Asilomar Beach; photo: David Whyte*
REMEMBERING MR. S
Stalin was still alive.
My parents mentioned “Mr. S.”
Never repeat what you hear at home.
I spoke when spoken to:
Children and fish have no voice.
Santa Claus was banned at the preschool.
The Christmas tree was decorated
with cardboard numerals six,
to celebrate the Six-Year Plan.
On the wall hung a large portrait
of Mr. S. with a marvelous mustache,
arms around smiling children.
Then Mr. S. died. Newspapers showed
“the masses” weeping at his funeral.
After the weeping stopped,
streets changed names.
Portraits of the mustache
disappeared from the walls.
New leaders gave speeches admitting
“past errors and deviations.”
My uncle’s double death sentence,
commuted to life in prison,
had been one of those deviations.
A hero of the wartime Underground,
he was released, given treatment
for problems caused by torture,
a sum of money.
After eight years in prison pajamas,
he could now afford the best suits.
Red banners still flapped like laundry
from official balconies.
In shop windows instead of goods,
pictures of Karl Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
In city parks, begonias were planted to read:
MARCH TOWARD SOCIALISM.
FIGHT FOR PEACE.
Conversation remained
a goulash of politics and rumors
about where to get butter and meat.
Favorite joke: How come
in Poland no one sleeps?
— Because the Party keeps vigil
and the enemy never sleeps.
Aunt Lola was offended by the slogan,
We are the manure
for future generations.
Radio Free Europe
crackled through the static.
Propaganda posters rotted in the rain.
at a New Year’s Eve party,
a Hungarian scientist whispered,
Nothing’s going to change
for a thousand years.
~ Oriana
Oh, how I love that failed prophecy.
*
THE RUSSIAN WAR ON UKRAINE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A WAR ON ITS LANGUAGE
~ Ukraine is the only country I know of that was dreamed into existence by a poet. Born a serf in 1814, Taras Shevchenko was freed from slavery by the efforts of fellow artists. The painter-poet then took on himself the mission of telling the story of the indigenous people of Ukraine in their native tongue. For this the Russian empire punished him with decades of exile and imprisonment—this despite the fact that he wrote his prose in Russian. His Ukrainian-language poetry, however, had the effect of solidifying and fortifying the indigenous people’s sense of themselves. Ever since, poets have held a singular importance for the culture.
Language can readily become an instrument of oppression. The history of Russian censorship of its own poets is well known thanks largely to Nadezhda Mandelstam’s account of her husband Osip’s trials in Hope Against Hope, and its sequel Hope Abandoned. Less well known is the way Russia exerted its hegemony over its colonies.
In 1863, two years after serfdom was abolished in the Russian Empire, the Russian minister of the interior, Petr Valuev, introduced a ban on Ukrainian-language publications—though, interestingly, the prohibition didn’t extend to fiction, perhaps because the genre was not widely developed in Ukraine yet.
Thirteen years later, in 1876, Emperor Alexander II, while enjoying a spa treatment in the German town of Ems, took time to issue a policy statement further restricting the use of Ukrainian. The new law, which was kept secret from the population, outlawed all publications in Ukrainian, including books imported from abroad. The policy also rendered illegal theater productions and performances of songs in Ukrainian. Russia feared that the indigenous peasant population might began to demand human rights and undermine Russia’s imperial claims. The prohibition wasn’t abolished until 1905.
The assault on Ukrainian culture reached a fever pitch under Stalin in the 1930s. And I don’t think there’s a Ukrainian writer alive today who isn’t aware of what happened during what I call the “aborted renaissance.”
Imagine 20th-century American literature without Faulkner, Richard Wright, Willa Cather, Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, James Baldwin… Imagine contemporary American literature without them… It’s unthinkable. But the unthinkable happened in Ukraine.
In 1930 some 260 writers actively participated in the country’s literary life. By 1938 only 36 remained on the scene. Surveying the fates of the missing speaks volumes about the leitmotif of that decade: Of the 224 MIAs, 17 were shot; 8 committed suicide; 175 were arrested or interred; 16 disappeared without a trace. Only 7 died of natural causes. Belorussian culture was similarly decimated and thwarted by Stalin.
The crime for which writers and intellectuals in former Soviet republics were punished was that they dared aspire to autonomy and cultural independence. That Russia remains so threatened by the mere existence of other languages and cultures is a psychosis worth exploring. Racism can take many forms. To skin color and religion one must add an inexplicable insecurity about the shape words take on the page, the sounds they make in our mouths. Behind the paranoia lies the fear that long-buried crimes against indigenous communities might finally see the light of day.
What might once have seemed like ancient history, a record of one of the most terrible periods of the 20th century, was given fresh urgency and relevance with the publication of what historian Timothy Snyder describes as Russia’s “Genocide Handbook,” published on RIA Novosti, Russia’s official state news agency site, on April 3rd, just a few days after the discovery of the mass murders by Russian soldiers in Bucha. As Snyder describes it:
The Russian handbook is one of the most openly genocidal documents I have ever seen. It calls for the liquidation of the Ukrainian state, and for abolition of any organization that has any association with Ukraine. Such people, “the majority of the population,” …more than twenty million people, are to be killed or sent to work in “labor camps” to expurgate their guilt for not loving Russia. Survivors are to be subject to “re-education.” Children will be raised to be Russian. The name “Ukraine” will disappear.
Men hep tavas a golas y dyr is the only line I know in Cornish. From a poem by the great British poet Tony Harrison, it translates to mean “the tongueless man gets his land took.” While Ukraine has never been tongueless, it has long appeared that way to the world. No more. Freed from the yoke of empire, the country has become a cosmopolitan nation in which identity is not determined by language.
Today, dozens of presses are rushing out translations of work by Ukrainian writers, whether they’re written in Ukrainian, Russian, Belarussian or Crimean Tatar. What kind of shelf life they’ll have remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: after this, no one will be able to call Ukraine a non-nation again. It is at best a modest consolation.
https://lithub.com/the-russian-war-on-ukraine-has-always-been-a-war-on-its-language/
Mary:
*
KHERSON ON NOVEMBER 11, 2022
Along with Ukraine, Europe also returns. Kherson this morning [November 11, 2022].
Oriana:
I know it's hard to imagine, but let's try: the US is partly occupied by a foreign power. But eventually Chicago is liberated, and the residents are hugging American soldiers and waving the American flag.
*
And the Ukrainians gained some Russian military equipment:
~ Shortly after the pullback announcement, pro-Kremlin figures bemoaned the loss of dozens of tanks and armed-personnel carriers to Ukrainian servicemen.
“Why wasn’t it all blown up or burned down?” Yuri Kotyonok, a Russian military correspondent, asked rhetorically in a Telegram post on Thursday. ~
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/11/russia-kherson-retreat-marks-tectonic-shift-in-ukraine-war
*
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ~ Albert Einstein
*
RUSSIA’S FUTURE IS GOING TO BE MESSY
~ Irrespective of the outcome of the war with Ukraine, future Russia will be messy, shifty, and eclectic. Prepare for Russia to become the “India of the 21st century”, vacillating between the quasi-Socialism of Indira Gandhi and the hard-right nationalism of Modi, with local idiosyncrasies like megarich Communists calling the shots in the regional governments.
This is due to several factors, of which three are the most important:
1. The legacy of the personalist rule of President Putin
Over the last two decades, he effectively dismantled the feeble institutions of our nascent democracy from the 1990s, concentrating all power in Presidential Administration. Our parliament now functions as its legislative department. The court system in Russia is its judiciary department. And our media is its propaganda department.
The ruling party, “United Russia”, is just a gathering of career climbers and political wannabes who swear their allegiance to the Presidential Administration. They lack any ideology besides personal loyalty to Putin.
It’ll take years, maybe decades for a new ruler to establish the same degree of personal political control Putin has been enjoying. In the meantime, several heavyweights will be jostling for the Kremlin.
2. State-oligarchical clans
What holds together such a geographically vast and ethnically diverse political body as Russian Federation is the system of tributary taxation. It bridges over political differences, family connections, and cultural affiliations. It has worked fabulously well so far.
But the fluid, complicated network of clans that populate the system is too dependent for its political stability on a top umpire. Someone’s got to uphold the ultimate balance of interests. Once the umpire is gone, the system stops being the kind of monolith we in Russia are so proud to be nowadays. It’s very likely to veer toward something like Lebanon or Somalia.
Without Putin, some clans are going to amass too much wealth and power. They will fight each other, and harmonizing their interests will immensely increase the transactional cost of future political and economic settlements.
3. Playing the middle
The general weakening of Russia’s global standing will more and more relegate us to playing the middle between the grand movers and shakers of the 21st century: the US and China. Post-Putin, expect much more nimble maneuvering between the East and the West, Erdogan-style. Also, much more dealings with defiant regional players in our Eurasian neighborhood like Iran, Turkey, India.
The 360-degree geopolitical horizon this creates will most probably result in a fluidity of political behavior demonstrated today by such masters of nimble maneuvering like Hungary, Serbia, and Israel. Add to that our rich history of propaganda and covert influencing, and be prepared for the fountain of variety and attention-grabbing news that future Russia will generate for global media.
~ Dima Vorobieb, Quora
Oriana:
Poor Dima, I imagine how disappointed he feels that Russia simply can't be a global power like China and the US. What a diminishment, to hope for "nimble maneuvering like Hungary, Serbia, and Israel."
*
INTERCEPTED CALL BETWEEN TWO RUSSIAN SOLDIERS
Russian soldier 1 : "Their artillery is f*cking us up. They have so much artillery and it's f*cking good.”
Russian soldier 2 : "Faggots.I don't even know how the f*ck Im still alive. I'm in f*cking awe.”
Russian soldier 1 : "Their weapons can rip a BTR into two halves. Meanwhile ours don't even know how to shoot. I just want to get the f*ck out of her asap.”
"Look, we had 8 companies, they were full, 120 people in each company. Out of 8 companies, only 45 remain… If we win, it's only by a miracle…..... right?.……"
Russian soldier 2 : "My battalion commander, former commander, may he burn in hell... he said, 'You're all going to be slaughtered.' Truth is, I think our own killed him in combat.... I'll put it this way, in terms of equipment, we're not just sucking, but they all have night-vision, thermal vision, lightweight armored vests…"
"...and not lightweight as in sh*t lightweight, but f*cking good lightweight.”
~ D’zy, Quora
Samyojeet Day:
Poorly trained and armed soldiers with worst battlefield tactics by their generals are being ripped apart. The poor Russian soldiers.
Jozef:
What a beautiful conversation…makes me smile. They should feel hunted every day until either they're dead or retreat from Ukraine.
Fred Haskins:
These poor kids are the sons of ordinary Russian people forced and or indoctrinated by Putin. I do feel sorry for them but not as sorry or angry at how the Ukrainians are suffering.
Putin and his cronies must pay!
Gordon Davis:
When kleptocracy fights a war it must do so without the benefits of which it deprived itself. The death toll of Russian leadership on the battlefield is meager justice. The death of so many misled, unprepared and unequipped boys is the butchers bill. Nothing short of abject defeat and regime change will cleanse the stain on the Russian national legacy.
Andy Dawson:
We're just overjoyed the Orcs are getting hammered.
The crap equipment is just part of the explanation for it — there's also crap tactics, crap strategy, crap logistics and crap training.
What's not to like?
Ted Kattchee:
The PTSD is going to be severe in Russia. Already one story of a guy shooting up a night club. Putin’s war is ruining generations.
McFish:
Reminds me of the radio correspondence between command and the doomed 131 Maikop brigade in Grozny during the First Chechen War (1994–1996).
“Call Moscow. On TV, they are saying that we have a minor exchange of fire. That is what they are calling us being surrounded and destroyed!”
“Boys are being shot point-blank. Help however you can!”
“Where is the column? We can’t even get out of our buildings. They’re firing from all over, and we need help urgently!”
“Another 15 minutes, and we are done for!”
“Don’t worry, when it’s dark, capture some Chechen families. Announce that you have hostages and take circular defense. This is the last option I can suggest.”
“I copy, but these around us don’t give a f****…They don’t give a shit who we have. They just want to take us out!
“Thank you. We will try to figure this out on our own.” (The final message before the soldiers were all killed).
*
HITLER’S MADNESS IN INVADING RUSSIA
~ Hitler drew generalizations from the First World War (where German handily beat the Russians), the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 (where the Japanese beat the Russians in a single fleet engagement) and the Winter War (where the Finns held off the entire Russian military for months although heavily outnumbered).
Hitler
knew, quite correctly, that many people in the Soviet Union were
dissatisfied with communism. He saw a country with a large number of
soldiers and equipment that was nevertheless a complete mess. He was
partially right.
After the Winter War, even Stalin had to realize that putting loyalists in military command positions (after killing the entire Russian military leadership) was a bad idea and the Russian military quickly reformed to put professionals back in leadership positions (luckily, Russia had a lot of battle hardened veterans from World War I and the Russian Civil War).
