*
THE FUNAMBULIST
Laughing Reader, one can love like that
only once. The heart is too scarred
after that, some bridges beyond repair.
then rises and bows;
and the tightrope walker.
I funambulated in my four-inch heels
over youth’s abyss, balancing
on flirtatious flattery.
Women learn flattery
will get you everywhere,
or at least to the end of the rope.
Look how far I have walked away
from that desperate young girl.
Or am I flattering myself?
Maybe in order to survive,
we have to flatter ourselves.
Old rabbis knew that when they said
angels precede us, calling,
Make way for the image of God.
(I know he is now dead;
I have a sense of abstraction
when I reach toward him.
But then it felt like that from the start.)
~ Oriana
*
“I have been Homer; shortly, I shall be No One, like Ulysses; shortly, I shall be all men; I shall be dead.” ~ Borges, “The Immortal” (tr. James E. Irby)
*
“I believed in nothing — in any case not in God or another life — but I blithely talked about the Absolute, the Eternal, and I believed that man had the power to transmute everything by the lyrical use of words.” ~ Michel Leiris, Manhood (tr. Richard Howard)
*
CONCLAVE: “THE GREATEST SIN IS CERTAINTY”: TRUST IN THE UNKNOWN, RIVETING IN CARDINAL RED
~ Conclave comes across as deceptively simple. It’s the story of Catholic cardinals, sequestered in Rome, voting in a new Pope over the course of a few days. The world outside, which we barely see, is shifting radically around them, yet they’re restrained by hundreds of years of tradition and order. Even within this group of cardinal brothers, there are echoes of the social and political climate outside that threaten to shake the foundation of the Catholic Church. Yet some of them would argue that the Church needs to be fundamentally shaken in order to best serve the people beyond their sequestered doors. Conclave can be boiled down to a series of conversations and gossip, the conclusion of which is nothing short of earth-shattering.
A sudden heart attack leads to the death of the current Pope, and Cardinal-Dean Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), is responsible for organizing the conclave meeting that will lead to the next Pope. When the voting begins, there are four frontrunners for the job: Bellini (Stanley Tucci), Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), Tremblay (John Lithgow), and Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto). Bellini’s views are more liberal and in line with the previous Pope’s, while Adeyami, Tremblay, and Tedesco are all varying levels of conservative, with Tedesco being the most extreme. Bellini claims that he is not interested in the job, but feels he must be open to becoming Pope in order to keep someone like Tedesco away from that much power.
The conclave is thrown for a loop when an unknown Archbishop arrives. Benitez (Carlos Diehz) comes from Kabul and, despite no one knowing of his existence prior to the beginning of the conclave, becomes a contender.
At the heart of Conclave is the idea that life exists on two ends of a spectrum, and rarely do we find ourselves existing in a happy medium. The sincerity and intensity with which the spectacle of the conclave is put on are directly at odds with how ridiculous all of it is. How all of this tradition feels antithetical to a cardinal hitting a vape pen while deep in the Vatican. The world of the Church does not allow for people to find themselves in the middle. There are saints and sinners and nothing in between, because you need those polar opposites in order for organized religion to do its job.
In his opening homily to the cardinals, Dean Lawrence speaks of doubt and uncertainty, which sends a ripple through the men. Their job is supposed to be removed from those feelings, yet that’s all Dean Lawrence can think of as he tries to resign due to a crisis of faith. Conclave exists in the chasm between doubt and certainty. Between the egos of those who want the job for power and control and those who don’t want it, but if elected would use the opportunity to create progress. It’s the friction of these two worlds that makes the film a fascinating experiment to eavesdrop on for two hours.
Ralph Fiennes as the “doubting Thomas” and Stanley Tucci as the liberal Cardinal Bellini
The ending of Conclave will likely ruffle many feathers within the Catholic Church, while others, from a storytelling perspective, may find its eleventh-hour reveal to be more for shock value than anything else. One could argue that reality exists somewhere in the in-between, like so much of what has come before it. That the ending is both radical and the equivalent of pulling a rug out. Given the film’s setting and circumstances, the ending is something that creates a conversation that’s worth having among the most devout as well as those who have never set foot inside a church. Conclave is, beneath its posturings of grandness, a quiet story about faith and confidence in the unknowingness that exists in our reality. It’s the sparring of progress and tradition in a world that is immensely desperate to have something that makes sense when it seems as though uncertainty reigns supreme.
From The Guardian
Like the easily devoured paperback it’s based on, pulpy papal thriller Conclave has a brisk, page-turning allure, filled with juicy intrigue and mystery, a beach read that would follow you back home after. We’ve become grimly accustomed to plot-heavy bestsellers such as this stretched out into indulgent 10-episode seasons of television (such as the recently misjudged re-adaptation of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+), a baggy over-extension of stories that demand a tighter grip.
So it’s a mercy of sorts to see All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger transform Robert Harris’s “unputdownable” pot-boiler into a brisk, contained feature instead, a two-hour escape to the Vatican that knows exactly when to drop us in and take us out. It’s a fairly dry set-up in theory but Harris and playwright Peter Straughan (who co-wrote 2011’s equally involving adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) have found humor and suspense in the fictionalized hunt for a new Pope, an election that propels a timely and tense political thriller, scheduled to be released in the US just days before a real one takes place.
Some of the nods toward its topicality were met with knowing laughs at its Toronto film festival premiere (a comparison to an “American political convention” and a sigh at having to make the less worst option) but it’s not a film straining too hard for such dot-joining. Because like any election, it’s a fraught one with high stakes regardless – here in a contemporary setting, there are competing sides hoping to push Catholicism either back or forward, to embrace diversity or to expel it. It’s one of the many electric tensions in the film, busied with debates over what a modern church should look like, what sacrifices must be considered and how hard it remains to convince some of the need to evolve.
After the death of the sitting pope, cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is forced to put aside any grief and focus on the urgent task at hand, putting together a conclave, bathed in secrecy to decide upon a successor. He’s closely aligned with the reluctant US candidate Bellini (Stanley Tucci), whose liberalism compels him to stand against the more traditional and bigoted Italian Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto). They also face competition from the more powerful American Tremblay (John Lithgow), the increasingly popular Nigerian Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) and a surprise, mysterious contender in the shape of Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who has been working in Kabul.
The rules dictated by the conclave make for a neat escalation of suspense with no information technically allowed in or out. Lawrence isn’t keen to play Poirot but the more he finds out about the candidates from shreds of information shared by those around him, the more he is compelled to bend the rules, in need of hard facts over hearsay. Fiennes makes for a compelling and unknowable detective, operating under extreme circumstances as he also starts to rise in power himself, gaining votes he claims not to want. He has to work through his own morality compared to the church’s and weigh up the greater good with the personal cost and after being snubbed for playing a very different sort of manager in The Grand Budapest Hotel, one can see him returning to the Academy fold here, a quietly commanding turn, gently carrying the film on his shoulders.
It’s a thriller of character actors talking in rooms but Berger gives it a dynamism which makes it glide and after this and his Oscar-winning war film, one can see why he was briefly linked to the next Bond movie (a rumour he has enthusiastically denied). He guides a wealth of great performances aside from Fiennes, including a wonderfully imperious Lithgow and a steadily unravelling Tucci, with room for a scene-securing Isabella Rossellini as an observant nun who’s so fun to watch in just a handful of scenes that you wish she had just a bit more to do.
The film picks at knotty discussions (Is a black pope really a sign of progress if he holds vile views towards the LGBTQ+ community? How much can you tweak and modernize an ancient religion before it loses its shape entirely?) and I’d argue that sometimes it could have picked a little harder, leaving interesting threads a little under-explored. But the knottiest is left for the finale, when a twist takes the film to new and surprising territory. I predict some potentially furious discourse upon release but I think it’s handled here with just about enough maturity if taken the right way, an opinion that may not be shared by some.
The nature of the twist, together with the high volume score, some crowd-pleasing gotchas and some sinister vaping remind us that Conclave is a glossily transferred airport novel first and a deeper drama about the world of religion second. Given how few high-class thrillers of this scale we actually get on the big screen at this moment, I would vote for more.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/sep/10/conclave-movie-review-ralph-fiennes
Oriana:
I will limit myself to saying just one thing: the most competent candidate for pope seems Sister Agnes, who of course has zero chance — as a woman, she can’t even become a priest. She delivers a memorable line: “We sisters are supposed to be invisible. Nevertheless, God has given us eyes and ears.” And what the sisters see is the cardinals' power struggles and their lack of piety (to put it mildly). 
Joe: CLERGY HIDING THEIR LACK OF FAITH
Since elementary school, I have witnessed the integration of economic and political policies into the tenets of Christianity. A former Catholic, I considered my time in the army a better opportunity for character growth than that of the psychological prison run by the nuns. They glorified the money-ruled society that swindled and bled the middle and lower classes.
They taught me there is no room for doubt or uncertainty because faith is absolute. A Christian must adhere to every tenet, or you are a nonbeliever. Of course, no one adheres to every doctrine. Today, religion incorporates economic and political policies into dogma.
Merging the Apostle’s Creed with the modern economic system and science of the Middle Ages produces an imaginary reality that conflicts with daily experience. Since Galileo, the distance between the religious and everyday experience has widened. As a result, doubt and uncertainty sprout from the mingling of secular policies with dogma.
Over the last forty years, doubt and uncertainty within Christianity have reached the point of high anxiety. Evangelicals want to relieve their stress by disassembling the public school system and teaching the Bible as science. Thomas Aquinas said faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. He meant in the spiritual, not literal sense.
Furthermore, religious leaders feel their position is weak because faith gives them power based on a non-verifiable myth. To strengthen their position, leaders blend religion with patriotism. As a result, they are brutal because they live in constant fear of losing wealth and power.
Oriana:
I think Conclave excels at showing us the worldliness of the cardinals (those "princes of the church"), even if now and then (rarely) they do mention God. The lust for power is fully on display.
At the same time, Thomas, the protagonist, is indeed the "doubting Thomas." His special problems are with prayer, he confides in another cardinal he considers his friend. But he finds no emotional support — in fact, not even interest in such spiritual matters. His "progressive"colleague would rather talk about gay marriage, feminism, and other social issues that should certainly concern the church, but are certainly not its essence.
Nor is "going fifty years back"about bringing back Latin. It would need to be about bringing back actual faith. And while our "doubting Thomas" may be right about certainty being the greatest sin, faith that is 99% doubt is perhaps no longer faith (the controversy caused by the letters of Mother Teresa, in which she described being tormented by doubt, also comes to mind). Some clergy resolve that crisis by treating the stories of Christ as "allegory" or even, frankly, mythology, and concentrating on ethical teachings. But they conceal this from their congregations, still referred to as "the faithful."
Only the more astute of the sheep (the church's favorite animal) sense that there is some "off" about statements such as "the Resurrection means the resurrection of Christ within you." The birth of the divine child in the barn? Why, if your heart is humble enough, that's the inner cradle of the Christ Child. Doubt? Doubt is really faith in its most clever disguise. The church has practiced psychological manipulation for so long that this doesn't even seem particularly revolutionary.
Mary:
*
THE CHILDLESS MAN
When
the US vice-presidential candidate JD Vance made a comment about
“childless cat ladies,” he evoked an image of educated, urbanite,
career-minded women.
But the picture of who is childless is
changing. Recent research has found that it’s more likely to be men who
aren’t able to have children even if they want them – in particular
lower income men.
A 2021 study in Norway found that the rate of
male childlessness was 72% among the lowest five percent of earners, but
only 11% among the highest earners – a gap that had widened by almost
20 percentage points over the previous 30 years.
Robin Hadley is
one of those who wanted to have a child but struggled to do so. He
didn’t go to university and went on to become a technical photographer
in a university lab, based in Manchester, and by his 30s, he was
desperate to be a dad.
He
was single at the time, having married and divorced in his 20s, and was
struggling to pay his mortgage, leaving him with little disposable
income. As he couldn’t afford to go out much, dating was a challenge.
When
his friends and colleagues started to become fathers, he felt a sense
of loss. “Birthday cards for kids or collections for new babies, all
that reminds you of what you're not – and what you’re expected to be.
There is pain associated with it,” he says.
His experience
inspired him to write a book looking at why, today, more men like him
who want to become fathers do not. While researching it, he realized
that, as he puts it, he had been hit by “all the things that affect
fertility outcomes – economics, biology, timing of events, relationship
choice”.
He also observed that men without children were absent
from most of the scholarship on aging and reproduction – as well as
from national statistics.
Childless men who wanted to be fathers are a hidden and disenfranchised population, according to Robin Hadley
Hadley
has interviewed other men in Britain who are childless, not by choice.
They also expressed sadness and loss, and told him that there was
“something missing” in their life.
This week, figures from the
Office for National Statistics showed that births in England and Wales
fell to an average of 1.44 births per woman, the lowest rate on record.
The US birth rate is at a record low, while in 2022 China reported its
first population decline in 60 years.
In almost every country in
the world, the proportion of people without children is growing.
Statistics are gathered differently around the globe and are difficult
to compare but rates of childlessness are particularly high in East
Asia, at about 30%. In the UK, it’s 18%.
THE RISE OF ‘SOCIAL INFERTILITY’
For
some, this is a choice. For others, it is the result of biological
infertility, which affects one in seven heterosexual couples in the UK.
For many more like Robin, it’s something else, a confluence of factors –
which can include lack of resources, financial struggles, or failing to
meet the right person at the right time. Some refer to this as “social
infertility”.
Anna Rotkirch, a
sociologist and demographer at Finland’s Population Research Institute,
has studied fertility intentions in Europe and Finland for more than 20
years, and argues that something else may be at play too: she has
noticed a profound shift in how we view children.
Like marriage,
having a child was once seen as a cornerstone event, something young
people did as they embarked on adult life. Now, says Professor Rotkirch,
it’s seen as a capstone event – what you do once other goals have been
achieved.
Outside Asia, Finland has one of the highest rates of
childlessness in the world. But in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was
celebrated for battling declining fertility with world-leading
child-friendly policies. Parental leave is generous there, childcare is
affordable and men and women do a more equal share of domestic work.
