also fell back on the idea of massiveness and uniformity to subjugate the individual and elevate the state. And, of course, all three authoritarian regimes repressed art, artists and aesthetics that were dissident.
Trumpism, too, has an aesthetic. Allow me to pretentiously, subjectively, declare it not beautiful. The aesthetic of Trumpism is sprawl – which had already infected the United States long before the Maga movement metastasized.
Last September I drove nearly 2,000 miles in the US with a French friend, Guillaume, zigzagging our way from DC to New Orleans and tracing, in part, the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville. (“It might be our last opportunity to observe democracy in America,” I had said to him.) Through his non-American eyes, I saw even more poignantly the ways the physical manifestation of Hannah Arendt’s “atomization” are scarred into the suburban and rural US landscape itself.
Like fish in water, I wonder if Americans are even aware of how they swim in it. The hours-long stretches of chain stores in single-story, flat-topped buildings. The cluster of gas stations, with functionally and aesthetically similar convenience stores selling rows and rows of sugary food and drinks. The big box chain stores, some of them matryoshka dolls that house other chains within – rectangular islands of stuff surrounded by parking lots leading to other little islands of fast food, also surrounded by parking lots, filled with rows and rows of the most enormous pickup trucks imaginable.
And then, just as it starts to dwindle, another on-ramp/off-ramp, and the whole shebang starts all over again, until you’ve cycled through all of the possible chain permutations and you begin to repeat. Wherever there is grass, it will be impeccably mowed. [Oriana: In California, we have plastic grass, no watering or mowing needed]
No matter where you are in America’s 3.8m sq miles, with its 340 million inhabitants, the sprawl will have followed the same driving logic as the chains it hosts – an utterly nondescript, completely indistinguishable look, feel and experience. Somehow, there is always still traffic on these six-lane roads, a trailing line of enormous vehicles that require parking lots that spill out like muffin tops, and with double-wide parking spaces. Everything about sprawl slumps outwards, like warmed jelly that can no longer hold its shape. There is no height except for the height of the signs advertising the chains; those rise several stories into the sky, enough to be visible from the highway.
Somewhere along the line, the American Dream became to live alone, surrounded by all of this, rather than living in connection with other people.
In somewhat cryptic lines, the poet Keats put forward a nexus that goes beyond the subjective nature of what we, individually, find aesthetically pleasing. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” he wrote. He was hardly the only one to interrogate the two at the same time. Plato and Plotinus sought to link beauty to an equally ineffable truth that lingered somewhere beyond our material reality; Kant, too, placed beauty beyond taste, as a disinterested thing that radiated outward. In theology, Saint Augustine and Hans Urs Von Balthasar draw the two back to the same divine origin, as critical components to any human attempt to understand the transcendent.
And if that’s all too mystical for you, the British theoretical physicist Tom McLeish argues: “As indications of the road forward rather than destinations achieved, beautiful experiments and theoretical ideas can, and even must, be celebrated, their aesthetic appeal unashamedly enjoyed.”
I would add a third vector to the one between beauty and truth: art, which in his 1934 book, Art As Experience, John Dewey sees as something that is inherent in the everyday experience of life rather than something necessarily pushed into museums. As long as that living is authentic. “Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality,” writes Dewey.
Perhaps there is something authentic to suburban sprawl when experienced as spectator and anthropologist. But as everyday life, sprawl is deadening, ugly, fake. Devoid of art, beauty and truth alike. The United States has long bought into the idea that freedom is endless expansion. But slouching across land simply because it is there uplifts neither the land nor the people on it. In this instance in particular, abundance did a disservice to the US by drawing it into an absence of experience. What surprise that a moribund ideology would take root in physical spaces that radiate the peculiar desolation of too much?
Given the number of artists, photographers, cinematographers and architects who have been willing to serve nefarious political movements, it would be simplistic for me to claim that artists are somehow immune to them. But art is an attempt to capture – and convey – something true about the world, and the human emotional experience of it. When the rational world has committed itself to a path that leads to destruction, perhaps those dedicated to beauty can, with what Keats called a “negative capability” to perceive truth, bring us back to both.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/19/maga-america-suburban-donald-trump
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MISHA ON PUTIN, AND HOW AMERICA HAS CHANGED
Putin said this, Putin said that, Putin has agreed in principle, rejected out of hand, consented to consider the proposal... What is this, for God's sake? Who the hell is this little bald man? He is a rabid rat, a monster, a mass-murderer, a war criminal, former small-bore KGB factotum, a snitch, a provocateur, a nonentity sprung unto the humanity from an ugly childhood spent in the fetid underworld of midtown-St. Petersburg's dangerous Dostoyevskean crime-infested inner courtyards. He belongs in a steel cage en route to a basement jail cell in The Hague. Instead, he is being fussed over beseechingly and treated with utmost respect by a pathetic Putin-loving US President, himself a dictator-wannabe. He is allowed to be in a position to condescend benevolently to America and the world, as he continues his lawless murderous rampage... The times we live in.
Give Putin everything he wants, and then maybe he’ll agree to a ceasefire.
That’s how it works, see? The Art of the Deal! ~ Michail Iossel, Facebook, March 18, 2025
For the once-unimaginable obscenity of Trump presidency to become remotely possible, America needed to have changed -- perhaps due to its inability, in the capacity of the world's sole remaining superpower, to sustain itself psychologically and maintain its inner cohesion and unity of historical purpose as a society in the vacuum of post-Cold War world -- into a harsher, coarser, more isolationist, more cynical, and ultimately more openly right-wing country. Kindness is out. Empathy is out. Idealism and tolerance are out. "What’s in it for me" is in. Exclusion is in. Proud selfishness, self-centeredness and insatiable victimhood are in. Vulgarity and shamelessness are in, all the way. "I don’t care about Ukraine or whatever as long as the price of eggs and gas are low" is in, big time. Yearning for the white Christian national dictatorship is in.
