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TWO GRAVES
In countries with too much history,
graveyard trees grow tallest.
Silver poplars sway, hushing
the stories of so many lives
with the rustle of endless leaves.
In my parents’ hometown, my footsteps crunch
on the white gravel around the graves.
Some are missing from this deep
roster in the earth.
Cousin Danek and Aunt Irena
died in the camps, and they have no graves.
Cousin Feliks too died at Auschwitz,
a Resistance fighter, tortured by the Nazis.
His last words — I didn’t betray
anyone — are his grave in the air.
Also missing is my uncle’s grave —
my mother’s brother,
the one who’d promised
to take her in his two-seater plane
and fly around the world.
A fighter pilot, he took part
in the defense of Warsaw.
When all was lost, he landed
in a meadow at night,
painted his plane black,
defiled it with the broken cross
of the swastika, and flew to France;
landed in a field, repainted his plane,
and joined the meager French air force.
They encountered German Messerschmidts.
The French pilots fled; a handful of Poles,
outnumbered twenty times,
accepted the air fight.
A surviving pilot saw my uncle’s plane
tumble down in flames
from the smoke-curdled sky near Amiens.
Many years later, my mother and I
went to the military
cemetery at Amiens — thousands
and thousands of plain white slabs,
name, rank, and dates, and underneath,
Mort pour la France —
all going back to World War I,
the Great War for France,
the massacre of her young men.
Here and there, fresh flowers on the old graves.
In a corner we finally found
a few World War II graves.
Two were marked
Un Soldat Unconnu.
Two nameless strangers died in 1940
pour la France, the headstone insisted.
My mother went back to the gate,
returned with chrysanthemums.
She was upset about the inscription:
“He died for a lot more
than France!”
We stood in silence.
Then she divided the bouquet
and laid the flowers on both graves.
~ Oriana
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WRITERS LIKE US: MY LIFE WITH SINCLAIR LEWIS
~ Whereas Hemingway was a bullfighting aficionado, the novelist and artist Barnaby Conrad was the real deal: the author of the best-selling Matador (1952) was known to Spanish audiences as “El Niño de California” for his exploits in the ring. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Papa later wrote that he “wished to have nothing to do with” the junior novelist. But Conrad’s connection with another early-twentieth-century giant, Sinclair Lewis, was more amiable: the young author spent the summer of 1947 working as Lewis’s secretary, and the impression “Red” made on Conrad colored the rest of his career. Now, a spirited account of those months can be found in Writers Like Us, a project brought to fruition by the late author’s son Barnaby Conrad III. Bullfighting does come up at one point, when in August 1947 Conrad learns of the great matador Manolete’s death. “Saw a bullfight once,” Lewis offered. “Rooted for the bull.” ~
The rest was behind a paywall, so to learn more about Sinclair Lewis I turned to Wikipedia:
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Lewis wrote six popular novels: Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).
Several of his notable works were critical of American capitalism and materialism during the interwar period. Lewis is respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds.”
Lewis began reading books while young, and kept a diary. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly child—tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat pop-eyed—had trouble making friends and pined after local girls. At the age of 13, he ran away from home and unsuccessfully tried to become a drummer boy in the Spanish–American War.
In late 1902, Lewis left home for a year at Oberlin Academy (the then-preparatory department of Oberlin College) to qualify for acceptance at Yale University. While at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and waned for much of his remaining teenage years. Lewis later became an atheist.
He entered Yale in 1903, but did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1908, taking time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. Lewis's undistinguished looks, country manners and seeming self-importance made it difficult for him to win and keep friends at Oberlin and Yale. He did make a few friends among the students and professors, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer.
Upon moving to Washington, D.C., Lewis devoted himself to writing. As early as 1916, he began taking notes for a realistic novel about small-town life. Work on that novel continued through mid-1920, when he completed Main Street, which was published on October 23, 1920. His biographer Mark Schorer wrote in 1961 that the phenomenal success of Main Street "was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history.” Lewis's agent had the most optimistic projection of sales at 25,000 copies. In its first six months, Main Street sold 180,000 copies and within a few years, sales were estimated at two million. Richard Lingeman wrote in 2002, "Main Street made [Lewis] rich—earning him about 3 million current dollars" (almost $5 million, as of 2022)
Lewis followed up this first great success with Babbitt (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. The story was set in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith, Winnemac, a setting to which Lewis returned in future novels, including Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Gideon Planish and Dodsworth.
Lewis continued his success in the 1920s with Arrowsmith (1925), a novel about the challenges faced by an idealistic doctor. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, which Lewis declined, still upset that Main Street had not won the prize. It was adapted as a 1931 Hollywood film directed by John Ford and starring Ronald Colman which was nominated for four Academy Awards.
Next Lewis published Elmer Gantry (1927), which depicted an evangelical minister as deeply hypocritical. The novel was denounced by many religious leaders and banned in some U.S. cities. It was adapted for the screen more than a generation later as the basis of the 1960 movie starring Burt Lancaster, who earned a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the title role. The film won two more awards as well.
Lewis next published Dodsworth (1929), a novel about the most affluent and successful members of American society. He portrayed them as leading essentially pointless lives in spite of great wealth and advantages. The book was adapted for the Broadway stage in 1934 by Sidney Howard, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1936 film version directed by William Wyler, which was a great success at the time. The film is still highly regarded; in 1990, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, and in 2005 Time magazine named it one of the "100 Best Movies" of the past 80 years.
During the late 1920s and 1930s, Lewis wrote many short stories for a variety of magazines and publications. "Little Bear Bongo" (1930) is a tale about a bear cub who wants to escape the circus in search of a better life in the real world, first published in Cosmopolitan magazine. The story was acquired by Walt Disney Pictures in 1940 for a possible feature film. World War II sidetracked those plans until 1947. Disney used the story (now titled "Bongo") as part of its feature Fun and Fancy Free.
In 1930 Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer from the United States to receive the award, after he had been nominated by Henrik Schück, member of the Swedish Academy. In the academy's presentation speech, special attention was paid to Babbitt. In his Nobel Lecture, Lewis praised Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and other contemporaries, but also lamented that "in America most of us—not readers alone, but even writers—are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues," and that America is "the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today." He also offered a profound criticism of the American literary establishment: "Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.”
After winning the Nobel Prize, Lewis wrote eleven more novels, ten of which appeared in his lifetime. The best remembered is It Can't Happen Here (1935), a novel about the election of a fascist to the American presidency.
After praising Dreiser as "pioneering", that he "more than any other man, marching alone, usually unappreciated, often hated, has cleared the trail from Victorian and Howellsian timidity and gentility in American fiction to honesty and boldness and passion of life" in his Nobel Lecture in December 1930,[20] in March 1931 Lewis publicly accused Dreiser of plagiarizing a book by Dorothy Thompson, Lewis's wife, which led to a well-publicized fight, wherein Dreiser repeatedly slapped Lewis.
Thompson initially made the accusation in 1928 regarding her work "The New Russia" and Dreiser's "Dreiser Goes to Russia", though The New York Times also linked the dispute to competition between Dreiser and Lewis over the Nobel Prize. Dreiser fired back that Sinclair's 1925 novel Arrowsmith (adapted later that year as a feature film) was unoriginal and that Dreiser himself was first approached to write it, which was disputed by the wife of Arrowsmith's subject, microbiologist Dr. Paul de Kruif. The feud carried on for some months. In 1944, Lewis campaigned to have Dreiser recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
After an alcoholic binge in 1937, Lewis checked in for treatment to the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. His doctors gave him a blunt assessment that he needed to decide "whether he was going to live without alcohol or die by it, one or the other." Lewis checked out after ten days, lacking any "fundamental understanding of his problem", as one of his physicians wrote to a colleague.
In the autumn of 1940, Lewis visited his old acquaintance, William Ellery Leonard, in Madison, Wisconsin. Leonard arranged a meeting with the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a tour of the campus. Lewis immediately became enthralled with the university and the city and offered to remain and teach a course in creative writing in the upcoming semester. For a month he was quite enamored of his professorial role. Suddenly, on November 7, after giving only five classes to his select group of 24 students, he announced that he had taught them all that he knew. He left Madison the next day.
In the 1940s, Lewis and rabbi-turned-popular-author Lewis Browne frequently appeared on the lecture platform together, touring the United States and debating before audiences of as many as 3,000 people, addressing such questions as "Has the Modern Woman Made Good?", "The Country Versus the City", "Is the Machine Age Wrecking Civilization?", and "Can Fascism Happen Here?" The pair were described as "the Gallagher and Shean of the lecture circuit" by Lewis biographer Richard Lingeman.
Sinclair Lewis had been a frequent visitor to Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 1946, he rented Thorvale Farm on Oblong Road. While working on his novel Kingsblood Royal, he purchased this summer estate and upgraded the Georgian mansion along with a farmhouse and many outbuildings. By 1948, Lewis had created a gentleman's farm consisting of 720 acres (290 ha) of agricultural and forest land. His intended residence in Williamstown was short-lived because of his medical problems.
Lewis died in Rome from advanced alcoholism, on January 10, 1951, aged 65. His body was cremated and his remains were buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. His final novel World So Wide (1951) was published posthumously.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: THE DEPLETION OF CULTURE
For more than a century already, the civilized world has been undergoing a process—unnoticed at first and for some time thereafter—of a loss of spiritual concentration and loftiness, a process of diffusion and perhaps even of irreplaceable loss of spiritual values. In the nineteenth century few descried it. Then the entire twentieth century, so productive technically but so hasty psychologically, worked in various ways toward the lowering of culture.
This destructive worldwide process, though relentless through the decades, has nonetheless caught us as if unawares. And there has arisen a widespread—though unfounded—illusion of cultural satiation, cultural fatigue: as if all possible culture has already been sampled by us, has been depleted, and no longer sustains us.