The early days of Operation Barbarossa seemed to show Hitler was right. The front line Russian units provided virtually no resistance to the German advance, tank and air force divisions were swatted away like flies, and hundreds of thousands of Soviets were taken prisoner. When the Germans reached Kiev, they were hailed as liberators.
Meanwhile, the general staff wasn’t so sure. They knew their military history and how big Russia was and how difficult it would be to secure it. Yes, the Russians up front turned out to be easy to overcome, but after summer ended and the rain turned the countryside to mud, the advance stopped dead, allowing the Russians time to regroup. From that point forward progress was a lot harder as the Soviets traded men and land for time while securing its industrial capacity further east.
By winter, the Russians were able to recall their best troops from the east and they proved a match for the Germans. The real tragedy was as winter approached absolutely no-one on the German side thought about preparing for it either, leading to massive suffering on the German side while the Russians rejoiced in their fur lined hats and boots.
It was a close thing, and the Germans almost pulled it off. Almost. ~ Steven Haddock, Quora
Ted Waldron:
The Germans had winter clothing, but they didn’t have the quantity to clothe their entire force on the Eastern Front, plus the German supply lines were already overstretched after the Battle of Kyiv. Priority went to fuel, ammunition, etc.
Leonard Calin:
The land battle of the Russo-Japanese War was one poison gas attack away from being a smaller scale preemptive rendition of the WW1 Western Front, featuring trench warfare, barbed wire, machine guns, artillery barrages and over-the-top bayonet assaults of said trenches.
Jeffrey Dubiel:
Yes. The Battle of Mukden was probably the largest land battle in history prior to WW1, with over 550,000 total troops engaged, and ended in a Japanese victory. So the Russo-Japanese War was about a lot more than Tsushima. That was just the exclamation point at the end. Up to then, Japan had suffered no serious reverses throughout the course of the war, and it kept its string of victories intact.
Ihor Kinal:
Note that the troops from the east were delayed because Stalin feared Japan would attack.
Stalin had a spy, Sorge, who assured him that they would NOT, but did not believe him.
The USA, having MAGIC, also assured Stalin of the same…
I believe the troops arrived just in time as the Germans were in the outskirts of Moscow, close enough to see the towers of the Kremlin, and to initiate shelling.
Joe Belkin:
Hitler as usual was an idiot, he thought “the Slavs” were inferior so how much resistance would they put up … so besides any tactical or strategic errors/poor planning, his basic premise was flawed … like fighting a wolverine, it’s small, almost cute, no problem, let me get into a cave and corner it … Tojo had the same thought with Americans, “inferior mongrel” race, they’d stop fighting soon.
Yuriy Koblenz-Mischke:
Germany planned that in 3 months or so Germans troops will reach the line from Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan, and the war will be over. The enormous industrial help from the US started to arrive about 1.5 years later and increased further on.
James Koroniades:
Hitler also made the mistake of preventing Guderian from taking Moscow immediately when he had the opportunity. Hitler decided to wait on Moscow and diverted his forces southward. Guderian probably could have taken Moscow if not delayed and this would have been a great symbolic victory and also made the soviets use a lot of energy to adjust their railroad network which had Moscow as it central transportation hub. Instead Hitler lost many men when later the German army tried to take the city in the dead of winter and when the city was better prepared to defend itself. Hitler could not afford to lose any men while the Soviets could do this and still win. Also he terrorized the local population so much that he lost the chance to win the hearts and minds of the Russian people.
Oriana:
The Soviet Union was ready to sacrifice millions of men, and indeed did just that. Today's Russia doesn't have those millions. And what men it does have are reluctant to fight this senseless, brutal war ("meat grinder") for the sake of Putin's delusions of restoring the Russian Empire.
*
WHY COMMUNISM SEEMED GREAT IN THEORY BUT WAS A TOTAL FAILURE IN REALITY (Dima Vorobiev)
~ Communism struggles with the amazing fact that this collectivist ideology only seems to work for people who believe in individual salvation and personal responsibility.
Communism is basically two things:
1. No private property. You share with other people the tools, land, trees, ideas, cars, works of art that make your living.
2. You contribute to the common pot what you can, you get out of the pot what you need
The idea sprang from Christian monasteries. Monks worked in silence and amid the prayers had plenty of time to introspect. Many came to ask themselves and everyone around: why can’t the whole humanity live the same pious, quiet and spiritual lifestyle as us? There will be no wars, no angry people, no famines, no suffering.
Scientific Communism
Then came Marxists with a very practical answer: we can make it work if we mandate everyone to give up their private property. Everyone will work for everyone’s salvation. To top it, no one will need to die to get Communist salvation. It will all happen in this world, not the next one!
In the 20th century, Communists managed to organize themselves and grab power across much of the world. They met much resistance, but ultimately overcame it. The largest and the most populous countries in the world even became a clear and present danger to the most prosperous and strong Capitalist countries. The bourgeois scum got the scare of their lives!
Selfishness pays
One problem kept popping up. Humans are shaped by evolution to be a bunch of lazy, selfish, sneaky predators. It takes the fear of pain, starvation, and death to get us off our idle behinds and make ourselves useful. There are also a tiny minority of people who are driven by curiosity, vanity and the desire to make a difference. But they are a maddeningly selfish bunch, too. They prefer to do their own stuff and object strongly when other people tell them what to do.
There’s also a powerful unselfish thing called love. It can do wonders and prevail over everything. But the unselfishness of love makes it the most dangerous enemy of Communism: people eagerly sacrifice the common good for their kids, their lovers, their family, and their friends.
God or perdition
What on Earth can trump our (1) selfishness, greed, laziness and (2) our loyalty to the loved ones?
There's only one thing seems to be able to do that. It’s the love of God and faith in individual salvation.
This is what the tale of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac is about. For us common people, this means: God is willing to give us individual salvation if we are ready to betray our loved ones for Him. (In the USSR, we had a Communist rendition to Abraham’s Test: “Who do you love more, Soviet rule or your Dad?”)
Enforcement
The history of Communism shows that the idea of Marx about the ideal society requires a degree of individual discipline and self-policing that no totalitarian society can assure. You need a community of people who are obsessed with individual responsibility in the face of God. If you start mixing these pious creatures with lazybones, creeps and men/women in love with each other, the latter ones get a ginormous unfair advantage. They will be piggybacking, leeching and stealing for themselves wherever possible, while the self-sacrificing dimwits will be busting their backs to make everyone’s life better.
You may, of course, put the police, worker’s watchers, KGB operatives and neighbor informants on the task of enforcing Communist morals. What happens next is the lazybones, leeches, and thieves use every trick in the book to become the enforcers. This is exactly what happened in every place from Soviet Russia through the Red Khmer’s Kampuchea, to the Chavista Venezuela.
Conclusion
The upshot to the story: you may make Communism work, in some places, for some time. To achieve that, you need
People who believe in individual responsibility before God or History
A wall between them and people who don’t believe in God/History
Preferential arrangements from the government in terms of property protection and economic incentives. On even terms, greedy people always outcompete selfless people.
Below, a group of Soviet militzionéry (“police”) in Soviet Ukraine in the late 1940s who take a field tour through their precinct. The recurring feature of all Communist projects was the omnipresence of well-armed enforcers who were tasked with oversight over the poorly disciplined, ideologically wobbly, insufficiently unselfish millions of builders of Communism.
Soviet law enforcers
Steve Staywell:
Communism on anything but a micro scale doesn't work for the same reason Christianity doesn't work on a large scale. It's people we're talking about, not robots.
Niall Robertson:
An excellent analysis. The one thing that communism can never be is ENFORCED BY DIKTAT FROM ABOVE. It has to be voluntary (as in medieval monasticism). That is why it has always failed and why everything it has touched has turned to shit.
Steven Fritz:
The idea that people should value other people above themselves requires violence to enforce. Somehow the enforcers always end up being the selfish ones. Who’d’a thunk it?
I lived for eighteen months in a religious order that used these rules. My leaving had nothing to do with the required selflessness. Such a system can work, but if it’s isolated from the rest of the world. Otherwise, entropy always wins.
Sam Keays:
I believe the biologist W.D. Hamilton once said that communism does work — look at ants — but not in our species.
*
DIMA VOROBIEV ON McDONALD’S IN MOSCOW
In retrospect, a facepalm.
We’re now two decades deep in post-Soviet wealth, glamor, and hype. It’s plainly embarrassing to look back at how poor, naive, and hungry we were in the sunset years of Soviet rule.
Our country could incinerate the entire world with our nuclear-tipped missiles—but we had no idea that McDonald’s wasn’t even a “restaurant”! So much for superpower greatness and the seven glorious decades of Socialism.
Consider the following:
There wasn’t a concept of “fine dining” in the USSR. We used a simple distinction between “expensive meals” and “just meals”. Back then, Mac food was expensive.
Deep frying food in boiling oil was practiced by our southern ethnicities. But in the Russian heartland, it was exotic. The amount of oil needed for it seemed a waste to Slavic housewives.
Cutting potatoes into neat long strips for French fries was a novelty. We used to fry potatoes, and there’s little point in neat shapes to it when you stir fry the bits.
Our food industry didn’t know the trick of mixing salt, sugar, and fat with additives to make ordinary food taste like heaven. If they used salt, it was salty. If they used sugar, they smothered you with sweetness. Fat, they made the food drip with it. As for flavors, they either didn’t have them or stole them.
The closest to McDonald’s concept was the canteens at Soviet workplaces and in the military. But they looked and smelled quite differently, to put it mildly.
The restaurant menus and prices varied but were subject to regulation by the government nationally and locally. Which made our food taste about the same everywhere. The McDonald’s stuff was like nothing of it.
Coffee and tea prepared in private homes in Moscow that had access to the real stuff tasted mostly decent. But for the absolute majority, especially from the provinces, the taste of sodas and hot Mac drinks were five stars, totes!
English letters, smooth surfaces, clean shapes, bright colors. At the time, these were distinct signs of “Western”, i.e. “expensive”, “stylish”, “for foreign tourists”, and “at special invitation only”.
Below, a McDonald’s flag raised in 1991 side by side with the one of the USSR and the city government of Moscow. For Russian civilization, where our State is the tentpole element for everything, this is a scene of a humiliating defeat to the despised, soulless, consumerist West.
No wonder defiant declarations like “I never eat McDonald’s junk” and “I never buy anything from IKEA” proliferated in their millions in social media during the proud and wealthy decades of Putinist rule.
Oriana:
The
McDonald’s flag flying next to the Hammer-and-Sickle! Did even the
staunchest anti-Communist imagine that in his wildest dreams? This,
indeed, is history as travesty.
Dima:
Russian
McDonald’s has (now, had) a distinct neat, even “classy” touch about it
compared with its unloved, neglected American version.
Olga Layevskaya:
Also,
disposable tableware, quite a wonder in the past. I remember people on
Quora laughing about someone's auntie who carefully stored and reused
that disposable items from Pushkinskaya Mac in the early 90s. I felt so
sorry for that woman. As you said, embarrassingly naive we all were.
As
for myself, I first visited Mac in early 2000s during a school trip to
Moscow. I was so awkward to order that famous hamburger that I ended up
with only coffee and fries. Our first fast food chain in Siberia was New
York Pizza. I still remember the taste.
Leonid Rachman:
I
remember visiting McD in Moscow in June of 1992 and buying 10 or 15
meals to all my Russian friends. The cost of it was maybe $20 to $25 but
to see they happiness was priceless.
Bill Smith:
The higher they hold their noses, the more Big Macs they consume: France has more McDonalds than any other country in Europe.
Luke Proctor
McDonalds is actually decent enough in France compared to most other countries.
Of course there's much better in France, but by McDonald's standards only a handful of other countries would have their quality of McDonald's on par.
Muskan Orpa:
As a junk food lover and citizen of an poor country, I understand the excitement and curiosity of Russians and i don’t blame them for following their basic human instincts. Gluttony is an negative trait of the human nature but it is still part of the human nature — proof that communism never worked whenever it was tried.
*
MORE ON RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA ABOUT UKRAINE
Servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces have learned new-minted words “denazification,” “demilitarization” and “de-Satanization” but it didn’t bring them any closer to understanding what the hell they are doing killing in Ukraine?
To fix this issue eight and a half months after the liberation invasion persuasion, Federal Council issued a brochure that lists the goals of the special military operation in Ukraine. The cover features a map of Russia with four new annexed regions. Although the map answers all the questions, there’s a lot of printed material, too.
The brochure is divided into chapters: president’s incoherent ramblings about SMO, lousy commanders of the disunited group of quickly dying troops, lack of any role of the youth in the events unleashed by deranged president, questions that young people want to ask but afraid they’ll wind up in jail, etc.
Shoigu, a Tuvan, shown in the painting with his warrior ancestors. Shoigu has no combat experience.
In the museum dedicated to Minister of Defence Sergey Shoigu in his native Tuva, he is depicted next to the Mongol general Sabutai whom Shoigu believes to be his forefather. Sabutai sacked Russian principalities of Ryazan, Vladimir, and Kozelsk, and also Kyiv and Chernihiv. Shoigu sold the war to superstitious Putin that if his great great great great grandfather did it, then he can do, too.