How did this happen? I don’t know. But it did. ~ March 18, 2025
Does anyone have any doubts as to whose side Trump would've been on in WWII? ~ March 18, 2025
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This is not an image of a bomb crater. It’s a collapsed terror tunnel. See the debris sliding down as opposed to everything burned and vaporized?
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WHERE MOST OF THE EARTH'S OXYGEN COMES FROM
Many people think that our main source of oxygen is the forest. In fact, the ocean from all marine organisms including plankton and seaweed produces more than half of the oxygen on earth.
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WHY RUSSIA DOESN’T CALL FOR MASS MOBILIZATION
A mass mobilization means calling men up for military service, giving them equipment and training, then sending them off to war. Russia still has men aplenty sure, there may be political ramifications of the call-up, but let’s say they get through this unscathed. Sending them off to war isn’t a big problem either.
Training them is an issue though, Russia already spent their best trainers as assault troops in Ukraine, they never had that many in the first place and they haven’t really been rebuilding the cadre either. Russian ability to train new formations is limited, the most you can hope for is rudimentary training to give you low quality soldiers.
An even bigger issue is equipment. Soviet-era stocks are running out, what is still left is usable and in need of extensive servicing, which takes time. Production is 5–10% of losses.
Another issue is logistics. They’ve been using civilian trucks and vans for a while and now they’re using mules and horses to supply their troops on the front line in some cases. The most you can do here is seize even more civilian vehicles and use those, but you’ll also need to cut civilian access to fuel in order to supply your entire army.
The mobiks at this point have a choice: attack fortified Ukrainian positions, held by battle-hardened troops with Western equipment, drones, and everything else … or escape and face Rosgvardia at worst and possibly not even that.
Yeah. I kind of hope Russia goes down that path. It would end the war in a predictable and not that horrible way, at least if you aren’t a Russian.
~ Tomaž Vargazon, Quora
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THE CELTS
Stone head of a man wearing a cap or helmet, found in Yorkshire, c. 2nd-3rd century.
Around the 1990s, the historical Celts endured something of an identity crisis. First in academic articles, then in popular books, and eventually in newspaper headlines, people started loudly declaring that ‘Celts’ did not really exist. Not all the scholarly ideas were new, but the mood certainly was: the general consensus that you could use the word Celtic to conjure up a relatively coherent historical people was called into question. The discipline of Celtic Studies grew anxious and self-critical: I have heard, from senior colleagues, accounts of students begging them to teach what could be said about the Celts, rather than the things that couldn’t.
Modern ‘Celts’, in particular, started to gain scare quotes: these identities, it appeared, were recent inventions grafted onto historical abstractions, a collage of disparate symbols from the pre-Roman past, stuck together with imagination, enthusiasm, and academic linguistics. Ian Stewart’s The Celts: A Modern History broadly agrees with these conclusions. But rather than seeing this as a reason to abandon the Celts, Stewart builds on recent scholarship to make a compelling case for the significance of modern Celticism, in all its paradoxical glory.
This is a big, ambitious, erudite book. After a crash course on academic trends, and on ancient evidence for the Celts, Stewart begins in the early modern period, with the scholarly recovery and reconstruction of Celtic knowledge. This recovery was required after the near-total disappearance of Celtic ideas in medieval Europe, but Stewart avoids portraying the era as one of dry, disinterested scholarship. As he writes, nation and race ‘are kept firmly in view throughout’, and he shows that debates about Celtic history and linguistics frequently descended into squabbles over ‘prestigious ancestors whose legacy was up for grabs’. Repeatedly, we come across authors who just so happen to discover that their own local dialect was the original tongue of all Europe.
For the uninitiated, the prominence of German claims to Celticity might come as a surprise: Celtic and Germanic concepts were not definitively separated until the late 18th century, and the apparent incongruence of modern German-speakers identifying as Celts might make their scholarship seem faintly ridiculous. But alongside a record of intellectual missteps and prejudices, Stewart demonstrates the real and lasting linguistic discoveries made in this era, not least the proofs of Celtic linguistic relatedness published by the Welsh Edward Lhwyd in 1707, which had already been ‘speculatively’ suggested by the German G.W. Leibniz.
Readers expecting dramatic tales of neo-druids and national struggles will, I hope, not turn away from extended sections on (for example) the significance of the phonological distinction between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic: part of the cleverness of Stewart’s book is that he manages to combine a full account of the weirder and wilder Celtic theories with evidence that, in among the eccentricities, genuine scholarly advances were taking place.
On the subject of scholarly advances, one of the many innovative aspects of Stewart’s grand narrative is his focus on James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848), an Anglo-Welsh ethnologist who emerges as one of the pioneers of placing Celtic languages in the Indo-European family. Prichard is shown to have profoundly influenced the continental linguists who often get most of the credit. He also, however, inaugurates a section of Stewart’s book in which the concept of race becomes central to the expression of Celtic identity. Here, for instance, we find the Scottish phrenologist George Combe (1788-1858) predicting, by lucky accident, the emergence of a second Napoleon in 19th-century France, based on his belief that ‘the small Celtic brain of the French’ was ‘vulnerable to demagoguery’.
