*
PASSION FLOWER
At my bedside, tincture of passion flower
to add to the wine,
but not in case of passion.
The older I get, the more I realize
the greatest seduction is sleep,
that velvet drowning
in innocence again —
the only Eden left of childhood.
Dreams reel more slowly now,
ourselves on the screen of the night,
but not as goddesses or heroes,
only as comic characters,
lost in another world — the way
the passion flower was not named for
quivering human love, its petals and its spikes,
but for the agony of Christ.
Yet look at these pistils and stamens,
whose only religion is life.
Feel how the tincture loosens limbs.
The older I get, the more I love
both passion-flower gates of sleep
and the glistening
cry of birds, the miracle
of morning.
~ Oriana
Mary:
LORD BYRON, 19TH CENTURY BAD BOY
~ The great object of life is Sensation – to feel that we exist – even though in pain – it is this ‘craving void’ which drives us to Gaming – to Battle – to Travel – to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principle attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment. ~ Lord Byron to Annabella Milbanke, his future wife, 6 September, 1813
Born in London in 1788, the poet George Gordon Byron, or Lord Byron as we know him, spent his life collecting sensations and courting controversy. While a student at Cambridge, for example, he kept a tame bear as a pet, taking it for walks as one would a dog. During his acrimonious and very public divorce in 1816, Byron was rumored to be having a sexual relationship with his half-sister, an allegation he denied in public but less adamantly in his private letters. His passionate support for the freedom of the Greeks in their War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire was likewise a ‘keenly felt pursuit’ that ultimately proved deadly. Suffering from a fever and infection contracted while awaiting battle in Greece, Byron died in 1824 at the age of 36.
Although in his letters Byron confessed to having no interest in society – ‘I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone’, – his exploits and writings drew attention, at times adoring and at others deeply critical.
It was in 1812 after the publication of the first part of his long narrative poem about a young aristocrat’s travels, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, that Byron became widely known, a celebrity in fashionable circles.
With a noticeable limp due to a club-foot – a disability he had suffered with from birth – and a striking face, Byron’s physical presence also commanded attention. His fellow English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge commented in a letter on 10 April 1816 that Byron’s face was ‘so beautiful, a countenance I scarcely ever saw’ and ‘his eyes the open portals of the sun – things of light, and for light’. During his lifetime, Byron was notoriously protective of his image and directed his publisher John Murray to destroy any engravings of himself that he disliked. One portrait he endorsed was completed in 1813 by the artist Thomas Phillips.
It shows Byron wearing Albanian dress, ‘the most magnificent in the world,’ Byron thought, which he had acquired while on a Grand Tour of the Mediterranean in 1809. The portrait alludes to his travels and adventurous spirit while presenting the face of a calm and pensive Byron. Known to be moody, by turns gregarious and then sullen, Byron was a man of extremes, both in terms of his character and his deeds. In a candid moment of self-reflection Byron wrote, ‘I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long, – I am such a strange mélange of good and evil, that it would be difficult to describe me’.
POLITICS
From a young age, Byron wished for a career in Parliament with poetry initially being only a secondary interest. He entered the House of Lords, his privilege for being born into British nobility, and in 1812 gave his first speech opposing the Frame Work Bill, which made the destruction of stocking frames, mechanical looms used in the textile industry, a crime punishable by death.
The controversy over the bill had provoked riots in Nottinghamshire where use of the frames had left many men unemployed, and therefore hungry and desperate. In the historic speech, Byron laments that many of his fellow politicians view the rioters as an uneducated mob, failing to recognize the desperation of their situation:
it is the mob that labour in your fields and in your houses – that man your navy and recruit your army – that have enabled you to defy all the world and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob but not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people.
Despite the eloquence and passion of Byron’s speech opposing the bill, the bill passed. Seen as a radical, Byron became the enemy of the more conservative forces as made clear by his representation as the devil with a cloven hoof in The Dorchester Guide; or, a house that Jack Built (1819), an anti-radical satirical pamphlet. The anonymous publication warns that ‘the mind is corrupted’ by Byron’s ‘sweet and harmonious’ poetry and says to ‘look at his feet’, a reference to his club-foot, for proof of his association with the devil.
This criticism was especially harsh given his lifelong sensitivity about his disability. Byron allegedly refused to sleep overnight in the same bed as many of his lovers so that they would not have an opportunity to observe his twisted foot.
LOVE
‘I cannot exist without some object of Love’ (Lord Byron to Lady Melbourne, 9 November 1812).
By his own account, Byron had many lovers, and most biographers agree that he had relationships with both women and men. Lady Caroline Lamb, the woman who famously labelled him ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ in her journal, demanded to meet Byron after reading Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and went on to have a short-lived but zealous affair with him in 1812. After Byron ended the relationship because he felt it had become too public and intense, Lamb tried to stab herself and then sent Byron a snippet of her pubic hair in a letter signed ‘from your wild antelope’.
The fame that went along with the publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage brought many attestations of love, but love and poetry intertwined throughout Byron’s life. He claimed that his first attempt at poetry at the age of 12 was occasioned by the love of a cousin. And Don Juan, the epic poem he worked on for the last six years of his life and which was unfinished at his death, reimagines the legend of the prolific lover. He wrote to a friend about Don Juan, ‘it may be bawdy but is it not good English … Could any man have written it – who has not lived in the world? – and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? Against a wall? in a court carriage?’ His final days saw him enthralled by a young Greek boy of 15 who failed to return his affection. No longer the dashing and famous poet he once was, Byron found the teenager’s rejection a deep blow to his fragile ego, and his poetry from the time bears witness. His poem on the occasion of his 36th birthday, his last, concludes ‘My days are in the yellow Leaf; / The flowers and fruits of Love are gone’.
CRITICISM
From his early publications, Byron provoked his contemporary poets by denouncing their writings. After receiving a harsh review of an early edition of his own poetry, Byron wrote the satire ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ (1809), which took aim at various poets, including Robert Southey, Walter Scott, and William Wordsworth whom he described variously as ‘little wits’ or ‘knaves and fools’. A letter to his publisher John Murray from 25 March 25 1817 when he was living in Venice includes an amusing poem that comments on the poems and novels of his contemporaries: Coleridge’s ‘Christabel,’ William Lisle Bowles’ ‘The Missionary,’ Margaret Holford’s ‘Margaret of Anjou,’ and, most entertainingly, his ex-lover Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon, which is a thinly veiled portrait of Byron.
In Don Juan, Byron writes:
Byron was also famously dismissive of his fellow poet John Keats. In letters to his publisher Murray, Byron variously refers to ‘Jack Keats or Ketch or whatever his names are’ and to Keats’s writing as ‘a sort of mental masturbation'. In a letter from 1821, Byron again expresses dislike of Keats’s poetry, although this time, it is tempered by Keats’s recent death, which was rumored to be hastened by a bad review: ‘Is it true – what Shelley writes me that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it – though I think he took the wrong line as a poet’.
One exception for Byron and his relationship with his contemporaries was his close friendship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Byron praised Shelley’s poetry and Shelley his. In a letter from Shelley to ‘My dear Lord Byron’ in 1821, Shelley writes. ‘Many thanks for Don Juan. … Nothing has ever been written like it in English, nor if I may venture to prophecy, will there ever be.’
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/lord-byron-19thcentury-bad-boy
Mary:
Oriana:
Alas, there is nothing romantic about old age. And it doesn't have to be "old-old" age. Now, one can fall in love at seventeen or at seventy, but a woman in her seventies still waiting for her Prince (and it does happen, probably more frequently than we are willing to admit) just doesn't arouse our interest and sympathy the way young lovers do. Past seventy, a prince is likely to be bald and have a pot belly . . .
*
Yes, Byron seems to have cultivated a certain persona . . . but there are reasons to think he was bipolar and his dark moods weren't exactly "just for show."
Before we leave Byron, let me quote my favorite stanzas from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the wingéd Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was--her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers:
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone--but Beauty still is here;
States fall, arts fade--but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
Venice 1964; Ikko Narahara
*
DID PUTIN KILL PRIGOZHIN?
~ When I was asked in May 2023 if Prigozhin should stay away from high-floor windows, after stating that the war in Ukraine was started on a false pretense, I said: “War heroes in Russia don’t get windows. They get helicopter crashes.”
The killers were unlucky. It was still daylight, there were plenty of witnesses, and because of multiple attacks of Ukrainian drones in the last couple of days, these witnesses were looking at the skies and filming.
The witnesses were first at the site of the crash, filming on their phones and posting videos in social networks.
This is why we know who killed Wagner's founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and his top commanders.
The timeline
Prigozhin's Embraer ERJ 135 business jet with tail number RA-02795 flew from Moscow to St. Petersburg with 10 souls on board.
The plane disappeared from radar screens at 18.11 Moscow time and crashed in Tver region near the village of Kuzhenkino.
There were 10 people on board, including 3 crew members.
The search operation ended 5 hours later and all the bodies were found.
The jet crashed 50 km from Vladimir Putin's residence in Valdai, where 4 divisions of S-300 PMU1 anti-air defense are stationed.
All Wagner’s top bosses were on the plane: The business chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, the military chief Dmitry Utkin, and the head of security Valeriy Chekalov. They were all on the same plane, although Prigozhin’s second plane was also flying the same route.
Prigozhin, Utkin, Chekalov.
In the videos of the falling plane, it’s visible it only has one wing. Witnesses report two “bangs” before the plane began to fall. White tracks of air defense missiles can be also seen.
An hour after the announcement of the crash of Prigozhin’s plane, a criminal case was opened under the article “Violation of traffic safety rules and the operation of air transport.” Well, that's right: you can't fly a plane without one wing, it's not safe. A case of investigation of premeditated murder was not opened.
"A specially created commission of the Federal Air Transport Agency has launched an investigation into the circumstances and causes of the crash of the plane on which Yevgeny Prigozhin was possibly flying," Kremlin-controlled Gazeta•ru simultaneously reported.
The commission to hide the causes of the crash, not to reveal it. The commission to confiscate any footage and silence witnesses.
Probably, they will charge the pilot who did not dodge the air defense missiles, with unsafe flying. Posthumously.
In fact, if I were a witness of the crash, I’d upload copies of all evidence to a UK newspaper like The Guardian — and try to escape the country through Georgia or Kazakhstan. In Russia, when you see what you shouldn’t have seen, your life is in danger.
Media coverage
Messages about the crash of Prigozhin's plane are word for word on the leading Russian news portals. It appears that the coverage of the accident is controlled by the presidential administration: only they are able to give instructions to all outlets at once and demand that not a word is changed.
Propagandist Vladimir Solovyov posted a message warning against commenting on the incident.
“Colleagues, I deliberately keep silent and recommend you doing the same. Silence is more valuable than gold right now,” Solovyov wrote.
That’s what you write when you feel that your name may be the next on the list.
Thousands of terrified members of Russia’s ruling class are now trying to figure out what happened with Prigozhin and asking themselves the question: who’s next?
The answer to this question is frightening in its simplicity: anyone.