“In 1240, great general Sabutai lay siege to Kyiv. Mongols bombarded the city for several days. After they breached city walls, Mongols burned churches and plundered the city.
This victory allowed them to advance to Hungary where their ally, Khan Orban, awaited.
“We are sons and daughters of Tartar-Mongol invaders. For that reason our minister of defence is a Mongol and most of our fighters come from from Turkic regions of Russia plus contract soldiers fighting for money and loot just like in the 13th century. Yes, we use Western symbols of hatred like swastika Z but it’s to make believe that we’re technologically advanced.”
The authors of the brochure didn’t say all that, but rather repeated the lie for the umpteenth time that the goal of SMO is to protect Russian people in Donetsk and Luhansk.
In that case why did they also annex Zaporozhie and Kherson?
*
“You should not worry about partial mobilization. Proportionally, 1–1.5% of the reservists will be conscripted. Statistically, you are more likely to die on the road in your Lada with no air bags and no anti-lock braking system; and ten times more likely to die from alcoholic intoxication.”
Interesting that the brochure doesn’t sell fighting in Ukraine as patriotic or as a holy duty, more like drawing the shortest straw.
The brochure warns young people that “the tone of the strategy of the national doctrine of the US” makes one falsely believe that America’s greatest military challenge in the world is China.
Based on these numbers, the brochure draws inevitable conclusion that drunk Russian soldiers armed with rusty guns who can’t beat 42nd army in the world present a greater danger to America than China.
Still the question remain, who are we fighting in Ukraine?
Banderas. ["banderites" – right-wing Ukrainian nationalists led by Stepan Bandera]
Yep. Banderas.
Ukraine regime is “a spiritual heir of Banderas.” The brochure recommends that teachers and parents explain to kids that “Russia is not fighting with the Ukrainian people, but with bandits, modern Banderas.”
I guess destroying electric system of Ukraine with the missiles from the strategic supply in the event of invasion is actually fighting bandits. Looks more like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
And we deduce that for eight and a half months the second army in the world failed to defeat a gang of bandits and had to mobilize 300k reservists. But it’s all right, most likely you won’t fight. It’s 1.5% chance.
Sheer stupidity of lies boggles my mind. ~
Oriana:
Who is Putin fighting in Ukraine? The Nazis? NATO? The West? The answer has been changing since the beginning of the invasion, but the latest one seems to be “Satan.”
The frightening thing is, once you’ve established Satan as the enemy, where do you go from there? It’s hard to to figure out a more mighty enemy.
Fortunately you can also cycle and combine the answers: NATO and Satan seem to be a satisfying combination.
*
STATE AHEAD OF FAMILY: THE SOVIET IDEOLOGY AND FAMILY BONDS
~ We in Russia don’t have the Confucianist tradition of honoring the family above all other allegiances we have. Especially the Communist era dealt a huge blow to the remains of old-time familial bonds. It was teaching us that there’s no higher virtue than sacrificing ourselves, everything we got, our friends and family in the name of our might state (derzháva). Our greatest rulers—Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Yekaterina the Great—went down in history not for protecting their family, but for killing them.
Which is why no scions or relatives of Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov or others had ever a slightest chance of getting to the very top in the Kremlin. We can see the same pattern in Putin’s rule. Despite his undisputed authority, no one in his family—even while getting amazingly rich—seems to have the slightest chance of succeeding him. People in the highest echelons of power and the populace would not appreciate such an ambition.
The Soviet art below is a portrait of our national icon from the era of the USSR, Pavlik Morozov. The boy reported to the authorities on his father as an enemy of the Bolshevik collectivization. Like Pavlik, we all were conditioned to never yield to the ugly chimeras of familial bonds and always stay faithful to our rulers instead. ~ Dima Vorobiev
Pavlik Morozov
Dima:
We operate in two modes: one public, where we proclaim the Pavlik values of Ródina (Motherland) as the highest value, and one private where we always try to take care of people we love and trust and never believe our government in anything. President Putin has been showing us the way.
Oriana:
It should be made clear that Pavlik’s story is far from straightforward. In a tragic denouement, it wasn’t only his father who paid with his life. According to to the official account, Pavlik was allegedly stabbed to death by the members of his family.
From Wiki:
~ Evidence has emerged since the dissolution of the Soviet Union of the fabrication of the Pavlik Morozov legend, as well as what Soviet officials thought of him. Maxim Gorky spoke to the Communist youth organization in 1933 of "the heroic deed of Pioneer Pavlik Morozov, the boy who understood that a person who is a relative by blood may well be an enemy of the spirit, and that such a person is not to be spared". Gorky was an ally and favorite of Stalin's, but this particular initiative does not seem to have been to Stalin's taste, at least according to rumor: "What a little swine, denouncing his own father," is one remark attributed to Stalin.
According to the most recent research, Gerasimovka was described in the Soviet press as a "kulak nest" because its villagers refused to join the kolkhoz, a state-controlled collective farm during the collectivization. Pavlik informed on neighbors when they did something wrong, including his father, who left the family for another woman. Pavlik was not a Pioneer, although he wanted to be one. Kelly believes there is no evidence that the family was involved in the murder of the boy (who was only 13), and that it probably was the work of some teenagers with whom Pavlik had a squabble over a gun. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov
Though I didn’t know his name, I vaguely knew that a boy in the Soviet Union denounced his own father. My parents told me more than once: “Never repeat outside what you hear in school.”
Jack Pytlarczyk:
Ah, Pavlik Morozow. He was also famous in Poland. As a warning what would happen if communists win. Family values and ties are still very strong here.
Grigori Gahan:
I've been reading the Red Famine and one point the author makes I found interesting. She points out that parents abandoning their children went from rare to common place during collectivization. She reasoned that since parents could not rely on the wealth of their children in their old age, and the children could not rely on the inheritance of their parents — it essentially broke the family unit apart. You potentially stood to gain more from fingering your parents as kulaks for hiding a sack of grain. In fact, the fact that your teacher was asking you about your home life trying to root out counter revolutionaries probably put a heavy check on the parents behavior. Same time, it was probably just as appealing for the parents to abandon their kid and blend into an urban area looking for factory work, rather than hang around waiting for your son to get you shipped off to the gulags so he could get a small promotion in the party.
Oriana:
This is probably an excessively harsh interpretation of family relationships under the Soviet rule. Even in the worst of times, the parent-child bond remains strong, being biological (“It’s a mammal thing,” a woman friend, mother of two, once told me).
And I can easily imagine Stalin privately calling Pavlik a “little swine.”
Still, the legend of Pavlik, even if divorced from facts — the very possibility that a son could betray his father in this way, sending his father to the Gulag, and/or execution — remains a horror story that is not easy for defenders of totalitarian regimes to deal with.
It reminds me of something I read about Hitlerjugend — again, it may be fabricated. According to that tale, young boys were given a puppy to raise. I think everyone agrees that children absolutely adore their puppies. After a year or so, the boys were given an order to shoot the puppy to prove their loyalty to Hitler. If I remember correctly, one of the boys turned the gun against himself.
Hopefully that’s not true, but the very fact that this story is imaginable shows the horror of this kind of indoctrination.
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WHY LOSING THE WAR IN UKRAINE WILL BE GOOD FOR RUSSIA (Misha Firer)
WINNING GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR (WW2) WAS A PYRRHIC VICTORY FOR THE SOVIET UNION.
The demographic backbone was broken with 30 million dead citizens, which eventually contributed greatly to the collapse of the country and the creation of the fascistic Victory Cult with its hatred of Ukraine, revanchism, a pseudo buildup of war machine that eventually led to the so-called Special Military Operation.
In that same period of time defeated Germany was occupied, and aided by the US to become the most powerful economy in Europe.
Crimea should be liberated too. It has been Putin’s personal obsession, masking a banal land grab with pathos of his pathetic Victory Cult.
Annexation of Crimea has nothing to do with “historical justice” or other such claptrap.
In all the years leading to annexation I hadn’t heard Crimea mentioned once in conversations. Nobody cared about it until the tsar did. Had he cared about Alaska then everyone would have been up in arms about returning Alaska “to Motherland’s harbor.”
Losing this war (with Ukraine) will give Russians new chances to make something good and worthwhile and decent in their own backyards once the illusory dreams of an empire have been wiped out.
Losing future billions in oil and gas revenues and territories in Siberia, underpopulated and undeveloped with natural resources to China will give Russians new opportunities to use their brains for a change to create new industries and diversify the economy.
Knowing history, I remain skeptical that Russians will take advantage of these new opportunities.
Nonetheless, they will be on the table to use, abuse, or throw away.
And that, I believe, is only fair. ~
Pedro Ximenez:
Russia needs this defeat more than anyone else. Only devastating defeat can bring Russian society to realize that they were lied to for all this years and that their so called leaders are a bunch of scumbags. Only then some changes in mentality can be achieved leaving dreams of glorious past behind and concentrating on a future for a change.
Benzion Inditsky:
It can be also very dangerous
Remember WW1, the “last war" and Hitler coming to power in just 15 years to take a revenge.
Marco Mart:
But that’s what’s happening. Like Germany lost WWI, the USSR lost the Cold War. Like Hitler took his revenge, Putin is taking his revenge.
All we need to witness now is Russia’s complete defeat — military and economic. Like Germany in 1945.
But there the analogy will end. There will be no rebirth in democracy — like in Germany. The Russians never experienced freedom. Even under the princes and kings, German cities were part of Europe’s economic uprising (craftsmen, traders), which led to the Renaissance, the industrial revolution and the age of enlightenment. Nothing of all that happened in Russia. Russia was copy-catting the Mongols and extending its Empire. All Russia ever had were mostly soldiers and peasants.
I’m afraid Russia will have to suffer some more before it will abandon its dreams of old Empire glories.
John Haller:
I think losing the Cold War was Russia's equivalent to Germany losing WWI.
Deeptanshu Singh:
Defeat is often a far better teacher than victory but only for those willing to learn.
As someone who once admired our Russian friends and now feels only a measure of pity and sadness, I hope the future generations of Russians are more open to learning.
Simas Urbanovicius:
Out of curiosity, what did you admire about Russia? Was it the genocide and deportations of the Baltic States? The deliberate famine in Ukraine? Raping and murdering everyone on the way to Berlin? Ethnic cleansing of Koenigsberg?
Alan Kruza:
Simas Urbonavicius, You’re asking some very relevant questions. We can hope for a better future Russia but its past, and present, must never be forgotten. I’m American and we still have a lot to answer for from our history.
Dale Duncan:
It was the utter defeat of Germany and Japan that allowed them to change. I am afraid that Russia will never lose enough to be able to change. We can only hope.
David Todd:
Spot on. Because if Ukraine can expel Russia, Ukrainian boots will stop firm at the border. There will be no invasion of Russia and therefore, it will not be an utter defeat from which they can learn at all. The end of this will change nothing in Russia.
Russian amputee -- he lost his legs for what? Putin''s delusions of imperial grandeur?
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THE ENEMY IS IN THE KREMLIN
Suddenly I'm glad that I know a little Russian (compulsory Russian classes in school started in the fifth grade). The hand-made sign says: "The enemy is in the Kremlin, not in Ukraine.”
I hope that whoever was brave enough to post that sign got away with it, and managed to post more such signs.
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WHAT MOSCOW LOOKS LIKE (Misha Firer)
Moscovites like to repeat their favorite mantra, “Mayor Sobyanin made Moscow beautiful.” Russian emigrés call Moscow nostalgically “krasavitsa” — “beautiful (woman).”
The reality is Moscow is just an ugly Asian mega-city.
In the picture is the most common panel apartment block “panel’ka” series п-44.
Everything about п-44 is brutalsky — elevators that stall midway, uncomfortable floor plans, low ceilings, non-soundproof walls, neighbors’ front door that crashes into your front door when opened simultaneously.
Still, п-44s are functional and millions of Moscovites call them home.
Yesterday, I uploaded photos to represent every region of Moscow, but lacking any landmarks they all look the same and I can’t tell which one is which — just an endless ocean of concrete, glass and asphalt with perennially leaden sky above from being too close to the Arctic Circle and from heavy smog.
These nicer apartment blocks are reminiscent of the gentler times when advanced Soviet technology didn’t permit to go above nine floors. A new Sobyanin’s “renovations” scam will see off thousands of five-story apartment blocks demolished to make way to 20–30 story apartment blocks.
New seventeen-story apartment blocks are becoming a rarity too — greedy recently consolidated construction mega-corporations go for taller and taller towers justifying the height by shortage of land in Russia.
*
There are many green pockets in Moscow. Unfortunately, summer is short and we don’t get much time to enjoy parks that receive half of federal parks and recreation budget, because most of us leave for our dachas and the Black Sea.
With almost no underground and multi-level parking anywhere except for the rich, cars in Moscow are like homeless pets. Abandoned for the night in random places, often far from home of their owners, tucked into the children’s playground, a distant nook, a road shoulder, a lawn, they get assaulted by rain, snow, hail and an occasional hooligan.