A chapter on race and the ‘Irish Question’ surveys a large and contentious body of evidence on the role of anti-Celtic racism in Britain’s treatment of Ireland, concluding that any racialized interpretation must always be balanced with other specific factors. And a brilliant consideration of the ‘Land Question’ across the British Celtic fringe shows that racial rhetoric was just as important in attempts to unify opposition to ‘Saxon’ landlordism as it was in English denigration of ‘Celtic’ tenants.
This duality continues to be important in the book’s final section, which focuses on the dawn of organized pan-Celticism around the turn of the 20th century. Here Celtic connectivity was asserted on combined racial and linguistic grounds: it could be mobilized on behalf of both nationalist radicalism and quiescent Unionism, and conferred an ongoing racial tinge to the self-consciously anti-colonial and left-leaning Celtic activism that developed as the century wore on. Hitler, it emerges, might have thought Jesus was a Celt, and the Nazis used Celtic Studies for their own ends; but that didn’t stop later left-identified pan-Celts from asserting that Celtic society was ‘always socialist’.
In a book that covers this much ground, it is always possible to think of other routes that might have been taken. Stewart is a historian of ideas, not a literary critic: you could imagine a narrative in which poetry, novels, and aesthetics play a bigger role. Similarly, you could write a book in which material written in, rather than about, the various Celtic languages was more central. But this latter point seems churlish when Stewart – whose multilingual focus on English, French, and German is unprecedented – is also able to cite more primary and secondary Celtic-language sources (predominantly in Welsh) than is usual for scholars outside Celtic Studies. Pan-Celticism itself was a movement so uncomfortably aware of its dependence on English that there were attempts to make Esperanto its alternative lingua franca.
From the fashionable melancholy Celticists of the 18th century to the scholarly skeptics of the 20th, people have long predicted the imminent disappearance of the Celts. But as Stewart’s book shows, like King Arthur returning from Afallon, the Celts are always coming back.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/celts-modern-history-ian-stewart-review
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EIGHT HIDDEN PORTRAITS IN FAMOUS PAINTINGS
“Something stirring beneath the surface” — what eight ghostly portraits found inside masterpieces reveal
In the past month alone, shadowy portraits have been found hidden in longstanding masterpieces by Titian and Picasso. What can they and other such discoveries tell us?
Something's stirring. Every few weeks, it seems, brings news of a sensational discovery in the world of art – of paintings hidden under other paintings and vanished visages twitching beneath the varnish of masterpieces whose every square millimetre we thought we knew. This past month alone has brought to light the detection of mysterious figures trapped beneath the surface of works by Titian and Picasso. But what are we to make of this slowly swelling collection of secret stares – these absent presences that simultaneously delight and disturb?
In early February, it was revealed that researchers at the Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Laboratories at the Cyprus Institute, using advanced imaging and a new multi-modal scanner combining different techniques, had proved the existence of an upside-down portrait of a mustachioed man holding a quill beneath the Italian Renaissance master Titian's painting Ecce Homo, 1570-75. On its surface, Titian's canvas portrays a bedraggled Jesus, hands bound by ropes, standing shoulder to shoulder with a sumptuously dressed Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who will sentence him to death. What is this strange, erased, anachronistic scribe doing here and what is he trying to tell us?
The presence of the hidden portrait, who peers imperceptibly through the craquelure – those alluring cracks in old master paintings – was first described by the art historian Paul Joannides and its significance to the surface narrative is more than incidental. While the identity of the topsy-turvy figure has yet to be determined, it is clear he helped shape the wrenching composition under which he has been buried for the past 450 years. The analysis of the materiality of the painting's layers in Cyprus has shown that the contours of the hidden figure's face dictated the curve of ropes binding Jesus's hands – establishing notes of harmony between the successive and seemingly contrary compositions.
That sense of quiet collaboration between layers of paint – between what is there and what used to be there – is more striking still in the hidden countenance of a woman found by conservators at The Courtauld Institute of Art beneath a painting from Pablo Picasso's Blue Period – a portrait of the artist's friend and sculptor Mateu Fernández de Soto. Also discovered with the use of infrared imaging technology, the portrait of the as-yet unidentified woman is rendered in an earlier, more impressionistic style, and appears, when brought to the surface, to be whispering into de Soto's ear, as if the past and present had merged into a single suspended moment.
Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto, 1901
In most instances, these buried portraits are merely the ghosts of rejected compositions that we were never intended to see – and could not have, were it not for the aid of advanced imaging tools that allow experts safely to peer beneath the paint without harming a work's surface. X-rays uncover hidden sketches, while infrared reflectography is capable of exposing subtle details masked by old varnish – details which, once glimpsed, are impossible to unknow. Once revealed, these portraits demand to be reckoned with. What follows is a short survey of some of the most intriguing and mysterious portraits – very often self-portraits – found wriggling restlessly beneath familiar masterpieces: unsettling presences that remain forever immeasurably close and worlds away.
Rembrandt’s An Old Man in the Military Costume
Think of Rembrandt and we tend to think first of that dim, imperishable realm in which his sitters sit outside of time – an eternal stage crafted from charcoal and sombrous umber. What we don't think of is giddy greens and garish vermilions igniting the space with vibrancy and verve. But that is exactly what researchers found staring back at them when they subjected the Dutch master's painting, An Old Man in Military Costume, to macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) imaging and infrared reflectography. Trapped beneath Rembrandt's meditation on mortality, a giddy ghost of jaunty youth clad in raffish reds and incorrigible verdigris intensifies the poignancy of his masterwork.