There is no protection.
There are no guarantees.
The door to hell had swung wide open.
Did Putin give orders to kill Prigozhin?
Prigozhin sentenced himself to death when he halted his march on Moscow.
On August 23 that sentence was carried out.
Defiantly and with ultimate cynicism.
In this war, at any critical point, Putin hasn’t failed to pick the worst option imaginable. He did it again.
The same team that promised him “Kyiv in 3 days” in 2022 and an easy run to take the whole left-bank Ukraine in 2014, convinced him that there is no harm but only benefits in knocking off the top of Wagner. That Wagnerites will be just too happy that the horrible Prigozhin is dead and they don’t need to do anything for him anymore.
The same team convinced Putin that he must publicly execute Prigozhin, to send a message to potential dissenters and assert his strength.
Until recently, Putin acted with more restraint. He sent messengers with "Novichok" to those whom he considered traitors. His former associates and patrons died mysterious deaths — like Boris Berezovsky in the UK.
But defiantly destroying a passenger plane with his own mercenaries just 2 months after giving them guarantees of safety and meeting them in Kremlin — that’s definitely a step up towards Stalin’s level totalitarianism.
It confirms that Putin’s new weapon of choice is fear, sending a message that everyone who questions his total and limitless power is doomed. That every person who serves him should fear him. That he no longer seeks their love, respect or trust. They should simply be afraid — be very afraid.
That’s how people felt around Stalin. He sent their wives to GULAG, killed their family members, ordered them around and mocked them — but his subordinates only nodded in agreement and tried to please him. Pleasing the tyrant was the only way to survive.
Putin is building an archaic regime just like that.
Putin isn’t completely removed from the reality and he is switched on enough to realize that his war in Ukraine is a total disaster. That his elites are greatly dissatisfied with the situation they are in. That there is no good option that can take Russia out of this mess. But Putin can still give orders and he strives to ensure that these orders are followed, no matter how terrifying they are. He wants to make sure that no one, even for a second, hesitates to do what they are ordered to do. He needs this blind obedience to go through with the plan of total mobilization. He needs this blind obedience to give an order to prep nuclear warheads and to press the button that fires that strike. Only fear can guarantee such blind obedience. This is why everyone must understand that Putin is capable of anything.
Prigozhin openly challenged Putin, so the traditional KGB method of murder, like poisoning by Novichok, would look too timid. Gopnik in Putin won against Putin-chekist: Criminals use demonstrative executions as a message for others in the gang; doing it without such an impact would be pointless as a punishment for an open rebellion.
Putin's regime has much higher success rate with plane crashes than with poisoning, victims of which now and then survive. Even at the dawn of Putin’s rule, a bunch of people who could cause him trouble, died successfully in air crashes: war hero General Lebed, ophthalmologist Svyatoslav Fedorov, investigative journalist Artyom Borovik. A few years later, a plane full of political elite of the Polish nation perished in a plane crash over Smolensk, including President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński.
Russian generals should think about their fate. If Russia loses the war, they could suffer the fate of generals from Surovikin to Lebed.
– What happened with Prigozhin’s plane?
– It fell.
~ Elena Gold, Quora, August 24. 2023
a makeshift memorial in front of the Wagner Group headquarters in St. Petersburg
Geoff Caplan:
Well — only a few innocent civilians such as the crew… Not so great for their loved ones. But who cares about such trifles?
Elena Gold:
Putin doesn’t care for hundreds of thousands who are already dead in the war with Ukraine.
Geoff Caplan:
True — he seems to have reached a level where “collateral damage” to a few tens of thousands of innocent civilians is of little concern. So why worry about a handful more when you can take out a disloyal follower at the same time?
Not that I’m exactly shedding tears for that hideous caricature of a human being Dmitry Utkin…
Coraian Zoltan Corzo:
Just like Hilter. After the July 20's plot, he just killed everyone he suspected knew about the plot. Also his most valuable assets like Rommel.
And that's the singularity. The point of no return. Putin just canceled any last chance to survive the next two years.
Roger Politis:
A nice planeload of thugs to get rid of. One positive aspect of mob wars, is that they tend to eliminate mobsters.
I will just spare a thought for the 3 hapless crew members, who happened to be at the wrong place in the wrong time…
Diana Lugova:
Some thoughts about Wagner’s jet Embraer Legacy 600, reg. # RA-02795 crash and Evgeny Prigozhin’s (and Dmitry Utkin’s) very public execution.
My impression is majority of people expected that Putin would kill him after June events, as Putin never forgives betrayal. However, I personally expected Putin would use his traditional methods such as Novichok or suicide via jumping from a window.
There are different rumors about this crash and Prigozhin fate.
Initially it was not 100% if he was on the plane. Later it was officially confirmed. To what extent you can trust Russian officials remains to be seen.
#1. The jet was short down by Russian air defense system. There were 2 explosions according to the local witness and white trace in the sky. It’s visible that the jet completely lost control and lost one wing. It sounds both possible and highly probable to me.
#2. The jet was shot by a fighter jet as a vendetta for the pilots killed by Wagner in June. I would say it’s possible but less probable version.
#3. Prigozhin staged his own death and now is somewhere undergoing plastic surgery and changing pictures in his numerous passports. It cannot be ruled out completely, though this theory cannot explain how he arrange the jet shooting now, when he was officially “in exile” and all his contacts with Russian MoD were cut. Still possible with lots of money, but it seems like there were easier ways to stage own death.
Georg:
I think it was Putin to set an example.
The date: Exactly the 23rd, the day when Prigozhin started his march on Moscow. Russians love these date games.
The plane was shot down by a rocket as the fuselage was fine and the one wing attached. The rests of the plane showed shrapnel, typical for anti aircraft weapons.
The fact that a video of the very moment exists when the plane was hit and fell. Thats a very lucky shot from the ladies who made the video.
The plane’s take-off start was postponed for quite a time in Moscow.
A second plane of the same type that followed and was also loaded with Wagnerians returned to Moskau and all were taken into custody by special forces as far as I know.
That was done by Putin exactly so everybody knows.
Diana Lugova:
Oh yes, it was done very public and Putin was smiling like Cheshire cat while giving speech in Kursk.
P. Baker:
If you expected Putin would use his traditional methods such as Novichok or suicide via jumping from a window, think again.
The object was not to just kill Prigozhin but to behead Wagner of its top leaders in such a way that you kill the very existence of Wagner.
Staging his own death was clearly not Prigozhin’s aim. In fact he believed he was pardoned by Putin and felt safe. Why else would he have flown from St. Petersburg to Moscow if he did not feel safe? If he did not feel safe Putin’s SFB would have been waiting for him at the Moscow airport where Prigozhin and his team would land to arrest them. But in that situation we all would know Putin would be responsible for their death. But that is not typically Russian. The typically Russian way to kill an adversary is to stage an accident or a suicide so that you can’t find anyone to blame.
But as has been said Putin does not forget nor forgive betrayal which is why Prigozhin and his team had to face consequences sometime.
Christa Denofre:
I sincerely doubt Prigozhin was unintelligent enough to actually be aboard any plane that had his name on the passenger list. I believe he was on the OTHER plane owned by Prigozhin that landed in Moscow during the same time frame. The eight bodies found in the wreckage of the first plane were too badly burned to be identified by any means other than dental records. Also, the original flight manifest stated there were three pilots and seven passengers aboard, not a total of eight. I think he bought himself some time.
*
THE MESSAGE OF PRIGOZHIN’S EXECUTION
~ Prigozhin got the finale he was preparing for others: a horrific, violent death.
Russia cooked in Prigozhin’s style is a space of absolute violence and absence of any rights, where “real men with sledgehammers” murder their enemies in order to achieve so-called “geopolitical goals”, i.e. money and power.
So, in a way, Prigozhin’s head got smashed by his own symbolic sledgehammer.
Liquidation is a daily reality for those willing to provide services of killers for hire. The same fate has already took away the “heroes of Donbass”, such as Zakharchenko and Arsen Pavlov (Motorola). Prigozhin was well aware of that.
Prigozhin’s failed mutiny was connected precisely with his desire to prolong his life, so as not to end up in the alley of dead heroes immediately after the completion of the battle for Bakhmut, after which his masters no longer needed him.
Through the mutiny, “Putin’s chef” managed to negotiate an extension, and he decided that everything worked out, that he successfully returned to the circle of the rulers of Russia with access to the Boss. But he only got 2 more months of life.
Vladimir Putin didn’t wait for the dish to cool down. His emotional state is such that even 2 months was a terribly long time to wait. The raging desire to ensure that the traitor was punished was burning him from the inside.
Being forced to negotiate with his own cook and the provider of unmentionable services was a humiliation that Putin would never forgive. But the worst thing was that Prigozhin demonstrated that no one would stand up to defend Putin. He showed the real ratings of people's love for him and made him a worldwide laughingstock. This is why Putin could not wait. Retribution had to defiantly reach the presumptuous serf, so that others understood that such sins are unsurvivable.
An unequivocal message was sent to all those loyal to the tsar, but who may doubt that the “special military operation” should continue indefinitely, regardless of the costs, and, if necessary, until the complete demise of the Russian people. The war will be fought exactly as it has been fought. This will be done by the people picked by Putin, selected on the principle of loyalty. Any doubts by an ordinary person will be punished with a long jail sentence for “discrediting Russian army”, and for disloyal rich people, their planes will simply fall from the skies.
Rich and influential people in Russia can no longer simply agree to the war. They need to fully approve of how this war is organized — who’s managing it, the decisions they make, accept the losses and the costs.
The execution of Prigozhin means the abolition of taboo on punishing of Putin’s loyal servants. Anything short of complete admiration is seen as unacceptable dissent that requires amercement.
Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels started talking about the start of "purges" that are absolutely necessary when "the very existence of Russia is at stake.”
In other words, the “Russian elites” watching the fall of Prigozhin must agree that they could, if necessary, not only be made accomplices in crimes, but also be executed — in the flames of a nuclear strike or as a result of palace intrigues.
Those who fled at the very beginning of the “special operation” turned out to be the smartest. Those who did not dare to lose back then, can now lose not only the money, but also their lives. ~
Elena Gold, Quora
George Graham:
It also makes it likely that those who suspect that their loyalty is suspect to the leader have now nothing to lose. Any plot that they conceive will not be half baked and will be carried out with ruthlessness. The spiral of distrust and paranoia will continue to spiral upwards.
Brian Mellon:
I have just seen a video on Kanal 13 shot in one of the Wagner cemeteries. It is being dismantled.
All the individual grave crosses are stacked up in a big pile and all the flowers similarly stacked ready for disposal.
It will shortly look as if it had never existed.
Stalinist at its very best.
Peter Lewis:
Prigozhin must have known there would be no forgiveness once his rebellion began. He had one slim chance of survival and that was to go through with it and overthrow Putin’s government, but for some reason he backed down. Perhaps, like most bullies, he was actually a coward.
Carol Weaver:
Personally I'm not sure he's dead.