Since 2010, however, fertility rates in the country have declined by almost a third.
“People
of all different classes seem to think that having a child is adding to
the uncertainty in their life,” Professor Rotkirch explains.
In
Finland, the wealthiest women are the least likely to end up childless
involuntarily, whereas low-income men are the most likely. That’s a big
shift from the past. Historically, people from poorer families tended to
transition to adulthood earlier – they left education, got jobs and
started families at a younger age.
*
This trend is happening
elsewhere in Europe, too. “Now it's actually the most disadvantaged
people who are the least likely to start a family because they can't
afford it,” adds Bernice Kuang, a demographer at the University of
Southampton.
When Dr Kuang surveyed the fertility intentions of young
people in the UK, she was surprised by the results. Twice as many 18 to
25-year-olds (15%) now say they will never have children, compared with
15 years ago (7-8%). Many more aren’t sure.
Of all those yet to
have children, more than half said they don’t want to or aren’t sure.
“That’s a big change from previous generations,” says Dr Kuang.
Those
who responded negatively tended to be the most financially insecure.
Where young people felt they had a lower standard of living than their
parents, they were less likely to want a child.
It makes sense,
says Dr Kuang, when you consider that the average age of getting a first
mortgage in the UK is the mid-thirties, and parents struggle to find
affordable childcare.
“If intentions don't change, it will be a big social change,” she says. “I’d be interested to see if the UK breaks records.”
THE CRISIS OF MASCULINITY
For
men, financial uncertainty has a compounding impact on involuntary
childlessness. It has been called “the selection effect” by
sociologists, where women tend to look for someone of the same social
class or above when they choose a partner.
“I can see I was
batting out of my league intellectually, and in terms of confidence,”
says Robin Hadley. “I think on reflection, selection effect could have
been a factor.”
In his late thirties, he met his current wife. By
the time they were talking about children, they were in their forties
and it was too late. But he says that she helped him gain the confidence
to go to university and get a PhD. “I wouldn’t be where I am now if it
wasn’t for her.”
Women are outperforming men in education in 70%
of countries worldwide, leading to what Yale sociologist Marcia Inhorn
has called “the mating gap”. In Europe, it means that men without a
university degree are the group most likely to be childless.
AN INVISIBLE DEMOGRAPHIC
Like
most countries, the UK doesn’t have good data on male fertility because
they only take the mother’s fertility history when registering a birth.
This means that childless men do not exist as a recognized “category”.
Some
Nordic countries, however, take both. The 2021 Norwegian study found
that a substantial number of men were being “left behind”, arguing that
“childlessness is highest among the poorest men”, and that “this
inequality in fertility has widened over time”. According to its
authors, “while much is already known about female fertility… relatively
little is known about male fertility”.
Men’s role in declining
birth rates is often overlooked, says Vincent Straub, who studies men’s
health and fertility at the University of Oxford.
He’s interested
in the role of “male malaise” in fertility decline – the confusion felt
by young men as women become empowered in society and expectations of
manhood and masculinity change.
The same issues that are causing a crisis in masculinity are also disrupting relationship patterns.
Finland
has excellent data on partnerships outside of marriage, and what it
shows concerns Prof Rotkirch. In the past, couples would move in
together, have a child, get married and have another child. Now couples
who live together will break up more often.
As well as the
corrosive effect of screentime on relationships, and the pressure of
competing careers, there is also a divergence in how couples see their
roles in a relationship.
“We’re seeing differences in the expectations of men and women,” says Vincent Straub.
GENDER ROLES ARE DETERRING WOMEN
Martha
Bao is in her 30s and lives in Shanghai, where she works in human
resources. She is part of a rapidly growing group of young Chinese women
saying no to parenthood.
In 2019, 4.5% of people under 30 in
China didn’t want children – two years later, that number had more than
doubled to 9.5%. Those statistics don’t differentiate between women and
men, but Martha says most of her female friends don't want a child while
all of the men do. It's not a surprise, she says, when the burden of
looking after children in China is so squarely placed on mothers.
“I
think to raise a child means taking on a lot of responsibilities and I
don't want to take them on. I want to be free,” she explains.
What can be done
Another
reason for declining birth rates, Straub and Hadley point out, may be
the fact that the conversation on fertility focuses almost totally on
women. Any policies designed to tackle it are missing half the picture.
Straub
believes we should focus on fertility as a men’s health issue and
discuss the benefits of caregiving to fathers. “Only one in 100 men in
the EU pause their career to look after a child; for women it’s one in
three,” he says. That’s despite mountains of evidence that nurturing a
child is good for men’s health.
“We need better data,” says Robin
Hadley. Until we record men’s fertility, we can’t fully understand it –
or the effect it has on their physical and mental health.
And the invisibility of men in fertility discussions extends beyond records. While
there’s more awareness now that young women need to think about their
fertility, it’s not a conversation being had among young men.
Men also have a biological clock, says Hadley, pointing to research showing that sperm declines in efficacy after 35. And that is something he thinks more young men need to understand.
So
making this invisible group visible is one way of tackling social
infertility. And another could be to extend the definition of parenting.
Another
reason for declining birth rates, Straub and Hadley point out, may be
the fact that the conversation on fertility focuses almost totally on
women. Any policies designed to tackle it are missing half the picture.
“We need better data,” says Robin
Hadley. Until we record men’s fertility, we can’t fully understand it –
or the effect it has on their physical and mental health.
And the
invisibility of men in fertility discussions extends beyond records.
While there’s more awareness now that young women need to think about
their fertility, it’s not a conversation being had among young men.
Men
also have a biological clock, says Hadley, pointing to research showing
that sperm declines in efficacy after 35. And that is something he
thinks more young men need to understand.
So making this
invisible group visible is one way of tackling social infertility. And
another could be to extend the definition of parenting.
All of
the researchers who commented on childlessness were keen to point out
that people without children still have a vital part to play in raising
them.
It's called alloparenting by behavioral ecologists,
explains Anna Rotkirch. For much of our evolution, a baby had more than a
dozen caregivers.
One of the childless men that Dr Hadley spoke
to in his research described a family he met regularly at his local
football club. For a school project, the two young boys needed a
grandparent. But they had none.
He stepped in as their surrogate
grandfather for three years and after that, when they saw him at
football, they would say, “Hi grandad”. It felt wonderful to be
acknowledged in that way, he said.
“I think most childless people
actually are involved in this kind of care, it’s just invisible,” says
Professor Rotkirch, “That's not seen in the birth registers, but it's
really important.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp81ynn7r4mo?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
*
“I’m having a vasectomy because we can’t afford to have a child”
The number of babies born in England and Wales is now the lowest since the 1970s, official statistics show.
The fertility rate — which measures how many children are born per woman during her child-bearing years — is the lowest on record at 1.44. Scotland's is even lower at 1.3.
Britain
is not unique — most countries are experiencing declining fertility and
some are even going to great lengths to create a baby boom.
So
what's causing the fall-off in fertility? There's the high cost of
bringing up children, the pressure to stay in work and the challenge of
finding the right partner.
But there's also evidence that more and more young adults don't plan on having any children at all.
BBC
News has spoken to two women and two men in their thirties — the
average age at which people in England and Wales become parents — to get
their thoughts on the issue.
Chris and Gemma: Vasectomy Aged 33
HGV
driver Chris Taylor and dog groomer Jemma Wrathmell jointly earn an
income of about £60,000 and have been together for 11 years.
The couple, who live in Wakefield in West Yorkshire, considered having children.
"We have had deep conversations where we go through the options and discuss things like school, cost and routine," Gemma says.
But the conclusion was that the cost was too high.
"After
all our bills and essentials there is no room in the budget to
accommodate a child," Chris says. "We don't see how our finances will
get any better within the next few years.”
As a result, they have
taken a "definitive decision" — Chris is seeking to have a vasectomy,
after years of Gemma having a contraceptive implant.
"Some people have said you'll change your mind, but they know it's our decision," says Jemma.
"I'm also not that maternal," she adds.
Ellie, 39: I’ve frozen my eggs
Ellie Lambert has frozen her eggs in the hope of meeting someone or "being in a financial situation where I can go it alone.”
Ellie, who lives in Sheffield, wants to have children but says she hasn't found a suitable partner.
Two
years ago, she spent £18,000 on two cycles of egg freezing. "I find it
really frustrating, it's a lot of cost for something that may not ever
lead to anything," she says.
She hopes to use them if she meets
someone, or if she reaches a financial situation where she can "go it
alone" with the aid of a sperm donor.
Ellie says she 's concerned about the additional financial pressure on single-parent households.
A
report from the Child Poverty Action Group last year found the average
cost of raising a child to age 18 was £166,000 for a couple and £220,000
for a lone parent.
Though Ellie thought she would meet someone
by her late 20s, "despite proactively being on all of the apps, it just
didn't happen.”
She says dating had become “fruitless," citing
the seemingly endless choice that dating apps offer as a factor, with
fewer people wanting to commit.
But going it alone would be "a big decision", says Ellie, who considers herself fortunate to earn a good salary.
Having already spent her savings on egg freezing, she says it would cost a further £10,000 to use a sperm donor with IVF.
Dami, 34: I'm waiting until I'm ready
For
Dami Olonisakin, a sex and relationships podcaster who lives in London,
improvements in fertility treatments — such as egg freezing — are
"empowering" and give women "more control than ever.”
Motherhood, she says, is not something to "be taken lightly.”
“Childcare costs are soaring, maternity policies are limited, women basically have to think really hard,” she says.
She also wants to have the "support system" of a long-term partner in place before having children.
But she isn't in a hurry. “I don't feel I'm in a rush to settle down and have kids just because it's expected,” she says.
Instead she is focusing on her career after growing up in a household that "didn't have anything.”
"I remember thinking to myself, 'I am never ever putting a child through this'," she says.
"[My parents] absolutely did their best, but I've always said I will not have a child until I'm... ready."
Kari, 34: I like the idea of adopting
Kari
Aaron Clark, a senior research fellow at the Royal Academy of
Engineering, earns £53,000 but feels he can't afford to raise a child in
London.
Four years ago, his salary was £22,000 while completing his PhD.
His partner Kaitlyn, who is currently a PhD student, is under similar financial strain.
It
means despite Kari's above-average salary, he has had less time to save
for a property — something he thinks is essential before becoming a
parent because of the "relatively insecure" nature of renting.
He
also cites the costs of childcare. According to a recent report by
children's charity Coram, the average weekly price for a full-time
childcare place for children under three in the UK is about £300,
compared with nearly £430 in inner London.
Kari says his views are shared by Kaitlyn —and they are both concerned about the effects of the climate crisis.
"I'm quite happy with the idea of adopting. That way I'm helping someone already struggling in the system," he says.
“I can adopt after they've got through the childcare stage.”
But despite his current pessimism about the viability of becoming a biological parent, Kari says he "wouldn't write it off”.
What does this mean for the future?
This all raises the question of what the future holds if fewer children are being born.
Declining
fertility rates are not just about people delaying parenthood, but
about a growing trend of people not having children, says Brienna
Perelli-Harris, professor of demography at the University of
Southampton.
Data from the recent UK Generations and Gender
Survey suggests that childless adults today are far less confident they
will have children, with a quarter of 18 to 25-year-olds saying they
would probably or definitely not have a child.
“Gen Z are more
likely to want to stay childless," she says. "Before, it might have been
more of a taboo — it's now more acceptable.
“And it's down to economic factors like future income, childcare costs and employment.”
"In the long term... the population will start to shrink," Prof Perelli-Harris adds.
"If it gets to 1.3 [children per woman] — that's seen as very low and government should start getting concerned.”
Concerns
have previously been raised about shrinking fertility rates in
countries where there's long been a downward trend, including the need
for more young people to work as carers for an aging population and pay
taxes.
But populations can continue to grow for a long time after
fertility falls below 2.1 children per woman, known as the replacement
level — the number of children required to ensure a population replaces
itself from one generation to the next — the ONS says.
This is the case in the UK and other countries like Spain and Italy, where the fertility rate is even lower.
"Immigration can stall population decline or even reverse it," says Prof Perelli-Harris.
"I
do not think we will see the UK population start to decline for the
foreseeable future, although the aging of the population will become
even more pronounced.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7x5kl5l8o
Mary:
Childlessness as a choice or through the pressure of circumstance appears to be a growing fact of demographics world wide. There are so many reasons cited, from the expense to fears about the future to the availability of contraception and the opportunity for women to pursue careers. But I also think there is a great uncertainty in society about gender identity. I don't mean the question an individual might have about how their own gender identity aligns with body morphology and social expectations, but more a question of "What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman?" The old definitions, the old rules, the stereotypes about masculinity and femininity no longer seem to fit — or to satisfy our needs and aspirations.
Change seems at once necessary, inevitable, and difficult. It's easy to get lost and confused, but impossible to ignore that the old order no longer can be depended on. Just looking at old magazine ads from the 50's or even the 70's underlines how unacceptable the old gender role typing has become. And at the same time all the current talk of gender fluidity and ambiguity can be unsettling...and for some absolutely terrifying. Think of all the outrage and furor over "the transgenders" — out of all proportion to their numbers.
Oriana:
I remember the time in my teens, still in Warsaw, when my mother led me to the full-size mirror, and we both stood there, studying our reflections. Then she said, "Remember, you and I can't expect to be popular with men — because we are not feminine." But I had no interest in being feminine — only later, much later, I realized that it meant positive things as well, such as being caring and protective, and knowing how to be soft-mannered when that mode was the most effective.
Regardless, one time I told a male friend about the "mirror incident" of being told I wasn't feminine enough. He burst out laughing. In fact a number of men told me, unasked, that I was feminine, which they ascribed to my European origins. American women, these men said, were big, brash, loud and aggressive, whereas I was "a little doll." I got to hate being told I was a little doll. But at least I stopped worrying about being feminine (not that I truly worried; unlike being "a real man," a high ideal, no woman seemed to aspire to be a "real woman").