Artemisia Gentileschi's Saint Catherine of Alexandria
With some paintings, the more we see the less we know. Take Artemisia Gentileschi's portrait of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1619. X-ray analysis of the Italian Baroque artist's work undertaken in 2019 revealed that she began the work as a self-portrait – one that closely resembles an earlier, and similarly entitled, Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, begun around 1615. Disentangling the two works' faces is tricky but scholars now think that the final work – which swaps a turban for a crown and a piercing stare for a pious, heavenly gaze – blends elements of the artist's own likeness with those of Caterina de' Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici, who commissioned the work. The result is proof that while an artist may be able to let go of a painting, a painting can never completely let go of the artist.
Caravaggio's Bacchus
Caravaggio only signed one painting during his lifetime and did so with ghoulish flair in a squiggle of blood at the bottom of the largest painting he ever made, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, 1608. But that is hardly the only time the Italian master inserted a semblance of himself into his paintings. In 2009, scholars using advanced reflectography penetrated the cracked surface of Caravaggio's depiction of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, to rehabilitate a tiny self-portrait that he had secreted in the reflection of the carafe (an almost subliminal detail that clumsy restoration efforts had obscured after the portrait-within-a-portrait was first discovered in 1922). This strange, distorted, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't selfie in the vessel of wine is key to the work's meaning, amplifying as it does themes of drunken illusion and elastic identity that are central to Caravaggio's painting.
Seurat's Young Woman Powdering Herself
On the surface, Young Woman Powdering Herself is a playful meditation on how subject and style overlap. Here, Georges Seurat employs his pioneering pointillist technique of countless tiny dots to depict his mistress, Madeleine Knobloch, as she scatters her own flurry of powdery specks across her face. The dabs of paint seem to swirl in the air, all but clogging it – metaphorically powdering, too, anyone who stops to stare. These deftly deployed dabs of paint reveal and erase in equal measure, as if conjuring a world only to blot it out again. That sense of brilliant obliteration is intensified with the discovery of a hidden self-portrait – Seurat's only known one – in the open window which he later concealed beneath another flurry of dots depicting a vase of flowers. How dotty is that?
Modigliani's Portrait of a Girl
Some people refuse to be forgotten, no matter how hard you scrub them from your memory. Italian modernist Amedeo Modigliani's famous Portrait of a Girl, 1917, is a compelling case in point. Some scholars suspect that the full-length portrait of a woman, concealed beneath the visible image, may depict an ex-lover with whom Modigliani ended a relationship a year earlier. In 2021, two PhD candidates at the University of London used Artificial Intelligence to reconstruct this hidden portrait, which strikingly resembles Modigliani's former muse and mistress, Beatrice Hastings. While the identity of both women, surface and hidden, remains uncertain, the layering reinforces themes of concealment and masking in Modigliani's work.
René Magritte's La Cinquième Saison
In his painting La Cinquième Saison, 1943, René Magritte portrays in profile two nearly identical men in dark suits and bowler hats – props that often signal the presence of his alter-ego in the artist's work. Both men hold small, framed paintings under their arms as they walk towards each other. The trajectory of their strides suggests not so much an imminent collision as a near miss – an eclipse, as one figure and painting slips behind the other. It somehow seems fitting that this painting – this painting of shuffling paintings – has been found, with the use of infrared reflectography, to be hiding under its surface another painting altogether: a portrait of a mysterious woman, who at once bears a strong resemblance to the artist's wife, Georgette, and has features that are wholly distinct. The discovery of the hidden portrait merely amplifies themes of riddling duality in the work of an artist known for his treacherously teasing images.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250221-eight-portraits-found-hidden-inside-masterpieces
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STOP SAYING “I THINK”
We’ve all done it. You’re in a meeting, on a date or even texting a friend, and two words slip into the conversation: “I think we should go with option A.” “I think we should see this movie.” “I think we should leave at 7.”While “I think” can be harmless sprinkled in here and there, if you use it too often and in the wrong context, it can weaken your message, diminish your presence and undermine your confidence.
“I think” is an example of minimizing language: words and phrases that soften your statements and make you seem less sure of yourself. Other common minimizing language includes “just,” “sorry” and “maybe.”
While these words may seem polite, they can dilute your credibility and make your ideas easier to dismiss, especially in a professional context.
Use this ‘subtle but powerful’ swap
Instead of “I think,” swap in “I recommend.” Compare these two statements:
“I think we should move the deadline.”
“I recommend moving the deadline.”
The first feels hesitant, while the second feels authoritative and action-oriented. Even if the message you want to convey is exactly the same, your words carry more weight when framed as a recommendation rather than what can be interpreted as a passing thought.
Here are a few examples of this swap in action at work and in life:
Instead of: “I think we should go with the second proposal.“ Try: “I recommend we go with the second proposal.”
Instead of: “I think we should prioritize this project.“ Try: “I recommend prioritizing this project.”
Instead of: “I think you should try this restaurant.“
Try: “I recommend trying this restaurant.”
Instead of: “I think you should change your reservation.“
Try: “I recommend changing your reservation.”
The shift is subtle but powerful. Saying “I recommend” instead of “I think” makes you sound more confident and decisive, gives you more influence, and ensures you’re seen as someone whose opinion matters.
What if you’re not sure?
There are times when it feels like you really should use “I think.” Perhaps you’re not confident in your recommendation, or you purposefully want to soften your message.
While it’s certainly a path you can take, you can still use “I recommend” in these situations — with a twist.