Elena Gold:
I am sure he’s dead. Putin was speaking too kindly of him.
Putin called him by the name, which he hasn’t done since the mutiny. Putin never pronounces the names of his enemies in public, and Prigozhin became not just an enemy, but a traitor. Putin praised Prigozhin, called him a talented businessman. Wouldn’t happen if he still posed a risk to Putin.
*
WHY PUTIN SHOWED LENIENCY TOWARD PRIGOZHIN AT FIRST
~ Putin and Prigozhin were old friends from back in the day. Putin used to be a nobody in St. Petersburg; he used to buy hot dogs from Prigozhin, who ran a hot dog stand in the market.
I suspect they used to chat frequently during those transactions. When Putin started moving up in the world, so did Prigozhin, who opened his first restaurant, and they reconnected.
It is believed that Putin was a regular at Prigozhin's restaurants. One day, Putin becomes president, and Prigozhin starts receiving contracts for catering, etc. This is a long-standing relationship that has evolved from being ordinary individuals to influential figures, as Putin has been president since 2000.
They even have houses next door to each other in Moscow. Not once did one ever say negative words about the other. ~ Mike Chang, Quora
Grammar god:
Prigozhin was more honest that Putin.
Yusif:
Prigozhin was in a position where he needed to show that he was not to blame. In that situation, he was correct. Russian MOD is a hot mess. You reverse their roles, and Putin would have been as honest and Prigozhin would be a lying scum.
Grammar god:
It’s the fact that he started from a powerful position and increasingly criticized leadership. He was honest in his broadcasts, without lies, while commending Zelensky for being an effective ruler and while being honest about his casualties, that convinces me Prigozhin is an excellent person, even though he’s evil. It’s best to have an intelligent enemy who respects you than a dumb friend who undermines you.
Yusif:
It’s only when he feels like he is being denied his victory at Bakhmut that he speaks out and becomes an honest man.
Edward Lokshin:
Putin didn’t buy hot dogs from Prigozhin. They got acquainted in the mid-1990s when Prigozhin was a successful restaurateur in Saint Petersburg and Putin was working for the Saint Petersburg city government. I can see why they “clicked” with each other: both were ambitious men who rose from humble beginnings.
Geoff Jones:
With luck they will descend into a chaotic spiral of murder and eliminate the worst offenders themselves.
*
MISHA IOSSEL ON PRIGOZHIN’S “PARABOLIC TRAJECTORY”
The dizzyingly parabolic trajectory of Yevgeny Prigozhin's life: from a cute quick-witted little Leningrad Jewish kid to an adolescent makeshift hot-dog street vendor and courtyard hoodlum and brutish teen thug mugging women and the elderly in the narrow dark alleyways in the cold sclerotic heart of the city on the Neva to full-fledged stick-up artist and armed burglar with a vile temper and mean disposition to a hardened convict with a decade-long jail sentence —
to the young and rapidly rising ex-KGB crook Vladimir Putin's all-purpose associate and junior business partner to Putin's personal chef and food taster to mighty caterer for the Kremlin and supplier of frequently contaminated fare for school cafeterias and army canteens all across Russia — to the rabidly and conveniently anti-Western quasi-ideologue and founder of the world's largest and most viciously aggressive "troll factory" on the outskirts of his native city's Gulf-of Finland-bound extremity stocked with cynical brainwashers for a pittance — to the sole owner of a massive and notoriously savage private army made up to a considerable extent of (you guessed it) hardened criminals, murderers and rapists, to...
well, but you know the rest, so let's just fast-forward, shall we... to a populist-demagogue folk hero and leader of an aborted coup against his former friend and benefactor Putin to someone, ultimately, of whose violent public execution in midair, when he was informed of it, the American President himself said that he wasn't surprised by it.
*
“The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time.” ~ Albert Einstein
*
THE MEANING OF THE FAILURE OF LUNA-25
~ Luna-25 mission ended in disaster.
And it's not just about the crashed spaceship.
It is the chatter about the greatness of Russia that has crashed into reality.
The Russian spaceship went in the same direction as the Russian warship.
If you recall, Russia promised to open a station on the Moon by 2015.
Putin personally said in 2018 that the mission would fly "next year." It didn’t happen.
Luna-25 spaceship had been preparing for this flight for almost a quarter of a century!
In the last 10 days, Russian propaganda was absolutely ecstatic. They gleefully shouted about the return of Russia to the space race.
About competing with the US and China.
About some unparalleled future developments and technologies, the uniqueness of Luna-25 mission.
But in reality — nothing.
Nada. Zero. Zilch.
The whole topic about the "great space power" once again turned out to be a fake.
No wonder Russia signed agreements on cooperation in space with Burundi and Zimbabwe.
In space exploration, Russia's place is right next to Burundi and Zimbabwe. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
Duy H. Bui
Because it was stol.. well excuse me, liberated from a washing machine, the master–control microchip of Luna-25 switched to “extra spin" mode at the most pivotal moment.
Mat Geezer:
In space, nationalism is kinda ridiculous. The Soviet Union really did compete in space: landing on Venus is still impressive. But the modern Russian state is basically a gangsters' colony so no surprise their attempts to actually achieve something fall flat.
Oriana:
When the flagship Moskva (“Moscow”) sank, I felt that was incredibly symbolic. It seemed to prophecy that Moscow would lose the war. And now this lunatic misadventure.
And it occurred to me that Ukraine has a lovely national logo: a stylized trident. Now that the hammer and sickle are passé, Russia no longer has a logo. Such things are not trivia. They are signals to our emotional brain.
[I agree that Russia still displays the hammer and sickle now and then — but in a timid, lost, sporadic way. For instance, some armored Russian vehicles in Ukraine fly the hammer-and-sickle flag. But it’s a far cry from the triumphant displays of the past. Now Russia has no ideology to offer to the world, no hope of a radiant future. It’s just about nationalism, corruption, and greed.] 
Yuri Borisov, head of Roscosmos. Note that he’s covering his watch, likely because it’s outrageously expensive.
He called the failure of the mission "an invaluable experience" and attributed problems to a 50-year hiatus from the research program.
And, to make the irony even more outrageous, a few days later India succeeded in landing its lunar probe near the Moon’s south pole.
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THE ORWELLIAN PROBLEM WITH THE SOVIET PAST
Russians are notorious for re-writing history so it’s more to their liking.
An old Soviet joke:
“With Communism, the future is certain! It is only the past that is unpredictable….”
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PUTIN IS DESTROYING MODERN RUSSIA —Interview with Anne Applebaum
(Note: this interview took place before Prigozhin's execution)
In a recent interview with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service, Applebaum said Western resolve to aid Ukraine in its battle against invading Russian forces remains strong and said the administration of US President Joe Biden has “adopted a mindset that it will be a long war”. Applebaum also predicted that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be remembered for “destroying modern Russia”.
How united does the West remain in the face of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Russian leader’s refusal to blink first. Is the dreaded war fatigue creeping in?
So, much to my surprise, I would not describe the situation right now as war fatigue. We are lucky in that all of the most important European countries and both North American countries who are part of NATO remain committed to winning the war. And that wasn’t something anybody predicted 18 months ago. Within each country, there are opponents of the war, and sometimes they’re very loud.
But if you look at Germany, France, Italy, the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Britain, Poland, Romania, Spain, you look down the list and what you see are all of the leaders of those countries are still supporting the war, and you don’t hear any major cracks. There are no major breaks. It’s true that, as I said, you know, inside French politics, inside German politics, inside US politics, there are opponents. And there is a danger that if any of them were to win an election, then the situation could change. But right now – the next really important election is the US one next year – right now, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.
It’s true that, in Poland, we have a very transactional government running the country, and one that’s very worried that it’s going to lose the next elections – and Polish elections are in October. And although the winner will still support aid to Ukraine, because all major political parties in Poland do, the ruling party is a nationalist party and it has some voters who are skeptical of Ukraine. There is quite a lot of propaganda around old Polish-Ukrainian conflicts. And there is some fatigue with Ukrainian refugees. I mean, some of that is being pumped up on social media, I suspect by the Russians but maybe by others inside Polish politics as well.
So, yes, there is some friction in the Polish-Ukrainian relationship. But I don’t think it’s changed the overall picture. I don’t think it alters Polish support for Ukraine, which is still absolutely in Poland the majority point of view.
Putin seems to believe that it will be a long war. And the Ukrainians seem very willing to fight for as long as it takes to free their country. But has the West also come to terms with what could be a long war and adopted a similar mindset?
You could see the Americans have adopted a mindset that it will be a long war because they've been very slow about providing advanced weapons to Ukraine, and they seem willing only to do it at each stage when they think the Ukrainians are ready, when they’re persuaded that it will be useful. I mean, it always feels to people on the ground like it’s a few months too late. If the Ukrainians had F-16s (US fighter jets) now and not a year from now or six months from now, it would make a really big difference in this summer’s counteroffensive. But I don’t feel in the Biden administration any doubt that they’re going to continue going.
And, as I said, there is a threat that the US election campaign could complicate this. There is a part of the Republican Party in the United States which is not in favor of the war and which may well campaign against the war. I don’t know if this will be a major issue in the campaign, but it could be. But I think we’re still six months to a year away from that, and that’s really a long time in this campaign.
If Ukraine’s counteroffensive doesn’t end up being a resounding success that Western politicians can tout to their voters, what do you see as some of the possible scenarios playing out?
I’m not going to predict what will happen on the ground in Ukraine because there’s too much that isn’t known. You know, the Ukrainians who I talked to feel confident that they are successfully destroying enormous quantities of Russian weaponry. And that they’ve broken through some of the first layers of defense in a few places. I think the mining of massive amounts of territory in Ukraine was more than they expected. And that means they need more de-mining equipment; they don’t have enough. And what the West was training them to do – the combined arms operations – that had assumed that mines would be gone. You can’t bring massive numbers of tanks over fields that are full of explosive devices. So, I don’t think it’s being fought the way they expected it to be fought, but they seem to have some confidence that they’re making progress.
Before the counteroffensive you wrote in your column in The Atlantic that the Ukrainian counteroffensive needed to convince the Russians that the war is not worth fighting. How far do you think the Russians are from that realization?
The rebellion led by [former Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny] Prigozhin was an interesting indication that some part of the Russian security apparatus already feels the war isn’t worth fighting. So, if you remember what Prigozhin said – right before he made his quixotic trip from Rostov then more than halfway to Moscow – what he said was, this war is being fought on false pretenses. It’s a war for corruption. Russian oligarchs wanted it because they’re greedy, and they wanted to steal Ukrainian companies and make money off of it. And that’s not a war, you know, it’s not worth people dying for something like that. So, if he said it, that means that others surely think it.
So, there is clearly a part of, as I said, the elite, the security apparatus, whatever you want to call it, who already think the war was a waste of time and a distraction. The question is, when does that number become sufficient to bring the war to a halt? When does it become possible to put pressure on Putin?
Again, there’s so much that we can’t see that I’m reluctant to make a prediction. I mean, it’s something that could happen tomorrow, or it could happen in three months, or it could happen in six months.