More than a few causes contributing to this decline of culture can be identified.
One of them is the perniciousness, for high culture, of utilitarian requirements, whether they flow from socialist-communist compulsion or from the market principle of sale and purchase. Pope John Paul II suggested that, following in the footsteps of the two totalitarianisms with which we are well familiar, a Third Totalitarianism now draws near: the absolute power of money, along with the rapt veneration of that power by so many. A shallowing of culture has come to pass from both the breathless haste of this worldwide process and the financial motivations that propel it.
Another cause lies in the strikingly swift and broad growth of material well-being, brought about by technological advancements, that has sharply outpaced the human character’s readiness for it as well as its capacity for self-discipline: how to orient and maintain one’s soul—and therefore one’s receptivity to culture—above ever-inflowing prosperity.
All-encompassing comfort has led the unprepared—and they are the majority—to a hardening of the soul. Thus, the flowering of civilization has brought boundless riches and comforts, the conquest of an entire World—yet, simultaneously, an impoverishment of souls. (Amongst the well-to-do classes of bygone centuries, many couldn’t withstand temptation and turned into cold, cruel rulers or else burned emptily through life; but how many examples, too, of those who did pass the test of well-being, at which point an elevated personality type would take shape, one that directed its pecuniary independence towards the preservation of culture or a philanthropic sustenance of its masters.)
A further cause (and far from the last) is the massification of culture (quite natural given the overall direction that civilization has taken): blanket literacy, education, and knowledgeableness. These, in turn, exponentially broaden the universe of consumers, and also, in synthesis with the workings of the law of markets, threaten to pull—and do pull—education wide of the mark of true culture. This process inexorably leads to a decline of both the average level of culture and especially of its pinnacles: there emerges a nonchalant indifference toward them, the demand for them dwindles, and their very disappearance passes unnoticed.
Let us stipulate that the particular nature of mass culture is not the cause: in and of itself, popular culture can at times attain true pinnacles, as we see in the folklore of many nations; the root of the problem here lies in the vulgarizing, morally undiscriminating contrivances of its presentation.
In such an environment the most creative portion of culture diminishes. This holds as true for the philosophical-contemplative domain as it does for the pinnacles of theoretical science, removed as they are from utilitarian application, and also of course—even first and foremost—for all art. The artist loses the incentive to create in relation to the judgments of top experts and connoisseurs, and allows himself to become less exacting toward his own work—especially when plucking out hurried commissions intended for superficial consumption.
Many art forms begin to recede, and rapidly—morphing into common craft, persistently perpetuating and re-perpetuating primitive patterns. First, tastes are cultivated (foisted) by those contrivances of presentation themselves, then “opinion polls” are conducted that unearth those same “tastes”—thus obtaining the desired justification for self-repetition and for the further debasement of quality. Everyone can see that television programming is at the forefront of such operations, and it has, in turn, guided the once-so-promising art of cinema toward perdition.
(In Hollywood and beyond there exist “evaluation teams” for screenplays; using an elaborate points system, they assign grades and dispense definitive direction on how to alter the plot, characters, and other elements in order to improve the “box-office appeal” of a film. Such vulgarizing methods seem to know no limits—today the same hubris prevails in reworking the classics. For example, Disney has rectified Victor Hugo’s blunder, and provided Esmeralda with a happy end and blissful marriage instead of a tragic demise.) The tawdriness of distorted art—long since become pseudo-art—continues to expand triumphantly, restrained by nothing, maiming our auditory and ocular perceptions and befouling our souls.
How irreversible, how irreparable is this process of mass vulgarization? Judging by the sphere of literature (the sphere closest to me), the path toward a reestablishment of high quality is not yet closed off, not yet taken from us, even if it will require a significant concentration of abilities and efforts.
In principle, and according to the very nature of art—according to its flexibility and multifacetedness—the elite and the popular can coexist in a single work of literature: in successful cases, indeed, that work may be multi-leveled, written in such a way that it is accessible and satisfactory concurrently for readers of diverse levels of understanding and perception; and if a person experiences an elevation of level over time, he reads the same book with a newer understanding. Failure in achieving this is hardly preordained; but the author has to rise above the day-to-day demands of the publishing market, above calculations of assured near-term success.
I believe that this holds true for many other areas of culture, and for those areas of science that can still afford to live a non-collective life.
But the fundamental, intrinsic reason for culture’s ongoing decline, its petering out, is its secularization. For several centuries now, the minds of enlightened humanity have been increasingly captivated by anthropocentrism—more politely called humanism—which in the twentieth century risked morphing almost into totalitarianism. But a hubristic anthropocentrism can provide no answers to many of life’s vital questions, and the deeper these questions, the more helpless it appears. The spiritual component is being expunged ever more perniciously from the system of human conceptions and motivations. As a result, our entire structure of values, our understanding of man’s very nature and mission in life, has become distorted. Little by little, we’ve fallen out of sync with the rhythm and breath of Nature, of the Universe.
This danger had been foreseen already by Blaise Pascal (I imagine no one gathered here today would deny him his high standing in science). He warned that “the ultimate essence of things is accessible only through religious perception.” Three centuries later, his judgment is all the more weighty for us today. Time and again we’ve had the opportunity to ascertain that the substance of historical processes lies not on the visible surface but in the spiritual deep. So it is with the philosophical crisis and ethical chaos that have arisen in modern mankind. And so, culture will not again throw open to us its undistorted depths until the regeneration of a morally predisposed soil should occur.
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While considering culture in the most general terms, we must not, however, lose sight of one of its significant particularities: the multiplicity of cultures on Earth. That which we designate by the shorthand “culture” (always meaning the broad range of Western culture) does not in fact encompass the culture of all mankind, nor are the values we term “universal” necessarily such. Attempts to adopt or establish the concept of a tightly unified global culture threaten to repress major distinct cultures on our Earth, some of them sizable in both area and population (such as the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Muslim cultures); by no means in all of them does one today observe the process of cultural depletion noted above.
Among these individual, extensive, and long-enduring cultures one finds our own Russian culture. Today many imagine that, the more decisively we destroy our traditional national system of values, the more quickly and effectively we may adopt and replicate the broad Western one. This constitutes both a groundless hope and a disastrous plan for our spiritual subsistence (not to mention that an adopted culture is inevitably inferior to the model it emulates). One thing we must certainly absorb from the West is an active yet stable civic life. But the only normal, natural path of development of any culture is a rational, balanced integration of its own organic principles—whether conservative-preserving or creative-renewing—as well as their dynamic, unpremeditated interaction with other cultures. In our country’s presently inflamed cultural bazaar, it would be ruinous for us to allow our own Russian culture to be reshaped or swallowed up so easily.
And zeroing in on Russian culture, we see with sorrow that a particular domestic crisis has been superimposed here on the broader crisis of world culture. For seventy years our culture had been kept harshly in check, even as it received ample material nourishment for those of its constituents working obsequiously in an assigned direction. And now, in today’s Russia, in our second decade beset by catastrophic social circumstances, culture and science are forgotten altogether, swept to life’s curb, and subsist on inedible scraps or on nothing at all. And for the people in those walks of life—what a morbid blow, both physical and psychological.
Even those branches of science on which depend the unity and security of our country or the preservation of our environment are mindlessly neglected to the point of miserable indigence. What then to say of culture, especially in the Russian provinces, whose people are scattered on wide expanses?
I’ve had the opportunity to travel in three dozen oblasts, also visiting regional centers and small towns—and just the condition of the schools and small libraries flings me into despair: schools are in disrepair and suffer a chronic lack of supplies while, in libraries, books are worn unimaginably ragged from age; when one does see sparkling new ones on the shelves, they are either kitschy pulp detective fiction or donations from dubious foundations with their own settled agendas and no moral responsibility for the cultivation of young minds.
These generations, one cohort after another, are virtually cut off from opportunities to develop not only along modern standards but even along any standard worthy of humanity. We’re losing them without recompense, we’re crossing them out in our madness—maybe for the sake of some well-founded practical calculation? . . . No, out of sheer thoughtlessness, forgetful that, apart from the ruling oligarchy, there still dares exist in our country an actual people.
Yet even more bitter than this descent of the healthy portion of our culture into absolute penury is the equally absolute, right from 1917, inner subversion of moral foundations, of compassion, of help for the weak and destitute, a loss of both historical memory and of a unifying national consciousness.
And if Russian culture today hasn’t yet perished, then it is only thanks to the striking selflessness of enthusiasts with no material backing and to the natural maturation of the young, whose talents haven’t yet been fully drubbed out.
The future of Russian culture hangs on whether our innate national abilities can grope their way forward even through the dire conditions of today. Some might achieve it through their talents, others, by aiding those talents through benevolent altruism. In today’s muddled—or even lost—condition of minds and souls, will our national organism receive life-giving impulses from its “endocrine glands”? To what extent this comes to pass depends on each one of us.
All that fills our airwaves with its wretched, barren din and hue, all these puffed-up shapes that flit across our television screens—all these shall pass away as if they never were, forgotten dust lost to History. And our people’s survival or extinction will depend on those who persist through these dark times, by way of concentrated labor or its material support, in shielding from ruin, in lifting up, in strengthening and developing the inner life of our minds and souls—that life which is culture.
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1997, soon after being elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences, he was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion there, which was the occasion of the speech he delivered on September 24, 1997, published here for the first time in a new translation by Ignat Solzhenitsyn.
https://newcriterion.com/article/the-depletion-of-culture/
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HUGE DRONE ATTACK ON MOSCOW
One of the largest attack of Ukrainian drones on Russia on March 11, 2025.
Over three hundred drones attacked Moscow and the Moscow region damaging residential buildings with debris after they had been jammed or shot down.