Preface your recommendation with an indication of what you’re drawing on to give it. For example:
“Based on what I’ve seen, I recommend…”
“Looking at the data, I’d recommend…”
“From my experience, I’d recommend…”
This keeps your statement strong while acknowledging some uncertainty and leaving room for further discussion.
Any time you try to disrupt a pattern that’s deeply ingrained in your everyday conversations, it takes practice. Here are a few strategies you can try to break this particular communication habit:
Listen for it. Start noticing how often you say “I think,” and in what contexts it tends to pop up. It may surprise you how many times a day you use this phrase.
Enlist help. Ask friends or peers to call it out when they hear it to help keep you accountable.
Pause before you speak. Speaking more slowly and adding pauses is already helpful when trying to appear more authoritative and confident. Now, you can also catch yourself when you’re about to say “I think” and give yourself enough time to swap it out.
Observe your writing. “I think” often creeps into our written communication too, especially quick messages over Slack or Teams. Take a second pass at your writing before hitting send to make sure you’re keeping things concise and using strong phrases like “I recommend.”
Confident communication isn’t just about what you say, it’s about how you say it. By swapping “I think” for “I recommend,” you’ll sound more authoritative at work — and come across as more self-assured in everyday life.
Oriana:
While the substitution of "I recommend" can work in many situations, it doesn't cover the frequent use of "I think" in everyday speech to fit all kinds of occasions, e.g. "I think it's gonna rain'; "I think Trump is a wanna-be dictator." "I think" has many more uses than "I recommend."
Besides, "I think" is a lot less obtrusive than a ponderous phrase like "I recommend." In fact "I think" is often used to add a touch of humility to one's statement.
Nevertheless, I agree that "I think" is overused in situations calling for more precise wording.
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THE FIRST COUPLE: “She f*cking hates him”
A new book reveals what Melania Trump really thinks about her sexual predator husband and it's absolutely brutal: "She f*cking hates him."
And it gets so much worse....
According to the new book "All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America" by journalist Michael Wolff, a source revealed to him the aforementioned opinion and was "bewildered that this needed saying."
Wolff writes that Trump chose during his campaign to never acknowledge that "the most public marriage in the nation was breaking down, even if by every standard indication, it was breaking down, and doing so in public."
Trump's staff didn't even know where Melania lived and she was conspicuously absent from most of his campaign events — a remarkable decision for a former first lady.
In fact, Melania didn't make a single campaign appearance in the 18 months leading up to the Republican National Convention in 2024. She "flatly refused" to make a "showstopper" speech at the convention. Instead, she appeared briefly on stage beside Trump during his acceptance speech and refused to speak for herself.
"Whatever was going on–and no one had any idea what was going on, at least no more than what was plainly obvious–it had certainly not been helped by the Stormy [Daniels] trial," Wolff writes. Melania refused to appear beside him in court.
"But that seemed hardly the only thing to explain the colder and colder winter," Wolff states.
When Trump's staffers asked Melania to appear by his side for his first indictment in New York she laughed in their faces and said, "Nice try."
Trump's staff worked on crafting a plan for Melania's role in a second Trump White House, coining the idea of "part-time First Lady" role that would allow her to spend more time in New York.
Wolff says of the Donald-Melania relationship that "in some sense, this is the darkest Trump hole."
"Nobody knows the answer to the what-about-Melania question. Not even the people closest to him. What is the nature of the marriage? Nobody can tell you," he writes.
When word first began spreading that Wolff was working on a book about Trump's 2024 campaign, his aides panicked.
"A number of us have received inquiries from the disgraced author Michael Wolff, whose previous work can only be described as fiction," said campaign co-chairs Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita in a statement along with other MAGA figures. Wiles is now Trump's Chief of Staff.
"He is a known peddler of fake news who routinely concocts situations, conversations, and conclusions that never happened," they added. "As a group, we have decided not to respond to his bad-faith inquiries, and we encourage others to completely disregard whatever nonsense he eventually publishes. Consider this our blanket response to whatever he writes."
Of course, if Wolff was as unreliable as they claim they wouldn't feel the need to address his book with such a lengthy statement. They're spooked because they know the journalist manages to get reliable sources. ~ by Occupy Democrat, Quora
Anna Gillingham:
The woman showed up to the inauguration in mourning gear. Can't argue with that.
John Carlton:
And the inauguration hat, a brim so wide that he had no chance of getting his lips anywhere near her.
Unlike, of course, when she was close to Trudeau.
Paul M:
Going back to the Obama not born in the US days she’s been a Cruella Deville.
Judy Crawford:
You do realize the book uncovers so much more. And you do realize who the author is. And you do realize that he interviewed Epstein and has the audio tapes to prove it.
Oh and you do know their marriage was a business deal, right?!
Oriana:
A bit more on this:
I was particularly struck by the statement (in paraphrase): To know him is to dislike him. He has a toxic presence.
As for Melania, a Hispanic radio announcer suggested calling her "La Primera Puta."
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AMERICA IS BECOMING A NATION OF HOMEBODIES
In his February 2025 cover story for The Atlantic, journalist Derek Thompson dubbed our current era “the anti-social century.”
He isn’t wrong. According to our recent research, the U.S. is becoming a nation of homebodies.
Using data from the American Time Use Survey, we studied how people in the U.S. spent their time before, during and after the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic did spur more Americans to stay home. But this trend didn’t start or end with the pandemic. We found that Americans were already spending more and more time at home and less and less time engaged in activities away from home stretching all the way back to at least 2003.