I’m pretty confident that it will happen because you know, of course, it is a huge burden on Ukraine to continue fighting the war and a huge burden on Ukraine’s allies, but it’s also a huge burden on Russia. Some huge proportion of Russian resources are now being spent on the military. I mean, it’s almost like Soviet days. And I’m convinced that there is a part of the country that doesn’t want that, doesn’t care about it, doesn’t need it and will want to bring it to an end.
I think it’s safe to say that you are not a fan of making predictions, but I’m going to nevertheless ask you to make one about the future of Prigozhin. How crazy would you say I am if I were to say I see him running in presidential elections?
Oh, I think Prigozhin thinks of himself as a future leader of Russia. There’s no question. I also think that Prigozhin’s career is not over. It turns out that the Wagner Group is crucial to Russian foreign policy, especially in Africa, but not only. There may also be financial reasons why Prigozhin has support inside Moscow, inside the Kremlin even.
Remember that part of his activities in Africa involve exploiting mines and other natural resources. There may be direct lines of funding going from Africa to Moscow that people don’t want to see eliminated. It’s clear that he has some kind of loyalty and some kind of support or he wouldn’t still be alive. So, I don’t think it’s wrong to guess that he might continue to play a role in Russia’s future. [Oriana: We can't expect journalists to be clairvoyant.]
Let me ask you, what does peace in Ukraine look like now? And let’s look at it from three vantage points: one from Kyiv, one from Moscow, and one from the West. What does peace look like for each of them?
My problem is that I can really only envision peace in one way: It has to reflect a political change in Russia. In other words, the Russians have to understand that the war was a mistake, understand that Ukraine is a separate country. It’s not going to be part of Russia, not now and not ever. And then they have to withdraw from all or most of Ukrainian territory that they’ve occupied.
I mean, I’m not going to have an argument here about what the final border of Ukraine will look like. But, you know, the Ukrainian position is that Ukraine has only one set of borders, and those are the international borders agreed to in 1991. Therefore, the Russians will have to leave, and we’ll have to perhaps find there has to be a way for them to make amends or make up for the damage they’ve caused.
Any other scenario, you know, any kind of cease-fire or temporary cease-fire or anything that leaves the situation as it is now, is not a recipe for permanent peace. It’s a recipe for a future war, which is what happened after 2014.
In other words, there was a line drawn, there was a negotiation, but the Russians didn’t really ever say, “Right, that’s it. This is all the territory we want and we’re going home.”
If you had had a moment like that, if you’d had a real moment of reflection and reckoning, then the war might have been over. So, until that happens, the war is not over.
When Russians say we’ve had enough? And if they say we’ve had enough but we’re keeping what we’ve taken?
No, they can’t keep what they’ve taken so far, because what they’ve taken is disputed, including by the people who are living there. So, no, it will have to involve withdrawal from all or most of the territory, as I said, and an acknowledgement that Ukraine is an independent country with a right to exist and that it’s not Russia.
Let’s talk a bit more in depth about the person who’d be vehemently opposed to everything that you just described. And let me ask you this question as not only to a journalist, but as a historian: the way things are going, what place do you think will Putin win in the history books? Its widely believed he covets one, but what will the chapter look like, both in Russian and Western editions?
Some of that depends on who wins the war, because history is written by the victors, as we know. But I don’t think there’s any question that Putin will be remembered as the man who really set out to destroy his own country. And apart from what he did to Ukraine, apart from what he did to Georgia, apart from what he did to Chechnya, apart from what he did to Syria, you know, this is somebody who has worsened the living standards, and freedom, and culture of Russia itself. He doesn’t seem to care about the well-being or prosperity of ordinary Russians. They’re just cannon fodder to him.
He’s not interested in Russian achievements in infrastructure or art or in literature and in anything else. He has impoverished Russians. And he’s also brought back a form of dictatorship that I think most Russians had thought they’d left behind.
Remember the Putin regime for the first decade that Putin was president had elements of freedom in it. It wasn’t a totalitarian state. There was no thought police, no thought control of the kind people had known from the Soviet era. He is now slowly bringing that back. So, this is a crushing not just of dissent but a crushing of all politics, all imagination, all culture, all activity, anything independent. What he’s really doing is really destroying modern Russia. And I think that’s what he'll be remembered for overall.
So no place for him in history books as the great modern-day tsar?
I think so, no, not certainly in the ones that are written with any kind of perspective.
Let’s move on to Georgia, as recently the 15th anniversary of the 2008 war with Russia was marked. What do you think is the legacy of that war and how significant?
I think it’s got different legacies in different places. But clearly, in the Western world, it was a kind of warning shot, it was the first indication that Putin was not the democrat he pretended to be. And I actually recently had spent some time looking up things that he said in the first few years when he was in power. Also, when he was made the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, he talked a lot about democracy and freedom and rule of law. And he fooled a lot of people.
And I think the invasion of Georgia was a kind of wake-up call. That was the moment when people realized that he’s not going to be an easy neighbor that so many hoped. We let him get away with mass murder in Chechnya, that was seen as – wrongly probably – but it was seen as some kind of internal affair, not the business of the outside world.
But clearly the invasion of Georgia was an aggressive act towards a sovereign neighbor. And I think that was the moment when perceptions of Putin really began to change. This is when people began to suddenly see Putin as a real problem.
Was that a wake-up call loud enough for the West to properly wake up, or did it continue to sleep?
It began to change attitudes; it began to change the way that people saw Russia. But the implication of your question is right, it wasn’t sufficient. It wasn’t really until 2014 that people understood the degree to which Western financial institutions, Western companies, and Western trade was enabling this kind of aggression. That people began to understand that there was going to have to be a security shift, even a military shift in Europe.
Notably, it was after 2014, that [former US President Barack] Obama, who got a lot of things wrong about Russia – but Obama first put American troops in Central Europe; there had been none up till then. And 2014 was the moment when suddenly people began to think maybe, you know, the Central European members of NATO aren’t as safe as we thought they were. So, 2008 was the beginning of the awareness. And I think 2014 was when it really began to change. And then obviously, 2022 is the moment when Russia was excluded from European civilization.
https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2058091/putin-is-really-destroying-modern-russia-interview-with-anne-applebaum?fbclid=IwAR1aGqiAhnqSSCgR-lPvcRZuqeIarGLE_kouWZjML-R3NDy9MTiC0MUohPA
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“Trying to restore the 'Russian world' by force, Putin has destroyed it.” ~ Timothy Garton Ash, in Financial Times, August 19, 2023
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GORBACHEV UNDERSTOOD THE FAILURE OF COMMUNISM AS AN ECONOMIC SYSTEM
~ In the early 1980s when Gorbachev was a highly-ranked member of the Soviet Central Committee but not yet general secretary, he arrived late for a meeting with a visiting U.S. official and apologized for his tardiness.
“I was busy dealing with a difficult problem we’ve been having in our agricultural economy,” he explained.
“Oh,” the U.S. official replied. “How long has this problem been going on?”
“Since 1917,” Gorbachev said with a wink. ~
Dan Rosenberg, Quora
Oriana:
1917 is of course the year of the Bolshevik Revolution (some historians prefer to call it a coup — as it’s been noted, in countries ruled by Orwellian dictators, the past becomes unpredictable). But for the head of the Soviet Union to admit that communism doesn't work – that was a revolutionary breakthrough.
Still, that's far from being an official line. I see this as a huge problem: imagine if Germany kept insisting that National Socialism was the best system ever, and Hitler was a genius. Imagine if Hitler's statues were everywhere, arm pointing toward the radiant future of the master race.
Now try to imagine, if you can, Russian schoolchildren being taught that Lenin and Stalin were mass murderers.
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“Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.” ~ Herbert Marcuse (via John Guzlowski, “Herbert Marcuse and Me”)
Oriana:
This reminded me of Freud’s “Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.”
But what killed Freud? Precisely those cigars, by causing cancer of the jaw.
Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar, but it is always a carcinogen.
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WARREN BUFFETT’S MOST IMPORTANT SECRET
Billionaire Warren Buffet, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is in his late eighties and still capturing the world's attention as the second richest person on the planet (as of this writing).
So, how has he done it? Actually, it's not so much about what he has done as it is what he hasn't done. With all the demands on him every day, Buffett learned a long time ago that the greatest commodity of all is time. He simply mastered the art and practice of setting boundaries for himself.
That's why this Buffett quote remains a powerful life lesson. The mega-mogul said:
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
The Powerful Meaning Behind Buffett’s Statement
Whether he meant saying no in the investment sense is not so important; what is important is that his advice, in whatever context, can apply to anyone arriving at the crossroads of daily decision-making.
For most ambitious people, we want to accomplish things. We are driven for results, doing more, learning things, getting promoted, and starting new ventures. But we also have our personal lives we can't ignore for optimum balance and happiness. Ambition in this sense can mean taking care of family priorities, expanding our social circles, and pursuing hobbies and other interests.
That's when Buffett's advice is a bull's-eye to our awareness. We have to know what to shoot for to simplify our lives. It means saying no over and over again to the unimportant things flying in our direction every day and remaining focused on saying yes to the few things that truly matter.
Steve Jobs Agreed. It’s About Focus.
Jobs prophetically supported this notion of saying no at an Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 1997. Here's what he said:
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”’
Like Jobs and Buffett, it's hushing that loud voice in your head when it tempts you with yet another sexy proposition that might steer you off course. You say a resounding NO! when it asks, "Should I take this opportunity? It may never come around again." Sometimes, the best course of action is not taking any action.
Seven Things Successful People Say No To Every Day
Jim Collins, famous author of the mega-bestseller Good to Great, once suggested that instead of to-do lists, we should make "stop-doing" lists. Because in obsessing over to-do lists full of things that don't really matter, we spend less time saying yes to the things that do.
Here are seven things the most successful people say no to on a regular basis. Perhaps you should too?
1. They say no to opportunities and things that don't excite them, speak to their values, or further their mission in life.
2. They say no to superficial networking events in which people swap business cards and never hear from one another. Why? Because successful people don't network. They build relationships.
3. They say no to spending time with uninspiring, critical, or negative people who drag them down. Time is precious -- choose a small circle of people who will energize you and challenge you to be better.
4. They say no to overworking. While it's true some successful people and many entrepreneurs put in 60 to 80 hours per week, very successful people aren't workaholics who neglect self-care and family. They recognize that if they can't take care of themselves, everything else suffers.
5. They say no to doing all the work. This comes down to one word: D-E-L-E-G-A-T-I-O-N.
6. They say no to giving the steering wheel of life to anyone else. Another Buffett quote affirms this: "You've gotta keep control of your time and you can't unless you say no. You can't let people set your agenda in life.”
7. They say no to people-pleasing. Successful people don't neglect their deepest wishes and desires to accommodate and yield to others' wishes and desires.