Before you pass judgement about how come a European people can live like that, bear in mind that a hundred years ago 95% of their ancestors were illiterate peasants living in gross izbas (log huts) without sanitation, electricity, sewer, water on taps. What you see is a social miracle.
Moscow is a capital of a strong regional power (you didn't see the other countries in the region). As such, it has a downtown with sky scrapers. Most of the tenants are government officials.
On the left is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with half the building white and lower half black.
It symbolizes two things — corruption (funds for whitewashing the lower half were embezzled) and a nation striving to bring pure goodness to foreignsky, but winding up drowning them in sorrow and quite often, blood.
The rich live in ivory towers as elsewhere in the world. Moscow has adopted the Cult of Wealth from the US. An iPhone, a Mercedes, an apartment with “Euro-remont” finishings, one point four children, trips to Italy. This is the Rusky Dream.
Moscovites work a record number of hours without any overtime pay, although productivity is considered low by Western standards.
Moscovites spend many hours in traffic.
The other day I read an article by Vladimir Pastukhov, Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCLA School of Slavonic and East European Studies.
Mr. Pastukhov calls the Russian people "social permafrost" with only two states — solid, when it is frozen, inactive, apathetic, hibernating; and gaseous, when it is heated and behaves highly irrationally and chaotically.
Transition between the two state happens almost instantaneously, without any intermediate stages.
Yesterday, we celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanovs' house. Today we throw the whole family down the shaft of a mine.
83% of us vote for keeping the USSR intact. Next day, the USSR is dismantled after some heavy vodka drinking in the woods of Belorussia.
Today, Moscow is a city of permafrost. Who knows what momentous changes melted social permafrost will bring. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
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CONDITIONS UKRAINE SHOULD INSIST ON (MISHA IOSSEL)
According to President Zelenskyy, conditions for peace negotiations with Russia are the following:
1. Restoring Ukraine's territorial integrity
2. Respecting UN Statute
3. Paying off all damages caused by war
4. Punishing each war criminal
5. Guarantees this won't happen again
Good — but there will need to be more:
Putin will need to go. (Zelensky reportedly gave up on this requirement.)
Russia will need to give up its place on the UN Security Council.
Russia will need to be denuclearized.
There will need to take place a Nuremberg-style process to deal with the crimes of Putin's regime.
All the kidnapped Ukrainians, especially children, will need to be returned to Ukraine.
Oriana:
Could these conditions be achieved without an invasion of Russia? And of course no one would want to invade Russia — the lessons of history is not so easily forgotten.
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COULD LENIN’S NEP POLICY HAVE BEEN EXTENDED?
[NEP: New Economic Policy. “The NEP represented a more market-oriented economic policy (deemed necessary after the Russian Civil War of 1918 to 1922) to foster the economy of the country, which had suffered severely since 1915. The Soviet authorities partially revoked the complete nationalization of industry (established during the period of War Communism of 1918 to 1921) and introduced a mixed economy which allowed private individuals to own small and medium sized enterprises, while the state continued to control large industries, banks and foreign trade.]
~ When NEP happened in the 1921–28, the USSR was at a crucial fork.
“Do we finish what we started back in 1917 and crush the reign of private interests and market forces?”
or
“Do we allow the proletarian state to relapse back into a new kind of exploitative, profit-driven society?”
Remember, back in 1921 Lenin himself called the NEP arrangement “State Capitalism”.
Moreover, he said: “State Capitalism would mean a step ahead compared to the state of affairs in our Soviet republic.”
Pretty much everyone understood the predicament back in the 1920s. If NEP were allowed to go on, it would have resulted in a variation of bureaucratic-oligarchical Capitalism guarded by a one-party state we see now in China. If you revisit Trotsky’s works, you find a passionate argument for why this should be prevented at any cost.
Stalin agreed with Trotsky in principle, but not in details. Unlike Trotsky, he believed that the Communist party could abolish the market and private initiative altogether in the absence of world revolution. His path was the one of “Socialism in one state”.
Conclusion: yes, NEP could have been sustained at the expense of the Communist project—just as it happened in China and Vietnam, and is now happening in North Korea.
Below: the modern Russian tricolor in perfect harmony with the monarchical white-golden-and-black flag of the House of Romanovs and the blood-red banner of proletarian revolution on the doors of garages in a Moscow suburb. If NEP had been sustained, this could have happened in our country half a century earlier.
In 1977, when the Chinese Communist Party was looking for an economic doctrine to replace the craziness and poverty of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping settled on the NEP as a model for China’s economic reforms.
It is ironic that the CCP adopted a policy which was rejected by the USSR more than 50 years earlier.
This gave birth to Deng’s famous quote “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” That really was the NEP summed up in one sentence.
Pendaar Pooyan:
How does the NEP compare to the reforms by Stolypin and Witte in the Russian Empire? Doesn’t make any sense to go through all that bloodshed if you’re going to become capitalist anyway.
Donald A. Vogel:
Ironically when US General Norman Schwartzkopf visited “Communist” Vietnam a few years ago, he met with young Vietnamese students who told him their dreams had nothing to do with expanding “Revolutionary Socialism” but to become business people “so they could make money.” Gen. Schwarzkopf, who’s had commanded an INF battalion in South Vietnam, was open mouthed and astounded, literally threw his hands up and quoted the anti-war song by Country Joe and the Fish, “1,2,3,4 what were we fighting for.”
Fergus Hashimoto:
Stalin adopted Trotsky’s proposal of industrialization but went much too far, among other things by abolishing private property. The Mensheviks were right. Russian Marxists should have adopted as moderate path to socialism, and should have preserved the market under state tutelage. The state and the market are based on different principles, and it is intuitively obvious that they should complement each other instead of one of them wiping out the other, as communists and neoliberals propose. The most successful countries have adopted mixed economies of various sorts.
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PRIVATE BUSINESS SECTOR IN NORTH KOREA
SEOUL, Dec 16 (Reuters) ~ The private sector has overtaken state-led agents to become North Korea's biggest economic actor over the past decade, a sign of booming markets allowed by leader Kim Jong Un, South Korea's Unification Ministry said on Thursday.
The ministry, which handles North Korea affairs, released a report on political, economic and social changes during Kim's 10-year rule, based on data from South Korean and U.N. agencies as well as interviews with defectors.
While the isolated country suffered from coronavirus lockdowns and sanctions over its weapons programs, private activity has grown from about 28% a decade ago to make up nearly 38% of the economy, the ministry said in the report.
Government-led programs, meanwhile, have shrunk to make up 29% of the economy, down from 37%, and around 9% was from entities that work in both state and private sectors, up from 7%.
The number of merchants has also soared some fourfold to hit an all-time high at about 1,368 in 2018, from 338 in 2011, before sharply dropping amid economic hardships and the pandemic.
"As marketization continues, the proportion of private economy is on a long-term upward trend," the ministry said. "People's activities are shaping into a dual way, state and private economy."
North Korea does not answer questions from foreign reporters and its government and state media rarely give insights into economic conditions.
Kim became leader in late 2011, upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.
The new leader's approval of markets previously abhorred by his father had helped improved livelihoods for many North Koreans, with its gross domestic product (GDP) rising 3.9% in 2016 -- the fastest in 17 years.
But initial progress was overshadowed by sanctions imposed over nuclear and long-range missile tests, a ministry official said, even as Kim vowed to build a self-reliant economy after declaring completion of "state nuclear force" in 2017.
"After all, in order to achieve sustainable economic growth and substantively boost people's livelihoods, they need to shift policy toward denuclearization and economic cooperation," the official said.
This month, Kim warned of a "very giant struggle" next year, and called in October for focusing on improving people's lives despite "grim" economic conditions. ~
https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/private-sector-overtakes-state-north-koreas-top-economic-actor-under-kim-skorea-2021-12-16/
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THE COST OF WAR: ONE EXAMPLE
~ One thing became apparent reading through the various reports of battles taking place on fronts across eastern Ukraine. In the few areas Russian troops managed to advance to even the smallest degree their gains came with ridiculously high and unsustainable losses. Even the taking of Pavlivka, a village of medium strategic value, cost Russian forces over 300 elite Marine KIAs and an untold number of wounded and tanks after a week of fierce fighting. The battle was so brutal as to spark dissent among surviving Russian troops and a letter of protest sent to their regional commanders. To add insult to injury, Russian commanders are now considering a general withdrawal from Pavlivka for no other reason than an insufficient numbers of soldiers left to fend off regrouping Ukrainian forces readying a counteroffensive to take back the town. One has to wonder just how much longer Russian forces are willing to be treated as expendable cannon fodder on foreign soil for no discernible reason other than Putin’s political survival. ~
***
WHY NUDE MODELS WERE PERMITTED IN VICTORIAN TIMES
~ First, the nineteenth century wasn’t as “morally strict” as we tend to think. “We had a long-term three-way relationship so we don't know who the father is” is a recurring pattern in 19th century Europe, involving off the top of my head the King, PM, and Queen of Denmark. For most of the 19th century, the Catholic Church permitted abortion, to name one random fact, and teenage homo- and bi- eroticism was still publicly celebrated in the Islamicate-Mediterranean countries (among Christians, Jews, and Moslems).
Long term, the French Revolution and gentrification did indeed represent a major push to prudishness compared to the heavily liberated 18th century, for the same reason the 19th century was a season of “morality campaigns” on several fronts, from women's suffrage to drinking to slavery. The middle-class is perpetually insecure as to its standing, and needs public “face” to keep its job; this is why it feels the need to invest in intangibles, like the idea that “we don't have sex too much”.
Neither the peasantry (who live off the land and don't care) nor the nobility (who own the land and don't care) were ever invested in seeming chaste. The bourgeoisie—who sought to dress and speak as if they owned land, even though they didn’t—started caring about appearances. In other words, “moral strictness” has never been the resting state of society. It is, almost by definition, the cry of the ascending urbanite, the person who seeks to appear clean, progressed, pious.
And even the Puritans celebrated married life, and cohabited (more or less peacefully) with other Christian groups who thought attending church in your birthday suit was a statement of faith (think of a cross between Jains and Femen). — You could probably find a few decades in the 19th century in which the exhibition of said art was deemed “scandalous” in certain countries among certain social strata. Not the stereotype you're looking for. ~ Dimitris Almyrantis, Quora
Rob Jameson:
There was a prevailing belief that a painting of a ‘nude’ figure (as opposed to a naked person) indicated both timelessness and ‘purity.’ To suggest otherwise was to show oneself to be lower class and unsophisticated.
Norman Owen:
Note the comment of Edward Gibbon on The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.”
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WHAT OUR HUNTER-GATHERER ANCESTORS CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE FRUSTRATIONS OF MODERN WORK AND SHORTAGE OF LEISURE
~ In the fall of 1963, an enterprising young anthropologist named Richard Lee journeyed to the Dobe region of the northwest Kalahari Desert, in southern Africa. He was there to live among a community known as the Ju/’hoansi, which was made up of approximately four hundred and sixty individuals, split among fourteen independent camps. This area of the Kalahari was semi-arid and suffered from drought every two or three years, leading Lee to describe it as “a marginal environment for human habitation.” The demanding conditions made the territory of the Ju/’hoansi less desirable to farmers and herders, allowing the community to live in relative isolation well into the twentieth century.
As Lee would later explain, the Ju/’hoansi were not completely cut off from the world. When he arrived, for example, the Ju/’hoansi were trading with nearby Tswana cattle herders and encountered Europeans on colonial patrols. But the lack of extensive contact with the local economy meant that the Ju/’hoansi still relied primarily on hunting and gathering for their sustenance. It was commonly believed at the time that acquiring food without the stability and abundance of agriculture was perilous and grueling. Lee wanted to find out whether this was true.
Nearly sixty years later, Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, faced a vexing labor issue of a different type. After months of plans and postponements, by the spring of 2022, Cook was ready to demand that Apple employees spend at least a few days each week at their desks in the company’s massive Cupertino, California, headquarters. The protest came swiftly. An employee group called AppleTogether wrote an open letter that expresses distinct displeasure with Cook’s plan: “Our vision of the future of work is growing further and further apart from that of the executive team.” The letter details, among other concerns, the time lost to commuting, the difficulty of achieving “deep thought” in distracting open offices, and the infantilizing nature of the rigid work schedules: “Stop treating us like school kids who need to be told when to be where and what homework to do.”
As I’ve studied and written about the awakening of knowledge workers spurred by the disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve come to see how Lee’s mid-century study of the Ju/’hoansi and Apple’s current struggle over remote work inform each other in unexpected ways. The insights from the movement within anthropology that Lee’s work sets in motion, if applied with care, can help us understand the frustrations that grip not just the protesting Apple employees but the millions of other knowledge workers who are feeling exhausted by their jobs.
After fifteen months of field research, extending from the fall of 1963 into the early winter of 1965, Lee was ready to present his results to the world. Working with his longtime collaborator Irven DeVore, he organized a splashy conference in Chicago the following spring. It was called “Man the Hunter,” and it promised to provide anthropology with its “first intensive survey of a single, crucial stage of human development—man’s once universal hunting way of life.” The clamor around the event was such that the eminent French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss traveled to America to attend.