And if you thought the end of lockdowns and the spread of vaccines led to a revival of partying and playing sports and dining out, you would be mistaken. The pandemic, it turns out, mostly accelerated ongoing trends.
All of this has major implications for traffic, public transit, real estate, the workplace, socializing and mental health.
The trend of staying home is not new.
There was a steady decline in out-of-home activities in the two decades leading up to the pandemic.
Compared with 2003, Americans in 2019 spent nearly 30 minutes less per day on out-of-home activities and eight fewer minutes a day traveling.
There could be any number of reasons for this shift, but advances in technology, whether it’s smartphones, streaming services or social media, are likely culprits. You can video chat with a friend rather than meeting them for coffee; order groceries through an app instead of venturing to the supermarket; and stream a movie instead of seeing it in a theater.
Time spent out of the house has been falling since 2003
In 2020, there was a steep drop-off in minutes per day spent outside the home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There's only been a slight recovery since then, and Americans spent nearly 1.5 hours less outside their homes in 2023 than they did in 2003.
Compared with 2003, Americans in 2019 spent nearly 30 minutes less per day on out-of-home activities and eight fewer minutes a day traveling. There could be any number of reasons for this shift, but advances in technology, whether it’s smartphones, streaming services or social media, are likely culprits. You can video chat with a friend rather than meeting them for coffee; order groceries through an app instead of venturing to the supermarket; and stream a movie instead of seeing it in a theater.
Of course, there was a sharp decline in out-of-home activities during the pandemic, which dramatically accelerated many of these stay-at-home trends.
Outside of travel, time spent on out-of-home activities fell by over an hour per day, on average, from 332 minutes in 2019 to 271 minutes in 2021. Travel, excluding air travel, fell from 69 to 54 minutes per day over the same period.
But even after the pandemic lockdowns were lifted, out-of-home activities and travel through 2023 remained substantially depressed, far below 2019 levels. There was a dramatic increase in remote work, online shopping, time spent using digital entertainment, such as streaming and gaming, and even time spent sleeping.
Time spent outside of the home has rebounded since the pandemic, but only slightly. There was hardly any recovery of out-of-home activities from 2022 to 2023, meaning 2023 out-of-home activities and travel were still far below 2019 levels. On the whole, Americans are spending nearly 1.5 hours less outside their homes in 2023 than they did in 2003.
While hours worked from home in 2022 were less than half of what they were in 2021, they’re still about five times what they were ahead of the pandemic. Despite this, only about one-quarter of the overall travel time reduction is due to less commuting. The rest reflects other kinds of travel, for activities such as shopping and socializing.
Ripple effects
This shift has already had consequences.
And if you thought the end of lockdowns and the spread of vaccines led to a revival of partying and playing sports and dining out, you would be mistaken. The pandemic, it turns out, mostly accelerated ongoing trends.
All of this has major implications for traffic, public transit, real estate, the workplace, socializing and mental health.
https://theconversation.com/america-is-becoming-a-nation-of-homebodies-250350?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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THE SEDUCTIONS OF CYNICISM
I would never describe myself as cynical. Yes, I have little faith in the likelihood of our coming together as a species to solve the climate crisis, make housing affordable or vote for the non-criminal presidential candidate.
But that’s based on evidence. Who could reflect on current events and feel optimistic about the future?
That’s what I might have argued before I read Jamil Zaki’s new book, Hope for Cynics.
Afterwards, I felt humbled: I might be part of the problem.
Zaki – a professor of psychology, and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab – paints a confronting picture of cynicism’s hold on us, and its negative impacts for the future and our individual lives.
Over the last 50 years, we’ve lost trust not only in institutions, but also in each other. In 2018, only 32% of Americans surveyed said that “most people can be trusted”, compared with nearly 50% in 1972. A global study in 2022 uncovered the same tendency towards distrust in 24 of 28 nations.
As trust has waned, cynicism has taken root as a response to global instability, mounting threats and falling living standards.
But, Zaki argues, it’s an own goal: believing things can only get worse all but guarantees that they will, by further eroding our social fabric and discouraging us from taking action against corruption and injustice.
Expecting the worst also harms our chances of finding happiness in the now. Studies show that cynics are more depressed, drink more alcohol, earn less money and even die younger than non-cynics.
But the popular belief that cynicism is just smarter and more realistic isn’t necessarily justifiable, Zaki points out: cynics perform worse at cognitive tests and are less effective at identifying untrustworthy people and lies than non-cynics.
“By never trusting, cynics never lose,” he writes. “They also never win.”
Zaki admits that for many years – even while professionally engaged in the study of kindness and empathy, and publicly preaching their importance – he, too, was a secret cynic.
He set out to write the book partly to understand that incongruity: “They say research is me-search,” Zaki laughs.
What he found was that cynicism doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Our tendency to focus on potential problems did evolve for a reason: “200,000 years ago, the person worrying about the predator on the horizon probably did better than their friend blissed out by the sunset”, he says.
But now those instincts for self-protection can lead us to fixate on the negative and overestimate the chances of frightening, but rare events.
Cynics might pride themselves on seeing the world as it really is, but humans are generally terrible at accounting for our biases and at amending our beliefs in line with evidence. “One of the central messages of psychology over the last century has been that we are much less objective than we think we are,” Zaki says.
In 2022, Zaki conducted a study of Stanford students, comparing their experiences on campus with their perceptions of the average Stanford student. Their self-reports described a warm, supportive community. But the “imagined” Stanford student was relatively hostile.