Buffett’s Three-Step Rule of Focus for Success
To set you on the right course, take a coaching lesson from Buffett himself. He once walked his personal pilot through a life-changing exercise in goal-setting that's since become popular in productivity and career circles. It's a simple, three-step process to set boundaries, say no to distractions, and home in on success. It goes like this:
1. Write down a list of your top 25 career goals.
2. Circle the five most important goals that truly speak to you. These are your most urgent goals.
Now here's the real kicker:
3. Completely eliminate the other 20 goals you have listed. Just cross them off, even if they hold weight or some level of importance.
Buffett says those 20 goals are lower and not urgent priorities, therefore, any effort invested in them steals away dedicated focus and energy from your five highest-priority goals.
The point is to say no to everything on that list except for what you have declared, in your heart-of-hearts, to be the five most important things. These are what you should put all your effort and focus into achieving. The rest are merely distractions that will get in the way of your reaching your ultimate success. ~
https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/warren-buffetts-3-step-5-25-strategy-how-to-focus-and-prioritize-your-time-like-a-billionaire
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THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF CHESS MASTER OSSIP BERNSTEIN
Ossip Samoilovich Bernstein (20 September 1882 – 30 November 1962) was a Ukrainian-French chess player and businessman. He was one of the inaugural recipients of the title International Grandmaster from FIDE in 1950.
Born in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, to a wealthy Jewish family. Bernstein grew up in Ukraine. He earned a doctorate in law at Heidelberg University in 1906, and became a financial lawyer.
Bernstein was a successful businessman who earned considerable wealth before losing it in the Bolshevik Revolution. He earned a second fortune that was lost in the Great Depression, and a third that was lost when France was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940. His Jewish origins meant that he could not remain in Nazi-occupied France, and he was forced to flee to Spain and settled in Barcelona. (Wiki)
In 1918, chess grandmaster Ossip Bernstein was arrested by the Bolshevik secret police. He was ordered to be shot by a firing squad since he was an advisor to bankers, who were considered enemies of the people during the Red Terror and the Bolshevik revolution.
As the firing squad lined up, preparing to take their shots, a superior officer asked to see the list of prisoners' names. Scanning the list, he recognized Bernstein's name because he was a chess enthusiast.
He gave him a choice.
The officer told Bernstein that if he beat him, the officer, at a chess game, he would be released and his life would be spared. Bernstein agreed and subsequently defeated him fairly quickly, thus securing his release from prison.
Bernstein went on to become one of the greatest chess players of his time. It's quite shocking to think that his life was spared due to just one chess game. (~ Quora)
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He tied for 2nd–3rd with Miguel Najdorf at Montevideo at age 72. Najdorf protested that it was unfair to play such an aged opponent, and then became so confident of victory that he convinced the tournament organizers to double the First Prize money at the expense of reducing the payouts for the lesser prizes, a gamble that backfired in spectacular fashion as the septuagenarian Bernstein routed him in a 37-move Old Indian Defense that won Bernstein the Brilliancy Prize. (Wiki)
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THE NUCLEAR-AGE MARKER IN OUR BODIES
~ Nuclear weapons tests in the mid-20th Century left a hidden legacy within our cells – along with most living things on Earth. This "bomb spike" has proven surprisingly useful to scientists, helping them crack police investigations and bust brain myths. Now, it has provided a clever way to mark the start of the Anthropocene.
It's in your teeth. Your eyes and your brain too. Scientists call it the "bomb spike" (or "bomb pulse") – and for more than half a century its signature has been present inside the human body.
In the 1950s, there were so many nuclear bomb explosions above ground that it transformed the chemical make-up of the atmosphere – altering the carbon composition of life on Earth ever since, along with oceans, sediments, stalactites and more.
Unlike the direct radioactive fallout from the explosions, the bomb spike is not harmful. In fact, it's proven surprisingly helpful for scientists in recent years. Some have even gone so far as to describe it as the "mushroom cloud's silver lining".
Why? Evidence of the pulse is so ubiquitous that it can, among many other insights, tell forensic scientists when a person was born (or died), provide discoveries about the age of neurons in our brains, reveal the origin of poached wildlife, determine red wine vintage and even unlock the true age of centuries-old sharks.
And now it may also help to define a new geological era. In July, a group of earth scientists recommended that its presence in a Canadian lake – along with other human-made markers from the mid-20th Century – should represent the official start of the Anthropocene.
So, what exactly is the bomb spike, and what can it reveal about us and the world?
Before the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty obligated signatory nations to test nuclear bombs underground, governments exploded hundreds of atomic weapons out in the open air. More than 500 of these blasts – mainly conducted by the US and Russia – spewed their contents into the atmosphere.
It's well-established that these tests spread radioactive material far and wide, harming humans and wildlife and rendering whole regions uninhabitable. Perhaps lesser known outside the scientific laboratory is that the bombs also reacted with natural nitrogen to form new isotopes – particularly carbon-14.
By the 1960s, overground bomb testing had produced almost twice the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere compared with previous levels. First the isotope entered water, sediments and vegetation, and then it passed along the food chain to humans. It has even reached organisms in the deepest ocean trench.
"In essence, every carbon pool on Earth which was in exchange with atmospheric CO2 since the late 1950s has been labelled by bomb carbon-14," writes Walter Kutschera of the University of Vienna, who published a review of the scientific applications of the spike in the journal Radiocarbon in 2022.
Back in the mid-20th Century, scientists noted the carbon-14 spike when atmospheric testing stopped, but it took decades for them to realize that the elevated levels might be useful. From the 1950s onwards, they had been using carbon-14 to date paleolithic remains or ancient texts, but that was based on its radioactive decay – known as radiocarbon dating. The isotope is unstable: it decays slowly into nitrogen with a half-life of 5,730 years. So, when a Neanderthal died, for instance, the quantity of carbon-14 in their bones and teeth would have started to gradually decline. Measure the extent of the decline, and you have a Neanderthal date of death.
Radiocarbon dating, however, tends to be limited to samples that are more than 300 years old, because of the isotope's slow decay rate. Any younger, and it hasn't decayed enough for an accurate date. Muddying recent dating further is humanity's introduction of additional CO2 into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution – the so-called Suess effect.
Around the turn of the century, however, researchers realized that the bomb spike could help them use carbon-14 in a different way – and crucially it allows for dating within the past 70-80 years.
Ever since the peak in the 1950s, levels of the isotope in nature (and human beings) have gradually declined. Scientists can therefore analyze the proportions of carbon-14 in any organic substance that has exchanged atmospheric carbon since the tests, and specify the window in which it formed, down to a resolution of one to two years.
And that includes you and me. If you were born in the 1950s, your tissues will have accumulated more carbon-14 than a 1980s child, but levels are only now approaching the pre-atomic state.
Forensic analysis
One of the earliest uses of the bomb spike was to assist crime investigators seeking to identify the age of unidentified human remains. Forensic scientists have found that they can measure bomb carbon-14 in teeth, bones, hair or even the lens of the eye to help them estimate how old a person was, or when they died, according to Eden Centaine Johnstone-Belford of Monash University and Soren Blau of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine in Australia.
In a 2019 review, Centaine Johnstone-Belford and Blau cite multiple examples where the bomb spike has informed police inquiries. For example, in 2010 investigators used it to confirm a body found in a northern Italian lake had been dumped there by the killer the previous year.
The pair also point out that knowing the time since death can be "a vital determination in human rights abuse cases such as war crimes, genocide and extrajudicial killings". In 2004, for example, bomb spike dating of hair samples from a mass grave in Ukraine allowed investigators to identify a Nazi war crime that occurred between 1941 and 1952.
The bomb spike has also unlocked new scientific discoveries, revealing new insights about the cells in our bodies and brains. In 2005, the biologist Kirsty Spalding of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and colleagues showed that it was possible to date the relative ages of our cells by analyzing bomb carbon-14 within their DNA. Across several subsequent studies, she has used the technique to answer whether certain cells in our bodies have been around since birth, or whether they are continually replaced.
For example, in 2008 Spalding and colleagues showed that the body continually replaces fat cells called adipocytes as the cells die. The number of these fat cells, she found, stays constant across adulthood – which promises new ways to tackle obesity. "Understanding that this is a dynamic process opens up new avenues of therapy, which may include manipulating the birth or death rate of fat cells, in combination with exercise and diet, to help reduce the number of fat cells in obesity," she says.
In 2013, Spalding and colleagues also used the bomb spike to look at the turnover of brain cells. For many years, researchers assumed that the number of neurons was fixed in childhood, and indeed her earlier research had suggested that was the case in regions like the cortex. However, by using carbon-14 to date neurons within the hippocampus, she and her team confirmed that new neurons may be produced there throughout adult life.
Corroborated by other research, the possible existence of "adult neurogenesis" has proven to be one of the most important neuroscience discoveries of the past 20 years. While the science is far from settled, it has suggested new avenues for medical strategies that might prevent neuron loss via disease, or even increase the generation of new neurons.
Dawn of a new age
Finally, the bomb spike was recently nominated as one of several markers that could help to officially recognize the dawn of the Anthropocene – the new geological era defined by human activity.
Not long after the idea of the Anthropocene was floated, geologists began to discuss how to define its location on Earth with a so-called "golden spike" – a rock, ice core or layer of sediment where a new era begins in the stratigraphic record. Every major geological period has one. The beginning of the Holocene is marked by a particular ice core from the center of Greenland. The base of the Jurassic begins in the Austrian Alps, at Kuhjoch pass in the Karwendel Mountains, where the smooth-shelled Psiloceras ammonite makes a first appearance. And one of the oldest golden spikes on Earth can be found in the Flinders Mountains of Australia, marking the start of the Ediacaran more than 600 million years ago – a period when the climate was periodically plunging into a "Snowball Earth”.
Over the years, various signatures of human activity have been explored as possibilities to mark the Anthropocene's dawn: it could have been the rise in methane caused by early farming thousands of years ago (seen in ice cores), evidence of early lead pollution from mining and smelting 3,000 years ago, or the rise in fossil fuel byproducts during the Industrial Revolution.
However, in 2016 the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) – part of the organization charged with making the decision – recommended the 1950s, when the carbon-14 bomb spike entered the geological record, along with other nuclear markers such as plutonium fallout and isotopes such as cesium-137 and strontium-90, as well as man-made deposits like spheroidal carbonaceous particles (SCPs), a type of fly ash produced by burning coal at high temperatures.
Not everyone agreed that selecting the 1950s was a good idea – indeed, one member of the group recently resigned in protest, arguing that profound human impacts began much earlier. However, the Working Group propose that the mid-20th Century marks a clear, recognizable point in geological strata when humanity made its presence in nature truly and fully known right across the globe. It also coincides, they say, with the "great acceleration" when our impact on the planet exploded through exponential rises in greenhouse emissions, water and land use, ocean acidification, fisheries exploitation, tropical forest loss, and more.
And the bomb spike will also last a long time, allowing geologists to see it in tens of thousands of years. "The radiocarbon signal will be detectable for about 60,000 years and is a fairly routine analysis," says geologist Colin Waters of the University of Leicester, who chairs the AWG.