Three people were killed and more than ten were injured, local authorities reported.
Due to Western sanctions Russian national football is reduced to playing against Grenada in a friendly game.
Grenada team nicknamed Spice Boys currently sits at 174th place in the global Coca Cola FIFA Men’s Rating.
The ambassador of Grenada for five years has been a man who has the same family name as I do. Oleg Firer, a naturalized U.S. citizen, convinced Putin that there’s money to be made in this Latin American country from spice plantations. When full-scale invasion was launched, Mr. Firer was fired.
No money had been made from Grenada spices despite Mr. Firer’s efforts.
This weekend there was a Black Sabbath of Western libertarian bloggers and media figures in Moscow. They interviewed all the main culprits of the war in order to highlight their side of the story and support Trump’s peace resolution.
Ukraine has launched over three hundred drones at Moscow to demonstrate what they think of the gathering and peace negotiations in Saudi Arabia on Moscow’s terms.
Russian-American podcaster Lex Fridman who was thirty miles from the nearest spot of the mass drone attack, got so terrified that he called it a “close call.”
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The emphasis is on “long-lasting peace,” but EU politicians are gearing up for a major military confrontation with Russia.
Normally, morally righteous people have to confront less than perfect reality in which the bad guys win, but with Ukraine hobbits have been confident that orcs would be badly defeated by elves that they believed every word of the fiction book. The victory has been so close and yet turned out to be so far.
Westerners want to believe now that Trump is a traitor and sold out to the enemy. However, once again their minds are clouded by emotions and social outrage.
Trump simply treats Ukraine as a business venture like everything else he does to make money. He doesn’t care about uncooperative Zelensky and Ukrainians. All he wants is rare earth metal deal and whatever Blackrock can squeeze out of Ukraine post peace deal.
Likewise Trump doesn’t want to pay for NATO anymore and have Europeans deal with Russian threat instead. Warfare instead of welfare. It doesn’t matter who’s gonna win that war, Europe or Russia. The end result is gonna be guaranteed: Europe will be lying in ruins.
Last time it happened, America became the global empire as all the European powers were bankrupt and couldn’t finance their colonies anymore and America could fill in the vacuum.
Likewise Trump sees just a businessman in Putin and Russia as a source of natural resources for sale, as well as he wishes to peel them away from China because in partnership they’d be harder to defeat.
Greenland conducted a referendum that surprised everyone: Greenlanders don’t want to be a Danish colony. But neither do they want to be a U.S. territory. They want to be free from annoying and bellicose white people who are constantly at each other’s throat.
As merchants are currently in charge of global politics, the whole thing becomes even a greater circus than under a liberal leadership. Rules-based order is coming undone unable to deal with internal and external contradictions of increasingly complex world and a bunch of oligarchs are only going to mess it up to a terminal stage.
People, however, are craving simplicity with well defined portrayal of good and bad guys. Good guys can’t be ordinary. They have to be heroic, selfless, bigger than life super heroes.
Evil Trump has spoilt the movie by rewriting the narrative while in reality all he cares about is to make more money at someone else’s expense.
He’s the caricature of the American financial capitalism that is now cannibalizing itself after having failed to defeat Taliban’s goat herders and Putin’s village drunks with the state of the art weaponry worth trillions of dollars. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
Andy Dragomir:
The Afghans have managed to self-finance a central Asian game-changer project of a 180km canal which will divert much of the vitally important Amu Darya river. This river is the last main source of water for the dying Aral sea, and also feeds almost all central Asian “stans.” There will be war. Project is already 75% complete.
The water wars are here!
Mich Verschuere:
Trump not only is “sold out to the enemy.” It seems like he wants to create a Putin-like system for the USA but with himself as Putin, only much greater and better, the greatest and the best some might say.
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GREENLAND IS MELTING
In 2019, climate scientist Steffen Olsen took a startling photo of huskies appearing to walk on water. The photo quickly went viral as it revealed the reality of Greenland's rapidly melting ice.
"The reaction surprised me," says Olsen. "It surprised me that so many people saw this as a beautiful photo. I saw it as a scary situation.”
On average, Greenland loses 234 billion tons of ice per year.
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ABANDONED COFFINS ACROSS RUSSIA REVEAL THE SCALE OF MILITARY LOSSES
The Moscow Times has reported that these coffins have been found abandoned in open fields, near railway stations and around morgues. The issue has sparked public outcry, with residents complaining of foul odors and health hazards.
Authorities have done little to address the situation, despite the shocking scale of the discoveries. In Yekaterinburg, over one hundred coffins were found in a single location, with locals describing the crisis as a "death conveyor belt.”
On 6 March, mass dumping was reported in Volzhsky, followed by another discovery in Novosibirsk two days earlier. A coffin found at a landfill carried identification from the 41st Combined Arms Army.
Ukraine estimates that Russia has suffered nearly 883,000 casualties since the full scale invasion began. The Russian military is struggling to manage these losses, leading to abandoned bodies and discarded coffins across the country.
The mounting death toll underscores Russia’s inability to sustain its war effort.
~ Foxmeister, Quora
Alan:
C'mon, this is Russia! The govt paid for funerals and local officials stole the money and dumped the stinky boxes! That's how it works in mutha Russia!
Frances Neil:
This IS Russia. This is Russkiy Mir.
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ON TRUMP’S IDEA THAT HE COULD END THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR IN 24 HOURS
When I heard it for the first time, I immediately said that “ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours” was impossible — people who believed it probably still believe in Easter Bunny.
Now Trump is saying that the defender state "does not have the cards" when the aggressor has not advanced in 3 years. Jim Mattis was right.
In fact, ending the war in Ukraine is straightforward:
Tell Putin to completely withdraw from Ukraine by a certain date.
If he does not, start destroying his forces inside Ukraine until he does.
Russians will leave Ukraine.
Putin can end this war any day.
He just needs to order his troops to go home.
~ Elena Gold, Quora
Mary Carnaham:
God only knows the depths of his internalized shame and helpless anger from probable psychological abuse in childhood. Sometimes the more money a family has, the more they can hide massive dysfunction.
George Davies:
It's crazy to think that Trump could end this war any day too.
For most of us, determining the exact quantity of U.S. weaponry nearing the end of its service life would be more than challenging, due to the lack of up to date publicly available data… But, you can bet there is enough of it to totally eject the bedraggled ‘Russian army’ from Ukraine.
The fact that these weapons are due for a decomissioning process, which makes it more expensive for the US than simply getting Ukraine to take it all off their hands, just adds further salt to the wound.
Unfortunately, the way weasel Trump is going, it seems there’s more chance of it ending up in Russian hands.
David Sulic:
You can dance around the problem all you want, when all is said and done, it is a very easy solution. Remove the aggressor, by force if necessary. Everybody knows who the aggressor is.
Of course, this would require the European Union, United States, along with UK, Australia, and any other nation that wants to join this alliance, to drive Putin out of Ukraine, and send a clear message that this kind of aggression will not be tolerated.
Donald Trump, by himself quashed any possibility of this happening by getting into bed with his idol Putin. He yearns to be like Putin, to have the power to rule, unquestioned. Putin helped him win two elections, and now, he is looking for payback. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that. The same scenario with Elon Musk — he bought the 2024 election for Trump, and is now looking for payback. Welcome to the new America of billionaires and conmen that don't give a damn about the common everyday working Americans.
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WHY IT’S SO DIFFICULT FOR ISRAEL TO FREE ISRAELI HOSTAGES
First, the hostages are being kept underground in the tunnels that run under Gaza. Some of those tunnels are 50 feet or more deep with hidden entrances and booby trapped corridors. So the IDF needs to first find the tunnels and then explore them carefully.
Second, the hostages are moved periodically from location to location. Anytime the IDF gets close they move the hostages to another location farther away. So there isn’t one location like a POW camp for the IDF to liberate.
Third, the hostages are separated into small groups. They are not all together in the same place at the same time. They are spread out all over Gaza in the tunnels. So even if the IDF liberated some the rest would still be in captivity.
Fourth, the hostages are being held not only by Hamas but also by other radical Islamic groups. So if the IDF captures Hamas soldiers and interrogates them about the hostage locations they have very little knowledge to pass on.
Fifth, the hostages are guarded by terrorists who will kill them before they let the IDF rescue them. And if it came down to it those radicals will set off suicide bombs and kill themselves with the hostages and IDF soldiers. So the IDF has to proceed slowly.
Sixth, after months of captivity, starvation, abuse and untended medical conditions probably most of the hostages are dead. Israel, I’d guess, assumes this but can’t publicly state it. So they will continue to try to rescue the hostages but realistically they won’t lose lots of troops unnecessarily in the process.
My suspicion is that’s why Hamas broke off the cease-fire/ hostage exchange. And why they refuse to agree to another one. They don’t have many hostages left and they don’t want Israel and the world to know that.
It’s the only bargaining chip they have. And they already spent it. ~ Dough Armey
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GAZA: THREE PATHOLOGIES
Gaza is precisely where the chief architect, Sinwar, planned it to be: in a state of a “necessary sacrifice.”
There are three hallmarks to the Palestinians, some view it as the three pathologies as these block any possible positive future.
The ethos of the victimhood
It allows an exemption from self-reflection since it's always somebody else's fault. It releases the Palestinians from taking responsibility for their lives, to build a better future for their kids, who inherit that mindset of being miserable. This ethos is getting great support from UNRWA and the West (the righteous part of it).
The ethos of the armed struggle
Kids at a young age would be exposed to Palestinian figures who are considered heroes for being terrorists. The education system transplants the admiration of armed murderers at a very young age. You will never find the Palestinian culture, having a well-recognized poet, artist, peace activist, or scientist. The true heroes are more likely those who managed to kill Israelis. The more blood on their hand, the bigger these heroes get.