But I am glad there are all kinds of options for women today. As for men who end up involuntarily childless, who says that life gives us all we desire? Choices are sacrifices, whether our own or those of our partner. Still, it seems that a woman sacrifices more when it comes to childbearing. To add insult to injury, men seem to enjoy fatherhood more than women enjoy motherhood, though they report that they feel more powerful once they become mothers.
But the worst possible thing is to live in regret. It's better by far to regard something as "fate" or a "done deal" — and then enjoy the positive aspects of it.
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BEING BILINGUAL IMPROVES COGNITIVE FUNCTION, MAY DELAY DEMENTIA
Bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tests of selective attention and multitasking. Selective attention can be measured by what is called the “Stroop Test” in which individuals look at a list of color names written in different colors. The task is to name the colors that words are printed in, rather than say the word itself. (If you search for “Stroop Test” or “Stroop Effect” online, you can take this test yourself.) Because we read automatically, it can be difficult to ignore the word “blue,” and report that it is printed in green. Bilinguals perform better on the Stroop Test, as well as other measures of selective attention.
They also are better at multitasking. One explanation of this superiority is that speakers of two languages are continually inhibiting one of their languages, and this process of inhibition confers general cognitive benefits to other activities. In fact, bilingual individuals outperform their monolingual counterparts on a variety of cognitive measures, such as performing concept-formation tasks, following complex instructions, and switching to new instructions. For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that the advantages of being bilingual are not universal across all cognitive domains. Bilingual individuals have been shown to have smaller vocabularies and to take longer in retrieving words from memory when compared to monolinguals. In the long run, however, the cognitive and linguistic advantages of being bilingual far outweigh these two issues.
A separate study, conducted in India, found strikingly similar results: bilingual patients developed symptoms of dementia 4.5 years later than monolinguals, even after other potential factors, such as gender and occupation, were controlled for. In addition, researchers have reported other positive effects of bilingualism for cognitive abilities in later life, even when the person acquired the language in adulthood. Crucially, Bialystok suggested that the positive benefits of being bilingual only really accrued to those who used both languages all the time.
But as encouraging as these kinds of studies are, they still have not established exactly how or why differences between bilinguals and monolinguals exist. Because these studies looked back at the histories of people who were already bilingual, the results can only say that a difference between the two groups was found, but not why that difference occurred. Further research is needed to determine what caused the differences in age of onset between the two groups.''
Other studies of successful aging suggest that being connected to one’s community and having plenty of social interaction is also important in forestalling the onset of dementia. Once again, however, the results are far less clear than the popular media might lead you to believe. Older individuals who lead active social lives are, almost by definition, healthier than their counterparts who rarely leave their homes or interact with others. So we can’t really say whether being socially active prevents the onset of dementia, or if people who don’t have dementia are more likely to be socially active.
But even if studying a foreign language is not a magical cure-all, there is one thing it will do: It will make you a better speaker of a foreign language. Doing that confers a whole host of advantages we do know about.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/can-learning-a-foreign-language-prevent-dementia/
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THE FALL OF EMPIRES
Maybe in the movies empires can strike back, but in the real world they fall. Every time. Here’s a look at the various weak spots that converge when a major empire is ready to roll its closing credits.
Empires as systems
Empires are complex political communities where a central group has some form of control over the governance of peripheral (outside) groups. The difference and relationships between these two groups are what makes the state an empire, rather than just another country. A third group that could affect an empire’s power is the people who live just beyond its border. In the past, these border regions were often inhabited by nomadic or semi-nomadic tribal peoples, typically seen as barbarians by the empires. Sometimes the border could be shared with another powerful state or empire. The Roman Empire’s eastern border was shared first with the Parthian and then Sassanian empires.
Empires like Rome and the Han dynasty in China were also economic networks through which goods and resources could be exchanged. Peripheral areas were integrated into the empire because they provided some benefit to the center’s economy, typically resources or labor. The people who lived on the other side of the border were a part of this network of exchange as well. Imperial merchants often crossed the border to trade with neighboring peoples, even when this was forbidden! These merchants didn’t just trade goods, they also brought imperial culture and ideas with them. The barbarian groups closest to the empire almost always came to adopt, at least partially, characteristics of the empire (those in the empire didn’t usually want to admit this!).
WHY EMPIRES COLLAPSE
Historians have long looked for exact causes behind the collapse of specific empires. Being historians, they disagree a lot, leading to a wide range of fallen-empire theories that are sometimes contradictory. So rather than spend a lot of time looking for that one, single cause of a collapse (barbarians! a lousy emperor! plague!), let’s try to understand some patterns within empires that make them vulnerable to collapse in the first place. There are two general measures that help us to evaluate the health of empires.
The first is money. Empires were really expensive, and as time went on in any empire, the expenses would go way up (armies, food and resources, education, propaganda, etc.). Eventually, there would be a financial breaking point where the usual problems that arise in such a complex system are too expensive to deal with. Some event will occur and the empire would collapse. How important is that event? If a delicate house of cards collapses because a fly landed on it, is it really the fly’s fault?
Healthy empires with adequate resources could respond to invasion, natural disasters, and even temporary shortages of money. However, over time each problem would become an increased burden on the empire and eventually, something would happen that the empire could no longer overcome. That “something” could be anything, but we have to see it as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
The second measure is cohesion. As an empire aged over time, people in the center lost their sense of cohesion (unity) with the empire. Elites became more interested in their own wealth and local reputation than with the empire. Peripheral people and even groups located just beyond the borders of the empire developed a stronger sense of group identity, separate from those within the empire’s borders. As the emperor became increasingly unable to rely upon elites for help and taxes, the peripheral and border groups became more cohesive. New groups rose up on the edges while the center lost its power.
These two factors of cost and cohesion fed off each other in a way that sped up the empire’s collapse. As the empire struggled to meet growing expenses, the elites in the center were less motivated to help the emperor maintain control. When a crisis hit—such as rebellion, plague, or attack from outside groups—the emperor was eventually unable to respond and the empire itself would begin to collapse.
Connected to cost and cohesion is the inconsistent number of people in the empire. The growth, decline, or reorganization of populations could dramatically affect the course of an empire. If the tax-paying population decreased too much, or if peasants moved out of reach of the tax collectors, the empire would suffer from lack of funds. A population that grew too much put pressure on available resources. And that’s no fun because when an empire couldn’t provide what its people needed, they usually rebelled. Peasant uprisings could bring down empires just as fast as invading armies or plagues.
From theory to reality: Han dynasty China and the Roman Empire
In this section, we will learn mainly about the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE and the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 CE. The Romans and Han were powerful and successful empires that left deep impressions on their respective regions. Both experienced similar problems that helped bring about their end, and those problems are related to the two measures we described above. A closer look at those issues is a great way to understand the general life cycle of an empire.
First, let’s look at the money measure. Both Rome and the Han dynasty suffered financial loss as elites began to pocket taxes for their own use. Then the empires lost even more tax revenues due to a loss of population because fewer people meant less taxes could be collected. In Rome, it wasn’t that the numbers changed so much as the distribution.
Peasants relocated for the specific purpose of living outside the reach of tax collectors, and tax revenues had plunged 50 percent by the year 431 CE. Similarly, parts of China ruled by the Han dynasty became depopulated as people sought safety from increased barbarian raids along the borders. It was kind of a downward spiral because the tax collectors could not reach the people who fled, and they needed that tax money to keep fighting off the barbarians that scared them off in the first place.
Both empires also had problems with cohesion. The Romans and Han were so confident in their imperial superiority, they tended to marginalize and mistreat these outside groups and some conquered people. Bad idea! Once the different groups realized how strong they would be by coming together, they became a much more serious threat to the nearest empire.
There is another specific issue that these two empires shared. Both the Romans and Han dynasty rulers of China also had a habit of sometimes putting a child in the emperor seat, valuing lineage over experience. Whether or not they were nice kids, they usually weren’t able to deal with the growing list of problems. Neither empire could survive all these complications—the Western Roman Empire disappeared while the Han dynasty broke up as the peripheries became separate kingdoms.
Collapse elsewhere
Examples of imperial collapse can also be seen in other great states, and in other time periods. One is the Persian Empire that you learned about in Era 3. From 334-323 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire. He was an impressive warrior, but the empire he conquered had been greatly weakened by internal issues, making it especially vulnerable to Alexander’s invasion. To briefly summarize what was going on before Alexander arrived: there was a civil war as brothers fought over the throne (404 BCE), the cruel rule of Artaxerxes III (358-338 BCE), and the assassinations of Artaxerxes III (338 BCE) and his young son Artaxerxes IV (336 BCE). The final ruler, Darius III, tried to hold together his weakened empire. But then the formidable Alexander showed up like a well-rested boxer facing an empire that had already gone 11 rounds.
Europe and Asia do not have a monopoly on imperial collapse; just consider the Andes zone of South America. When you get to Era 5, you will look at the collapse of the Inca state, so we’ll try to avoid spoilers here. What we can reveal is that the last Inca emperor, Atahualpa, was executed by the Spanish in 1533 CE, effectively ending the vast Inca Empire that had ruled over much of western South America.
This story has usually been told as the victory of superior Europeans over primitive Inca, but that is not entirely accurate. The Inca had created a sophisticated empire that in many ways was far more complex than the Spanish Empire was at that time. But the Spanish had pretty lucky timing, arriving right when the Inca were emerging from an eight-year civil war. Inca elites had become less interested in helping the emperor, and peripheral groups had been forming stronger, anti-Incan identities. (Are these patterns starting to sound familiar?) The Spanish used these discontented groups against Atahualpa, and it worked. Rather than defeat the Inca with their small army, the Spanish took advantage of Inca weakness and used its peripheral peoples against it.
Now let’s move north to Mesoamerica. Historians have argued that the Maya Classical Period (250-900 CE) collapsed due to deforestation linked to overpopulation. As the population grew, more forests were cut down to create fields. At the same time, the climate shifted, causing a long period of drought. This caused a couple of big problems, as farming became less productive and rulers had to change their trade patterns. This weakened the position of rulers and led to rapid collapse.
Recently, however, this version of events has begun to change. Archaeologists have determined that while the population did grow quite large, Maya farmers took conservation needs into account as they changed the landscape. In fact, this large population survived two major periods of drought without showing any signs of collapse. So it’s not like another drought was going to take them by surprise. While population growth and deforestation may have played a role in the eventual collapse of the Maya, they were not the key causes.
Alexander the Great, mosaic
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history-project-ap-preview/x7515b0ca3395d084:review-introduction-to-world-history/x7515b0ca3395d084:0-4collapse-and-restructuring/a/read-empires-fall-appreview
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MISHA FIRER ON RUSSIAN FAMILIES
Russian state cares deeply about families having multiple children, and work tirelessly to come up with new punitive laws and implement draconian policies to foster necessary social and cultural changes.
Of course, if you watch Channel-1 talk shows a lot you will think that family values are dead.
Millions tune in to find out whether the heroine got knocked up again by her alcoholic boyfriend from her village or a different alcoholic from another village, and to watch battles of fake psychics and other charlatans who speak like they’re starring in an 18th century costume drama (filmed just down the block from my place in the appropriately old mansion).
Channel-1 has a knockoff of Queer Eye, an awkward idea in Russia, as queers in the show have to pretend that they are not queer, which is contrary to the very concept of the show, but if they overdo it, overweight guests would think that they are not queer and therefore have no edge and advantage over their alcoholic husbands in giving them fashion makeover and lifestyle advice.
The ideal scenario is women tacitly know the hosts are queer, but queers don’t behave like they are queer in order not to insult Eastern Orthodox values coopted by KGB operatives who believe that the populace are illiterate, archaic and still live mentally in the caves.
Two times a week I walk by the Great Moscow Circus on the way from work to the metro station at the time when people are streaming out.
There are families with kids, naturally, and I have counted how many children each family has to make the average and extrapolate to the whole country based on my anecdotal evidence.
The most common number is one. One child per family. There are two children, maybe a third of the total. And there are no families with three or more children. Maybe families can’t buy enough tickets for everyone and whoever drew the short straw stayed home?
I have also observed that most of the couples that I know have divorced. At a closer examination, I realized that divorce became a rite of passage, no less important than marriage.
You finish high school, graduate from college, find a job, get married, have a child, get a divorce in order to find somebody else because the first partner was a mistake of youth and it’s statistically impossible to have luck from at first attempt. You are free to experiment and date someone from work with whom you share interests. Or just focus on the job.
Even the couples that haven’t divorced yet are in a rush to do it although there are no clear signs of any conflict or emotional disengagement. Often women initiate the divorce. I think it’s because they are more compliant and want to do it by the book. They are more aligned than men with social norms.
In contrast, public officials and politicians, you know the ones who are pushing for big families, do not get divorced at all.
This is in major part because all the assets like real estate, businesses, luxury cars are officially owned by wives to avoid corruption investigation. Wife wouldn’t have courage to run away with the loot because mafia would catch up rather fast. Men are also free to take mistresses and have extra children in case they steal enough money to support them.
Thus, politicians and public officials do not understand regular people who just want to have one child and get a divorce right away as they don’t have much to divide because they haven’t accumulated anything.
The ruling elites also live completely separately from the commoners.
They have personal drivers who drive them around in passenger vehicles with blue sirens and tinted windows. They eat in restaurants that common people never visit. Their kids go to school where no commoners’ children are allowed to attend. If they want to see a circus performance they fly to France.
Consequently, governing elites simply project their own lives onto commoners and act surprised that they don’t match.
Google Translation of the advertisement of a new apartment complex. Russians don’t want to have bundles of joy brought to them by storks. They care to have a key to a new apartment. Some privacy away from the incessant noise of the big city. ~ Misha Firer, Quora [Google Translation is responsible for “flys” instead of “flies”]
Tim Orun:
The way Statism is supposed to work is lots of children are supposed to be born into poverty so there is plenty of fodder seeking those gooood government jobs and military service. Statism can’t survive without dependent minions. The Russian people seemed to have not gotten the memo. I guess that plan used to work well before contraception became available.
*
A FINNISH WOMAN’S VIEW OF THE AMERICAN ELECTION
For me, the loss of respect for America has happened little by little after Ronald Reagan’s second election to the office.