The AWG studied 12 candidate locations that could host the official golden spike, including a cave in Italy where the bomb pulse and the other markers are encased in stalactites, an archaeological excavation in Vienna, a patch of peatland near the border of the Czech Republic and Poland, and a coral reef off the north-east coast of Australia.
Last month, they recommended a (perhaps soon-to-be infamous) "winner": Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada. A core from the muddy lake sediments, featuring carbon-14, a particularly abrupt plutonium marker, and other man-made signatures, will be kept at a museum in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, accompanied by a brass plaque.
While the lake core is poised to become the official designation, if it's approved, it technically means that we too will hold one of the markers of the Anthropocene's dawn in our cells. Future generations won't, because the elevated carbon-14 has almost returned to previous levels. Therefore if tomorrow's archaeologists happen to study our preserved bodily remains, it might tell them about a unique point in history – a time of nuclear bombs, a great acceleration, and the century when humans began to have an impact on nature unlike any before. ~
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230808-atomic-bomb-spike-carbon-radioactive-body-anthropocene
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WHY THIS JEWISH CHAPLAIN SEES HER ATHEISM AS A GIFT
To start these conversations, I usually ask the guest to define their spiritual identity. And when I asked this of author Vanessa Zoltan, she replied that she's a Jewish atheist.
That is interesting enough, but within a couple minutes it started to become clear that what actually defines her outlook on the world and her spiritual life is the Holocaust.
All four of her grandparents survived the Nazi concentration camps, and it shaped so much of their lives and, as a result, hers. She writes about it in her new memoir, Praying with Jane Eyre. And no, Jane Eyre doesn't have anything to do with the Holocaust, but they are both integral parts of Zoltan's life.
For her, the idea of God didn't survive the horrors of the Holocaust, so she has had to find a different kind of spiritual center. And she found it in literature — specifically Jane Eyre.
Today, in part one of the conversation, we talked about how Zoltan built a spiritual identity out of the Holocaust and how that led her to be an atheist chaplain.
Vanessa Zoltan: I would say genuinely, like the religion that I was raised in and the theology that I was raised in, was the Holocaust.
Rachel Martin: The theology you were raised with was the Holocaust?
Zoltan: Yes.
Martin: That is a really provocative sentence.
Zoltan: I'm really not trying to be provocative, I know how it sounds, but all four of my grandparents were Auschwitz survivors. My parents were both born right after the war to recent survivors. And every law I was taught, as to how to walk through the world, was through the orientation of the Holocaust.
Like, you don't get in lines, you know, our people have stood in enough lines. You always get involved if you see anything — that you don't understand what's going on with a neighbor, you get involved. The course of bureaucracy is always to be questioned. And we were taught to sort of look at our friends and wonder whether or not they would hide us if we ever needed to be hidden. So I think very much the theology that I was raised in was a theology of the Holocaust.
Martin: And that wasn't like a grim joke, like, "Hey, the Joneses around the corner, do you think they would hide us?" That wasn't funny, it was serious when your family talked about it.
Zoltan: Yeah, it was really serious. My father was a refugee from Hungary. He had to leave with his father one day, you know, pretending that they were going to Austria for tooth surgery. And it was certain neighbors who were able to help them get out and get the right paperwork to get out.
My dad wasn't just raised with these stories, it's very real for him that at any moment you may have to leave your country. And this is the lived truth of probably half the globe, right? That at any moment you might have to leave. And so you keep your eye out for who could help you.
But also at any moment, someone else might be the person who needs to leave or needs help. So keep your eye out as to who you can help. Even just a seamstress who lived next door to my dad's parents hid my grandparents' wedding album. They got married before the war and both survived, which is wild. But we have their wedding pictures because this woman saved them for us. And like, this was not like a great heroic act. She didn't risk anything. And yet my family is very grateful to her.
So, what are the things that you can do literally for your neighbors? I watched my parents do that my whole childhood, and that was all Holocaust response.
Martin: You're describing ways to be and behaviors that are attached to your grandparents' survival of the Holocaust, but you specifically called it a theology. How did your grandparents experience in the Holocaust, and then by extension your parents, how did that shape your perception of whether or not there's a God?
Zoltan: I asked my dad once about God and he said, "If there's a God, he hates us." And by "us" he meant the Jewish people. My dad's historical understanding of Jews is that every generation there's an attempt at total eradication. And I grew up around Iranian Jews in Los Angeles who had moved from Iran because of that and Jews from Russia.
So this was also something I was very much just exposed to. And I understand that that can sound paranoid, but I also don't think it is. So yeah, the belief was that of course there's no God, because what God would do this.
But I think that the absence of God can be really beautiful. It means it's our responsibility to take care of each other on this earth. And everything courageous and beautiful that we do is on us.
And so I see my atheism very much as an act of optimism, that it is our job to make this world as good as possible for as many people as possible.
Martin: Do you remember any prayers in your home when you were growing up, to God specifically? Did your parents do that?
Zoltan: Yeah, we did Friday night Shabbat dinner. So we did the prayer over the wine, over the challah, over the meal. My father would bless the three children and my grandparents, when it was at their house, would bless all seven grandchildren. It wasn't to God, you did it because it's what you did because that's what Jews do. And it's just ungrateful not to.
My grandfather was not only an atheist, but really spat in the face of religion a lot of his life. He had a very complicated relationship with religion, but when his wife of 50 years, my grandmother, passed away he went to Temple every day, twice a day to say the mourner's prayer for her. And when it wasn't time to be reciting the Kaddish, he would read The L.A. Times. Like, he was not following the service at all, but then would stand up and do the Kaddish.
We asked him if he thought it mattered, if God was paying attention or if my grandma heard him or anything. And he was like, "No, it's just what she deserves.”
There still didn't seem to be any sort of belief in God. It was just, that's how you show someone you love them, is that they die knowing that that is what you will do for them and then you honor that commitment and do it.
Martin: How have you fixed on atheism instead of taking an agnostic approach? Which would leave open the possibility that something is out there, something bigger than us. How are you so firm?
Zoltan: I'm a chaplain and so I see myself as one of the things that religion has to offer. I would like to be one of the positive things that religion has on offer. I think religion has a lot of great things, and I think atheist chaplains are a necessary part of that tapestry.
Someone who is going to say, "It just sucks that your mom died. She isn't in a better place. It just sucks. She's just gone. You're just not gonna talk to her again." And sit with someone in that. I think I have a role and a call on this planet to be that person.
Most of the community members who I work with and serve are ex-evangelical and ex-Mormon who have somehow been really hurt by traditional religion. And to offer a safe space where that's not going to happen again feels important to me.
For me it's about the afterlife. I think the afterlife is a tool of oppression. Obviously with big exceptions.
Martin: Say more.
Zoltan: It's really easy to say to someone, "It's great that you're suffering in this life because you'll get your just rewards in the next life." It is a form of Christianity that has been taught to enslaved people across the globe for 700 years.
I think that it can be a way to keep people from revolting. By telling them that they're gonna get their just desserts in the next life. And there are very few forms of the afterlife that are appealing to me. I don't like the idea of the prosperity gospel. I need things to have good results on this planet, I'm results oriented, Rachel. I'm data-driven in my religion. I want us to be solving these problems on this planet.
Martin: You don't think you can hold both those ideas at the same time?
Zoltan: I think intellectually I can. But I don't want to. I want to marvel at the fact that lions exist and despair at the fact that they're dying from being overheated because we've ruined this planet and not leave myself the option to put a silver lining on it.
I'm not saying that religious people have only cheap grace. I want to just confront the realities of the suffering. And I don't think enough people take that position. And I was raised to take that position. I don't think everybody should. So I feel like this is a muscle that I have and I don't know why, but I think it's a gift that I have to offer, my atheism.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/20/1194628971/religion-atheism-chaplin
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THE MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY
As a Jew who converted from Christianity, I once thought Judaism was Christianity without Jesus. Belief in Jesus seemed to be the basic difference. I was wrong.
In a decisive move away from Judaism, which is focused on life and the living, Christianity focused on death, an afterlife, and individual salvation from a fiery eternity. Yet, Christianity claims that Judaism has no value except in its use to Christianity, thereby making it easy to assume that Jews are “rejecting” the beliefs of Christians.
Judaism is a life-affirming practice with so little focus on death that the Mourners Kaddish praises G-d and makes no mention of an afterlife. Although we honor the dead and recognize the times to grieve, we do not adulate death. While many Christians have crosses or crucifixes in their homes and churches, Jews worship no demigod represented by symbols of death, dying or a human’s everlasting life. In Judaism, we are not born sinners and no one dies to save another’s soul. No one.
Just as the Ten Commandments were divided on two tablets delineating our obligations to G-d and to each other, we atone for our sins against each other and against G-d, individually and collectively, while we are alive. No one’s death atones for any sin.
Our synagogues do not have priests, preachers, or any equivalent hierarchy of a church. We have no Pope, Bishops, Cardinals, etc. Jews do not pray through any intermediary or have a religious country like the Vatican. Israel is a secular democracy of people practicing many religions. It is also the only country in the entire world that ensures safe harbor to Jews. In Judaism, saving lives is the highest priority.
Jews pray, individually and communally, directly to G-d. Our rabbis are teachers and our Torah is the “teaching or instruction.” We welcome serious commentary within the community. We see the truth of multiple perspectives. We remember the past and hope for the future, while finding joy and purpose in the present from generation to generation.
Jews have no imperative to proselytize nor do we think that anyone is in need of salvation after death. We believe that G-d created Jews and non-Jews. While we are generally open to sincere conversion candidates, we do not think that Judaism is the one and only way for everyone. It is the way for us. That’s enough.
We are created in G-D’s image and we are dust. The practice of Judaism balances the human ego and the id. We are not expected to do everything, nor are we free to do nothing. While G-d laughs, or weeps, at humanity and our limited human beliefs, G-d also loves us and wants us to choose life, loving kindness, charity, justice, righteousness, and mercy. To everything, there is a season. We walk with our G-d through every day of life and give thanks.
Judaism is about life. Jewish mourners set aside their grieving for 25 hours every week to welcome G-D’s gift of Shabbat. In fact, saving lives is the only acceptable reason to violate Shabbat - the weekly celebration of life. Shabbat is never subordinated to death, only to life. And, that all is the difference.
L’Chaim. ~ CJ Ressler
Synagogue in Gwoździec, now Hvizdets in Ukraine.
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HOW YOUR SKIN SHAPES YOUR HEALTH
Sun-damaged
skin releases chemicals that contribute to systemic inflammation,
increasing the risk of almost every age-related disease.
~ The latest research suggests that our skin is not just a mirror for our lifestyles – reflecting the effects of years of smoking, drinking, sun and stress – and hinting at our inner health. No, in this new upside-down-world, the body's largest organ is an active participant in our physical well-being. This is a strange new reality where wrinkles, dry skin and sunspots cause aging, instead of the other way around.
A strange revelation
In 1958, the same year the US passed the law that led to the moon landings and the creation of NASA, another major project was quietly conceived. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study was to be a scientific investigation of aging with a daring and rather unorthodox premise.