The ethos of being an eternal refugee
This status is inherited for three consecutive generations and has no precedence in any other group of refugees (created as a consequence of a war). It serves a purpose that Palestinian nationalism is an antithesis to Israeli nationalism, such that for Palestine to exist, Israel must not exist.
For a long time, this ideology seemed entrenched, a situation that is not about to change.
And then came Trump, with his declaration, that the situation will change.
It seems Trump is about to put the Palestinians in a serious internal conflict: he tells them — it is either they stay in the rubble they created, or give up their problematic identity to get a better future.
Very often, Americans and Westerners fail to understand Trump, giving ridiculous interpretations of his words.
Trump’s words, despite being in English, are spoken in the Palestinian language. These words are understood very well in the Middle East and might make a change. ~ Quora
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LEONHARD EULER AND RAMANUNJAN
A Swiss gentleman by the name of Leonhard Euler was an absolute genius. He was, among other things, “a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician, and engineer” and he founded the studies of graph theory and topology..jpg)
Euler was insanely productive. He discovered so much stuff in so many fields that, to avoid ambiguity, things are often named after the second person to generate the proof or discover it. I couldn’t even begin to name all the things he came up with and then get this — guy goes blind. Surely, that’ll slow him down? But no! It actually INCREASES his productivity as now he can dictate all that goes on in that powerful mind straight to his scribes, no need for him to write it down himself. At which point he goes on to deliver an average of one mathematical paper each week.
Leonard Euler was the stuff of absolute genius. When he lost his eyesight as an old man he merely said: “Now I have fewer distractions!” and carried on cheerfully. Not bad for a man whose most famous portrait seems to be him wearing what appears to be underwear for a hat.
~ Jean-Marie Valheur, Quora
Prasad Tadepalli:
A lot of what engineers, physicists and mathematicians do today rests on the foundations laid mostly by 4 people — Newton, Euler, Gauss and Maxwell. Nearly everything artefact of technology we depend on today for our daily lives owes to these four people. I know I am exaggerating a bit as I say this, but if I had to name only 4 people that would be my list.
Giona Granata:
There is no Newton without Galileo.
Orased Tadepalli:
Euler was also known be generous to his fellow mathematicians when a situation required that he wanted to give greater credit to the other person. Au contraire, Gauss — the other unarguably universal name in physics and mathematics — was supposed to have been very tight fisted about giving credit to others. He apparently refused to acknowledge Janos Bolyai contribution to hyperbolic geometry — so much that a young Bolyai gave up his ambition of becoming a mathematician.
Alexander Probyn:
And not only Gauss but Newton too, especially in his wrangling with Leibniz over who had invented calculus, or ‘fluxions’, as Newton called it, first.
Steve Lussing:
Euler spent most of his adult life in St. Petersburg, Russia and is buried on the monastery grounds in the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg.
Snehadis Panda:
Aanother example can be Ramanujan. From a small village in Madras province in British India, he went on to become one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, all of this without much of formal education. Tragically he died in his 30s due to tuberculosis. Many were skeptical of his abilities; some considered him as a con man. Hardy was the one who stood with him in his thick and thin. Madras is in south of India and the temperature varies between 30 degrees celsius to 50 degrees celsius. UK is far colder when compared to this. It was also difficult for him to find completely vegetarian food (he was a orthodox Hindu). Hardy tried his best and helped him out immensely.
Masticatron:
Sadly his ability to communicate how he got the answers was extremely poor. He personally attributed much or all of it to dreams provided by a goddess (“Holy Mother”)
Srinivasa Ramanujan
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THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
One day in 1961, while his old computer was printing out graphs, Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist at MIT, went out to get a cup of coffee.
When he returned, he found himself faced with something strange: instead of the weather maps he had intended to repeat, he had obtained completely different graphs. This completely disconcerted him, because he had entered the same initial data and therefore expected to obtain the same images. Thinking back, Lorenz realized that the initial values entered in the two cases differed (albeit slightly): the first time he had used 6 decimal places, the second time only 3.
A chaotic system is characterized by the property of having an evolution particularly sensitive to the variation of the values of its significant parameters: two chaotic systems that start from initial conditions that differ even by a very small amount can evolve in a completely different way.
Lorenz provided a suggestive image of this fact. The flap of a butterfly's wings in South America could trigger a hurricane in Europe, where good weather was initially forecast, because the infinitesimal change in pressure caused by the movement of the wings could generate a completely different weather pattern. Since then, for chaotic phenomena (in which a small change in the initial conditions can result in a completely different result than expected), people also speak of the "butterfly effect" and the metaphor is widely used.
George Franz:
The butterfly’s wings don’t cause the hurricanes. The issue is with modeling which direction the hurricane will go. Trying to model a chaotic system can be next to impossible because tiny changes in the inputs have huge effects on the outcome. (…) Normally the difference in 3.99 and 3.999 is trivial. Not in chaotic systems.
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THE MILITARY GAP BETWEEN THE U.S. AND RUSSIA
Right off the bat — Russia spends about 6% of GDP on Defense, and the USA does about 3.4% — and keep in mind, that is with Russia in a wartime economy and the USA not in a wartime economy. The US economy is about 19x the economy of Russia, so in terms of spending, it is not even close.
Then you get to reserves — Russia has about 10x the reservists that the USA does. However, if you count the draft between the two of them, what the USA can call on is at least if not more than 2x what Russia can call on.
Russia lacks the ability through its diminished military to globally project force — it simply cannot move its army fast enough around the globe. And, their troops are less equipped and less trained than American counterparts.
Russia has never shown that it is capable of putting into effect the modern military principle of combined arms — no one has anywhere near what the USA can do on combined arms, but some some other nations like UK have shown that they can employ the doctrine. Russia has shown that it cannot or will not.
Then you get to quality of weapons — and quantity. The USA has Russia beat on both fronts — quality of small arms, large arms, vehicles, diversity of vehicles and arms — as well as quantity of arms and the industry to replace spent arms.
Then you get to the ability of logistics — no one has the logistical ability of the USA. It is not even close.
Then you get to the ability of real time intelligence for troop movements — no one has the ability (the French and the Chinese are probably close to the USA but even they are way behind) for real time intelligence that pierces the fog of war.
But despite all those advantages Russia has an advantage that the USA does not. Russia has the will to use nukes on their own soil — not city sized nukes (except in total desperation) but they do have and would use small scale tactical nukes on their own soil if invaded by a viable threat if they thought it necessary, and I truly do not think the USA has that will.
Likewise, the USA does not have the will to make war crimes policy — we have bad actors, true — but we do not make rape and murder and child abduction a policy of war whereas Russia does. Also, the USA does try (not always successfully) to limit civilian deaths whereas Russia considers military and civilian targets to be equals. So as a matter of brutal force of will, Russia has a greater will to do whatever is necessary to win — no matter how vile it is for them to do it.
But for overall video game simulation power scale, Russia is like an 8 year old Irish girl playing a 20 year old South Korean male in Starcraft. ~ John Hesley, Quora
Stephen Grimmer:
Ukraine has solved Russia's prison population, unemployment, juvenile delinquency, domestic violence and alcoholism problems, and they are still ungrateful?
Paul Shaw:
Soon Putin and his 40 Thieves will all be burning in Hell!
Tuapse oil refinery on fire
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VACCINES AND MORTALITY
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THE CURRENT INFLATION
Hyperinflation could wipe out Donald Trump's wealth in a heartbeat, so eliminating inflation is high on his list of priorities. And how do you eliminate inflation? It's simple.
Have a really painful recession, the kind where people lose their homes and their jobs and their life savings, and I guarantee you when the country comes out the other side, inflation will be gone. Surely a little human suffering is a small price to pay to achieve maximal benefit to millionaires and billionaires!
Why do we have inflation in the first place? Well, the economy almost collapsed during COVID. In order to save the country, first Trump and then Biden essentially printed money and distributed it to the American people, to the tune of $3.5 trillion. Nobody turned that cash down; I sure didn’t. You can't inject that kind of money into an economy without it overheating and causing inflation. The economic miracle Biden gets no credit for was the soft landing he engineered for the economy after COVID.
By rights, we should have experienced an outright depression in the wake of the economic and social disaster; instead, the economy stepped away from the precipice and we experienced a full recovery, albeit with lingering side effects.
Biden didn't let the economy collapse. He had too much empathy and concern for the American people. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have no such scruples. Why should they care? They're not going to feel any pain.
F. Scott Fitzgerald described the phenomenon in The Great Gatsby:
“They were careless people, [Donald] and [Elon]—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” ~ Marc Clamage, Quora
Rob Jamieson:
It appears Trump imagines that he can recreate the “gilded age,” which he misnamed a “golden age.” Many of his followers mistook this for the idea that low-cost manufacturing could magically be returned to America after being outsourced to low wage countries.
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COULD CHINA DEFEAT RUSSIA?
Yes. And they’re actually doing it.
A Chinese fusion reactor
Russia is a gas station with nukes. It has been that way for years before Ukraine war, things have steadily gone south since then. Their only real source of revenue are sales of natural gas and oil, with minerals being a very distant third.
Natural gas and oil face an existential threat in the form of fusion power. If we manage to make commercially viable fusion power plants, gas and oil become obsolete immediately and are phased out over the next 30 years or so. China is one of the major investors in fusion power, alongside Europe, Canada, UK and (sometimes) the USA. If any of these projects work out, Russian economic project is bust for good.
It’s likely several of them will work out in the end, some will just arrive sooner than others. The science says commercial fusion is possible and all that’s left are the engineering challenges. These are slowly being solved and eventually we’ll have fusion power, making Russia, but also the Arab world, redundant as far as the world economy is concerned.