Leon Trotsky once said the two dominant traits in the US are vulgarity and stupidity. I would like to add also bad education, bad general knowledge, bad skills on foreign languages, nonexistent knowledge of foreign countries and cultures, superciliousness, adoration of violence, childlike obsession with firearms, sense of superiority over everyone else, considering oneself special, naïvete in politics, recalcitrance to reforms, religious fanaticism and all-pervasive racism.
I once considered US and Europe as similar in culture, cultural legacy, value set and ethics. During the past forty years I have come to see they are two different worlds and two different cultural spheres. The division is not as profound as with Europe and Russia, but it is there.
In Europe, a presidential republic would be considered a dangerous form of governance. Simply because it accumulates too much power for one man. This is why we do not like absolute monarchies or dictatorships either. It is why in each and every European country the offices of the head of the state (king or president) and the head of the government (prime minister) are separated.
Likewise, outside the Anglosphere, the majority vote is considered a dangerous form of election. Simply because a) winner takes it all and b) it does not reflect the will of the people. Majority vote inevitably leads into two-party system, with one evil party and one flaky party. Relative vote and proportional representation, where the seats are distributed by the percentage of votes each party has attained, is less dangerous.
Not to speak about the American judicial system, which is considered both incredibly cruel, insane, and inane in Europe — most European countries follow the Roman civil law.
USA is a country of contradictions, extremes and polarization. While the middle class living standards are approximately the same in the EU and US, the American rich are filthy rich and the American poor are dirt poor. You can see nowhere similar blatant display of wealth in Europe than in the US — nor similar squalor and abject poverty. The smart in the US are really smart, and the dumb are really dumb. USA has the best universities in the world and the worst schools. And so on. The list is endless.
USA was founded as a live-action role playing re-enactment of the Roman Republic. Electing Trump for the second term is a sign we are entering the era after the murder of the Gracchi brothers. The Optimates and the Populares are already there, and the Marian reforms in the military have been already carried out.
It took twelve years from the French revolution (which also was live-action role playing re-enactment of the Roman Republic) to collapse into an Empire. Let us see what will happen with USA, and who will play the role of Augustus. ~ Susanna Viljanen, Quora
Indre Cuckler::
I remember when growing up in Lithuania in the 80s, the word “America” was synonymous to “great and beyond great.” For example, people would say: how was your trip to the beach? Oh, it was America! My mom sometimes when being annoyed by me asking (when I was little) where you going mommy? She: I am going to America! The irony and a tragedy is that I am actually the one who left and currently live in America. What a joke, I regret it everyday. But things were looking not so bad when I came here in 2002. But I was also young and stupid.
Karl Heinonen:
Remember that still in the 90’s the image of the USA was something completely different from what it is today. It was the undisputed leading superpower, full of cool stuff like skyscrapers (tallest of the world!) and space shuttles, its culture ruling the world with movies and music, its military doing borderline sci-fi stuff. I remember non-ironic use of the sentiment “one can become easily rich by migrating to the USA”.
Those days seem so distant today that it’s easy to forget they ever existed.
Quibus Pythonicus:
Why would we consider presidential republics especially prone to dictatorships here. France is a semi-presidental system, and France wasn’t taken over by big moustache man (Germany was a parliamentary republic.).
I believe the US is still in “Post Carthage victory period” and we are far from the late Republic. It is performing very well in terms of economic growth compared to Europe (which is stagnating.) and China, which is handling post-covid recovery badly. Russia is a meme economically so I will not even mention it.
Martin:
Some of the most horrific ideas in history, such as nazism, fascism, communism, and christian theocracy, originated in Europe but never found a place in America. The reason we are more like America today than Russia is America itself, not us (technically Japan's stupidity at Pearl Harbor, but whatever).
Lukasz Bernas
Unfortunately, Marx was correct that hatred is the force that runs society. Tell me, what political program Trump and his cultists offered? None. They just claim that they hate immigrants, Ukrainians, transsexuals, Democrats, childless women etc. And this hate is enough to win election.
John Hill:
The danger in Trump's case is having someone assume the role of Caligula or Nero.
Alek Trajkov:
It was Europe that started two world wars and squandered its right to lead. I wonder if there will be another European disaster that US will have to take care of.
Garreth Adamson:
Strange comment. As I was growing up in the 60s/70s, Britain was so much more affordable and open-minded than today. It might be grubby, but New York was plenty grubbier. I remember sometime mid decade the city went bankrupt. Both were full of possibilities that seem a world away now. But far from a shining city on a hill, America looked like some concrete dystopia.
The time that was hard to live through was the early 80s, as the post war consensus was torn apart on both sides of the Atlantic. And without even any economic benefits to show for it, except for a few spivs, caricatured by Harry Enfield’s character Loadsamoney. Growth in the 80s was far more stop-start, with two major recessions, but in total less than in the 70s, and the politics meaner and more brutal, a shift which has lasted to our own day.
Many people view the 80s through these weird rose-tinted spectacles, but I was there and remember, and the figures are there to look up.
Russia had to beg North Korea not just for shells and missiles, but also for soldiers — which shows you the state of the “mighty” Russian military.
After reports surfaced that the North Korean soldiers were already in Russia, today the news broke that 18 DPRK soldiers have already done a runner.
Reportedly, 18 North Koreans disappeared from their positions in the Bryansk region of Russia, 7 km from the Ukrainian border.
Russians are now looking for the missing North Koreans.
It’s assumed the North Korean soldiers are trying to run away either to Ukraine or Europe. Apparently, Russians are presenting North Korean soldiers as a “special Buryat brigade” — they even gave them Russian names and issued Russian documents. Buryat people are of Asian appearance. Russia occupied and absorbed Buryatia in 17th century, before that it was part of Mongolia.
So, Russians are running out of troops for the war in Ukraine and sending just whoever they can get to guard the border regions — conscripts serving compulsory 1-year service, navy and strategic missile forces personnel — and now also the North Koreans. It appears there weren’t active zones of combat where the North Korean soldiers were stationed, so it looks like Putin’s generals are just trying to plug holes in their defense with DPRK servicemen.
Reportedly, Ukraine is now working with the South Korea, to offer the chance to obtain South Korean citizenship to all the North Korean soldiers fighting in Ukraine, who voluntarily surrender.
According to intelligence, North Korea has already sent 10,000 soldiers to Russia and will continue sending 3,000 people per month.
18 out of 10,000 now gone, that’s the start.
Hopefully, Ukrainians will get to interview some of these soldiers and will be able to find out more. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
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HOW WILL SOUTH KOREA RESPOND?
South Korea won’t send troops to Ukraine to fight against North Koreans and Russians, but they may increase their support, following the news about DPRK sending soldiers to take part in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
So far, South Korea was providing humanitarian aid (including medical supplies), as well as financial aid — only in 2024, South Korea pledged USD $394 million assistance to Ukraine.
South Korea sent to Ukraine technical and non-lethal military supplies, such as bulletproof vests, helmets, combat engineering vehicles for de-mining, pickup trucks, and mini excavators (to be used in humanitarian missions).
South Korea has a policy of not sending arms to countries for use in active conflict, however, they transferred over 500,000 units of 155mm artillery shells to the US, to compensate for the ammunition the U.S. sent to Ukraine.
Recently, North Korea blew up several rail lines and crossings to South, which were built by mutual agreement between the countries.
Apparently, the North Korea still owes to the South over USD $100 million for that — now the crossings have been destroyed.
This happened as China was conducting military exercises on cutting off Taiwan and after the recent attack on Israel by Iran.
The question here: what is North Korea getting in exchange for sending soldiers to be used by Russia?
Likely, it’s military technologies, which would allow North Korea to improve their ballistic missiles — which so far they weren’t able to build (the missiles they’ve tested can’t fly as required).
The West’s hesitation to give a proper response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine allows the axis of evil to mature and consolidate.
It’s certainly putting the international security more at risk. ~ Elena Gold
The fact that ‘we’ didn’t even want that necessarily is even part of our national anthem, which literally starts like this:
(William of Nassau, am I of German blood, true to my fatherland until death. The prince of Orange am I, free and fearless. I have always honored The King of Spain.)
As in: we didn’t want to leave, we were willing to compromise, but they forced our hand. It’s the only stanza Dutch people are more or less expected to know of the fifteen that make up the song; the first letters of each stanza combined in turn reading the name: Willem van Nassov. I’m assuming the ‘v’ at the end is a cheat because the author couldn’t come up with a good line starting with ‘u’ - but there could be another reason, I don’t know. It’s the bit we sing at the start of international sporting events and again if we happen to win.
In other words, when the Dutch were about to kick off in the world championship football final against Spain in 2010, we were singing from the stands that we were honoring the king of our opponents.
I’m guessing that the Dutch national anthem (as far as I’m aware the oldest in the world) is also unique in the sense that it mentions two other nationalities in its first stanza, before even getting to Holland, but then again, it is about how we came to be in existence, so it’s a bit of an origin story I guess.
Matthew King:
Interesting. I’m sure the expulsion of Jews in the 15th century didn’t help the economy much either… Indian Givers
England was pragmatic enough to keep religion at a distance from national policy & nation building; how much distance is up to debate. French were not as zealous Catholics as Spanish. And Spanish suffered from incumbent disease that eventually takes hold of every power after a century or so, except Romans maybe.
Tim Newberry :
You forgot the Napoleonic Wars which were the final nail to the point where Spain had to change sides just to be able to still exist. Manu Vazquez Liguren: Spanish Empire was actually defeated by two facts: Napoleon army became strong enough to invade Spain and Hispanoamericans decided to abandon Spain at the same time!
Aldo Rovinazzi:
An interesting theory, strongly backed by data, is that the decision to foment sheep keeping to the detriment of agriculture, had a dramatic unwanted effect.
In particular, the Catholic Kings Fernando and Isabel (the ones Columbus worked for) celebrated the final expulsion of the Moors by decreeing that all citizens had the right to pasture their rams on all the nation's open lands.
Sheep cut the grass they eat, but rams rip it off with the root system (which is why rams were not allowed to roam around). It suddenly made sense to keep a lot of rams, hence the grass cover in the Spanish plains disappeared, leading to soil erosion and loss of trees.
The barren land in turn affected rainfall (change in temperature excursion, convective air circulation, relative humidity etc.). This resulted in the interior becoming barren and no longer suitable for intensive agriculture.
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HOW THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT WOULD REACT IF AWARE OF IMMINENT COLLAPSE
Most likely the way they are currently acting.
They would be scrambling for a fix to the problem.
While at the same time pretending nothing is wrong.
They would be making outrageous threats to try to buy more time to obtain more soldiers and materiel.
Russia is currently scrambling for a fix to their manpower and materiel problems in Ukraine.
They would hit soft targets such as day care centers and hospitals to have some good news to send back home.
They would be selling oil and gas at lower prices.
The only friend they could find is North Korea.
Meanwhile inflation is soaring, the central bank rate was hiked to 21% and the ruble continues to fall.
And Ukraine still occupies part of Russia.
Many economist predict a collapse of the Russian economy by 2026 at the latest.
~ Dimitri Zolochev, Quora
Elena Gold:
Another general arrested in Moscow — deputy chief of logistics of Russian National Guard, Major General Mirza Mirzaev.
Putin had to break unspoken contract “loyal servants can steal” — and start using terror. Because Russia is bankrupt.
Factories aren’t paid for military orders.
Money is scarce in RU
Dimitri Zolochev:
Putin probably has secret bunkers to try to survive his downfall. How long he could survive is debatable. He might go from hideout to hideout. He might get sanctuary in NK, Red China, or Iran.
He must have plans already figured out how to escape to sanctuary and escape arrest and assassination.
Kevin Rooney:
There just like drug dealers, you get rid of one and another pops up to take over. This will be the case for many years to come as they just hide behind their nuclear bombs and whilst they do that, no one will risk nuclear war to get rid of them for good.
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IS RUSSIA A FAILING STATE?
This week in Russia: a leader of a region threatens to kill an oligarchic billionaire senator and 2 Duma members, following a deadly shootout 400 meters from the Kremlin.
The scandal with “Wildberries” marketplace (Russia’s answer to “Amazon”) keeps escalating: Ramzan Kadyrov, who is the boss of a de facto independent totalitarian Islamist enclave within Russia, publicly declared blood feud against 3 other distinguished businessmen from Caucasus region (1 Dagestani and 2 Ingushes), alleging that they were planning to kill him. ”I officially declare blood feud against Bekkhan Barakhoev, Suleiman Kerimov and Rizvan Kurbanov. I am a Caucasian, I am a Chechen, I am bringing my own back home,” stated Kadyrov.
The last phrase sounds familiar: “We are bringing our own back home,” — that’s what Vladimir Putin insists he’s doing in Ukraine, “taking Russia’s own land back”.
If this isn’t a failed state, then I don’t know what is.
Imagine (if you can) the news that the governor of Kansas publicly declares “a blood feud” against a senator from Texas. And imagine American businessmen having to resort to seeking help from mafia bosses to divide their property in a divorce.
De facto, Kadyrov threatens to ignite Caucasus, if he can’t get what he wants — the control over the massive online cash streams.
And he doesn’t care about Putin’s plans for world domination, which now include the online marketplace that is supposed to be molded into sanctions-bypassing trading platform.
Rumors in Moscow say that Vaino (Chief of Staff of Putin’s administration) and Kerimov offered Kadyrov USD $1 billion as a compensation for “Wildberries”.
Kadyrov asked for $7 billion.
Then these two offered some bandits $200 million to get rid of Kadyrov.
But the bandits told Kadyrov about the order.
Now Kadyrov is on the warpath.
Keen to find out what happens next!
I suspect that Kadyrov and Kerimov, by starting the war for ‘Wildberries’, can do more for the collapse of the Russian Empire than all the Russian opposition combined.
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HAS THE TIME OF THE HEAT PUMP FINALLY ARRIVED?
Our descendants will look back on this time in human history with a mixture of confusion and disgust. Americans spend around 90 percent of their time in indoor spaces, which we heat by burning fossil fuels that also warm the planet and sully the air of our homes. Our descendants will be especially confused because for years we’ve had easy access to a cleaner, more efficient alternative: the fully electric heat pump.