Lee stole the show with a paper that described the results of his time spent among the Ju/’hoansi. It opens by repeating the common assumption that hunter-gatherer life is “generally a precarious and arduous struggle for existence,” then methodically presents data to undermine that idea. The community that Lee studied turned out to be well fed, consuming more than two thousand calories a day, even during a historic drought in Botswana. As Lee summarizes:
The Dobe-area Bushmen live well today on wild plants and meat, in spite of the fact that they are confined to the least productive portion of the range in which Bushman peoples were formerly found. It is likely that an even more substantial subsistence base would have been characteristic of these hunters and gatherers in the past.
Equally striking was the observation that the Ju/’hoansi appeared to work less than the farmers around them. According to Lee’s data, the adults he studied spent, on average, around twenty hours a week acquiring food, with an additional twenty hours or so dedicated to other chores–providing abundant leisure time. Lee concluded that Hobbes may have had it wrong: “[L]ife in the state of nature is not necessarily nasty, brutish, and short.”
The influence of “Man the Hunter” was profound. Mark Dyble, a lecturer in evolutionary anthropology at University College London, told me that the main conclusions of Lee’s work became “the dominant paradigm for a long time.” The South African anthropologist James Suzman, in his recent book, “Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time,” describes the gathering as “one of the most talked-about conferences in the history of modern anthropology.” It’s now common to hear someone quip, often with a dash of contrarian zeal, that our prehistoric ancestors had easier lives than we do.
Not surprisingly, reality turned out to be more complex than the portrayals of prehistoric easy living promoted by Lee’s biggest boosters. Critics pointed out that the effort expended to obtain food by hunter-gatherers varies significantly depending on the environment, and that the definition of “work” used by subsequent interpreters of Lee may have been biased toward activity away from home, leading to an undercount of other types of domestic labor.
It’s also important to recognize the academic vogues of the time. Some of the most effective promoters of the vision of a relaxed Paleolithic—such as Marshall Sahlins, who wrote a classic 1966 paper titled “The Original Affluent Society”—were proud supporters of a theoretical position called substantivism, which argues that the principles of neoclassical economics are not fundamental to human nature. The implications of Lee’s careful calorie counts and detailed work diaries, gathered in the desert camps of the Kalahari, turned out to provide excellent fodder for the political radicalism of the nineteen-sixties.
Despite these important caveats, however, in the years since Lee’s splashy conference, more studies have been conducted and more nuance has been introduced into this literature, reinforcing the idea that there is some useful knowledge to be gained about the working lives of early humans from the study of extant hunter-gatherer communities. In the past couple of years alone, for example, three major books drew on anthropological research on modern hunter-gathers to make arguments about our prehistoric ancestors. These include, in addition to James Suzman’s “Work,” the social historian Jan Lucassen’s “The Story of Work” and the Times best-seller “The Dawn of Everything,” co-authored by David Wengrow and the late David Graeber.
To connect these developments in anthropology to the protesting employees at Apple, we must first take a close look at what their grievances are really about. At the moment, the employees who signed the letter are hoping to preserve the ability to work from home, but I believe that a more general principle is at stake. Knowledge workers were already exhausted by their jobs before the pandemic arrived: too much e-mail, too many meetings, too much to do—all being relentlessly delivered through ubiquitous glowing screens. We used to believe that these depredations were somehow fundamental to office work in the twenty-first century, but the pandemic called this assumption into question. If an activity as entrenched as coming to an office every day could be overturned essentially overnight, what other aspects of our professional lives could be reimagined?
This reasoning better explains the energy that propels groups such as AppleTogether to resist a return to pre-pandemic worklife. The battle for telecommuting is a proxy for a deeper unrest. If employees lose remote work, the last highly visible, virus-prompted workplace experiment, the window for future transformation might slam shut. The tragedy of this moment, however, is how this reform movement lacks good ideas about what else to demand. Shifting more work to teleconferencing eliminates commutes and provides schedule flexibility, but, as so many office refugees learned, remote work alone doesn’t really help alleviate most of what made their jobs frantic and exhausting. We need new ideas about how to reshape work, and anthropology may have something to offer.
Around the same time that Lee travelled to the Kalahari, another young anthropologist, named James Woodburn, found his way to Lake Eyasi, on the Serengeti Plateau of East Africa’s Rift Valley. He was there to observe the Hadza people, who, like the Ju/’hoansi, still largely depended on hunting and gathering as their primary means of obtaining food. Woodburn returned to Lake Eyasi frequently for many decades, using his observations as the foundation for his pioneering research on social organization.
Drawing from this field work, Woodburn argued that hunter-gatherer communities like the Hadza often relied on what he called an “immediate-return” economy. As Woodburn elaborates, in such a system, “People obtain a direct and immediate return from their labor. They go out hunting or gathering and eat the food obtained the same day or casually over the days that follow.”
If we now jump forward to our current moment, and consider the daily lot of our protesting Apple employees, we discover a rhythm of activity far different from our immediate-return past. In modern office life, our efforts rarely generate an immediate reward. When we answer an e-mail or attend a meeting, we’re typically advancing, in fits and starts, long-term projects that may be weeks or months away from completion. The modern knowledge worker also tends to juggle many different objectives at the same time, moving rapidly back and forth between them throughout the day.
A mind adapted over hundreds of thousands of years for the pursuit of singular goals, tackled one at a time, often with clear feedback about each activity’s success or failure, might struggle when faced instead with an in-box overflowing with messages connected to dozens of unrelated projects. We spent most of our history in the immediate-return economy of the hunter-gatherer. We shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves exhausted by the ambiguously rewarded hyper-parallelism that defines so much of contemporary knowledge work.
Another point where work in hunter-gatherer societies differs from our modern efforts is the degree to which the intensity of work varies over time. A 2019 paper in Nature Human Behavior, on which Dyble is a lead author, describes a research study that set out to gather the same style of time measurements made by Lee so many years earlier. Dyble’s team observed the Agta of the northern Philippines, a community well suited for the comparison of different models of food acquisition, as some of them still largely depended on hunting and gathering, and others had shifted toward rice farming. All of them had the same culture and environment, allowing a cleaner comparison between the two strategies. Dyble’s team diverged from the work-diary approach used by Lee, in which the researcher attempts to capture all the activities of their subjects’ day (which turns out to be quite hard), and instead deployed the more modern experience-sampling method, in which, at randomly generated intervals, the researchers record what their subjects are doing at that exact moment. The goal was to calculate, for both the farmers and foragers, the relative proportion of samples dedicated to leisure versus work activities.
“The group engaged entirely in foraging spent forty to fifty per cent of daylight hours at leisure,” Dyble told me, when I asked him to summarize his team’s results, “versus more like thirty per cent for those who engage entirely in farming.” His data validates Lee’s claim that hunter-gatherers enjoy more leisure time than agriculturalists, though perhaps not to the same extreme. Missing from these high-level numbers, however, is an equally important observation: how this leisure time was distributed throughout the day. As Dyble explained, while the farmers engaged in “monotonous, continuous work,” the pace of the foragers’ schedules was more varied, with breaks interspersed throughout their daily efforts. “Hunting trips required a long hike through the forest, so you’d be out all day, but you’d have breaks,” Dyble told me. “With something like fishing, there are spikes, ups and downs . . . only a small per cent of their time is spent actually fishing.”
Once again, when we compare the work experience of hunter-gathers with that of our contemporary Apple employees we find a wedge of insight. Modern knowledge workers adopt the factory model, in which you work for set hours each day at a continually high level of intensity, without significant breaks. The Agta forager, by contrast, would think nothing of stopping for a long midday nap if the sun were hot and the game proved hard to track. When was the last time an Apple employee found herself with two or three unscheduled hours on her calendar during the afternoon to just kick back? To make matters worse for our current moment, laptops and smartphones have pushed work beyond these long days to also colonize the evenings and weekends once dedicated to rest. In the hunter-gatherer context, work intensity fluctuated based on the circumstances of the moment. Today, we’ve replaced this rhythm with a more exhausting culture of always being on.
The final point of difference I observed concerns the nature of the work occupying our time then and now. “[H]ow do you become a successful hunter-gatherer?” Lucassen asks in his magisterial “The Story of Work.” “You must learn it, and the apprenticeship is long.” Drawing from multiple anthropological sources, Lucassen presents a common “schema” for training competent hunters. Young children are given toy hunting weapons to familiarize them with their tools. Next, between the ages of five and seven, they join hunting trips to observe the adults’ techniques. (In general, Lucassen notes, observation is prioritized over teaching.) By the age of twelve or thirteen, children can hunt on their own with their peers and are introduced to more complex strategies. Finally, by late adolescence, they’re ready to learn the details of pursuing larger game. An entire childhood is dedicated to perfecting this useful ability.
Gathering, of course, is just as complex as hunting. Dyble told me that the Agta possess detailed knowledge of dozens of different plant species, including their spatial distribution in the forests and fields surrounding their villages. Other everyday skills, absolutely critical for survival in times long past, require similarly demanding levels of training. I recently watched some of the early seasons of the History Channel survival program “Alone,” some of which were filmed in notoriously damp British Columbia. It struck me how often the contestants, many of whom were world-class survivalists, struggled to get fires started, even with the help of modern ferro rods, which spew showers of sparks. For hundreds of thousands of years, one can assume, humans consistently conjured flames, under all types of demanding conditions, and without the benefit of modern tools. The frustrated survivalists on “Alone” regularly practiced the art of fire-starting. Early humans mastered it.
Given the necessity of complex skills for survival throughout most of our history, it’s not surprising that we enjoy the feeling of doing practical, difficult tasks. “The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy,” Matthew Crawford writes in his 2009 ode to skilled handiwork, “Shop Class as Soulcraft.” There’s scientific support for these satisfactions as well. Self-determination theory, a well-cited psychological framework for understanding human motivation, identifies a feeling of “competence” as one of the three critical ingredients for generating high-quality motivation and engagement.
Returning to the context of our protesting Apple employees, we find our instinct for skilled effort once again impeded by modern obstacles. To be sure, knowledge work does often require high levels of education and skill, but in recent years we’ve increasingly drowned the application of such talents in a deluge of distraction. We can blame this, in part, on the rise of low-friction digital communication tools like e-mail and chat. Office collaboration now takes place largely through a frenzy of back-and-forth, ad-hoc messaging, punctuated by meetings. The satisfactions of skilled labor are unavoidably diluted when you can only dedicate partial attention to your efforts. Our ancestors were adapted to do hard things well. The modern office, by contrast, encourages a fragmented mediocrity.
If we want to make office life more sustainable and humane, addressing these mismatches between our nature and our current reality is a good place to start. Consider overload. As argued, our brains struggle when asked to rapidly switch between many different ongoing projects. Knowledge work can be adjusted to better avoid this issue. I’ve previously advocated, for example, for more reliance on pull systems for task assignment in office environments. In such a scheme, you work on only one major objective at a time. When you reach a clear stopping point, you then—and only then—pull in the next thing to tackle from a centrally managed collection. This supports singular focus and the sequential completion of objectives, a rhythm that may be more familiar to our ancient brains.
Another mismatch is the unnatural way in which modern knowledge workers toil at a continually high level of intensity. As noted, throughout our species’ history as hunter-gatherers the pace of our labors was likely more varied. Correcting this issue would require us to address the deeper issue of performativity in office environments. Work that takes place on computer screens tends to be vaguer and more ambiguous than physical efforts. Without the ability to point to a pile of completed widgets to demonstrate our productivity, we’re often forced to fall back on visible busyness as a proxy for worthy labor—leading to our unnatural constant intensity. Remote work might provide some relief here, as it removes you from the physical gaze of your manager, but escaping the office doesn’t eliminate the digital variant of this surveillance that refracts through modern communication tools. Your manager might not literally see whether you’re working, but she can see how quickly you’re responding to her e-mail messages.
There are practical solutions to these issues, too. Last summer, for example, I wrote a column about a philosophy called the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE, for short. Innovated by a pair of human-resource employees at the Best Buy corporate headquarters in the early two-thousands, ROWE provides you full autonomy over when and how you accomplish your work. In this scheme, you’re measured only by your results, not your visible activity. ROWE is exactly the type of management philosophy that would enable more natural and autonomous variations in the intensity of your work over time.
The final mismatch I identified concerned the way in which modern knowledge work subverts our instinct for skilled effort. It’s not that knowledge workers lack ability but, instead, that the relentless, mind-warping distraction that defines the modern office makes it difficult to apply these abilities in a satisfying manner. The talented marketing executive wants to focus her energy on writing a brilliant campaign, and would find great fulfillment in doing so, but finds herself instead thwarted by the constant ping of her in-box and demands of her calendar.