Russia better enjoy their current level of relevance and prosperity. It goes rapidly downhill from here on. ~ Tomaž Vargazon, Quora
Arkadiusz Jenczaj:
Fusion power is not at the “if” stage but “when” stage.
Chef Finn:
The French recently held plasma at 50 million degrees Celsius for over 1100 seconds. So definitely at the “when” stage.
Tomaž Vargazon:
China is one of the nations undermining the very foundations of Russian economic viability.
They aren’t the leaders in this regard. They might have the third place, after the French and the British; they might not even have that. But they are at most a few years behind and are likely to develop fusion power domestically within a decade of the leader(s), possibly a lot less than that.
Near as I can tell, the real thing to watch out for is ITER. These EAST and WEST experiments are all feeding information into ITER that is the actual thing that will demonstrate fusion power is commercially viable.
Unless there is a massive breakthrough somewhere, ITER will be the first fusion facility that could be built into a power plant. That’s not the actual goal of the construction, but it will have all the parts we currently don’t yet know how to build one. The fact smaller experiments are doing so well means we can be hopeful ITER will outdo itself and demonstrate fusion power as viable within a year of operations.
Fusion power may be 10 years away. Fingers crossed!
Oriana:
~ ITER is an international nuclear
fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy
through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun. It is being built
next to the Cadarache facility in southern France. ~
Grave Robber
Useful Communist Chinese fusion reactors are also perpetually “20 more years” away, like everyone else's.
Unless there's some real, quantified technological breakthrough in keeping the plasma contained properly, with no contact whatsoever with any other material, including at the exhaust port, at vastly lower energy consumption, it's just not happening.
Paweł Źuk:
Even if fusion doesn’t work out, Russia might still be toast.
China has huge potential for renewable power and they can make their own nuclear fuel now, too — they just need to scale production up.
With a sufficiently overbuilt renewable+nuclear power grid, China could become an absolutely enormous exporter of synthetic fossil fuels. Russian oil isn’t that great — it’s heavy crude, difficult to extract and to transport and refine. Synthetic fuel would be much better, but it’s currently too expensive because of the power required to make it.
But with ~200 PWh of solar potential, that will not last even without the arrival of a transformative new power source. Conveniently, this also solves the problem of storing excess solar power without spamming battery farms or flooding huge areas for pumped storage — just make gas and diesel when the sun is shining, and burn it when it’s not. Sell the excess to all the rising Asian economies.
Incidentally, China’s also extremely well positioned to sell energy resources, with a huge coastline and lots of good ports. Russia can’t really compete with them in Asia.
Resident Q:
Having a source of cheap energy for Russia is not going to replace the revenue from oil and gas sales once they are no longer in demand.
Russian mafia dictatorship is based on the sales of natural resources to Europe.
That Kanpuria Guy:
The MIT “Limits to growth” study suggests “massive societal collapse” by mid 2040’s due to resource depletion, pollution and the effects of climate change.
Flilp Finodeyev:
Good luck replacing liquid hydrocarbons for aviation, marine, military, and heavy trucking fuel. Dream on.
Russia is also pursuing fusion technologies. Russia recently fired up one of its Fusion reactors.
Eduardo Henchmen:
The Arab world is already shifting their own power sources away from oil, since they understand it’s a resource that will eventually lose its market power compared to the rest.
Kush:
It's so easy for China to decimate Russia, on paper, in Quora, or in author's words — US turning to dust in 50 years, I mean the sheer overaconfidence is appalling. Please share what are you smoking bro?
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DARWIN ON RELIGION — from his diary
~ During these two years I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament, from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign etc, etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus, or the beliefs of any barbarian. The question then continually rose before my mind and it would not be banished: is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindus, would he permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva etc., as Christianity’s connected with the Old Testament? This appeared to me utterly incredible.
By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported; that the more we know about the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become; that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible to us; that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events; that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give, not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.
. . . Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the actions of natural selection than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. ~ The Voyage of Charles Darwin, 161-163.
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DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME COSTS THE ECONOMY BILLIONS
Investigations into the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster revealed that key decision-makers worked on little sleep, raising concerns that fatigue impaired their judgment. Similarly, in 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil spill resulted in a massive environmental catastrophe. The official investigation revealed the third mate, in charge of steering the ship, was running on too little sleep, among other problems.
While these specific disasters were not caused by daylight saving time, they are conclusively linked to fatigue, based on post accident investigations and reports. They underscore the well-documented dangers of sleep deprivation and fatigue-related errors. Yet a vast body of research shows that every year, the shift to daylight saving time needlessly exacerbates these risks, disrupting millions of Americans’ sleep and increasing the likelihood of accidents, health issues and fatal errors.
Imagine a world where one simple decision – keeping our clocks aligned with the natural cycle of the Sun – could save lives, prevent accidents and improve mental well-being. It’s not just about an hour of lost sleep; it’s about how small disruptions ripple through our health, our workplaces and even our children’s futures.
I’m a neurologist who specializes in sleep health. I’ve seen firsthand the negative impacts of poor sleep; it has enormous personal and economic consequences.
Yet despite overwhelming research supporting better sleep policies – such as delaying school start times to align with adolescent biology and the adoption of permanent standard time – these issues remain largely overlooked in public policy discussions.
Sleep deprivation comes with real costs
Chronic sleep deprivation does more than leave people tired. It costs an estimated US$411 billion annually in lost productivity and health care costs. Poor sleep leads to workplace mistakes, car accidents and long-term health issues that strain businesses, families and the economy as a whole.
Fortunately, there’s a fix. Smarter sleep policies – such as permanent standard time and later school start times – can boost efficiency, improve health and save lives.
Declining scores, drowsy driving and depression
Sleep-deprived teens have lower grades and test scores, more car crashes caused by drowsy driving, more alcohol and drug use and higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicide and aggressive behavior, including carrying weapons.
Along with the health benefits, studies have found that moving school start times to 8:30 am or later could add $8.6 billion to the economy within two years, partly by increased graduation rates.
While concerns about increased transportation costs exist, such as the need for additional buses or drivers due to staggered school start times, some districts have found that optimizing bus routes can offset expenses, making the change cost-neutral or even cost-saving.
For instance, a study in Boston found that reorganizing bus schedules using advanced algorithms reduced the number of buses needed and improved efficiency, which allowed high school students to start later and better align with their natural sleep cycles. This change not only supported adolescent sleep health but also saved the district $5 million annually.
More heart attacks, car wrecks and suicide
Every March, most Americans shift their clocks forward for daylight saving time. Studies show this change disrupts sleep and leads to measurable adverse outcomes, including a significant increase in heart attacks. These effects linger for days after the shift, as sleep-deprived workers struggle to adjust.
The mental health impact is also severe. Suicide rates increase in the weeks following the switch, particularly for those already vulnerable to depression.
Unlike daylight saving time, standard time follows the body’s natural circadian rhythm, which is primarily regulated by exposure to sunlight. Our internal clocks are most stable when morning light exposure occurs early in the day, signaling the body to wake up and regulate key biological functions such as hormone production, alertness and metabolism. In contrast, daylight saving time artificially extends evening light, delaying the body’s release of melatonin and making it harder to fall asleep at a biologically appropriate time.
Studies have found that adopting permanent standard time could prevent up to 5,000 suicides annually by reducing seasonal depression, decrease errors, injuries and absenteeism in the workplace and make roads safer, potentially preventing 1,300 traffic deaths each year.
Times are changing
The U.S. tried permanent daylight saving time in 1974. It was so unpopular that Congress repealed it within nine months.
Russia tried it too, in 2011, but switched back three years later. The United Kingdom dropped permanent daylight saving time in 1971 after three years, and Portugal in 1996 after four. All of these countries found that the switch caused widespread public dissatisfaction, health concerns, more morning car accidents and disrupted work schedules. No country is currently on year-round daylight saving time.
These examples provide real-world evidence that permanent DST is undesirable due to public dissatisfaction, safety concerns and negative health effects – all three countries attempted it and ultimately reversed course. Since 2022, there has been renewed debate, largely driven by former U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s Sunshine Protection Act, which aims to make DST permanent.
However, the name is misleading because it doesn’t “protect” sunshine but rather eliminates critical morning light, which is essential for regulating circadian rhythms. Major health organizations, along with the National Safety Council, strongly oppose permanent DST due to its well-documented risks.
There are signs that suggest the U.S. is finally waking up to these problems. Out of 13,000 school districts, 1,000 have independently adopted later school start times. California and Florida have enacted laws requiring high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. California’s mandate went into effect in 2022, and Florida’s is set to begin in 2026.
Permanent standard time and later school start times are not radical ideas. They’re practical, evidence-based solutions based on human biology. Implementing these changes nationally would require congressional action. However, current federal law already allows states to adopt permanent standard time, as Arizona and Hawaii have done, setting a precedent for the rest of the country.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/daylight-saving-time-and-early-school-start-times-cost-the-economy-billions/
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WHICH TIME SHOULD BE MADE PERMANENT?
While more than 60% of countries around the world follow standard time all year, most of the United States (with the exception of Arizona, Hawaii, the Navajo Nation and the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands) shifts between standard time and daylight saving time (DST) each year.
Daylight saving time starts in the U.S. on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. States that observe daylight saving time set their clocks forward one hour so that the evenings have an extra hour of daylight, and the mornings are darker when the days are shorter in the winter months.
However, many people, especially sleep physicians, question the impact that daylight saving time has on health.
“There has always been a debate in regard to daylight saving time,” says Phyllis C. Zee, MD, PhD, sleep medicine specialist and chief of Sleep Medicine in the Department of Neurology at Northwestern Medicine. “Science has evolved over the last decade to show the transition between standard time and DST is associated with bad health consequences. The big question on the table right now is, should it be permanent standard time or permanent DST?”