At long last, though, the humble heat pump is exploding in popularity. Unlike a boiler or furnace, which burn fossil fuels to produce heat, this device transfers heat through an outdoor unit into the indoor space. (It looks a bit like a traditional air conditioner.) In the winter, a heat pump extracts heat from outdoor air, but it can be reversed in the summer to pump heat out, providing cooling. Exchanging heat in this way is much more efficient than generating it.
In 2021 4 million heat pumps were installed in the US, up from 1.7 million in 2012. Europe, too, is coming around to the heat pump, with sales increasing 28 percent in Germany in 2021 and 60 percent in Poland. That’s no small feat, given the global pandemic slowdown, and it’s just the beginning of growth, especially with Europe’s push for energy independence from Russia amid the war in Ukraine.
“Heat pumps are a few years behind electric vehicles but really deserve similar attention and could deliver very sizable reductions in emissions if we deployed them much more rapidly,” says Jan Rosenow, director of European programs at the Regulatory Assistance Project, an NGO dedicated to the transition to clean energy. Here’s how heat pumps work, how governments can use them to reduce emissions, and how you can get your hands on one.
Moving Heat, Not Making It
A heat pump works on the same principle as a refrigerator, which keeps your food cold not by pumping cool air in, but by pumping warm air out. The heat you feel on the outside of the machine is actually being transferred away. Similarly, a heat pump can cool a building by moving hot air out. Or, in the winter, a heat pump can warm a building by operating as a sort of “reverse refrigerator,” extracting heat from even cold outdoor air and bringing it inside. (That’s putting it simply—the engineering involved is rather complex.)
“The air may be relatively cold, but it’s transferring heat from that cold air into your home,” says Randal Newton, vice president of engineering of Trane Technologies, which makes heat pumps. “Your refrigerator is cold, and it’s still transferring heat into your kitchen from that cold box.”
Home heat pumps can even run on the geothermal energy in your backyard. Instead of exchanging heat with the air, a geothermal pump uses plastic pipes buried in the yard to exchange heat with the land itself. (You don’t have to live on top of a hot spring; once you get four or five feet deep in the ground, it stays at a fairly constant temperature year-round.)
“The easiest way to think about this is like your backyard is a battery,” says Ryan Dougherty, president of the Geothermal Exchange Organization, a trade association that advocates for geothermal heat pumps. “You can draw off that thermal battery in the winter and you can heat your house with the energy that’s right there in your yard. And then in the summer, the processes is just reversed: You take heat out of your house and you put it back into the battery.
” The downside of a heat pump is that you can’t install one on your own, unless you’re really handy. Whether it uses air or geothermal energy, a heat pump is no more difficult to install than an air conditioner, but you still need a professional. But the upside is that heating and air conditioning companies (disclosure: my aunt owns one such company) have been installing these things for years, so it’s just a matter of getting in touch with local businesses for quotes.
In 2021 4 million heat pumps were installed in the US, up from 1.7 million in 2012. Europe, too, is coming around to the heat pump, with sales increasing 28 percent in Germany in 2021 and 60 percent in Poland. That’s no small feat, given the global pandemic slowdown, and it’s just the beginning of growth, especially with Europe’s push for energy independence from Russia amid the war in Ukraine.
“Heat pumps are a few years behind electric vehicles but really deserve similar attention and could deliver very sizable reductions in emissions if we deployed them much more rapidly,” says Jan Rosenow, director of European programs at the Regulatory Assistance Project, an NGO dedicated to the transition to clean energy.
Here’s how heat pumps work, how governments can use them to reduce emissions, and how you can get your hands on one.
“The air may be relatively cold, but it’s transferring heat from that cold air into your home,” says Randal Newton, vice president of engineering of Trane Technologies, which makes heat pumps. “Your refrigerator is cold, and it’s still transferring heat into your kitchen from that cold box.
” Home heat pumps can even run on the geothermal energy in your backyard. Instead of exchanging heat with the air, a geothermal pump uses plastic pipes buried in the yard to exchange heat with the land itself. (You don’t have to live on top of a hot spring; once you get four or five feet deep in the ground, it stays at a fairly constant temperature year-round.)
Cooling the Planet by Warming Your Home
Installation is going to run you between $4,000 and $8,000, but a heat pump pays dividends with its efficiency: It uses half the electricity of electric furnaces and baseboard heaters. “Even if your heat pumps are powered on coal power, it’s still a big upgrade,” says Duncan Gibb, lead analyst for heating and buildings at REN21, which advocates for renewables. “There’s really nothing to lose by making buildings more efficient as quickly as possible and deploying heat pumps. I think that the government should really be taking this seriously now.”
The long-term idea, of course, is to run heat pumps on power generated with renewables, not fossil fuels. But the economics are a bit tricky. Buying a heat pump is an upfront expense, and fossil fuels like gas for furnaces remain cheap. But as heat pumps grow in popularity, prices will come down, as happened with solar panels. So it’ll get cheaper to heat and cool a home cleanly, says New York University climate economist Gernot Wagner, who thinks of both of these technologies as investments. “It’s like the solar panel,” he says of heat pumps. “First you spend a lot of money, right? Much less of course now than ever, but you spend the money and once you have it, you’re printing free electricity.”
To make heat pumps more affordable, especially for low-income folks, governments need to offer tax breaks and hefty subsidies to incentivize homeowners and building owners to switch. (Honestly, if billionaires really cared about saving the planet, they’d pay for everyone to get heat pumps.)
But officials can also ban new gas hookups, as cities like New York City and Berkeley are already doing. “Let’s cut the gas line, let’s put in a heat pump,” says Wagner. “It makes for a better indoor climate, it makes for a better home. It’s a no-brainer.”
Another option is “heat as a service,” in which a homeowner would pay a monthly fee for a company to install and maintain a heat pump. (Such programs are starting to pop up across Europe.) “It’s sort of like a phone plan,” says Gibb. “This is obviously great because it takes not only the upfront cost away from the consumer, but also it reduces their risk that’s associated with price fluctuations in fuel.” So if your local power plant is still running on fossil fuels, and the price of those spikes, you don’t take a hit on your heating bill.
One of the next challenges will be manufacturing more heat pumps. Another will be finding the labor required to install them. Gibb says the United Kingdom has a plan to install 600,000 heat pumps by the year 2028, which would require way more installers than are currently trained to do the work.
“There’s a lack of skilled installers across the board,” says Gibb. “There’s a lot of smaller companies out there that do gas boiler installs, and do retrofits and things like that, but they’re not necessarily equipped to know how to install a heat pump.”
So an accelerated deployment of heat pumps will require juicing manufacturing—the Biden administration reportedly considered invoking the Defense Production Act to churn out the appliances to help Europe wean off Russian fossil fuels—as well as a massive training program for skilled workers to install the things. Our descendants, and the planet, will certainly appreciate the effort.
~ Matt Simon is a senior staff writer covering biology, robotics, and the environment. He’s the author, most recently, of A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies.
Joe:
I had a heat pump installed in early October, and it has saved me nearly $200.
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PANENTHEISM
I remain as convinced as ever that the suffering we find in the universe is powerful evidence against the existence of a loving and all-powerful God. But I’ve also come to think there are powerful considerations in support of something Godish. One is the fine-tuning of physics for life, the surprising discovery of recent decades that certain numbers in physics are, against incredible odds, just right for the emergence of life.
The second is psycho-physical harmony, the improbable alignment between consciousness and behavior that is presupposed in any evolutionary story of the character of our conscious experience. All this was laid out in my recent book Why? The Purpose of the Universe (2023).
I now think the evidence points towards a hypothesis that John Stuart Mill took seriously: a good God of limited abilities. This hypothesis is able to account both for the imperfections of our universe – in terms of God’s limited abilities – and for the things about our universe that are improbably good, such as fine-tuning and psycho-physical harmony. God would have liked to make intelligent life in an instant, or by breathing into the dust as we see depicted in Genesis.
But the only way God was able to create life was by bringing into existence a universe with the right physics that would eventually evolve intelligent life. God made the best universe they could.
The second change was discovering the great diversity of forms of Christianity. Wide reading and conversations with various Christian thinkers have given me a deeper sense of the mystical traditions of Christianity, as well as its radical roots.
I haven’t changed my mind on the form of Christianity I rejected in my youth. However, I now think there are forms of Christianity that fit quite well with the limited God I now believe in. The final change was coming to see the value of a spiritual community. Being ‘spiritual but not religious’ can be a bit lonely and hard to sustain. Religion involves rituals and practices that bind people together across space and time, marking the seasons and the big moments of life – birth, marriage, coming of age, death – forming a bridge between society and the Divine. I feel happier and closer to the Divine when I can connect to it in relation to others.
The idea of God I received as a child was of something completely separate from the universe. However, there are versions of the God hypothesis that don’t see things in such binary terms. There are pantheists, who think that ‘God’ and ‘the universe’ are simply different words for the same thing. This seems like just atheism repackaged. But there are also pan-en-theists, who don’t quite identify God and the universe, but nor do they think they’re entirely separate.
Panentheists believe there is an intimate connection between God and the universe; the two overlap. The universe is in some sense inside God, and perhaps God is inside the universe. These ideas of the Divine resonate with me spiritually, in a way that the purely supernatural idea of God does not. There is a fit with the conviction of many mystics, as well as the English Romantic poets, that the Divine is present in all things. William Wordsworth spoke in the poem Tintern Abbey (1798) of ‘Something far more deeply interfused.’
Moreover, there is a close fit with the philosophical theory I have spent much of my career defending, namely panpsychism: the view that consciousness goes all the way to the fundamental building blocks of reality. For panpsychists, the particles or fields that make up our universe have their own very rudimentary form of conscious experience, and the highly complex consciousness of the human or animal brain is built up from these more basic forms of consciousness. Panentheism is more at home in a panpsychist picture of reality, as it’s easier to make sense of the Divine pervading the universe if the universe is filled with consciousness than it is if the universe is a cold, unfeeling mechanism.
Panentheism may also help us to make sense of the idea of a God that is subject to limitations. If God had to create the universe inside themselves, then it could be that the timeless and unchangeable nature of God imposed certain limitations on what could be created. Perhaps the deep simplicity and unity of God’s nature ensured that creation had to begin with a very simple starting point – the Big Bang – and could only progress to complexity over time.
In my book Why? I defended such views of our origins over both traditional atheism and traditional Western religions. What’s happened since then is that I’ve come to see that panentheism fits quite well with certain interpretations of Christianity.
Many people assume the essence of Christianity is as follows. We are all sinners and so we deserve to burn in hell for eternity. Fortunately, Jesus took the punishment we deserve and, as a result, if we accept Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf, we’ll go to heaven to live with God when we die. Everyone who doesn’t accept Jesus’ sacrifice will burn in hell forever.
In fact, this is only one interpretation of Christianity, associated with the Protestant Reformation, although a similar view was defended by Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century. It’s also, in my opinion, one of the most implausible theological doctrines in any of the modern global religions. I don’t think anybody deserves to burn in hell for eternity. And, even if we did, it wouldn’t achieve anything to punish an innocent man in our place. The word ‘Jesus’ is for many deeply associated with this picture, and so, in discussing an alternative, I’m going to borrow a trick from the author Francis Spufford and use the Hebrew version of Jesus instead: Yeshua.
Christianity is a little bit like quantum mechanics. In terms of the mathematics, quantum mechanics is our most successful scientific theory. The problem is nobody knows what on earth is going on in reality to make those equations work in predicting what we will observe. There are many different interpretations with no consensus on which is the correct one. Likewise, with Christianity, all Christians agree that Yeshua had some central role in the purpose of the universe. But there is no officially agreed view on the mechanics of that.
The views that are more plausible to my mind revolve around love and unity rather than sin and punishment. According to the participatory theory popular in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Yeshua stuff was all about God becoming more similar to us so that we can become more similar to God. God wants us to share more deeply in their form of existence. But there’s a problem: the timeless, transcendent aspect of God is radically different from, say, a naturally evolved human being.
Without God becoming more similar to their creation, the difference between God and creation is just too great for the two to share a common form of existence. The philosopher Robin Collins suggests this is analogous to the fact that ‘a tree branch cannot be grafted into a horse, only another tree; the horse is too alien for it.’ It is only once God, through Yeshua, shares in temporal, physical existence that the gap is bridged between God and creation, creating the potential for human beings and indeed the whole of creation to share more deeply in God’s form of existence.
This view still doesn’t make sense to me if we’re assuming that God is all-powerful. If God can do anything, then they could have created us to share in their form of existence from the beginning, rather than subjecting us to millions of painful years of evolution. But if God is not all-powerful, then maybe they are on their way to creating a perfect universe but are only able to do this in two stages. In the first stage, they create an OK universe, one with the right kind of physics to eventually evolve intelligent life.
Next, when creation has evolved enough, God begins to bring the universe to perfection by becoming more intimately involved in it, sharing in its nature that it can share in their nature. Perhaps this is a process that is still continuing – and maybe needs a bit of help from us – but which took a radical and decisive step forward in the events surrounding Yeshua.
Learning about this form of Christianity removed some of my big objections to Christianity. But the resurrection was still a big stumbling block. If Yeshua rose as a physical body that could be seen and touched, then surely he could have revealed himself to millions, making the existence of God and the truth of Christianity an indisputable historical fact.
These worries were countered only recently when I read the biblical scholar Dale Allison’s book The Resurrection of Jesus (2021), which presents a powerful defense of a slightly unorthodox view of the resurrection.
For Allison, the resurrection appearances consisted of visions, rather than literally seeing and touching a body. In other words, the resurrection appearances of the first Christians were more like the resurrection appearances of Paul on the road to Damascus. We might imagine that, soon after the crucifixion, the followers of Yeshua started being thrown to the ground and overwhelmed by intense visions: first Mary Magdalene, then Peter, later the 11 remaining disciples, 500 people at once, James the brother of Jesus, and many others, much later including Paul. Despite not involving a body that could be physically seen and touched, such novel and intense visions, occurring both to groups and individuals, could be enough to render it undeniable that reality had fundamentally altered in some radically new way.