Before then, it had been standard scientific practice to attempt to glean insights into the physiology of living people from donated cadavers – a practice with roots in the 19th Century tradition of graverobbing. But this time, subjects would be scrutinized somewhat earlier, while their hearts were still beating and their bodies were very much alive. The research followed thousands of adult men (and later, women) for decades, to see how their health developed – and how this was affected by their genes and the environment.
Just two decades in, scientists had already made some intriguing breakthroughs, from the discovery that less emotionally stable men were more likely to be diagnosed with heart disease to the revelation that our problem-solving abilities decline only slightly with age.
But one of the most striking findings confirmed what people had long suspected: how youthful you look is an impressively accurate expression of your inner health. By 1982, those men who had been assessed as looking particularly old for their age at the beginning of the study, 20 years earlier, were more likely to be dead. This is backed up by more recent research, which found that, of patients who were judged to look at least 10 years older than they should, 99% had health problems.
It turns out skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors, from your bone density to your risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases or dying from cardiovascular disease. However, as the evidence has begun to add up, the story has taken a surprise twist. Is the skin simply a living tally of the damage we have accumulated, or is it more complicated? Could it, in fact, be keeping healthy people healthy – and dragging unhealthy ones down further?
Another kind of birthday
There are two main ways to measure a person's age. The first is the standard method, known as chronological age – the kind tracked by revolutions of the sun. But there is also your biological age, which indicates the rate at which you are aging physically – the maturity of your organs and cells. It can vary wildly between different people and even within the same body.
As we rack up the years, it's common wisdom that our chronological age will eventually catch up with our looks: skin becomes thinner and less even-toned, with lower elasticity, as the cells responsible for producing pigment and collagen die off or become "senescent" – meaning they stop renewing themselves and continue to exist in a kind of dormant state.
But it is the environment that tends to do the real damage. Though ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation can damage our DNA – leading to sunburn, mutations and skin cancer – 95% of the total UV radiation that makes it to the Earth's surface is ultraviolet A (UVA). This portion of the sun's rays has a longer wavelength, which allows it to penetrate deep into the dermis – where it breaks down collagen and stimulates cells to produce melanin.
At the microscopic level, photoaged skin – skin that has been aged by the sun – is thicker, with tangles of misshapen elastin and collagen fibers. At the visible level, it is often irregularly pigmented and significantly more wrinkled. This is true whether you have very light skin which is incapable of tanning, known as type one on the Fitzpatrick scale, or very dark skin, type six, which the scale inaccurately describes as never burning. Even deeply pigmented skin can burn and is susceptible to photoaging, though it will take longer for wrinkles to kick in.
In fact, it's thought that intrinsic factors are responsible for the tiniest fraction of the classic "aged" look, while UV light is responsible for over 80% of visible skin changes. If you spent your whole life indoors with the curtains drawn, it's possible that you might not see significant alterations to this organ until you reach your 80s.
Crucially though, along with these effects the skin also undergoes a chemical transformation. And it is this that might be having a profound impact on our overall health.
A chemical cocktail
In 2000, at the birth of a new century, a radical new concept emerged. By observing the way most organisms respond to stress, a group of scientists at the University of Bologna, Italy suggested a new way to think about aging.
In a young, healthy person, the immune system is routinely deployed to maintain order – patching up damage and shooing off infections. But as we get older, or when we are in poor health, these inflammatory responses can pass a certain critical threshold – a point beyond which they go into overdrive, releasing a cascade of potent chemicals that rampage around the body, destroying healthy cells and mutilating our DNA. Enter "inflammaging" – the simmering backdrop of inflammation that accompanies the aging process.
This is where the skin comes in. The latest research suggests that wrinkly, diseased, or damaged skin becomes part of this system of inflammation, releasing a chemical cocktail that leads to yet further damage and inflammation. "Chronologically aged skin exhibits higher expression levels of a whole panel of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines," says Mao-Qiang Man, a research scientist at University of California San Francisco, who says that the same is also true for photoaged skin.
Locally, these chemicals degrade collagen and elastin, causing further skin thinning, wrinkles, and reduced elasticity, explains Tuba Musarrat Ansary, a postdoctoral researcher at Jichi Medical University, Japan. "They [also] disrupt the skin's barrier, increasing water loss and susceptibility to stressors," she says. The feedback loop is further compounded by senescent cells in the skin – either created by natural aging or UV damage – which also release their own inflammatory chemicals.
But this is just the beginning. As the largest organ in the body, the skin can have a profound impact. The chemicals released by diseased and dysfunctional skin soon enter the bloodstream, where they wash around, damaging other tissues. Amid the ensuing systemic inflammation, chemicals from the skin can reach and harm organs that seem entirely unrelated, including your heart and brain.
The result is accelerated aging, and a higher risk of developing the majority of – or possibly even all – related disorders. So far, aged or diseased skin has been linked to the onset of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cognitive impairment, as well as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
Though we're all familiar with the risks of smoking, drinking, overeating and a lack of exercise, you might argue that poor skin health is the elephant in the room – the one factor that we all routinely overlook. The good news is that there is a lot you can do to improve it.
A matter of moisture
The first step to protecting skin – and therefore, this new theory suggests, overall health – is to stay out of the sun. The most famous method is the "Slip, Slop, Slap," protocol, first launched in Australia in 1981. Today it has been expanded to include five central tenets: slip on a t-shirt [and ideally, other protective clothing], slop on high-factor sunscreen, slap on a wide-brimmed hat, slide on some sunglasses, and seek shade from the sun.
Plus, if the relationship between skin damage and age-related diseases isn't compelling enough to convince people to whip out their fishing hats and sunblock, there are two very good reasons to try it. The first is that protecting your skin from the sun is extremely effective at preventing the visible signs of aging.
In one early study, those who wore a broad-spectrum SPF15 sunscreen every day for four and a half years did not show any signs of further skin aging during this period. That's despite the fact that this low factor typically protects you from sunburn for just 15 times longer than it would take to happen without it – so if your skin would usually start to redden in 10 minutes, you should be able to stay in the sun for just 150 minutes (two and a half hours).
Moreover, the sunscreen in the experiment did not specify the level of protection against UVA radiation, the kind that leads to skin aging. In most parts of the world, to be classified as broad-spectrum, products must demonstrate that they not only absorb or reflect UVB radiation (indicated by the SPF rating), but also UVA. However, the degree to which they achieve this varies substantially. Dermatologists recommend that you always check the label for the UVA rating too, which is usually indicated by UV-PF or PPD.
The second reason is that there is strong evidence sunscreen can prevent most of the inflammation that occurs when the skin is exposed to the sun – the first step towards developing age-related diseases.
But this is not the only way to keep your skin in good condition. In fact, by far the easiest way to improve the health of this organ is to moisturize. And there is direct evidence that this does reduce inflammation – and that it may help to prevent dementia.
Along with an uneven skin tone and wrinkles, both chronologically and photoaged skin is significantly drier. The humidity levels of human skin peak in the 40th year of life, after which they plummet, producing lower and lower quantities of its natural moisturizers – lipids, filaggrin, sebum and glycerol. This is a problem, because dehydrated skin is less effective as a barrier between the insides of our bodies and the outside world. When our skin is desiccated and flaky, its usual tasks – of keeping out infectious agents, environmental toxins, and allergens, while keeping in moisture – become significantly more challenging.
In one study, an international team of researchers – including Man – asked older volunteers to apply a topical moisturizer twice a day for one month. Compared to older participants who had not received any treatment, the subjects' skin was significantly restored, with lower levels of three different classes of inflammatory chemicals.
These promising results were quickly followed up with another study by the same team, which involved treating adults over 65 years old with a moisturizing cream twice a day for three years. The participants' cognitive functioning was measured at the beginning and end of the study – and after three years, though the control group had declined significantly, those who had been hydrating their skin had not deteriorated.
"Decreased stratum corneum hydration levels [those in the outer layer of the epidermis] are likely the major contributor to inflammaging," says Man, who explains that because dry skin tends to have higher levels of inflammation, it can feel itchy. And if you yield to the scratching impulse – you guessed it – the inflammation gets worse.
But, Man says, many natural ingredients can help. These include glycerol, petrolatum, hyaluronic acid and lipids that would usually be found in this layer of the skin – normal constituents of even the most basic moisturizers.
It's possible that simply drinking more water might also help to hydrate the skin, though the evidence is murky – some studies suggest there is not yet any support for this, while others claim it can help. It also hasn't been directly studied as a way to prevent inflammation or related diseases.
To visualize the extent to which the skin is able to affect the rest of your body, it helps to think about just how much of it you have – then remember that, as you would expect, all the skin you can see on the outside of your body is matched by the exact same surface area on the inside. And when your skin is damaged, every inch is capable of releasing toxic chemicals.
So, protecting your skin from the sun really does pay off – but don't forget the moisturizer either. Please excuse me while I fetch my SPF50+, sunglasses, sun umbrella and most outrageously silly fishing hat… I have some gardening to do. ~
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230823-the-curious-ways-your-skin-shapes-your-health
Oriana:
Ten days ago or so, I happened to hit a sharp corner of something (I don't have a clear recollection of how it happened -- I regarded it as a minor mishap at worst -- a nasty bruise on my right thigh). But once I tried to go to sleep, my whole body ached: more specifically, every place where I've ever sustained an injury or had a surgical incision. My "replaced" knee felt ten times as painful as on average. The area over the bottom of my right lung hurt too (I've had a lung surgery in 2019). The list could go on . . . And only after a while I connected all this multi-site pain with my big bruise, "the mother of all bruises." So I learned about the interconnectedness of inflammation the hard way.
Because I happen to have smooth skin, women ask me what cream I use. I've given up on creams years ago -- though this article makes me wonder if perhaps I should give another chance to an inexpensive hyaluronic acid moisturizer. But I dare say that I've found something that works very well for me: red palm oil (sustainably grown) and virgin coconut oil (I order both online). Red palm oil is especially impressive -- it can heal minor injuries and pesky discolorations or patches of irritated skin that come with aging. Or at least it has done this for me.
Some women say that olive oil is the smooth skin miracle; others like grapeseed oil or jojoba oil. I'm sure there are benefits, but ultimately what matters is experimenting to find out what works for you. In terms of cost, I favor those oils that are sold as food. This way it's easier not to be stingy, but to really lay it on. The cosmetic benefits are a bonus. Healthy skin helps you stay healthy -- and due to ageing, it needs some help.
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CAN HIGH-FRUCTOSE DIET LEAD TO DEMENTIA?
An American Journal of Clinical Nutrition paper ties together research explaining how fructose was essential for our ancestors’ survival with studies that show why this simple sugar is bad for the brain and may be a prime driver of Alzheimer’s disease.
Some fructose occurs naturally in the brain, but it is also found in fruit, some vegetables, and honey. In the modern world, it is a basic component in table sugar, while high fructose corn syrup is a frequent additive used to sweeten processed foods and beverages.