Dr. Zee shares why she is in favor of getting rid of daylight saving time and moving to year-round standard time.
What Is Daylight Saving Time?
DST is the time between March and November when most U.S. states, including Illinois, turn the clocks forward one hour. A few states, including Hawaii and Arizona, do not change from standard time.
In states that follow DST, on the day in March when people “spring forward,” many will lose one full hour of sleep. This one hour seems harmless, but it can wreak havoc on the body for days, and even months.
Daylight Saving Time: A Potential Barrier to Sleep
Sleep health depends on the balance between two processes:
Sleep homeostasis: the desire to sleep that builds from the moment you wake up through bedtime.
Circadian rhythm: the body’s natural 24-hour biological cycles, including the sleep-wake cycle that regulates the timing of sleep at night and wakefulness during the day.
Your circadian rhythm is set by the timing and amount of bright light exposure a person gets during the day. “With DST, between March and November, your body is exposed to less morning light and more evening light, which can throw off your circadian rhythm,” states Dr. Zee.
When your internal clock is out of sync with the sun’s clock, you can feel tired in the morning and awake in the evening. By throwing off your circadian rhythm, you also throw off your sleep homeostasis. As a result, your sleep health is at stake, along with a number of functions in your body, including your metabolism and mental health.
“If we adopt permanent standard time, our internal clocks will more likely be in sync with the rotation of the Earth, seasonal changes and the sun clock,” says Dr. Zee.
Daylight Saving Time: A Broader Health Hazard
“We know that sleep deprivation is bad for your physical and cognitive health,” notes Dr. Zee. She explains that the transition to daylight saving time can create short-term health problems — sleep issues, fatigue and changes in blood pressure — that feel like traveling to another time zone, or prolonged jet lag. “Late starters,” or those who wake up later in the morning, as well as teenagers, who tend to be night owls, are more vulnerable to these effects because they already sleep through more hours of natural morning light. DST can further throw off their circadian rhythms.
Additionally, daylight saving time can have long-term health effects. Studies show that DST is linked to:
Depression
Slowed metabolism
Weight gain
Cluster headaches
Daylight saving time has also been linked to increased risk of developing certain disorders, from cognitive and mental health issues to digestive and heart diseases. And, if you already have these conditions, DST can make them worse.
During the week after the shift to DST, research shows an associated rise in:
Cardiovascular disease, with a higher risk of heart attacks
Injuries, including a spike in fatal car accidents
Stroke rate
Mental health and cognitive issues
Digestive and immune-related diseases, such as colitis
Steps to Saving Sleep During Daylight Saving Time
Leading up to and during daylight saving time, protect your circadian rhythm and your health by:
Keeping a sleep routine: Aim for seven to nine hours of sleep each night. The night before DST starts, go to bed one hour earlier than normal to prepare. This is an especially important technique for parents with young children.
Chasing the morning light: For one to two days leading up to the switch to DST, get outside in the morning. More natural morning light can help preserve your circadian rhythm. Throughout DST, spend as much time outside in the mornings as you can. Instead of looking at your phone in the morning, try to take in as much sunlight as possible.
Eliminating sleep disturbances: Avoid excess amounts of caffeine, alcohol and blue light exposure (from screens) one to two hours before bedtime.
Exercising in the morning: Activity raises your body temperature, which can increase your wakefulness and help reset your internal clock.
https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/healthy-tips/daylight-savings-time-your-health
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TRAVELING AS AN AMERICAN UNDER TRUMP 2
Traveling abroad for the first time since November, I saw pity in the eyes of strangers when they heard my American accent. Pity, empathy, and utter confusion, as if to convey “What the hell is happening to your country?” with a mere glance or a quiet sigh.
Believe me, I’m American and I’m just as confused as you are.
There was no adulation for the US on this trip, a far cry from the standard enthusiastic response to hearing I’m from California. In nearly five weeks, I didn’t hear a single “Oh, I’d love to go to America” or “I have a cousin in Boston I’d like to visit.”
From taxi drivers to baristas, commuters in the tube or customers at Costa, strangers expressed their condolences, as if the US has entered hospice care – slowly losing its faculties, its freedom, its rights, and its voice. Shutting down until it surrenders to a higher power as the soul exits its body, and we’re left alone to mourn the loss – helpless, sad, shocked, and in a state of disbelief.
“How do you feel about Trump?” my Uber driver asked me en route to Heathrow, sussing out my political stance before regaling me with the latest laundry list of lunacy from the US.
The five stages of grief flash through my disillusioned American brain – I rounded denial a few weeks ago and now I’m toggling between anger and depression. I’ll never choose acceptance, and is there any bargaining with crazy?
“Ugh, don’t remind me. I have to go back home today,” I muttered, slumping down in my seat after releasing a Herculean sigh.
“America seems so angry,” he continued. “All the guns, the mass shootings, and now Trump and his henchmen. How is everyone coping?” he asked.
It’s a good question. “I’ve heard everything from bingeing on chocolate, cheap wine, Cheetos, and Netflix to taking up knitting or mahjong, or adopting a cat. Anything to preserve our sanity.”
“My family escaped Kosovo in the late 90s,” he said. “We lived in a one-room flat in Glasgow and my brother still lives there, but my mother died back home in the war.”
My heart plunged into my stomach. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Here I am prattling on about how ‘bad’ things are in the United States and I’m not going home to a war, famine, or mass displacement … ”
His eyes searched to meet mine in the rear-view mirror as we pulled up to the departure gate.
“This is true. Not yet, anyway … but the seed has been planted in your country and so, we are afraid for you.”
Yes, a very orange seed.
His voice was consoling.
I was struck by his compassionate tone, his need to make sense of the chaos from across the pond, and his genuine concern for not just me, but for America as a whole – something I’d never experienced before in such abundance while traveling. From Inverness to London, I found solace in the voices of strangers who wanted to talk about what’s going on (most of whom were far more versed in US politics than the average American).
“Do you think the UK would adopt me?” I asked.
He let out a gentle chuckle, pulled out my suitcase from the boot, and reached out to shake my hand.
“Take care of yourself,” he whispered. “Keep your family and friends close and be kind to your neighbors.”
This kind of human connection when you’re far from home is incredibly comforting, not just for a solo menopausal traveler prone to bouts of tears and emotional outbursts, but for an American headed back to the US; and for the first time, feeling more terrified about the next four years than of flying.
I’ve always been slightly embarrassed as an American abroad, cringing at the sight (and sound) of fellow citizens behaving badly, and I often contemplate saying I’m Canadian. I do my best to blend in, to respect the culture, and most of all to read the room – anything to avoid being labeled as an “ugly American” (arrogant, crude, self-absorbed, and ignorant).
But it seems that in the second coming of Trump, the ugliest of all Americans has trumped even the most hideous stereotypes. Because, really, what could be uglier?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/09/traveling-american-trump-essay
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LIBERAL THERAPISTS, CONSERVATIVE CLIENTS
The relationship between liberal therapists and conservative clients has demanded a slight revision of therapeutic calculus. A few said they find themselves revolted by their clients’ beliefs but figure out how to work with them effectively despite the fraught dynamic.
None of the therapists I interviewed said they try to change clients’ political views, but therapy is often about getting people to think about problems in their lives differently – and sometimes there’s overlap.
One therapist I spoke with used the example of some of her clients’ fear and hatred of transgender people. She asks them where those fears stem from, because they are often passed on generationally.
“What kind of things were you taught as a child? If you heard your parents talking about this – do all of your values align with your parents’ values? Have you ever broken from them? Will you feel rejected by your family or community if you think differently?” she asks.
As therapy progresses, fears are often unlocked, and some of those questions are answered. “Even if the client isn’t focused on the political aspect, we can work on some of those themes, like fear, without getting into politics,” she said.
Another liberal practitioner who took on a Trump-supporting client had doubts about their potential for growth in part because of the latter’s very religious, conservative beliefs. The client was upset with their church’s liberal positions on some issues, and that was causing a problem in their life.
The therapist encouraged the client to talk with church leadership and to try to understand a different viewpoint. “I didn’t look at it as an opportunity or say, ‘Oh, I got a chance to try to win them over,’” she said. “It was, ‘Oh, you have this conflict, and maybe if you can see another perspective that would help you.’”
Sometimes, the roles are reversed and fear is on the other foot. A practitioner who fears fascism and societal collapse, and has stocked up on supplies in case “the shit hits the fan”, said the money she makes taking on conservative clients is worth it.
“You know, I’m billing $90 an hour, and I can listen to that bullshit for 50 minutes for $90,” she said. “I feel gross saying that because I do think my [Trump-supporting] clients are doing something awful, and are the personification of the problems I deal with.”
A website, ConservativeCounselors.com, highlights the work of conservative therapists around the country. The Guardian sent emails to five of them, but only one responded in a brief email.
“Conservative therapists have formed a pretty tight group, and many of us have shared that you’ve reached out for an interview,” the therapist, Maria Coppersmith, said. “The general consensus is that the Guardian is so ultra-liberal, that any conservative therapist that shares his or her viewpoint is likely to have their words twisted and will be highly misrepresented. You might get a naive newbie therapist that will agree to an interview, but I am respectfully declining.”
SCREW THAT, THIS IS VERY POLITICAL
To describe what’s occurring in the interplay between therapy and politics, Bill Doherty, co-founder of Braver Angels, a non-profit that works toward depolarization, borrowed a term from practitioners in destabilized Latin American countries: political stress.
“It’s the anxiety and psychological preoccupation that stems from what’s happening in our political situation, how government officials are behaving and how we’re treating each other when we disagree,” Doherty said. “The challenge is therapists have their own viewpoints – they vote – this is not external to their lives. So the major challenge that’s now happening is therapists trying to keep their own political leanings from influencing clients.”