One simple but surprisingly effective improvement is to declare that e-mail and chat tools are only for broadcasting information or asking questions that can be answered with a single reply. Any interaction that instead requires multiple back-and-forth exchanges must be deferred to an actual, real-time conversation. Moving every such conversation to its own pre-scheduled meeting, of course, would be absurd: you would soon find your calendar overwhelmed by these discussions. But you might instead institute “office hours.” At a fixed time, every day, you make yourself available for unscheduled conversation—your door is open, your phone turned on, and you’ve logged into a public Zoom meeting. Now when someone sends you a message about a complicated issue, you can politely respond, “This sounds important, grab me at one of my upcoming office hours and we can get into it.” When you eliminate the need to service many different ongoing, back-and-forth interactions, the number of times you feel obligated to check your in-box plummets, improving your ability to find long, uninterrupted stretches to focus on hard things.
The problem with these types of solutions, of course, is that they’re difficult to implement. The ROWE philosophy, for example, can be transformative when properly executed, but requires an extensive commitment to maintain, and, even then, some people are never able to adjust to the accountability that comes with this increased flexibility. Similarly, office hours really can significantly reduce the quantity of urgent communication in peoples’ in-boxes, but the small number of companies I’ve identified that successfully deploy this collaboration strategy depended on unequivocal support from top executives. As with ROWE, these are not fixes that can be casually implemented by individuals. One can hope, however, that understanding the deeper issues motivating these suggestions can help generate the will needed to make progress at the organizational level. When considered in isolation, for example, a pull system for task assignment might come across as fiddly and eccentric. When it’s instead presented against the backdrop of an understanding of a human brain adapted for the sequential completion of goals, it might now seem essential.
It’s safe to assume that, when Richard Lee journeyed to the Kalahari Desert, the travails of office workers were not on his mind. He sought instead to better understand the hunting and gathering activities that had dominated the human experience for so much of our history. My leap from this sober-minded anthropology, with its dense journals and conferences attended by Claude Lévi-Strauss, to pragmatic suggestions about pull systems and office hours might seem an ambitious thought experiment at best, and reckless at worst. In some ways, this is true. But, in other ways, a look back to the deep history of human work seems well suited to the goal of better understanding structural issues currently afflicting the knowledge sector. Those frustrated Apple employees aren’t just arguing about their commutes; they’re at the vanguard of a movement that’s leveraging the disruptions of the pandemic to question so many more of the arbitrary assumptions that have come to define the modern workplace. Why do we follow a factory-style work schedule, or feel forced to perform busyness, or spend more time in meetings talking about projects rather than actually completing them?
If we hope to replace this mishmash of conventions with something more fulfilling and sustainable, it makes sense to start by asking fundamental questions about what “work” meant throughout most of human history. Once we realize the degree to which our minds adapted for immediate-return efforts, with varied pace and plenty of skill, our frustrations with long days filled with frantic e-mailing and schedule-devouring meetings suddenly make sense. We’re built to work. But not this way. In the conclusion of his paper on his time spent among the Ju/’hoansi, Lee argued that through most of our species’ history, in most of the environments in which we have lived, hunting and gathering was a “well-adapted way of life.” Perhaps the time has come to demand something similar from the types of work that take up so much of our time today. ~
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/office-space/lessons-from-the-deep-history-of-work?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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THE TRIANGLE OF SADNESS: A LESSON ON MARXISM AND CAPITALISM
~ If Triangle of Sadness (2022) could be rendered down to one message, it’s this: society’s new ‘aspirational’ goals are just as likely to come crashing down as everything else. The film offers up a world of floating wealth, glamour, vanity and privilege, calls the whole shebang into question and then glories in pulling it down. The resulting film is very, very funny and (usually) trusts the audience to get what it’s doing without shepherding them towards The Point. But it’s also a surprisingly dark film, which hammers its daft but essentially harmless protagonists into the sand in ways which can be as grueling as they are engrossing. It offers a very well-observed causal link between farce and social commentary, hinting at the oh-so plausible idea that they’re often one and the same, given the society in question.
Carl (Harris Dickinson) is a male model: he’s had some moderate success in the industry, judging by his portfolio, but we’re shown in no uncertain terms that his job is, well, a bit silly. Parading around shirtless with a host of other young men distinguishable only by their ethnicity – the height, the hairlessness, the pout are all the same – he’s trying to get a gig where he has to showcase a certain kind of facial expression, as well as such tasks as – walking in a line. ‘Get rid of your triangle of sadness’, one of the panel suggests, meaning the frown lines around his brow. It’s good advice in terms of getting hired (which he doesn’t seem to be on this occasion) and also tough advice which he struggles to follow throughout the film, given the scenarios which unfold around him. Through it all, Carl has the vibe of a man who doesn’t quite know what’s going on, and can only trade in his good looks, because nothing else is exactly certain.
That being said, his good looks get him places, sure, but don’t immure him from being exploited and dismissed. Girlfriend Yaya (Charlbi Dean) is also in fashion – well, sort of, as an Influencer – and she has perfected the art of never seeing an unpaid restaurant tab; Carl has a go at railing against this, but they make it up of course. Theirs is chiefly an Instagram marriage of convenience, a relationship being conducted to get followers and to sell a lifestyle.
Carl’s blithe confidence that Yaya will really fall for him one day seems to underestimate her as-yet untested commitment to the two-dimensional. For her, it’s a business thing, but she’s confident enough to peek out from behind this at times, knowing that even her complete honesty about her motivations won’t break this at-times very lucrative bond.
It’s a bond which gets them tickets aboard a very exclusive yacht trip. Not too shabby, given Yaya’s credit card was recently declined, but that seems to be the wages of Influencing – the ability to go somewhere nice for free, to do more of it.
The rich and privileged aboard – a disparate bunch, but most of the older travelers seem to have made their fortunes actually doing something, even if you don’t like what that something is – are there to play, sit at the captain’s table, and occasionally acknowledge the crack team of staff hellbent on serving their every whim. Boss of the middle layer of humans, Paula (Vicky Berlin) takes these responsibilities very, very seriously, though she’s openly motivated by the promise of tips and praise nonetheless. But it’s worth remembering that the ship isn’t divided into two – masters and servants, to put it crudely. There’s another social class here, and one which goes largely unseen until their presence becomes very noteworthy indeed. The Filipino crew members – tending the engine room, cleaning the loos – are as invisible to those people in crisp white shirts as the crisp white shirt wearers are to the idle (if retired) wealthy above deck. It all feels like a very modern microcosm. There’s always someone getting their hands dirty, while another group of people enjoy all the appearance of hard graft on their account.
Things begin to go badly wrong on account of two key factors. First, the captain (Woody Harrelson) won’t leave his quarters, and Paula is horribly suspicious that he’s drinking in there. This could jeopardize the much-vaunted Captain’s Dinner, which is meant to be a highlight of the trip. (It’s also rather charming that, despite being hidden behind a door for much of the film, Harrelson’s character still dominates proceedings; it only takes hearing his voice at first, which is credit to what he does with this role.) Secondly, a storm is about to hit: it’s a hell of a storm, too, and it precipitates one of the funniest, most unexpected segues into physical comedy I’ve seen in a while. (Has anyone seen Taxidermia? Yeah.)
Would that have been enough? This well-executed shift into a more physical disruption of how the good times roll? Actually it would, but as much as director Ruben Östlund takes his time over this element of the plot – there’s more. Add in a captain who would rather fight the system he ends up supporting, a charmingly earthy, rags-to-riches Russian millionaire still very able to roll with the punches, a host of morally dubious but personally completely likeable guests navigating the hellish after-effects of the storm; still there’s more. Triangle of Sadness is not only able to shift its location, but uses this to take more time underlining the almost perfect fecklessness of the Influencer generation, now in an extreme situation.
The ruined yacht and then the introduction of yet another outsider agency to question this tenuous class system is pitch perfect, and the final act of the film offers an engaging, perfectly ambiguous conclusion to all of this. It’d be remiss not to mention the character of Abigail (Dolly De Leon) who showcases that fecklessness by comparison, but when she asks her companions if they could catch fish, make a fire, cook – could she not be asking the audience, too? Most of us have more in common with the beachgoers, if we can call them that, than we do with Abigail. Then, at the heart of all this, there’s Carl again: is he being sincere, or is he just using his physical charms to get by – again?
This is a film able to sustain moments of charm and warmth alongside pitch-black humor and grotesque observation. The death of its star, Charlbi Dean – it goes without saying perhaps – is a tragedy: as a genuine former model who brings her insider knowledge of the industry to bear on her performance here, she is perfect, sweet and mean and honest and dishonest by turns. You can – just about – pity Carl, even whilst being eminently frustrated by him, and held apart from him. This is a film which leaves some big questions hanging without compromising on its verve and wit.
https://warped-perspective.com/index.php/2022/11/02/triangle-of-sadness-2022/
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WICKED AND SUBTLETY-FREE SATIRE ON THE RICH
~ The rich eat, but then suffer mercilessly in Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, a wicked, at-times horrifically and humorously gross, satire that takes aim at the wealthy in a manner that is deliciously void of any subtlety.
Divided into three chapters – all linked by a young, glamorous couple – the film promises one observation before skewering to another (and another), honing no sympathy for its uber wealthy players, but alarmingly lacing them with a certain depth. Said young couple are fashion models Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean, who tragically passed away only several months ago [of viral pneumonia]; her magnetic, star-making performance now shrouded in undeniable sadness).
The film initially has fun with the notion of gender roles and modern manners as the duo squabble over who will pay for a bill after dinner. It’s the type of conversation that we all (unfortunately) have either had a variation of, or, at the very least, thought about having, when it comes to who should pay and why, in their case, that he should automatically pay despite her wealth; “I make more money than you”, she so casually reminds him, not remotely helping the situation at hand.
Observations such as this – as well as a particularly humorous gag where Carl is unable to decipher which light switch is which in a hotel room (I think we’ve all had this problem) – helps Östlund’s exaggerated comedy earn a certain reality, a state of being that floats further and further away as the film shifts locations. The second chapter of Triangle of Sadness (a reference to the term plastic surgeons use when describing the “worry wrinkle” between the eyebrows) moves the couple to a luxury yacht; Carl tagging along as Yaya’s plus one as she soaks in the benefits of being an “influencer”, earning a free invite due to her mass following. It’s here that the film spends the majority of its time, introducing us to an array of reality-detached millionaires (maybe even billionaires) that have every intention of tipping the scales in their favor before Östlund proves otherwise.
Through a tide of rough outside waters and neglected food, a wave of seasickness rocks the passengers during the Captain’s Dinner, resulting in what is sure to be the film’s most discussed sequence – an extended set piece of Monty Python-esque toilet humor that sees bodily fluids from all ends engulf those on board. It’s a vile, but no-less hilarious set-up that leads to the film’s final chapter (“The Island”), where those that made it out alive are marooned on a nearby island following a surprise pirate attack.
In an environment where their wealth now means nothing in terms of survival, Triangle of Sadness could have enjoyed itself in letting the survivors (including Carl and Yaya) fend for themselves, possibly descending into a Lord of the Flies-type narrative that, honestly, would have felt organic to Östlund’s mean streak. Instead, he honors “the help”, showcasing the glorious Dolly de Leon as Abigail, a Filipino cleaner who asserts her dominance as the only one capable of making a fire and catching fish. She subverts the social order in one foul swoop, and the film is all the better for it.
Whilst Triangle of Sadness doesn’t exactly express its commentary in a quick fashion – the film clocks in at 147 minutes – its examinational humor never loses any of its bite throughout. It isn’t looking for you to sympathize with its characters either, but they remain constantly watchable in spite of them being (mostly) unlikeable. Throughout it all it’s Carl and Yaya that keep us as an audience invested, and their gradual change of power speaks to Östlund’s grand construction and the prowess of both Dickinson and Dean; the film’s closing minutes, ambiguous as they are, cementing their true reversal, with his ultimate insecurity and her assurance emerging in an open ending that will be just as discussed as the yacht centerpiece that this film hopefully won’t be merely reduced to. ~
https://www.theaureview.com/watch/triangle-of-sadness-brisbane-international-film-festival-review/
Dolly De Leon as Abigal, the fabulous Filipina who shows the rich who's the boss (and a pure capitalist) in a survival situation.
Oriana:
My favorite scene was the conversation between the Marxist captain and the Russian oligarch. The captain quotes, among others, “Capitalism is freedom for the slave owners.” The oligarch (wonderfully played by Zlatko Burić), smiles with delight and provides the author of the quotation: “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. I learned that at school.”
I dearly wish the Captain had been one of the survivors, so he and the oligarch could continue their discussion in the situation where wealth = food, and the lowest member of the proletarian — the ship’s cleaning lady — suddenly has the most power.
Obviously I can’t resist a movie that illustrates the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
The first part, with the two models bickering about who’ll pick up the tag, dragged for me. I had zero interest in these characters. But once we are watching the good parts: the scenes on the ship and on the island, it becomes clear why this movie got a standing ovation at Cannes.
Highly recommended.
Mary:
Oriana:
"Style without substance" says it all. But the movie that shows it does have substance. I predict I'll remember this movie for a long, long time. The power reversal once is comes down to survival is wonderfully portrayed. I hope this movie wins an Oscar, or several.