“We make the case that Alzheimer’s disease is driven by diet,” said the study’s lead author Richard Johnson, MD, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine specializing in renal disease and hypertension.
How might this work? Fructose helps conserve energy during times of scarcity by triggering a neural response that encourages food and water intake, slows down metabolism, and stores fat and glycogen, the paper explained. It also reduces insulin sensitivity which helps preserve glucose, a primary energy source for the brain.
At the same time, the sugar signals the brain to block out distractions so it can zero in on tasks like exploration and risk taking. All good when finding food is an imperative for survival. Less desirable in a world that requires very little foraging.
In fact, the researchers found the entire foraging instinct was set in motion by the metabolism of fructose whether it was eaten or produced in the body. Metabolizing fructose and its byproduct, intracellular uric acid, was critical to the survival of both humans and animals, they said. And in addition, the researchers noted fructose escalates the foraging response by reducing blood flow to the brain’s cerebral cortex involved in self-control, as well as the hippocampus and thalamus. Meanwhile, it increases blood flow around the visual cortex associated with food reward.
When long term high fructose intake pushes the setting on our “survival switch” to high, the brain is constantly on the hunt for high fat, sugary, and salty foods–all of which are readily available on supermarket shelves and the drive through. In turn, this pushes the brain to produce even more fructose which can ultimately lead to neural inflammation and create the conditions that lead to Alzheimer’s, the scientists proposed.
“We believe that initially the fructose-dependent reduction in cerebral metabolism in these regions was reversible and meant to be beneficial,” Johnson said. “But chronic and persistent reduction in cerebral metabolism driven by recurrent fructose metabolism leads to progressive brain atrophy and neuron loss with all of the features of AD.”
One study the paper cited as evidence for this idea found that laboratory rats fed a constant diet of fructose begin to build up tau and amyloid beta proteins in the brain, the same proteins that are associated with Alzheimer’s. Johnson goes so far as to speculate that when some Alzheimer’s patients wander off, it may be a vestige of the foraging response.
Of course, this is all just theory for now. Scientists need more lab data to understand how fructose metabolism might cause Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia in a real world setting. In the meantime, they suggested it can’t hurt to test dietary and drug interventions that reduce fructose exposure or block fructose metabolism to see if they can prevent, manage, or treat the disease.
https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/sugary-foods-may-be-driving-alzheimers-study-suggests/
Oriana:
High-fructose diet has also been found to increase the risk of pancreatic cancer. So much for the “fruitarian diet”!
Fruit juice is definitely out. If you enjoy fruit, consider eating more raspberries: “A half cup of fresh raspberries has about 1.5 grams of fructose. This makes raspberries a good low fructose option. In addition, raspberries have numerous health benefits. They’ve been shown to lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of stroke and heart disease. Moreover, raspberries have high levels polyphenols, which contain flavonoids and antioxidants and support immune system health” ~ https://www.fodmapessentials.com/low-fructose-fruits/
Blackberries and strawberries are also fine. When it comes to apples, alas, Granny Smith is the only low-fructose option.
On the other hand, if you like fresh apricots, you’re in luck.
According to anecdotal experience, some people may lose a bit of weight simply by not consuming any fruit. "It's nature's junk food." It's used by bears and marmots and certain other animals to fatten themselves up for winter.
Ultimately, though, what stays in my mind is that Alzheimer's is "diet driven." "Two new studies link soda consumption to early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and poor brain health. Although the studies do not prove cause and effect, they suggest that drinking sodas — whether they are sugar sweetened or diet — may be linked to accelerated brain aging and an increased risk of Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia." ~ https://www.alzinfo.org/articles/prevention/drinking-sodas-tied-to-poor-brain-health-and-alzheimers-risk/
For more information about fructose as a driver of Alzheimer's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbWE-J1JpKs
One source of fructoses overload that you should permanently exclude from your diet is APPLE JUICE.
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MORE YOUNG PEOPLE ARE GETTING CANCER
~ Diagnoses of early-onset cancers — those affecting people 50 and younger — spiked between 2010 and 2019, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open this week.
The fastest-growing type was gastrointestinal cancer, which rose 14.80%, followed by cancer of the endocrine system (8.69%) and breast cancer (7.7%).
Gastrointestinal cancer originates anywhere along the digestive tract, including the esophagus, small intestine, stomach, pancreas, colon, bile duct, gall bladder, liver, anus and rectum.
Despite gastrointestinal cancer’s sharp increase, breast cancer still had the highest total number of cases among those 50 and under in 2019.
A team of researchers led by the National University of Singapore analyzed data from 17 national cancer registries from Jan. 1, 2010, to Dec. 31, 2019, according to the journal article discussing the study.
The researchers found that in the study period, the overall incidence of early-onset cancers increased — while it decreased for those over 50.
"The increase in early-onset cancers is likely associated with the increasing incidence of obesity as well as changes in environmental exposures, such as smoke and gasoline, sleep patterns, physical activity, microbiota and transient exposure to carcinogenic compounds," the study authors wrote in the journal.
"Early-onset cancer is associated with substantial mortality and morbidity," the authors added.
FINDINGS CONFIRM A DISTURBING TREND
Dr. Monique Gary, medical director of the Grand View Health/Penn Cancer Network in Pennsylvania, where she also serves as director of the breast program, was not involved in the study but reviewed the findings.
"The study is further evidence of a disturbing trend that physicians have more than anecdotally known to be true, which is that cancer rates are increasing in younger individuals," she told Fox News Digital.
"It is not surprising that the risk factors associated with increased cancer incidence are largely preventable," she added.
These risk factors — obesity, tobacco and alcohol intake, sedentary lifestyles, and decreased quality and lack of adequate rest — were all exacerbated during the pandemic, the doctor noted.
"Future studies will be very telling with respect to the impact that COVID-19 has had upon these preventable risk factors in younger populations," she added.
Among all the risk factors cited, the impacts of stress and a sedentary lifestyle have been most underestimated, the doctor said.
"While we are becoming more adept at understanding lifestyle factors that influence cancer risk, a lot of work still needs to be done to understand the biological mechanisms," she said.
"Every day, we are uncovering new information regarding the complexities of cancer, and we are at a crossroads now, where we should challenge our understanding of cancer as a disease of aging."
While there are underlying genetic factors and biomarkers of the disease, Dr. Gary emphasized the need to find ways to reduce chronic and preventable illness to "reverse the trend of climbing rates of malignancy.”
"Breast and gynecological cancers continue to have the highest incidence in 30- to 39-year-olds, and this should prompt a close examination of the screening, best practices, guidelines and risk-reducing strategies for individuals within this age group — especially those with family history and other non-preventable risk factors," she said.
The doctor also stressed the need to focus on mental health and diet, as well as social determinants of health that influence these risk factors.
"The most important thing to do is to act, to move your body," she said. "COVID forced people of all ages to shelter at home, and most of us have adapted to an increased sedentary lifestyle as a result.”
She added, "We need to make sure we prioritize an active lifestyle, and even a small action can make a big difference.”
It is also important to adopt the principle of "food as medicine," Gary said.
"Plant-rich diets high in antioxidants and cruciferous vegetables help to decrease cancer risk," she noted.
"We also know, as highlighted in this study, that tobacco (in all forms, including vaping) and alcohol intake is a major factor, and it’s important to be aware of our habits and how to manage them.”
"The beauty of wellness is that when we work to improve one area, the benefits extend to other areas as well," she said.
"Cancer risk is an important and major consideration and risk factor, but we also must be mindful of the impact of other chronic illnesses on our overall well-being.”
*
As with any study, there were some limitations with this one, Gary noted.
One is the study period itself; it was done between 2010 and 2019.
"It does not paint the full picture of the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on comorbidities and cancer risk factors," the doctor said.
"Additionally, as the study notes, the utilization of body mass index (BMI) as a screening tool for chronic disease such as obesity, which is linked to cancer risk, has been called into question," she told Fox News Digital.
"It’s an important consideration as we look to reevaluate the ways in which we measure these comorbidities for more accurate reporting," she added.
In the future, parallel studies that look at patterns of other chronic illnesses in young people, including the impact of sedentary lifestyles and diet, are needed, said Gary.
"While knowledge is power, we need to act on the data and on this knowledge so that ‘wellness’ is no longer just a buzzword or a mindset, and that the actions to achieve wellness are clearly defined, personalized, accessible and integrated into all that we do."
https://www.foxnews.com/health/more-younger-people-cancer-diagnoses-study-finds-especially-type
calicat10:
Obesity is one of the biggest factors in many cancers — liver, pancreatic, colon, breast — the list goes on. We have an obesity epidemic in this country so it is no wonder that other diseases are coming to fruition.
Annieboo438:
Of all the many beloved family and friends of mine who died from leukemia, pancreatic, esophagus and breast cancer, none where overweight. What killed them was the chemo. Strange to discover family who had cancer in 1920s and 30s lived as long with cancer, as persons with same cancer in 2023. Read historic death certificates for proof.
gunguy1968:
Yep. Italy has a significantly lower cancer rate, in spite of having a higher percentage of smokers. All their food is made fresh, none of the ultra-processed garbage we have here.
badapples65:
There are over 20 food additives used randomly in America that are illegal to use in other countries
Speaking of other countries:
Countries with the highest cancer rates
Australia
New Zealand
Ireland
United States
Denmark
Belgium
The Netherlands
Canada
France
Norway
Countries with the lowest cancer rate
Sudan
South Sudan
Djibouti
Timor-Leste
Tajikistan
Republic of Congo
Bhutan
Nepal
The Republic of Gambia
Niger
Highest versus lowest:
Australia: 452 per 100,000 people
Singapore (lowest in the top 50): 233 per 100,000 people
Niger (actual lowest) 78 per 100,000 people
Oriana:
Cancer, like heart disease, has been called a “disease of civilization.” One factor that is relatively rarely mentioned is the aging population in developed countries. The incidence of cancer tends to increase with age. Still, note that Japan, though it has the highest percentage of people over 65, is not among the countries with high cancer rate. In fact Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world.
Cancer used to be rare in Japan, possibly due to the protective nature of the traditional Japanese diet (seaweed, natto). But Japan’s cancer rates are beginning to catch up with the rest of Asia.
Breast cancer used to be very rare in rural Poland (as opposed to urban population). Again, traditional diet, high in potatoes and cabbage, appears to have been protective.
https://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/2022/01/which-countries-have-the-highest-and-lowest-cancer-rates/
“In general, 1 out of 8 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. In Japan, that is 1 out of every 38, but it was even less a decade ago,” says Kazuki Takabe, MD, Clinical Chief of Breast Surgery at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
https://www.roswellpark.org/cancertalk/201707/breast-cancer-rates-rising-among-japanese-women
Oriana:
Only those Japanese women who eat the traditional Japanese diet have very low breast cancer rate. Those daughters of theirs who become addicted to chips and soda and other junk food have a much higher breast cancer rate.
Japanese women who eat traditional Japanese diet have the highest life expectancy in the world. Seaweed (a good source of fucose) may be part of the answer.
Ending on beauty:
So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
~ Byron
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