Crucially, Allison is not denying that the resurrection was physical. He thinks that historical evidence supports the tomb of Yeshua having been found empty. But he denies the familiar narrative we find in Luke’s Gospel according to which Yeshua rose from the tomb as a body that could be seen and touched, hung around for a period of time, and then floated up to heaven – an event known as the ascension. Rather, Allison believes the first Christians identified the resurrection and the ascension.
In Paul’s letters in the Bible, he describes resurrection bodies as continuous with but radically different from ordinary bodies, as a plant is continuous with but radically different from a seed. For Allison, the tomb was empty not because Yeshua had stood up and wandered off, but because he had been transformed into a radically new form of physicality, perhaps a kind of formless energy.
If we move a little beyond what Allison claims and adopt panentheism – on which the universe is part of God – then for this formless energy to be absorbed into God involves this formless energy filling the universe. In other words, Yeshua brought God closer to us not by being punished for our sin but by filling the entire universe with God’s love.
Do we have any reason to take any of this seriously? Traditional Christian apologists argue that the resurrection is the only explanation for the strange events that followed the crucifixion. We have good historical evidence that many people, including one violent opponent of the Christian movement, had experiences that persuaded them that Yeshua was in some sense alive again. They must have been incredibly powerful experiences because they motivated them to vigorously defend this conviction at great cost to themselves, including the cost of their lives in some cases.
I agree with traditional Christian apologists that there aren’t any very satisfying non-Christian explanations of the historical origins of Christianity.
On the other hand, I agree with the view popularized by Carl Sagan that extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence, and I don’t think we have extraordinary evidence for the resurrection. It’s perfectly rational for an atheist to hold that Christianity was sparked by some kind of rare mass hallucination, preferring that explanation on the basis that, while improbable, mass hallucination is less improbable than a resurrection.
However, what counts as extraordinary depends on your worldview. I have tried to show how a certain form of Christianity fits quite well with a panentheist view on which God is not all-powerful, a view I believe to be well supported by current evidence. Relative to that worldview, Christianity – at least the form I have outlined – is not extraordinary; it’s one possible hypothesis as to what the purpose of the universe might be.
By accepting that hypothesis, we get a more satisfying explanation of the origins of Christianity than anything available to a non-Christian (although note that the explanation I support, outlined in the previous section, is somewhat different from that of the traditional Christian). In other words, while the evidence for Christianity is not sufficient to persuade an atheist, it may be sufficient to persuade someone whose worldview is consonant with the truth of Christianity.
I hasten to add, these matters are inherently uncertain. I’ve come to think there’s a reasonable chance that a certain form of Christianity is true; but there’s also a reasonable chance it’s false. My intellectual hero William James argued that, in situations of uncertainty, when the truth is of monumental importance, it can be rational to choose to believe.
He gives the analogy of being stuck in the mountains with the only way of escaping being to leap across an enormous chasm between two precipices.
Intellectually speaking, it is uncertain whether or not you can make it. But if you choose to believe you will make it, you raise the chances that you will succeed.
The analogy is not perfect, as nobody is suggesting that a religion is more likely to be true if we believe it. But James’s example shows how pragmatic considerations can play a role when the evidence doesn’t conclusively settle matters. To take a contemporary analogy, it’s highly uncertain whether human beings will deal with the climate crisis. But it can be rational to believe we will, if that belief can provide meaning and motivation.
Faith is not about certainty. It is fundamentally a decision to trust your spiritual experiences, and to trust a certain framework for interpreting and acting upon those experiences. Hindus interpret their spiritual experiences as awareness of Ultimate Reality at the core of one’s being, and respond by meditating to realize their identity with Ultimate Reality.
Christians interpret their spiritual experiences as awareness of a loving creator, and pray to deepen their relationship with God. These decisions to trust certain experiences influence how you see the world, how you respond to other people, and how you engage with nature. For a person of faith, each moment of daily life is permeated with meaning and significance.
This openness to uncertainty allows for pluralism. If faith requires certainty, then people of faith must be certain that their religion is right, and hence certain that other religions are wrong. But for trust to be rational, it’s only required that we’re not putting our trust in something wildly improbable. If there’s a 30 per cent chance that my loved one will make it, then it’s rational to have faith that they’ll pull through. But if the doctors tell me the chances of survival are sadly less than 1 per cent, then my loved one and I should enjoy our last moments and prepare to say goodbye.
This doesn’t mean faith gets a free pass. If Dawkins is right, there’s less than a 1 per cent chance that God exists, in which case it’s irrational to trust in the tenets of a theistic religion. However, if Dawkins is wrong, it might turn out that more than one religion is probable enough to have faith in. I have come to think that Christianity, in a certain form, is a credible possibility. But I have no problem with the idea that other religions may also be probable enough for it to be rational to have faith in them. If it is highly uncertain which religion is true, it may be rational to bring in pragmatic considerations, such as which religion you feel culturally comfortable in, to select a faith to follow.
Finally, I want to bring in one crucial element I haven’t mentioned so far: the extraordinary teaching of Yeshua. His focus on the poor and the weak, his talk of loving your enemies and turning the other cheek, his attacks on those who overvalue tradition or social status, were light years ahead of their time, and have played a crucial role in shaping the modern ethical ideals that we still struggle to live up to. This in itself proves nothing. But, for me, it’s a vital element in the mix, giving credibility to the possibility that the events depicted in the New Testament describe some profound moment in the evolution of reality.
Life is short and much is uncertain. We all have to take our leap of faith, whether that’s for secular humanism, one of the religions, or simply a vague conviction that there is some greater reality. In deciding, it’s important to reflect on what’s likely to be true but also what’s likely to bring happiness and fulfillment. For my own part, I have found a faith that is certain to bring me happiness, and which is, in my judgment, probable enough to be worth taking a bet on. ~
Philip Goff https://aeon.co/essays/i-now-think-a-heretical-form-of-christianity-might-be-true
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MOST PATIENTS DO NOT RESPOND TO IMMUNOTHERAPY
On the day I arrive at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to meet James Allison and his longtime collaborator Padmanee Sharma, they are nowhere to be found. The previous day, one of their colleagues informs me, Allison was summoned up on stage by Willie Nelson, in front of 60,000 people at a rock festival in Austin, to deliver a harmonica solo. They are still on their way back.
By now, Allison is almost used to adulation. There are even murmurings that his work in cancer immunotherapy might win him the Nobel Prize. Twenty years ago, he was the first to show it’s possible to turbocharge the body’s response to cancer with a drug that releases the immune system so that it destroys tumors on its own.
The drug he identified to do that, called Yervoy, went on sale in 2011 to treat metastatic skin cancer. In lucky patients, it causes otherwise fatal tumors to melt away. By last year, worldwide sales of Yervoy and two newer drugs had reached $6 billion a year, and the medications had been given to more than 100,000 people. This transformative new class of immunotherapy agents, known as checkpoint inhibitors, is acknowledged to be the most important advance against cancer since chemotherapy.
Allison, who is 68, is an unimposing man, with a slight Texas drawl and a stringy mane of white hair. He still finds it hard not to cry when he meets cancer survivors saved by his discovery. But I had gone to talk to him about unfinished business. That is because for every miracle cure, for every Jimmy Carter or 22-year-old melanoma patient pulled back from death, there are many more people who, for reasons that no one understands, can’t be saved.
Of all patients dying from all types of cancer in America this year, only one in 12 would be expected to benefit from any immunotherapy drug. Some even argue that direct-to-consumer marketing, including a Super Bowl ad, has created dangerous expectations. Patients cashing in their last chance will, more likely than not, find themselves among the large majority for whom drugs like Allison’s don’t yet work.
Allison has known about the shortcomings longer than anyone. He says they dampen any sense of triumph and shadow him at award banquets. Sometimes, he stays awake at night. “About 22 percent of melanoma patients that get a single round of treatment with Yervoy are alive 10 years later,” he said after receiving a Lasker Award in 2015, and then added solemnly: “We got to get that up, and we got to do it in more kinds of cancer.”
James Allison and his wife and scientific partner, Padmanee Sharma
At MD Anderson I was introduced to what Allison calls the “platform.” It is a large-scale effort to determine why the immune system at times acts like the perfect weapon but in other cases fails to kick into action. Sharma, a Guyanese immigrant and practicing cancer doctor, oversees the collection of tumor samples from 100 of Anderson’s 165 cancer trials that involve immunotherapy. The tissue is then scrutinized by her lab and Allison’s for clues to how the battle is proceeding. “What is the immune response doing that leads to tumor rejection? What is the immune response doing that it stops rejecting the tumor and [it] starts growing again?” Sharma asks. “Those are big questions that we still need to understand.”
The answers can’t come too soon for some. The pharmaceutical industry and research institutions are in the midst of a pell-mell sprint into thousands of clinical trials based on new immunotherapy agents. As of October, by one tally, more than 166,736 patients were being sought to fill slots in studies of drugs involving a single protein, called PD-1. The overall number of immunotherapy trials probably tops 3,000, says Jeff Bluestone, an immunologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who also serves as president and CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
But a growing number of researchers fret that the flood of clinical trials is uncoördinated, redundant, and potentially counterproductive. That is because in many cases, the basic science remains little understood. “This is not sustainable,” Ira Mellman, the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, told his colleagues when he took the stage last fall. Mellman, a vice president at the biotech behemoth Genentech, put up a byzantine diagram, consisting of concentric circles crammed with small type. The visually overwhelming slide showed trials under way to test immune-boosting therapeutics. His industry, he said, is “[throwing] plates of pasta against the wall, and hoping that something is going to stick.”’
Mellman told me that while Allison hadn’t invented immunotherapy, his drug had been the one that clarified its potential. Now, he says, Allison’s is one of the “few serious efforts” to better understand the mechanisms by which the immune system is killing cancers and the reasons why, too often, it is still not seeing them. “We would have a much better shot at doing what’s best for patients, doing best for science, if we understand mechanisms,” he told me. “You can just wildly try different things and hope that something works, or you can go back and try again and understand the basis of all of this. Until we know that, we’re not going to really understand why some respond and some don’t.”
Checkpoint Discovery
Cancer is personal for Allison. At 10, he held the hand of his mother, Constance, in tiny Alice, Texas, and wondered at the burn marks up and down her neck. He had not expected her to die. Only later did he learn that the marks were from radiation, and that cancer had killed her. By the time he was 15, cancer had consumed two of his uncles.
When Allison first began to chart a scientific career, he says, he recoiled from cancer. Back then, it seemed, there were few real clues. And immunology, the field he had picked, had a particular reputation for serving up fool’s gold when it came to the disease. “I couldn’t get any purchase on it,” he recalls. “I wasn’t going to go crashing into something until I knew how it worked.”
At that time, in the 1970s, T cells—those tiny assassins that allow the body to fight off infections—had only recently been discovered. Allison was fascinated to learn there were molecular-level sentinels that patrolled the human body looking for trouble—that “if they see something wrong, they just deal with it.” He thought: “What could be cooler than that?”
The existence of such immune cells did raise an obvious question: if T cells were designed to protect the body by killing infected and diseased cells, how was it that cancer managed to elude them? By then, there were hints that sometimes tumors did in fact succumb. In the 19th century surgeons had inoculated cancer patients with heat-killed bacteria, with inconsistent results. In 1980, a Time magazine cover spotlighted a scientific frenzy around a molecule called interferon, which sends the immune system into overdrive. But the treatment was indiscriminate, as likely to harm a person as heal. “It was crazy, because people were doing things and they didn’t understand how they worked,” Allison remembers. “People just said: ‘Oh, well. It causes T cells to grow. So we put tons of it into people.”’
Allison instead began studying the molecular receptors present on the T cell’s surface. One of his most important findings was to locate a receptor called CD28 that acts like a gas pedal. When it gets engaged, it is one of two key signals—in addition to a receptor that actually locks onto a tumor cell and functions somewhat like an ignition switch—that a T cell needs to initiate an attack.
Even when those switches were flipped to the “on” position, however, such attacks were often short-lived and sometimes failed to start up at all. By 1992, Allison thought there might be a third switch. The most likely candidate: CTLA-4, a mysterious receptor sometimes spotted on T cells. But both Allison and Bluestone, the UCSF immunologist, found that this molecule behaved unexpectedly. When proteins bound to it, it didn’t turn a T cell on—it turned it off. These molecular brakes were called checkpoints.
Scientists subsequently demonstrated why evolution might have favored checkpoints. When they created mice lacking CTLA-4, their T cells ended up attacking their own bodies after an infection. Without an off switch, the mice “died within a few weeks, of massive autoimmune disease,” Bluestone recalls.
Bluestone initially saw the chance to develop new types of immune-suppressing drugs—say, for organ transplant patients. But Allison saw a different possibility. Releasing these brakes might strengthen the immune system’s response against cancer. One of Allison’s graduate students had already developed an antibody able to stick to a T cell’s CTLA-4 receptors, essentially jamming the switch. Allison instructed a postdoc to inject the antibody into mice riddled with tumors. The results, he recalls, “were spectacular.”
“The tumors were cured,” Allison says. “I mean, it was 100 percent and zero percent — no statistics necessary.”’
Miracle Drugs
The drug, the first of the checkpoint inhibitors, would become known as ipilimumab or Yervoy, and it is now sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb, a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Manhattan. Human studies began around 2000 on 14 patients stricken with metastatic melanoma, who were steeling themselves for their finals days in hospice. But after the trial began, three saw their tumors shrink.
Allison, who moved to New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2004 to be closer to the trials, soon met one of the patients his drug had saved. Sharon Belvin was in her 20s, and had just finished college and gotten married, when metastatic melanomas appeared in her lungs, liver, and brain. She was terminal by the time her physician enrolled her in the first phase II clinical trial. The day Allison met her, she’d been in remission for a year.
“She hugged me,” Allison recalls. “Her husband hugged me, and her mother and father were there, and they all hugged me. It was just sobbing, and everybody was really happy. I walked to my office and I had a lot to think about. I cried all the way there.”’