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HOW PLANKTON HELPED CREATE THE EARTH’S MOUNTAINS 2 BILLION YEARS AGO
~ A world without the great mountain ranges – the Himalayas, the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes – is unimaginable, but they were not always a part of the Earth’s geography. Mountains didn’t start forming widely until 2 billion years ago, half way through the planet’s history. Now our research has revealed how primitive life played a key role in their introduction to the planet.
While the formation of mountains is usually associated with the collision of tectonic plates causing huge slabs of rock to be thrust skywards, our study has shown that this was triggered by an abundance of nutrients in the oceans 2 billion years ago which caused an explosion of planktonic life.
Mountains are not just a beautiful backdrop for recreation, they are essential to the way the world works, through their influence on weather, climate, the distribution of fresh water and the erosion of rock to make cultivable soil.
Before there were mountains, the plate movements that reshape the distribution of oceans and continents only occurred on a limited scale. But the movement of these plates are essential to making mountains. The pressure of one plate pushing against another – typically an ocean plate hitting a continental plate – causes slabs of ocean rock to break off and stack up on top of each other as they are pushed from behind.
Over millions of years the stack of rocks builds up, creating mountains, just as the Himalayas were built from ocean rocks between India and Eurasia, pushed northwards until the ocean disappeared and its remains were left piled high.
We know these mountains came originally from the ocean by the sea fossils found on the Tibetan plateau, thousands of meters above sea level. But piling up huge slabs of rock on such a scale needs serious lubrication, otherwise friction would stop them. That lubricant is carbon, which became part of the ocean rock when dead plankton fell to the ocean floor and became buried.
Plankton have lived in our oceans for over 3 billion years, but 2 billion years ago their numbers exploded when abundant nutrients entered the water. At the time, life was no more complex than their single cells. But the cells became much bigger, and they contained more carbon.
When they died they sank quickly and were buried in mud which created rock with unprecedented amounts of carbon, which was turned into graphite by heat and pressure. Graphite makes a great lubricant. Locks, hinges, gears, wheels and even zips all move more easily with graphite – and so do rocks.
LUBRICATION
The plentiful graphite that accumulated beneath the ocean floor had a profound effect, by lubricating the building of mountains. While it has long been known that tectonic processes were lubricated, our research shows that it was the sheer abundance of carbon in the ocean that played a crucial role in the thickening of the Earth’s crust that built its mountain ranges.
The process has continued since then, and other geological layers like salt have also played their part, but the graphite beds of 2 billion years ago were especially slippery, and some have been involved in making mountains more than once.
The biggest mountains on Earth, the Himalayas, are geologically young – about 50 million years old – but rocks made in a much older ocean slid over each other to help create them. They had already slid in the first millions of years after they formed, and then after a long dormancy they slid again to help the rise of the Himalayas. They may slide again in the distant future.
Long after mankind is gone, those ancient plankton will continue their influence on the planet. The mountains made 2 billion years ago are worn down now, but we can still see their roots in places like Scotland, for example.
Our study looked at 20 cases of mountain building around the world from that time, from Australia to China, South America to the Arctic and in north-west Scotland, where we can see the slip surfaces in graphite-bearing rocks in Harris, Iona and Gairloch, formed during earthquakes that accompanied the earliest mountain building. The island of Tiree is one of the flattest places in Britain, but the seabirds that run over its sandy beaches cross the foundations of huge, long-gone mountains.
The Hebridean island island of Tiree is now utterly flat, its 2 billion-year-old mountains worn away.
GRAPHITE RESOURCES
In each of the 20 ancient mountain ranges that were studied, exceptional amounts of graphite were recorded. In many cases the graphite is abundant enough to have been mined as a resource.
Graphite is now a hot commodity, as it is needed in the batteries that are central to green technology (far more graphite is required than lithium in a lithium ion battery). Many of the largest graphite deposits in the world were formed about 2 billion years ago. The graphite that helped bring us mountains may prove critical to the planet once more, and play a key role in its preservation for future generations.
Without the carbon from countless cells of plankton, the distribution of tectonic plates may have evolved rather differently, and we would not have mountains as we know them. Ours is a planet fundamentally shaped by life. ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-plankton-helped-create-the-earth-s-mountains-2-billion-years-ago?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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WHY WE DEVELOP LIFE-LONG IMMUNITY TO SOME DISEASES, BUT NOT TO OTHERS
~ Some diseases, like the measles, infect us once and usually grant us immunity for life. For others, like the flu, we have to get vaccinated year after year.
So why do we develop lifelong immunity to some diseases but not others? And where does the novel coronavirus fit into all this?
Whether or not we develop immunity to a disease often depends on our antibodies, which are proteins we produce in response to infection. Antibodies are one of the body’s most well-known defenses: They coat invading cells and, in the best case, prevent those invaders from hijacking our cells and replicating. After we clear an infection, antibody levels often wane, but at least a few stick around, ready to ramp up production again if that same disease attacks again. That's why an antibody test can tell you if you were infected in the past. It's also what keeps us from getting sick a second time — usually.
"The body doesn't really forget," said Marc Jenkins, an immunologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Usually, when we get reinfected with a disease, it's not because our body has lost immunity. We get reinfected either because the pathogen mutated and our immune system no longer recognizes it, or because our bodies tend to mount a much lower immune response, he said.
Take the flu. This is a virus that can change its genes easily, Jenkins said. Just as our immune systems kill off one version of the virus, another emerges that our immune systems don't recognize. Not all viruses mutate so readily. For example, the polio virus can't easily change its genome, Jenkins said. That's why we've been so successful at (almost) eradicating it.
The common cold, and other viruses that don’t typically get past our upper respiratory tract, reinfect us not necessarily because they mutate rapidly, but because our body doesn't usually produce many antibodies against these pathogens in the first place, said Mark Slifka, an immunologist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. "Our bodies are not worried about the upper respiratory tract," he said. That's what we're seeing with mild cases of COVID-19. The virus sticks to the upper respiratory tract, where the body does not treat it like a threat. In a 2020 preprint study (meaning it hasn't been peer reviewed yet) published in the database MedRxiv, 10 out of 175 patients who had mild symptoms recovered from COVID-19 without developing detectable antibodies.
For diseases that don't fall into either of these categories — meaning they don’t mutate rapidly and they generally prompt a strong immune response — immunity tends to last much longer. A 2007 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that it would take more than 200 years for even half of your antibodies to disappear after a measles or a mumps infection. The same study found similar results for Epstein-Barr virus, which causes mono. Still, antibody responses don't always last a lifetime. That same study found that it takes around 50 years to lose half of our chickenpox antibodies, and 11 years to lose half of our tetanus antibodies. That means that without a booster shot, you could theoretically become infected with one of these diseases as an adult.
Scientists still aren't sure why we maintain our antibody responses longer for some diseases compared with others. It's possible that some of these more common diseases, such as chickenpox and mono, actually are reinfecting us more frequently than we realize, but that the antibodies we do have crush the infection before we notice, Jenkins said. And in those cases, the immune system would be at full capacity again and again because of the reinfections. "It keeps our immunity vigilant," he noted. In contrast, "with tetanus, we're probably very rarely getting exposed, we're not stepping on a [dirty] nail very often.”
Other scientists point out that the human immune system is trained to target pathogens that "look" a certain way, Slifka said. Bacteria and viruses tend to be symmetrical with a repetitive pattern of proteins across their surfaces. (Think about COVID-19 — it's a ball with evenly spaced spikes all over it.) One theory suggests that we mount a larger and longer-lasting immune response to more repetitive-looking pathogens. For example, the antibodies we produce against variola, the highly repetitively-structured smallpox virus, last a lifetime. Tetanus, however, isn't repetitive at all. It's the toxin produced by tetanus bacteria, not the bacteria itself, that makes us sick. Based on this theory, it's possible that our bodies aren't as well-trained to target this single, asymmetrical protein, Slifka said.
So, will immunity to the new coronavirus — whether that comes from infection or a vaccine — be as long-lived as our immunity to smallpox, or will we need a new vaccine every year? While it’s true that some people aren’t mounting large antibody responses, Jenkins is still hopeful for the former. All the evidence both from natural infections and from vaccine trials suggest that most people are making neutralizing antibodies, the variety which prevents viruses from entering our cells, Jenkins said. And unlike the flu, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, isn't mutating quickly, Jenkins noted.
"This virus has the features of viruses that we've been very successful in vaccinating against," Jenkins said. ~
https://www.livescience.com/why-lifelong-immunity.html
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SEMIGLUTIDE LEADS TO “AMAZING” WEIGHT LOSS IN ADOLESCENTS
~ In adolescents with overweight or obesity, the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) semaglutide in a new study was associated with a mean weight loss of 16.1% at 68 weeks, with nearly three-quarters of the study population losing ≥5% of their baseline body weight.
The findings, from the international phase 3 STEP TEENS clinical trial, could potentially expand the use of semaglutide 2.4 mg, approved in 2021 (Wegovy, Novo Nordisk) as an adjunct to diet and exercise for weight loss in adults, to the rapidly growing population of youth reaching body mass index (BMI) levels of ≥30 kg/m2.
“The results are amazing,” said senior STEP TEENS investigator Silva Arslanian, MD, professor of pediatrics and clinical and translational science and the Richard L. Day Endowed Chair in Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, in a University statement. “For a person who is 5 foot, 5 inches tall and weighs 240 pounds, the average reduction in BMI equates to shedding about 40 pounds.”
As obesity rates increase worldwide, Arslanian added, it is no longer enough to advise people with weight issues to eat more vegetables and cut out sugar and fat. “We live in a very obesogenic environment, so it can be very hard to make those changes. There is a real need for safe and effective medications to treat obesity.”
The study, published online in the New England Journal of Medicine on November 2, and presented at ObesityWeek® 2022, November 1-4, enrolled adolescents aged 12 to <18 years with obesity (BMI in the 95th percentile or higher) or with overweight (BMI in the 85th percentile or higher) and at least one weight-related comorbidity. The trial recruited participants at 37 international locations between October 2019 and March 2022.
Arslanian and colleagues randomized the final cohort of 201 participants in a 2:1 ratio to receive once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg (n=234) or placebo (n=67) for 68 weeks. All participants participated in a 12-week lifestyle intervention phase just prior to randomization that included nutrition counseling and physical activity for weight loss. The investigators identified percentage change in BMI from baseline to week 68 as the study’s primary endpoint and weight loss of at least 5% at week 68 as a secondary confirmatory endpoint.
Of the 201 participants, 38% were boys, 36% were aged <15 years (mean age 15.4 years), and 79% were White. All but 1 of the youths were classified as having obesity. The research team reports that body weight, BMI, and waist circumference were slightly higher among those randomized to semaglutide, but other baseline characteristics were similar between groups.
FINDINGS
At the end of the 68-week study period, the observed mean change in BMI from baseline was
-16.1% among those receiving semaglutide 2.4 mg and 0.6% among those receiving placebo (estimated difference, -16.7 percentage points [95% CI, -20.3 to -13.2]; P <.001).
Analysis of the secondary endpoint found that 73% of the adolescents receiving semaglutide 2.4 mg achieved weight loss of ≥5% compared to just 18% of those randomized to placebo (OR, 14.0 [95% CI, 6.3 to 31.0]; P <.001).
Additional weight reduction outcomes included a loss of ≥20% among 37% of youth in the semaglutide arm compared with 3% of those in the placebo arm.
CARDIOMETABOLIC RISK IMPROVEMENT
Among improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors associated semaglutide use vs placebo treatment at week 68 were reductions in waist circumference, levels of glycated hemoglobin, lipids, and alanine aminotransferase (an enzyme found in the liver and kidneys). Based on analysis of responses to the Impact of Weight on Quality of Life—Kids questionnaire, youth who received semaglutide had improved scores at week 68 which authors say was mainly the result of improvements in the domain of physical comfort. Arslanian et al note that semaglutide is the first antiobesity medication to be linked with such quality-of-life improvements in adolescents.
The safety analysis found a higher incidence of gastrointestinal adverse events with semaglutide than with placebo (62% vs 42%) and 4 cases of cholelithiasis [gall stones] among adolescents randomized to semaglutide. Serious adverse events, investigators say, were reported among 11% of the semaglutide group and 9% of the placebo group. The safety and tolerability outcomes were consistent with adult phase 3 semaglutide data and with the GLP-1 RA class.
Speaking during a panel discussion during ObesityWeek® 2022 where the study was presented, Claudia Fox, MD, MPH, associate professor in the department of pediatrics and co-director for pediatric obesity medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said “These results are mind-blowing in summary. I think we really are at the doorstep of a new era in terms of how we are now going to be able to really effectively treat adolescent and pediatric patients with obesity.”
https://www.patientcareonline.com/view/semaglutide-2-4-mg-wegovy-yields-amazing-weight-loss-in-adolescents-similar-to-adult-response?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=11082022_Patient%20Care_enl_unsponsored&eKey=aXZ5MzMzQGNveC5uZXQ=
Oriana:
As for adults, a recent study published in JAMA found “In this cohort study of 175 patients with overweight or obesity, the total body weight loss percentages achieved were 5.9% at 3 months and 10.9% at 6 months.” In addition, “24 (23.5%) achieved weight loss of 15% or more, and 8 (7.8%) achieved weight loss of 20% or more.”