Broadly speaking, therapists say the profound shock and sharp sense of fear that was almost universal among liberal clients after Trump’s first win has been replaced with variations of numbness, hopelessness and resignation.
“After Trump won in 2016 everyone was like, ‘Oh my God what’s going to happen? What are we going to do?’ And during Covid they were like, ‘Oh my God, there are no adults in Washington! What are we going to do?’” a therapist said. Now his clients are much more despondent.
“They’re like, ‘Fuck it, let it burn,’” he said.
Williams said there was indeed less “fear and scrambling” in November 2024, but it has been more difficult for trans clients this time around. Many are running against the clock to make changes to identification cards, birth certificates, passports and other documents.
Similarly, a therapist who works with federal employees says there is a broad sense of “whiplash”. The administration has also attacked minorities and women employed at federal agencies, claiming that they are unqualified and were only hired due to DEI initiatives. That takes a toll on some clients, who may end up questioning how people view their worth.
And then there’s intra-family strife. One therapist certified to practice in Michigan and California said familial stress is greater in Michigan, a purple, more religious state. His clients feel a dissonance: “They say, ‘I love my parents, and they’re showing up for me, but then I also know that they voted for this person who’s completely appalling.’”
START HONORING THE NUMBNESS
Each therapist who spoke with the Guardian said anger and numbness over the second administration are initially appropriate responses. “Anger is a protective force,” Williams added.
But to help his clients to settle their nervous systems, he directs them inward: “In the stillness they can access the greater wisdom – usually the message is there of what’s going to be supportive to them.” He also urges them to “go to nature and connect to systems older and larger than this moment, and put energy toward something life-affirming and creative”.
Another therapist has clients accept this new reality. “Normalize that there is this threatening energy that is closing down certain civil liberties and trying to change social norms,” he said, adding that he also urges people to be curious about their numbness.
This doesn’t mean embracing being inactive, however. “Find ways to start honoring the numbness, while starting to move energy, whether that’s physical movement, or getting out, seeing people and finding light in what feels like a dark time for some folks, whether that’s through art, music or nature,” he added.
Doherty recommends what he calls “buffering”: limiting intake of news and conversations with friends and family about politics. That’s an especially helpful strategy for couples he counsels who have differing political viewpoints. Many still make it work, Doherty said.
Most therapists tell their clients to focus on what they can control. Some suggest putting energy into mutual aid projects or partaking in local political action. One therapist is seeing her siblings more, making herself an ally to trans folks. She also likes to listen to the Moth story hour as a healthy escape from reality.
However, another therapist pointed to a meme in which a person is lying in the road, about to get hit by a large truck. In the meme, a nearby therapist waves, shouting: “Just focus on the things you can control!” She finds the advice to be ludicrous. “I feel like an asshole as a therapist sometimes, so I try to not say shit like that.”
Liberal therapists often face many of the same fears as their clients. Williams recounted how he worked with some of his youngest clients who were “heartbroken”, and how there was synergy in that process.
“What I tried to do in those situations was reconnect them to: ‘We’re here, we’re alive, there’s a purpose,’” Williams said. “I actually left those sessions feeling more purposeful, and feeling more power from what I witnessed after reconnecting them with themselves.”
Another therapist said she felt a similar energy by opening up about her political views and fears: “It feels more like we’re in this together,” she said.
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/mar/07/therapist-trump-politics-mental-health
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ANORA (THE OSCAR-WINNING MOVIE) — COMEDY OR TRAGEDY?
‘Anora’ is a wild, funny, and strikingly realistic film. It takes its time to build momentum, but once it does, it charges ahead at full throttle until the very end. Beyond its humor, the film carries a deep sense of heartbreak and profound sadness. Each character is intricately detailed, with everyone getting their moment in the spotlight. Sharp editing and masterful direction keep you engaged throughout its runtime. While exploring the delusional world of extreme wealth, ‘Anora’ also delves into the life of a broken woman—one whose profession demands a carefree façade that few ever see through.
The film follows Ani (Mikey Madison), an escort from Brooklyn. When Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the wayward son of a Russian oligarch, visits the club where she works, the owner asks her to entertain him since she knows some Russian. Vanya becomes a regular, seeking Ani out for frequent encounters, and eventually offers her $15,000 to spend a week with him. During their time together, Vanya takes Ani and his friends on a trip to Las Vegas. There, he confesses that he wants to marry her to secure a green card, ensuring he never has to return to his home country. Ani agrees, and they tie the knot in a chapel—unaware of the storm that awaits them once Vanya’s parents find out. What starts as a spontaneous decision soon spirals into chaos, with life-changing consequences for Ani.
This film carries a certain infectious energy that keeps you hooked. At its core, ‘Anora’ is a tragic story, but Sean Baker wraps it in layers of comedy and drama, making it both entertaining and deeply affecting. This unconventional Cinderella tale will jolt you, make you laugh, and leave you profoundly sad.
Baker masterfully explores economic inequality, turning the marriage between an escort and a wealthy heir into a gripping power struggle. The film also sheds light on a side of New York rarely seen on screen—a world where people struggle to make ends meet, trapped in a suffocating reality. Amid the humor and chaos, this film serves as a sharp commentary on survival, privilege, and the illusions we create to escape our circumstances.
While ‘Anora’ benefits from Sean Baker’s exceptional direction, his job is made easier by a cast delivering outstanding performances. Nearly every actor is in top form, elevating the film with their presence. Mikey Madison is simply phenomenal in the title role, delivering a performance that will be remembered for years. Her transformation—from a carefree woman thrilled to earn $15,000 for a week to someone utterly powerless as her husband’s family fights to annul the marriage—is mesmerizing.
Yura Borisov delivers a subtly powerful performance as Igor, conveying deep emotion through his silence. However, the true scene-stealer is Karren Karagulian as Toros, the man hired by Vanya’s parents to keep an eye on Vanya in New York. His energy perfectly matches the film’s rhythm, making it all the more baffling that his performance was overlooked by the Academy. He unquestionably deserved to be the film’s seventh nominee.
For the first 45 minutes, not much happens—the film focuses on Vanya meeting Ani, their frequent encounters, and their carefree attempts to have a good time. But the moment Igor and Garnik, Toros’s men, arrive at the mansion to pressure Vanya into annulling the marriage, the film takes a sharp turn. Tension and action skyrocket, and from that point on, it becomes relentless.
Midway through, this drama grips you tightly and never lets go. There’s no slowdown, no moment to catch your breath. It tears apart the fairytale illusion, delivering a riveting and electrifying experience. What starts as a whimsical adventure soon turns into a fierce battle for control, making ‘Anora’ a riveting and fantastic watch.
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AN ANTI-“PRETTY WOMAN”
In an interview with IndieWire, Sean Baker was asked about the similarities between his film Anora (2024) and Pretty Woman (1990), and he responded: “There are definitely similarities between this film and Pretty Woman. Honestly, I didn’t even pick up on that until halfway through production, and somebody called it out, and I was like, ‘Oh, okay. Yeah, I see that.' But I didn’t want it in any way to affect me. I didn’t want to be influenced by it. So I decided not to revisit it, and to tell you the truth, I still haven’t revisited it, so I haven’t seen it since 1990. I’m going to wait, let all the dust settle from Anora, and then I’ll rent it next, whenever.”
Baker’s statement underlines just how ubiquitous Pretty Woman was to popular culture and its perception of sex workers. It perpetuated the “hooker with a heart of gold” stereotype and romanticized a transaction between a man and a woman that only exists because of the commodification of sex through capitalism.
Sure, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere have fantastic chemistry, and there is something inherently compelling about seeing them both drop their façades to fall in love, but ultimately it’s all a farce. In real life, sex workers face stigmatization, often working in dangerous conditions. Baker isn’t new to depicting this line of work, most famously with his breakout film Tangerine (2015). With Anora, intentionally or not, he has made an anti-Pretty Woman which is more grounded and realistic, yet not wholly devoid of empathy and compassion.
The central theme running through Anora is transactions, whether with love, money, sex, or respect. Every character in the film is trading something precious to them to get something they are missing. Vanya is trading money for friends and intimacy, and Anora is trading sex for money and love, but eventually, they both run out of resources.
In Pretty Woman, the main characters are protected from the realities of their respective stations in life by Hollywood gloss, reinforced by the fact that Pretty Woman takes place in LA. Anora is established in New York City, and that grittiness and occasional crassness seep into every aspect of the aesthetic. Anora herself is brash and bossy, refusing to be disrespected and hardened by a life of objectification. Conversely, Vanya is flighty and immature, existing solely through impulsive decisions and whatever is easiest for him.
One of Baker’s strengths as a director is his ability to focus on characters who usually slip through the cracks. Igor (Yura Borisov), a low-level hired hand, ends up being one of the most complex characters in the film. Usually, so-called “goon” characters are incidental, existing as a two-dimensional trope. Still, Igor ends up being the audience surrogate in a way, a sane person in a whirlwind of chaos. How his relationship slowly evolves with Anora is fascinating, and it goes surprising places.
Some might say that the relationship between Anora and Vanya feels rushed and underdeveloped, but that is the whole point. It was established on a shaky, superficial foundation to begin with, and realistically, it crumbles at the slightest agitation. The bulk of the narrative is concerned with the fallout of their marriage and how it affects everyone around them, often becoming a comedy with its sheer insanity.
The last twenty minutes is where it punches the viewer in the guts. Anora exists in a universe where nobody does anything out of the kindness of their hearts and is unable to perceive a situation where she gets something without giving up a piece of herself. In the quiet after the storm, when she’s left alone, her sobs are the only thing left for us to hear.
https://www.spoilerfreemoviesleuth.com/2024/11/love-as-currency-in-late-stage.html
…
Winner at the Directors’ Guild, Producers’ Guild, Critics’ Choice, Cannes Film Festival and Best Picture Oscar frontrunner “Anora” may have a similar concept to “Pretty Woman” but with one helluva difference.