Allison says by that time he was aware of his drug’s limitations. It didn’t help everyone, and it didn’t work in most cancers. And if he needed a reminder of the stakes, it came in 2005, when Allison’s brother succumbed to prostate cancer after eight years. The same year, doctors found early-stage cancer in Allison’s own prostate. He had surgery rather than chance drug treatment.
As soon as cancer researchers learned that Yervoy worked on some previously incurable patients but not on others, many asked the obvious question: was it possible the body had more than one checkpoint?
Another molecule, called PD-1, was quickly identified and successfully targeted with checkpoint inhibitors. Allison’s Yervoy was approved in 2011 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for patients with melanoma. Three years later the FDA approved Merck’s PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and a similar drug, also from Bristol-Myers Squibb, called nivolumab (Opdivo). One or both have since been approved to treat some types of lung cancer, kidney cancer, and Hodgkin’s lymphoma, creating the most important new class of cancer drugs in a century.
Gatling Gun
The day I arrived at MD Anderson to tour the platform, an Argentinean immunologist, Luis Vence, greeted me in a fluorescent-lit hallway. Our first stop was a lab where he swung open the door of a refrigerator-size machine to reveal 28 black canisters arrayed around a central hub, like the bundled cylinders of a Gatling gun. When cancerous samples come in, they are treated with fluorescent antibodies designed to stick to CTLA-4, PD-1, and other molecules on the surface of immune cells. The machine can then, in a few seconds, use a laser to scan all 10,000 or so cells from a biopsy, count them, and separate them by type. Vence compared it to sifting through multicolored ping-pong balls.
In a nearby lab, one of his colleagues, Jorge Blando, directed me to a microscope through which I could see a panorama of a cellular battle under way. The slide contained a slice of bone marrow riddled with tumors. These were recognizable by their larger, fuller-shaped cells. Among them were the tiny immune cells, stained brown, that had infiltrated and begun to attack. Others seemed to hover around the periphery. How many eventually make it in—and how long they survive to keep fighting—determines whether the tumor is defeated.
“What you are looking at in cancer is natural selection at a high speed,” Vence says. “When you treat it with chemotherapy, maybe you destroy 99 percent of the tumor. But the 1 percent that is left is resistant to chemotherapy. That’s the one that grows back and basically kills you.” This explains why even the latest targeted drugs—those designed to hit very specific molecules on, say, a breast cancer cell—typically extend patients’ life by only a few months.
Yet Vence and others believe that the immune system is inherently capable of spotting and countering any move a cancer makes. How else to explain how some advanced melanoma patients, who had tumors in their lungs or brain, are disease-free years after a course of Yervoy infusions? “The beauty of immunotherapy,” Vence says, “is that the immune system can evolve at the same time, along with the tumor. It can keep up much easier.”
It was Sharma who had the idea for the platform. When she began it, few volunteers were yet receiving Yervoy, then a relatively new and unproven drug. So Sharma persuaded patients slated to have less serious tumors removed by surgery to take small doses. A biopsy sample was collected before the drug was administered. Then, comparing the initial cancer and the excised tumor, the lab could use state-of-the-art technology to track the immune response and begin to examine why it didn’t always work.
Sharma’s first finding came fairly quickly. In tissue from bladder cancers treated with CTLA-4 antibodies, readings from the Gatling gun showed that T cells possessing a molecule called ICOS were “off the charts.” Sharma’s reaction was elation mixed with confusion. T cells with ICOS on them had previously been found only in the tiny sacs in the lymph nodes known as follicles, and they were believed to suppress immune responses, not enhance them. Allison decided to engineer mice whose tumors triggered ICOS. In their tumors, CTLA-4 was four times as effective. ICOS, it turns out, was part of cascade that made T cells attack tumor cells more effectively.
“I can’t believe we missed this,” Allison remembers telling Sharma. “This is amazing.” He’d been scooped by his collaborator and felt blown away. They’d been spending more and time together, talking on the phone and working on science. Now he blurted out: “I love you!” Sharma recalls plowing forward with the conversation as if nothing had been said. But he had said it. The pair were married in a small ceremony in 2014.
With the help of the Boston venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures, they also started a company called Jounce Therapeutics that is developing a drug to increase ICOS levels. Human tests got under way last year, and although it’s too early to know how the drug is working, the idea has already been remunerative. Jounce went public in January, raising $117 million. Now Sharma drives a Tesla with a vanity plate that reads “ICOS.” On Allison’s Porsche, the plate says “CTLA4.”
A Tidal Wave
During the same meeting at which Mellman castigated the industry for spaghetti throwing, I saw Allison huddled over an iPad with another scientist, discussing some of the most recent findings he, Blando, and Sharma have made using their platform. They have been studying prostate cancer, in which no checkpoint drug yet seems to work. “What we found was that prostate cancer is almost a desert immunologically,” Allison says. “It’s a very cold tumor. There’s not much in there.”
But Blando’s microscope has revealed that two drugs together might make the difference. Yervoy, he found, is necessary to drive T cells into the tumor, while the addition of a PD-1 drug makes sure they start killing. On the basis of these results and further research, Sharma and Allison convinced Bristol-Myers to combine the drugs in a clinical trial for advanced prostate cancer.
Many immunotherapy trials don’t have as much new preclinical research behind them. One reason is that drug companies are still exploiting the original checkpoint discoveries. Bristol-Myers’s Opdivo has been approved for eight different cancer “indications” in two years, which must be a record. “The pace of the clinical applications of the science is much faster than understanding mechanisms in the lab,” says Gregory B. Lesinski, a scientist at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University.
But racing ahead of the science can also incur huge penalties. Last summer, a test of Opdivo as a first-choice treatment for advanced lung cancer led to one of the greatest fiascoes in the company’s history. Bristol had organized a trial that, in seeking the largest market, had essentially taken all comers. Its competitor Merck chose to test its drug in only lung cancer patients whose biomarkers indicated they were most likely to respond. When Merck reported its results in June, they were so good that independent monitors said patients in a control group using chemotherapy could switch to the new drug immediately. Then, in August, Bristol acknowledged that its own test had failed to show a benefit. Shares of the company dropped by 20 percent, and Bristol’s research and development chief eventually stepped down.
The revival of immunotherapy now includes cancer-fighting viruses, genetically reprogrammed T cells, and vaccines designed to make tumors more visible to the immune system.
Understanding the best way to put it all together is one of the crucial jobs ahead. At times, the explosion of new activity has tended to diminish the importance of Allison’s drug. Although it is still a billion-dollar-a-year blockbuster, Yervoy is now less often prescribed, in part because of side effects. One analyst called it the “iPod of immunotherapy”—a product overshadowed by the revolutionary change in thinking it caused. “Its importance would be hard to overstate in terms of what it has done to crystallize all the other activities,” says Mellman. “In my opinion, the idea that the immune system could target cancer didn’t start with Jim. But the field did.”
Once a year Allison packs a sold-out venue at the American Society for Cancer Research. There his own band, the Checkpoints, plays to doctors and scientists, nearly all of whom are converts to immunotherapy. Yet Allison still recalls the reviewer who, two decades ago, told a journal to reject his breakthrough paper because “we all know that immunotherapy’s crap. It’s never worked.”
Now that immunotherapy looks like the future, how far can it go? As I stood with Allison and Sharma in the MD Anderson parking lot, saying our good-byes, they seemed hopeful. Allison grabbed a piece of paper and sketched a graph. Start with everyone who has cancer, he said. Then, going out to the right, trace the survivors: how many are left after two months, six months, a year. It’s a line that, for most advanced cancers, drops relentlessly to the dust. But immunotherapy is lifting the curve. In melanoma, there are more and more long-term survivors. Allison calls it “raising the tail.”
“Ultimately, the goal is to try to get the survival rate as high as we can in as many different kinds of cancers as we can,” he says. Allison has finally gotten purchase on the monster that darkened his childhood. And he is not going to let go.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-unfinished-business-of-immunotherapy?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
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NOT ONLY THE DURATION OF SLEEP, BUT ITS REGULARITY
According to a study published earlier this year in the journal Sleep, people who embrace high sleep regularity (going to bed and waking up at the same general time every day, including weekends) experience significantly lower all-cause mortality compared with people with low sleep regularity.
Granted, that sounds counterintuitive, especially since sleep duration gets all the press. After all:
A 2018 study published in Sleep found that people who sleep for five to six hours are 19 percent less productive than people who regularly sleep for seven to eight hours per night. For hardcore sleep warriors, people who average less than five hours a night are nearly 30 percent less productive.
A study published in the Journal of Business Venturing found that people who are sleep-deprived generate worse ideas than they would if they were well-rested, are worse at distinguishing between good and bad ideas, and tend to be more impulsive and likely to act on bad ideas.
A study presented at the Nutrition 2023 conference found that people who sleep between seven and nine hours a night, with no long periods of wakefulness, reduce their rate of death from any cause by 18 percent.
So yeah: Sleep duration matters. Yet as the 2024 Sleep study found, sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of all-cause mortality than sleep duration.
As the researchers write:
Achieving optimal sleep duration has been the focus of sleep health guidelines. Emerging research demonstrates that sleep regularity, the day-to-day consistency of sleep-wake timing, can be a stronger predictor for some health outcomes than sleep duration.
Higher sleep regularity was associated with a 20 to 48 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality, a 16 to 39 percent lower risk of cancer mortality, and a 22 to 57 percent lower risk of cardiometabolic mortality.
Sleep regularity is an important predictor of mortality risk and is a stronger predictor than sleep duration.
Granted, going to bed and waking up at roughly the same time can fall into the “simple yet difficult” category, especially when your job involves shiftwork: work nights, and it’s easy to let sleep regularity slip. If you normally sleep in the evening but you’re invited to a 7 p.m. birthday party? You’ll shift your sleep hours. If you normally go to bed by 1 p.m. but the day is particularly glorious? It can be really hard to go to bed when the sun is shining brightly. And then there are all the people in your life who like to wake you up because they can’t seem to realize that their 3 p.m., where sleep is concerned, is your 3 a.m.
If your job involves shiftwork, maintaining sleep regularity discipline is extremely important.
Sleep regularity is an important predictor of mortality risk and is a stronger predictor than sleep duration.
As a 2022 study published in Sleep Health that evaluated people who consistently slept 6.5 hours a night found, irregular sleep significantly increased the risk of all-cause mortality compared with regular sleep, regardless of sleep duration; irregular sleep was associated with a 1.2 to 1.5 times increase in mortality.
Even if you sleep the same number of hours, sleep irregularity could make you half again as likely to live a longer, healthier life.
To quote the 2024 Sleep researchers, “Sleep regularity may be a simple, effective target for improving general health and survival.” if you would like to live longer, embracing sleep regularity and reasonable sleep duration (why not double-dip?) can provide significant lifespan and healthspan returns — and in the process, you’ll be smarter, happier, and more focused and alert.
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CARBS OR FATS FOR BREAKFAST? MEN AND WOMEN DIFFER
The best type of breakfast for men and for women? Two very different menus, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The study proposes that for optimal energy levels and health, men’s metabolisms may respond best to carbohydrate-rich breakfast after not eating overnight, while women may benefit more from meals with a higher percentage of fat upon waking.
Choosing the right foods for your metabolism might also help you lose and maintain weight.
Metabolism refers to the complex series of chemical processes in the body through which nutritive substances are converted into energy, growth occurs, and cellular damage is repaired.
The study is based on a mathematical model created by the researchers that allowed them to simulate the effect of various dietary choices on men’s and women’s metabolisms.
The model aimed to fill gaps in existing knowledge about differences between the ways in which men and women process fat. Medical research has historically focused on men’s health, so there is far less data available on the effects of foods on women’s metabolism.
Using the model, the researchers were able to simulate dietary outcomes for women, particularly where clinical data is lacking. Human nutrition consists primarily of carbohydrates, fat, and proteins. Women tend to rely more heavily on lipid — fatty acid — metabolism instead of the carbohydrate metabolism preference shown by men. What is most significant, say the study’s authors, is that these differences in metabolism can result in differences in metabolic responses and in disease risk, so it is important that we gain a fuller understanding of them.
Why is fat metabolism faster in women?
Senior investigator of the study Anita T. Layton, PhD, research chair in Mathematical Biology and Medicine, and professor of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Pharmacy and Biology at the University of Waterloo, told Medical News Today that:
“Existing knowledge seems to present a paradox: Women tend to preserve more fat than men during the absorptive period, but exhibit significantly higher fat oxidation during the post-absorptive period.
Our model can guide tailored, sex-specific dietary recommendations that optimize metabolic health and prevent complications like post-prandial hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia. Simulations can be done to see how a specific body may respond to meals of all kinds of compositions.”
“We hypothesize that this increased reliance on fat metabolism in females is influenced by sex differences in liver and adipose tissue, for which model simulations point to a candidate underlying mechanism,” she added. Layton also described the potential mechanism at play, noting that “the female liver diverts more glycerol towards gluconeogenesis.”
Why are there sex differences in the way we metabolize nutrients? Put simply, “women store more fat,” said Layton, “but also burn more fat during prolonged exercise and metabolize fat more efficiently in a meal after a fast.” “Fat is a great source of energy, which is needed to meet the high nutritional costs of pregnancy and lactation,” Layton noted. “These sex differences,” she added, “are likely driven by estrogen, as women bear higher nutrient costs during reproduction and lactation.”
She suggested consideration of the complexity of a woman’s life from a biological perspective, especially compared to a man’s. “The lifespan of a man is pretty simple: They grow from a child to a young adult, and then to an older adult.” “Women, on the other hand, may get pregnant and then go through lactation, both of which have tremendous nutritional requirements and impose major changes in the female body […] and they may repeat these stages multiple times before going through menopause and the rest of the aging process,” she pointed out. “Many of the sex differences,” Layton noted, “are there to prepare women for the extraneous demands imposed by pregnancy and lactation.”
Routhenstein, who specializes in preventive cardiology, also noted, that: “In the heart health space, there is strong recognition that many past studies have left out women, and there is a conscious ongoing effort where more studies are looking primarily at women and heart health, especially during the peri- and postmenopausal life transition.”