“They saw that imaginary person as much pricklier, more judgmental and less warm than anyone they actually knew,” Zaki says. The same discrepancy between real and imagined proved consistent in his surveys of school systems, government departments and private companies.
It reflects our warped view of humanity, “like an unfun fun-house mirror”, he writes: “We perceive our species to be more cruel, more callous and less caring than it really is.”
In fact, there is plenty of consensus, even with people we’d identify as our opponents, says Zaki.
“Dozens” of studies have shown that Democrats and Republicans have an inaccurate picture of each other, imagining their rivals as richer, more different from them and more extreme in their views than they really are. Yet the 2021 Common Ground survey found nearly 150 issues on which Democrats and Republicans agreed. They weren’t small fry, either: two-thirds of both parties endorsed tax incentives to promote clean energy, for example.
It speaks to the “false polarization” of society “keeping us from each other, and understanding how much we share”, says Zaki. If you knew that your views were shared by two-thirds of the population, “you’d feel much more empowered.”
While some may see optimists as naive and blindly accepting of the status quo, cynicism breeds its own kind of “dark complacency”, Zaki says. Though we’re not necessarily wrong to distrust politicians, by writing them off, we disengage ourselves.
“Autocrats love a cynical population, because a group of people that don’t trust each other are easier to control.”
The widespread decline in social trust has in fact been ascribed to increasing inequality, as populations turn against each other in response to scarcity. We might even feel a “grim satisfaction” when our low expectations of humanity are proved right, Zaki says.
But that overlooks our own part in perpetuating them. “We imagine that we’re passive observers, but in fact our beliefs shape our personal versions of the world, the actions that we take and the cultures we create,” says Zaki.
“We have these toxic self-fulfilling prophecies – when we expect little of others, they notice and we get their worst.”
People often have good reasons for retreating into cynicism, Zaki says. It is, after all, a self-protective strategy: if we don’t expect too much, we can’t be disappointed. But over time, he says, it reaffirms our sense of passivity, and “withers us from the inside out”.
What makes cynicism so seductive – and also so hard to give up – is that it relieves us of personal responsibility. It’s easier to believe that we are simply victims of the world than it is to reckon with our own part in making it better, for ourselves and others.
We may be relatively powerless over systemic issues, but “we can absolutely tend our social backyards”, says Zaki. The way we treat others and engage with the world can radiate outwards, and “turn those vicious cycles into virtuous ones”.
We may be relatively powerless over systemic issues, but “we can absolutely tend our social backyards”, says Zaki. The way we treat others and engage with the world can radiate outwards, and “turn those vicious cycles into virtuous ones”.
The counter to cynicism is not optimism, Zaki continues: it’s hope, “the idea that the future could turn out well – not that it will”. With hope, “there is room for our actions to matter”. That’s what makes it feel so daunting, he says: “Hope is hard because it demands something of us.”
As a self-described “recovering cynic”, the changes that Zaki has made in his own life have been small but powerful.
We may be relatively powerless over systemic issues, but “we can absolutely tend our social backyards”, says Zaki. The way we treat others and engage with the world can radiate outwards, and “turn those vicious cycles into virtuous ones”.
The counter to cynicism is not optimism, Zaki continues: it’s hope, “the idea that the future could turn out well – not that it will”. With hope, “there is room for our actions to matter”. That’s what makes it feel so daunting, he says: “Hope is hard because it demands something of us.”
As a self-described “recovering cynic”, the changes that Zaki has made in his own life have been small but powerful.
First, he has become more conscious of cynical thoughts, noticing when he is coming to “unnecessarily bleak conclusions” and interrupting them with facts. Tellingly, Zaki has noticed that this is most common when he’s sleep-deprived or stressed: cynicism is a defining trait of burnout.
He also makes a point of taking more social risks, such as asking for help and talking to new people. It doesn’t come naturally, but the result has been life-affirming. “Just last night, I struck up a conversation with a stranger that was so fulfilling,” he says.
Zaki also practices what he calls “positive gossip”: spreading word, within his circles, of acts of generosity or kindness. He describes it as “personal counter-programming” to cynicism.
“It feels safer to shut down,” Zaki says. “It’s hard to take chances, to try and keep an open mind or stay connected.”
But when we give up on each other or a better future, “we actually make the bleakest, grimmest outcomes much more likely to pass”, Zaki says.
Living in a small town, I’m already in the habit of talking to strangers, and Zaki is right: it never fails to remind me that the world is a friendlier, more cooperative place than I’d believe from scrolling X or the day’s headlines.
The key to resisting cynicism, for me, is balancing between those two seemingly contradictory visions of the world. There’s the one that’s unfair, hostile, falling apart at the seams – and the one I navigate day-to-day, where I can disagree politically with my neighbor, but still have trust that I can turn to her for help. Maybe there is more I could be doing to bring those realities into alignment, or at least closer together.
I’m somewhat chastened to recognize my own actions in Zaki’s description of cynicism as a “warm blanket” beneath which one seeks shelter from the world. But I also feel grateful to him for pointing out that it’s full of holes.
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/oct/02/optimist-cynicism-faith
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CAN EXERCISING HELP YOU LIVE LONGER? TWIN STUDY SAYS IT MAY BE COMPLICATED
Exercising more than the recommended amount may not benefit life span as much as previously thought.
Past studies have shown that certain lifestyle choices, such as exercising regularly, may help extend longevity.
A new study found that higher levels of physical activity may not benefit life span as much as previously thought.
However, experts say regular activity is crucial for overall health and life quality.