Patients with diabetes had less dramatic results.
The oral form of semiglutide is available under the brand name RYBELSUS. Unfortunately it is quite expensive at this point, though, as with all new drugs, the cost will come down over time.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2796491
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HOW TO INCREASE YOUR LEVELS OF GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide 1) — Dr. Fred Pescatore’s diet
Here is an easy-to-understand article from Woman’s World — please excuse the “chatty” style.
~ Not long ago, the FDA approved a drug called semiglutide, which experts say is as effective as weight-loss surgery. While it’s not for everyone, it can be a lifesaving option for some. “And it can be an inspiration for anyone hoping to drop excess pounds,” reveals Columbia University-trained nutrition expert Fred Pescatore, M.D. Turns out, “it’s pretty easy to mimic the benefits of this drug without all the risks that come with medication or a medical procedure.” Dr. Pescatore already has patients using this approach, a powerful new twist on the popular keto diet.
“The feedback I get is amazing,” he says. “It always works. It works for every single person who does it.” As folks transform their health, many are able to shed as much or more than a typical gastric-bypass patient — dropping up to 60 pounds in one month!
So what does semiglutide do inside us? Originally approved as a diabetes drug, it slims primarily by increasing levels of a hormone called GLP-1, which improves blood-sugar control and insulin function as it signals our brain that we’re full,” Dr. Pescatore explains.
“The more GLP-1 we make, the less we want to eat. On top of that, chronically high blood sugar comes down, shifting out body chemistry in favor of effortless weight loss. It’s why studies show dieters who boost GLP-1 melt about 5.5. times more flab than those who don’t.
Now, you might wonder why we don’t all just take semiglutide. Well, it’s pricey and may cause GI distress and gallstones. Of course you may find natural GLP-1 boosters are all you need …
UPGRADED KETO RX
According to a new Norwegian study, women who go on any version of the keto diet — which replaces most of the carbs with fat and protein — experience hormonal shifts that up GLP-1 production. And that is just for starters.
“When you cut way back on carbs, your body no longer makes enough blood sugar to fuel itself. So you begin turning fat into a new fuel called ketones,” Dr. Pescatore explains. Ketones accelerate fat burn by up to 900%, and, like semiglutide, help lower appetite. “People feel full for a really long time, says Dr. Pescatore.
He adds that when we run on ketones, the body is able to heal damage that causes blood-sugar and insulin issues in the first place — copying another key effect of the drug. Even if a basic keto diet is all you do, you should see the scale move nicely.
And for those who want to take it to the next level: Eat lots of calcium. The mineral will team up with amino acids in protein to “potently stimulate GLP-1 release,” per recent British research.
Dr. Pescatore says the amino acid GLUTAMINE increases GLP-1 the most, so he’s a fan of food rich in both calcium and glutamine — especially whey protein powder, Greek yogurt, cheese, leafy greens and broccoli. It’s also worth noting that eggs, fish, chicken and beef all have loads of aminos, plus a decent hit of calcium.
“A lot of keto diets focus on replacing carbs with fatty foods, but I see the best results when people focus on protein, dairy, and green vegetables,” he says.
BONUS BOOSTERS
Dr. Pescatore recommends eating meals in a short window each day, such as 11 am to 7 pm, and sticking to zero-calorie liquids the rest of the time [tea and coffee also act as appetite suppressants].
Why? A growing mountain of research shows that going longer between dinner one day and breakfast the next triggers biochemical changes that not only increase GLP-1, but also help us heal and reach an optimal weight as quickly as possible.
One last hormone hack: A daily probiotic improves your gut lining, which is where GP is produced, so you make dramatically more of the stuff. Probiotics also help us spike level of bacteria linked to automatic weight control. Find supplements options as cheap as 5 cents at superstores.
REAL-WORLD WOW
“I weighted 150 pounds in grade school and kept gaining from there,” recalls fast-food lover Donna Maddox, 65. “I always dieted, but was so hungry. Within a couple of months, I’d be gaining again.”
Finally, at a fateful Halloween party, the Idaho grandma dropped candy and realized she’d gotten too big to bend forward and pick it up. “I didn’t want to lose my independence,” she shares. So when she about a book called Dirty Lazy Keto, she gave its guidelines a go.
“I loved it that I could have cheese every day,” says Donna. Pairing dairy with amin acid rich options like protein powder, hamburgers and pizza crust made from chicken, she was blown away by how her hunger disappeared. “I was hungry on every diet until this one.” She was also wowed by how quickly the weight came off. “I have a disability and can’t exercise, but I’m still down from a size 22 to a 12. And I don’t need naps anymore! It just feels so good, you really can do it forever.” ~ Woman’s World, 9/12/22, pp 24-25.
unflavored version is also available; that's the preferred kind
Inset:
Calcium and amino acids in a daily serving of whey protein are so good for our brain, a Japanese study found they boosted memory by 47%.
Another inset: Rebecca lost 82 lbs!
For decades, “I’ve tried every diet out there, but I never had enough success to continue,” shares Tennessee retiree Rebecca Davis, 63. While battling health setbacks — pre diabetes, severe knee pain, pancreatitis — she finally went keto and and had luck. She then switched to a “keto carnivore diet” after reading it might help her IBS. The plan calls for only GLP-1-boosting animal products like eggs, ribs, pork, cheese and yogurt. “I thought I’d try it for 30 days.” The difference was stunning. Her constant hunger disappeared, and she went long stretches between meals without even trying. “My knee pain was gone in three days. The scale kept going down. My pre-diabetes reversed.” All told, she’d shrunk from a size 24 to an 8 and is still losing. “I feel strong again, like I can conquer the world!” For more inspiration, she recommends the Facebook group “Keto and Carnivore for Women Over 60 and Beyond.”
Oriana:
For those averse to meat, fish protein remains an option. Salmon is an especially good source of protein, raising both GLP-1 and adiponectin levels. Adiponectin is involved in regulating insulin levels and fatty acid breakdown; its level are dramatically lower in obesity, and rise with weight loss.
And for whatever that may be worth, I heard a TED talk on longevity that stated that only 2% of centenarians were vegetarians. But perhaps it’s not fair to quote results from the study of centenarians, since genes seem to play a central role (it’s long been known that longevity runs in families).
In any case, if you don’t wish to go “keto-carnivore,” you can still be “keto-piscivore” — i.e. eat fish and seafood instead of meat. Salmon is also a good source of calcium. Let’s face it, however, for calcium there is nothing quite like dairy. Still in the interest of avoiding meat, you can eat yogurt fortified with whey protein or glutamine. Otherwise, you need to eat a lot of leafy vegetables. For most people, that means spinach. And because calcium from spinach is not as easily absorbed as calcium from cheese and yogurt, you’ll need to eat a lot of spinach.
Let’s face it: Dr. Pescatore’s GLP-1 raising diet is for cheese lovers.
Now, more protein is not necessarily better. Excess is definitely bad for health and may lead to weight gain, since excess protein is converted to glucose (something that Atkins apparently wasn’t sufficiently aware of). Fortunately, healthy protein like salmon is also very satiating, so after a certain amount you receive a strong “Enough!” signal from the brain.
Thus, the advice is very simple: “eat plenty of protein and dietary calcium.” In particular, WHEY PROTEIN and YOGURT have been proved to raise GLP-1 levels.
The amino-acid glutamine, easily obtained from protein-rich foods (or, in powder form, from Amazon or Walmart), seems particularly important for stimulating the release of GLP-1.
Nuts, eggs, cheese, yogurt, and avocados (I know: not a source of protein) have been shown to increase GLP-1. Thus, lacto-ovo vegetarians should have no trouble with this “natural semiglutide” diet.
And one more thing: if you eat dairy three times a day, especially cheese, you're getting both the protein and the calcium you need to achieve the same weight loss as with semiglutide.
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NON-STRESSFUL EXERCISE PROVIDES GREAT BENEFITS
~ Zone 2 training means exercising at a level of exertion where your body is working, but not very hard (no gasping or panting). At this level your body is able to use fat as fuel rather than carbohydrates. As you work harder and move up into Zone 3 and beyond you will switch to using carbohydrates, a quite different state in which your heart, lungs and muscles are under stress and will need time to recover. (You know this switch is happening when breathing becomes harder and you are gasping or panting.)
Without plunging into a full physiology lecture, a Zone 2 workout takes place at this specific point of exertion and has a very positive effect on the metabolism, improving blood sugar levels and reducing insulin resistance. This is thanks to its turbocharging effect on our cells’ mitochondria.
Mitochondria are powerhouses in our cells that generate the energy we need for every action. Efficient mitochondria mean your body is better at converting fuel into energy, making you stronger and healthier.
Dr Richard Blagrove, senior lecturer in physiology at Loughborough University, says: “In terms of both health and performance, Zone 2 training can be really advantageous. I don’t feel bad about getting on my stationary bike and reading a book for an hour.”
He says elite athletes will be doing 90 per cent of their training in this way right now, laying down an “aerobic base” before they build to more intense modes of exercise for competition later in the year. For the rest of us, Zone 2 can be transformative.
Former professional cyclist and fitness coach at ATP Performance Andy Turner lost 24kg through this kind of movement. “Zone 2 makes you better at utilizing fats as a fuel source and it can help level out your blood sugar. Longer-duration aerobics work can sometimes be forgotten; now it’s all about time-efficient, 30-minute, High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).”
HIIT cannot be done every day without strain and risk. It can take 48 hours or more for your body to recover from a session and unsurprisingly this does not speed up as you grow older, whereas Zone 2 provides its many benefits in a sustainable way.
Zone 2 works best in a mix with some high-intensity training – three Zone 2 sessions a week with two HIIT blasts is a good mix.
HOW CAN YOU TELL OU’RE IN ZONE 2?
Zone 1 is pretty much watching Antiques Roadshow in a favorite armchair; Zone 5 is being chased by a pack of slavering rabid dogs.
Zone 2 is the place where your body is working, but not very hard. Technically this is 60-70 per cent of your maximum heart rate, but an easier way to check is the Talk Test.
If you’re in Zone 2 you should be able to hold a fully realized conversation. If you were to call someone during a Zone 2 workout, you should be able to use complex sentences, not just sentiments such as “Help!” or “Taxi!”.
The point at which you reach Zone 2 will depend on your individual level of fitness. For those who are at the extreme end of sedentary, simply moving about the house performing chores can be a Zone 2 workout. The important thing is to keep going and not stray up into the zones that will put more stress on the body.
Each session needs to be sufficiently prolonged for the benefits to accrue. Experts recommend an hour to 90 minutes. The minimum time to feel the complete benefit of Zone 2 is 45 minutes. Research suggests less than this and you will not get the mitochondrial health you are hoping for.
It is, however, difficult to remain completely in control of your exertion for such a long stretch. I tried a 60-minute circuit of London’s Hampstead Heath on a glorious, blue-skied afternoon and found that either boredom or a hill would tempt me into more exertion. What was needed was a floaty, meditative approach to the run, an utterly different mindset to my usual goal-focused, gimlet-eyed determination.
If you find the idea of a mindful run too hippy, then locking a stationary bike or treadmill into the appropriate pace and watching a favorite film or settling into a book is a less “summer of love” approach.
There’s a misplaced, quasi-religious “sin” and “good works” element to fitness – we’re performing physical penance for modern life. Every slice of cake must be paid for in discomfort, making much of exercise a puritan cult. Running at Zone 2 pace in the park felt lazy and dented my middle-aged male pride. I wanted to stop passers-by and explain I was capable of more.
Zone 2 means letting go of the Personal Best obsession, but when you do, the reward is a calming, life-enhancing hour of your life with a rich array of health benefits.
Antiques Roadshow, it turns out, runs to just about optimal Zone 2 duration. The universe is sending us a message.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/lazy-workout-big-health-benefits/?WT.mc_id=e_DM59580&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_Edi_New_Reg&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_Edi_New_Reg20221107&utm_campaign=DM59580
Oriana:
Based on a presentation during a gerontology conference, what I keep in mind that simply taking a walk every day was associated with better health and longer life.
This fits perfectly with the idea of “snacking on exercise.”
Of course correlation does not prove causation, and people who choose to go for a walk rather than watch TV may have higher IQ (a good predictor of longevity) and be more mindful of their health, to mention just two factors that seem to have a profound influence on life expectancy.
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ending on beauty:
VESPER
Next to the grapes to the side
of the house, the mother with the disappearing
bones showed me the flowers opening
at dusk, perfuming the silence.
See, they unfold the dark to make
music with the moths. She stepped inside.
Far off, the yellowing moon crocheted
its starry nightgown into the shadow.
~ Kerry Shawn Keys
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