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/carbs-or-fats-for-breakfast-which-is-best-for-healthy-weight-in-men-vs-women
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LONGEVITY LINKED TO PROTEINS THAT CALM OVEREXCITED NEURONS
New research makes a molecular connection between the brain and aging — and shows that overactive neurons can shorten life span.
A thousand seemingly insignificant things change as an organism ages. Beyond the obvious signs like graying hair and memory problems are myriad shifts both subtler and more consequential: Metabolic processes run less smoothly; neurons respond less swiftly; the replication of DNA grows faultier.
But while bodies may seem to just gradually wear out, many researchers believe instead that aging is controlled at the cellular and biochemical level. They find evidence for this in the throng of biological mechanisms that are linked to aging but also conserved across species as distantly related as roundworms and humans. Whole subfields of research have grown up around biologists’ attempts to understand the relationships among the core genes involved in aging, which seem to connect highly disparate biological functions, like metabolism and perception. If scientists can pinpoint which of the changes in these processes induce aging, rather than result from it, it may be possible to intervene and extend the human life span.
So far, research has suggested that severely limiting calorie intake can have a beneficial effect, as can manipulating certain genes in laboratory animals. But recently in Nature, Bruce Yankner, a professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues reported on a previously overlooked controller of life span: the activity level of neurons in the brain. In a series of experiments on roundworms, mice and human brain tissue, they found that a protein called REST, which controls the expression of many genes related to neural firing, also controls life span. They also showed that boosting the levels of the equivalent of REST in worms lengthens their lives by making their neurons fire more quietly and with more control. How exactly overexcitation of neurons might shorten life span remains to be seen, but the effect is real and its discovery suggests new avenues for understanding the aging process.
Genetic Mechanisms of Aging
In the early days of the molecular study of aging, many people were skeptical that it was even worth looking into. Cynthia Kenyon, a pioneering researcher in this area at the University of California, San Francisco, has described attitudes in the late 1980s: “The aging field at the time was considered a backwater by many molecular biologists, and the students were not interested, or were even repelled by the idea. Many of my faculty colleagues felt the same way. One told me that I would fall off the edge of the Earth if I studied aging.”
That was because many scientists thought that aging (more specifically, growing old) must be a fairly boring, passive process at the molecular level — nothing more than the natural result of things wearing out. Evolutionary biologists argued that aging could not be regulated by any complex or evolved mechanism because it occurs after the age of reproduction, when natural selection no longer has a chance to act.
However, Kenyon and a handful of colleagues thought that if the processes involved in aging were connected to processes that acted earlier in an organism’s lifetime, the real story might be more interesting than people realized. Through careful, often poorly funded work on Caenorhabditis elegans, the laboratory roundworm, they laid the groundwork for what is now a bustling field.
A key early finding was that the inactivation of a gene called daf-2 was fundamental to extending the life span of the worms. “daf-2 mutants were the most amazing things I had ever seen. They were active and healthy and they lived more than twice as long as normal,” Kenyon wrote in a reflection on these experiments. “It seemed magical but also a little creepy: they should have been dead, but there they were, moving around.”
This gene and a second one called daf-16 are both involved in producing these effects in worms. And as scientists came to understand the genes’ activities, it became increasingly clear that aging is not separate from the processes that control an organism’s development before the age of sexual maturity; it makes use of the same biochemical machinery. These genes are important in early life, helping the worms to resist stressful conditions during their youth.
As the worms age, modulation of daf-2 and daf-16 then influences their health and longevity.
These startling results helped draw attention to the field, and over the next two decades many other discoveries illuminated a mysterious network of signal transduction pathways — where one protein binds another protein, which activates another, which switches off another and so on — that, if disturbed, can fundamentally alter life span.
By 1997, researchers had discovered that in worms daf-2 is part of a family of receptors that send signals triggered by insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar, and the structurally similar hormone IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor 1; daf-16 was farther down that same chain. Tracing the equivalent pathway in mammals, scientists found that it led to a protein called FoxO, which binds to the DNA in the nucleus, turning a shadowy army of genes on and off.
That it all comes down to the regulation of genes is perhaps not surprising, but it suggests that the processes that control aging and life span are vastly complex, acting on many systems at once in ways that may be hard to pick apart. But sometimes, it’s possible to shine a little light on what’s happening, as in the Yankner group’s new paper.
Get Plenty of REST
Figuring out which genes are turned on and off in aging brains has long been one of Yankner’s interests. About 15 years ago, in a paper published in Nature, he and his colleagues looked at gene expression data from donated human brains to see how it changes over a lifetime. Some years later, they realized that many of the changes they’d seen were caused by a protein called REST. REST, which turns genes off, was mainly known for its role in the development of the fetal brain: It represses neuronal genes until the young brain is ready for them to be expressed.
But that’s not the only time it’s active. “We discovered in 2014 that [the REST gene] is actually reactivated in the aging brain,” Yankner said.
To understand how the REST protein does its job, imagine that the network of neurons in the brain is engaged in something like the party game Telephone. Each neuron is covered with proteins and molecular channels that enable it to fire and pass messages. When one neuron fires, it releases a flood of neurotransmitters that excite or inhibit the firing of the next neuron down the line. REST inhibits the production of some of the proteins and channels involved in this process, reining in the excitation.
In their study, published in October 2019, Yankner and his colleagues report that the brains of long-lived humans have unusually low levels of proteins involved in excitation, at least in comparison with the brains of people who died much younger. This finding suggests that the exceptionally old people probably had less neural firing. To investigate this association in more detail, Yankner’s team turned to C. elegans. They compared neural activity in the splendidly long-lived daf-2 mutants with that of normal worms and saw that firing levels in the daf-2 animals were indeed very different.
“They were almost silent. They had very low neural activity compared to normal worms,” Yankner said, noting that neural activity usually increases with age in worms. “This was very interesting, and sort of parallels the gene expression pattern we saw in the extremely old humans.”
When the researchers gave normal roundworms drugs that suppressed excitation, it extended their life spans. Genetic manipulation that suppressed inhibition — the process that keeps neurons from firing — did the reverse. Several other experiments using different methods confirmed their results. The firing itself was somehow controlling life span — and in this case, less firing meant more longevity.
Because REST was plentiful in the brains of long-lived people, the researchers wondered if lab animals without REST would have more neural firing and shorter lives. Sure enough, they found that the brains of elderly mice in which the Rest gene had been knocked out were a mess of overexcited neurons, with a tendency toward bursts of activity resembling seizures. Worms with boosted levels of their version of REST (proteins named SPR-3 and SPR-4) had more controlled neural activity and lived longer. But daf-2 mutant worms deprived of REST were stripped of their longevity.
“It suggests that there is a conserved mechanism from worms to [humans],” Yankner said. “You have this master transcription factor that keeps the brain at what we call a homeostatic or equilibrium level —it doesn’t let it get too excitable — and that prolongs life span. When that gets out of whack, it’s deleterious physiologically.”
What’s more, Yankner and his colleagues found that in worms the life extension effect depended on a very familiar bit of DNA: daf-16. This meant that REST’s trail had led the researchers back to that highly important aging pathway, as well as the insulin/IGF-1 system. “That really puts the REST transcription factor somehow squarely into this insulin signaling cascade,” said Thomas Flatt, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg who studies aging and the immune system. REST appears to be yet another way of feeding the basic molecular activities of the body into the metabolic pathway.
A Biological Balancing Act
Neural activity has been implicated in life span before, notes Joy Alcedo, a molecular geneticist at Wayne State University who studies the connections between sensory neurons, aging and developmental processes. Previous studies have found that manipulating the activity of even single neurons in C. elegans can extend or shorten life span. It’s not yet clear why, but one possibility is that the way the worms respond biochemically to their environment may somehow trip a switch in their hormonal signaling that affects how long they live.
The new study, however, suggests something broader: that overactivity in general is unhealthy. Neuronal overactivity may not feel like anything in particular from the viewpoint of the worm, mouse or human, unless it gets bad enough to provoke seizures. But perhaps over time it may damage neurons.
The new work also ties into the idea that aging may fundamentally involve a loss of biological stability, Flatt said. “A lot of things in aging and life span somehow have to do with homeostasis. Things are being maintained in a proper balance, if you will.” There’s a growing consensus in aging research that what we perceive as the body slowing down may in fact be a failure to preserve various equilibria.
Flatt has found that aging flies show higher levels of immune-related molecules, and that this rise contributes to their deaths. Keeping the levels in check, closer to what they might have been when the flies were younger, extends their lives.
The results may help explain the observation that some drugs used for epilepsy extend life span in lab animals, said Nektarios Tavernarakis, a molecular biologist at the University of Crete who wrote a commentary that accompanied Yankner’s recent paper. If overexcitation shortens life span, then medicines that systematically reduce excitation could have the opposite effect. “This new study provides a mechanism,” he said.
In 2014, Yankner’s laboratory also reported that patients with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s have lower levels of REST. The early stages of Alzheimer’s, Yankner notes, involve an increase in neural firing in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that deals with memory. He and his colleagues wonder whether the lack of REST contributes to the development of these diseases; they are now searching for potential drugs that boost REST levels to test in lab organisms and eventually patients.
In the meantime, however, it’s not clear that people can do anything to put the new findings about REST to work in extending their longevity. According to Yankner, REST levels in the brain haven’t been tied to any particular moods or states of intellectual activity. It would be a “misconception,” he explained by email, “to correlate amount of thinking with life span.” And while he notes that there is evidence that “meditation and yoga can have a variety of beneficial effects for mental and physical health,” no studies show that they have any bearing on REST levels.
Why exactly do overexcited neurons lead to death? That’s still a mystery. The answer probably lies somewhere downstream of the DAF-16 protein and FoxO, in the genes they turn on and off. They may be increasing the organism’s ability to deal with stress, reworking its energy production to be more efficient, shifting its metabolism into another gear, or performing any number of other changes that together add up a sturdier and longer-lived organism. “It is intriguing that something as transient as the activity state of a neural circuit could have such a major physiological influence on something as protean as life span,” Yankner said.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/longevity-linked-to-proteins-that-calm-overexcited-neurons?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
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THE BENEFITS OF ALLULOSE, THE GOOD-FOR-YOU SUGAR SUBSTITUTE
Allulose is also known as D-psicose. It’s classified as a rare sugar because it’s naturally present in only a few foods. Wheat, figs, raisins, and molasses all contain it.
Some people describe allulose as having a similar taste and texture to table sugar. It’s about 70% as sweet as sugar, which is similar to the sweetness of erythritol, another popular sweetener.
Like glucose and fructose, allulose is a monosaccharide, or single sugar. In contrast, table sugar, also known as sucrose, is a disaccharide made of glucose and fructose joined together.
In fact, allulose has the same chemical formula as fructose but is arranged differently. This difference in structure prevents your body from processing allulose the way it processes fructose.
Although around 70% of the allulose you consume is absorbed into your blood through your digestive tract, it leaves your body via your urine without being used as fuel.
Allulose also provides 0.2 to 0.4 calories per gram (g), or about 1/10 the calories of table sugar.
Here’s some helpful information for people who have diabetes or are monitoring their blood sugar for another reason: Allulose does not appear to raise blood sugar or insulin levels.
In addition, early research suggests that allulose has anti-inflammatory properties and may help prevent obesity and reduce the risk of chronic disease.
Although some foods contain small amounts of this rare sugar, manufacturers have also used enzymes to convert fructose into allulose in recent years.
It may help regulate blood sugar
Allulose may turn out to be a powerful tool for managing diabetes.
Several animal studies have found it may lower blood sugar, increase insulin sensitivity, and decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes by protecting the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas.
In a study comparing the effects of consuming allulose, cellulose, and a commercial diet in rats with insulin resistance, the allulose group had improved insulin sensitivity after 7 weeks.
Early research also suggests that allulose may have beneficial effects on blood sugar regulation in humans.
In one study, 30 participants without diabetes received a 50-g dose of sucrose followed by either a placebo or allulose.
The allulose group experienced significantly lower blood sugar levels after 30 minutes than the placebo group, though this difference was not maintained at later time points.
Although research is limited and more studies involving people with diabetes and prediabetes are needed, the evidence to date is encouraging.
It may increase fat loss
Some research suggests that allulose may help increase fat loss, including visceral fat. This type of fat is strongly linked to heart disease and some other health conditions.
In a study with 121 Korean adults, participants took 4 or 7 g of allulose or a placebo twice per day for 12 weeks. The group taking the larger amount of allulose had a significant decrease in body fat percentage and mass, including abdominal fat.
Another small study with 13 healthy adults found that taking 5 g of allulose before a meal appeared to lead to improved energy metabolism after they ate, which could help manage body weight.
Still, more studies in humans are necessary before conclusions can be made.
It may protect against fatty liver
Studies in rats and mice have found that, in addition to preventing weight gain, allulose seems to reduce fat storage in the liver.
Hepatic steatosis, more commonly known as fatty liver, is strongly linked to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
In one study, mice with leptin deficiency and obesity were given allulose and showed lower total fat mass and liver fat after 15 weeks. These changes occurred without exercise or restrictive diets.
Allulose may also protect against muscle loss.
In the same study of mice with obesity, allulose significantly decreased liver and belly fat and appeared to prevent the loss of lean mass.
Additionally, a small study with 90 human participants found that taking allulose for 48 weeks improved fatty liver scores.
Although these results are promising, more controlled human studies need to be done.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/allulose#improve-fatty-liver
Oriana
Allulose can be purchased online.
Typing this, I’m enjoying cranberry jelly made with 3 ingredients: cranberries, allulose (to taste), and just enough boiling water to make the cranberries pop. Thus, instead of the unhealthy commercial product, you can enjoy the benefits of cranberries AND the benefits of allulose.
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ending on beauty:
And now
the best of all
is to be alone, to possess one’s soul in silence
Nakedly to be alone, unseen
is better than anything else in the world,
a relief like death.
~ D.H. Lawrence, opening stanzas from Image-Making Love