For as long as there has been science, researchers have continued to look for ways to help us live longer.
Past studies show that certain healthy lifestyle choices, such as eating a healthy diet, not smoking, and exercising regularly may help increase a person’s life span.
“The length of the life span reflects the overall health of individuals,” Elina Sillanpää, PhD, associate professor in the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland told Medical News Today.
“Many people still die from diseases that are partially preventable through healthy lifestyles. For example, physical activity recommendations are based on studies investigating the associations between activity and life span. Physical activity can affect various diseases and the aging process. Life span is an outcome that may combine all potential health benefits of physical activity,” she said.
Sillanpää is the lead of the GenActive research project that launched in 2021 to study the potential links between physical activity, cardiometabolic disease, and genetics.
In one of the newest studies from the project, Sillanpää and her team report that higher levels of physical activity may not benefit lifespan as much as previously thought.
The study was recently published in the journal European Journal of Epidemiology.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/can-exercising-help-you-live-longer-twin-study-complicated
Oriana:
Exercise is beneficial in many ways, but nothing beats having centenarian genes. The most common age of death in the US is 85; when it comes to living beyond that age, we see that longevity runs in some families. In the most unfortunate families, most members die fairly young, generally of cancer. Taking metformin or berberine is emerging as the most reliable way to achieve a long life. Rapamycin is another drug which may prolong life, but it remains controversial because of side effects.
Smoking and obesity are two lifestyle factors that result in shorter life expectancy. On the other hand, the primacy is longevity genes is revealed by the fact that a significant percentage of centenarians used to be smokers and drinkers, until quitting in their nineties or so. A typical answer to that puzzle is that centenarian genes include a subset involved in efficient detoxification of carcinogens.
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IS EXCESSIVE SLEEPINESS A WARNING SIGN OF DEMENTIA?
At least 55 million people are living with dementia worldwide, and numbers are increasing rapidly.
Studies have suggested links between altered sleep patterns and dementia risk.
A new study in women over 80 years of age has linked increased sleepiness with greater dementia risk.
Women with increased sleepiness were twice as likely to develop dementia during the 5-year study as those with stable sleep patterns.
Dementia is an increasing problem worldwide. More than 55 million people are currently living with the condition, with 139 million predicted to have dementia by 2050.
Many factors may increase a person’s risk of developing dementia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), these factors include:
lack of physical activity
uncontrolled diabetes
high blood pressure (hypertension)
hearing loss
tobacco and alcohol use.
Several studies have suggested that disturbed sleep patterns may contribute to dementia risk, but do not agree whether too much or too little sleep has greater impact.
SLEEP DURATION AND DEMENTIA
One large-scale study found that high or low sleep duration increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. Another found that short sleep duration in middle age was associated with higher dementia risk.
A third suggests that sleeping more than 9 hours a night is associated with neurodegeneration and dementia.
All these studies relied on participant-reported sleep duration, rather than objective measurement of sleep and wakefulness.
Now, a study led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, which used sleep trackers to monitor the sleep patterns of 733 women in their 80s, has found that increased 24-hour sleepiness, particularly excessive napping, was associated with a doubled risk of developing dementia.
The study appears in the journal Neurology.
“Increased sleepiness and frequent napping may be linked to dementia due to several underlying factors,” Allder told MNT, adding that “one key reason is sleep fragmentation and neurodegeneration — poor nighttime sleep quality can disrupt deep sleep, which is essential for clearing amyloid-beta, a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Circadian disruption also plays a role, as worsening sleep-wake cycles and irregular circadian rhythms are associated with neurodegenerative changes. Circadian misalignment can impair memory consolidation and contribute to cognitive decline,” he continued.
Concurring with the researchers’ suggestion that increased sleepiness might be a result of early dementia, Allder also explained that excessive sleepiness might act as a compensatory mechanism for brain dysfunction.
If sleep is disturbed, brain waste, such as beta-amyloid and tau, may start to build up, eventually forming the plaques and tangles characteristic of Alzheimer’s. Accumulation of beta-amyloid and tau may begin 10-20 years before dementia symptoms become noticeable.
Dr. Porsteinsson explained: “When you sleep, the brain ‘shrinks,’ which appears to open up [the] flow of cerebrospinal fluid that flushes out toxic byproducts such as [beta-amyloid] 42 and p-tau. The brain also resets its balance during sleep. The quality of sleep and how much time you spend in deep-sleep matters here as well.”
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/dementia-and-sleep-what-do-we-know-about-this-link#Sleep-quality
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Ending on beauty:
I LOVED SCIENCE FOR THE WRONG REASONS
I loved science for the wrong reason.
Vanadium, I whispered, meniscus.
Alluvial, I prayed in my bed
along the edge of my pillow.
There were signs in each train:
Do not lean out the window, but I did.
The State urged me to build socialism,
the Church taught me I was a sinner.
But I believed in the tenses,
I confessed devoutly with verbs.
On my knees, in dark creaky vowels.
I confessed even sins I didn’t commit,
just to taste the forbidden syllables.
Speaking was like kissing:
a question of desire, fidelity.
Truth was only another pretext.
Later I almost grasped
the mysticism of it — why mother
said Close the window
when she meant Open the door —
why father put a twig in his mouth:
Look, I’m the Dove of Peace —
while grandmother teased, Quick!
Sprinkle salt on a pigeon’s tail —
And the child who leaned out of
all windows still believes
I’m here to sprinkle salt
on the tails of flying words.
~ Oriana
Pablo Picasso: Dove of Peace, Woman