Oscar nominee Sean Baker’s raucous, raunchy rom-com revolves around Anora – a.k.a. Ani (Oscar nominee Mikey Madison) – a tough-talking 23 year-old stripper from Brighton Beach in South Brooklyn, who hooks up with 21 year-old Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the obscenely spoiled son of a Russian oligarch.
They meet at the tacky HQ KONY Midtown Manhattan strip club where Ivan – nicknamed Vanya – specifically requests the services of a Russian-speaking lap dancer. What starts out as a drug-fueled, transactional sex worker/client relationship in a private room soon progresses to wild New Year’s Eve party that culminates in an impromptu wedding in Las Vegas.
Ani’s thrilled with the accoutrements of this whirlwind romance, particularly the cash payment of $15,000 a week as his personal escort, a sparkling 4-carat diamond engagement ring and long sable coat, while Vanya relishes the idea that this quickie U.S. ‘green card’ union will enable him to escape parental control and become an American citizen.
But when Ivan’s irate folks in Moscow discover their precious son/heir has married a prostitute, all hell breaks loose. Specifically, there’s a remarkable home-invasion scene in which Toros (Karren Karagulian), an Armenian ‘fixer,’ and his two muscle men (Vache Tovmasyan, Oscar nominee Yuri Borisov) try to capture Ani and Ivan to facilitate an immediate annulment.
While feckless Ivan flees, feisty Ani turns ferociously feral, screaming uncontrollably and utterly terrorizing the thugs as she tears apart the luxurious waterfront McMansion. (The palatial Mill Basin property actually once belonged to Russian billionaire Galina Anisimova.)
In interviews, writer/director Sean Baker, who favors making movies about bawdy, brash sex workers (“Tangerine,” “The Florida Project,” “Red Rocket”) often mentions that he was loosely inspired by Federico Fellini’s “Nights of Cabria” (1957), starring Giulietta Masina as the determined prostitute who – at the conclusion – sheds a single tear.
*
Sean Baker's films are all about people living in the margins of society — the neglected, the poor, the invisibles, the underprivileged. What's admirable in what he does is that his films show them as human beings with dreams and aspirations however big and small they are. His subjects are always borderline (un)interesting. There might be a glimpse of beauty in banality. But is it enough to be a subject for a film that costs millions of dollars and all the talents and effort and time? I mean, a lot of shitty, frivolous movies are made all the time. Maybe I'm bitter with everything that's going on in the world. But I have zero interests in seeing an exotic dancer from Coney Island falling in love with a bratty rich Russian kid in a Cinderella type scenario, same as I have zero interest in seeing rich and famous people as subjects in movies.
Mikey Madison plays Ani, an exotic dancer who hit it off with Ivan (Mark Edelstein), a sweet but absurdly rich kid who is her patron one night. Ani wants to keep everything professional, charging him by the night. But once he asks her to be his girlfriend for a week, the money and the mansion and the drugs and champaign are too good to pass up. Better/worse, they fly to Vegas to party and get married on an impulse. When they come back to New York, Ivan's handler, Toros (Karren Karagulian), a middle-aged Armenian, an employee of his oligarchic Russian parents, gets into a full damage control mode. Ivan's parents are flying in, Toros will need to annul the marriage with some court connections Ivan's parents have.
There's no story here for a movie that's over two hours long. Everything is cliché. So, what do we watch in the next hour and a half? Ani freaks out at Toros and his goons Igor and Garnick, Ivan flees from the Brighton Beach mansion. It's all about them going through the Coney Island neighborhood looking for Ivan.
There are some fine visceral scenes that things get very physical and spontaneous. And I love the local details Baker inserts here and there and his direction with many non-actors too. Anora almost reminds me of Good Time and Uncut Gems of Safdie brothers in terms of immediacy and their peasantry. But within the context of the war in Ukraine and demonstrations in Georgia, al Assad fleeing Syria and atrocities in Gaza and Trump's second term (and NYers know about Trump's relations with the Russians in Brighton Beach), Baker doesn't seem to read the room with Anora.
Soon as Ani realizes that there's not going to be a fairytale ending, the grim reality besets — we are duped again by the rich. It doesn't matter if we have dreams and aspirations. We are just playthings for the rich. And that is not a good thing to be reminded of at this climate.
https://www.dustinchang.com/2024/12/the-rich-strikes-again.html
Oriana:
One expects a movie about a sex worker to have a “message” — particularly if that movie happens to win a “best movie” Oscar — rather than be a fast-paced, shallow entertainment. In a movie about a prostitute who still has romantic dreams, the audience might learn about what leads some young women to become prostitutes. But Anora exists only in the present tense; we learn nothing about the protagonist’s background.
Still, Anora is hardly a comedy. The immature (to put it mildly) Russian husband, Vania, is ultimately sickening. He is not just empty-headed, but also seems devoid of feelings, of anything that might be called “soul.” Anora’s slick professional skill at seducing men into going with her to a “private room” also made me wonder if she might be damaged beyond repair. For a brief moment she’s allowed to dream of a different life, but of course it ends in tears — in the last scene she is literally sobbing.
Vania’s oligarch parents show us, again and again, that the world is ruled by money. But that’s true only for those who fail to develop a more satisfying kind of wealth — a rich mind. The objection might be that mental and artistic development takes education, which takes money —but Anora comes from the kind of background where the future tense simple simply doesn’t exist, and concepts like education, goals, or inner life likewise don’t exist. The movie never shows us Anora’s background — as if being a “sex worker” happened to be self-explanatory.
Early in the movie, one of Anora’s potential clients asks her, “Do your parents know what you do for a living?” But Anora’s parents remain a mystery. All we learn is that one of her grandmothers spoke Russian. Anora's looks suggest some Asian roots, possibly Japanese, but that is never explored. She seems to have no family, no one to turn to. The one man who shows her some tenderness is Igor, who explains that his name means “warrior,” while hers mean “shining bright” — implying certain high ideals — but Anora can’t really respond to Igor’s unexpected protectiveness, since the only way she knows how to relate to men is transactional sex.
The movie is strictly in the present tense; there is no past, there is no future. But the character I identify with most is precisely that anonymous man who asks Anora if her parents know what she does for a living. She shrugs off the question, but it continues to haunt me: how come this young woman is so “un-parented”? Is she an orphan? Was she sexually abused as a child? We never learn, and the movie, while certainly well constructed and well acted, leaves me unsatisfied.
Or rather, both satisfied and unsatisfied. Satisfied because it's a very interesting movie: not a boring minute. Unsatisfied, because I'd like it to dig deeper into these fascinating characters and their life circumstances. But I must admit that Anora and Igor are still with me. I suppose that's the power of great acting — the power of art.
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WANT TO RAISE SUCCESSFUL KIDS?
1. MAKE THEM DO CHORES
Researchers at La Trobe University in Australia recently set out to determine whether children who do chores at home would develop better working memory, inhibition, and other success-predicting behaviors.
They broke chores into three categories: self-care, other care, and pet care. Writing in the peer-reviewed Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, they said their studies showed that kids who did self-care and other-care chores were in fact more likely to exhibit better academic performances and problem-solving skills.
But pet-care chores did nothing either way for the kids’ later development.
Why not? Maybe it’s because pet care chores aren’t as strenuous as other chores, or maybe because the kids didn’t really view the kinds of things you have to do to take care of a pet dog (walk it, feed it, etc.) to be work.
The bottom line, however? Make your kids do chores. They might not love the idea to start with, but you’ve got science on your side.
2. TEACH THEM TO BE POLITE
This one focuses on three specific words: please, thank you, and you’re welcome.
Teaching kids to say “please” when they ask for something can reinforce their tendency to be polite, which makes them more persuasive when they’re older. Teaching them to say “thank you” habitually encourages gratitude, which stimulates happiness and makes stress easier to deal with.
And teaching them to say “you’re welcome” reinforces confidence by emphasizing that the things they do for others are worthy of thanks. (This is especially true when you juxtapose “you’re welcome” with other things people say in response to “thank you,” like “no worries!” or “no problem!”)
3. WORK ON THEIR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Children who develop emotional intelligence also develop “a higher chance of graduating, getting a good job, and just being happy,” according to Rachael Katz and Helen Shwe Hadani, authors of The Emotionally Intelligent Child: Effective Strategies for Parenting Self-Aware, Cooperative, and Well-Balanced Kids.
There are many things you can do to develop emotional intelligence (many more listed here), but at the outset, model your good thinking and use of emotions for them, ask them for their ideas, and try not to judge.
Oh, and remember that kids are just that: kids. It’s unfair often to expect them to react and respond to things like adults would (or at least, should!).
4. STEER THEM TOWARD VIDEO GAMES
Wait, what? Tell them to play video games?
Yes, indeed. A new study out of Europe that used a “massive” amount of data determined that kids who spend an above-average amount of time playing them wind up with higher IQs than kids who spend their screen time watching videos or scrolling through social media.
Kids today spent a massive amount of time glued to screens, on average. This study of 5,000 children at least suggests that if they’re going to be using screens that much, the higher the percentage of that time they spend on video games, the better.
5. HELP THEM FIND THEIR PASSION(S)
This study was fascinating. Researchers in Scandinavia wanted to determine whether passion, grit, or mindset was the most important factor in predicting young people’s success, specifically in an athletic context.
In short, passion turned out to be far more predictive of whether kids were successful; while mindset and grit might have predicted that young people would continue attempting to succeed, it was passion that best predicted whether they actually would.
“For people who are the best of the best in their field, passion is absolutely the biggest factor. It’s the essential key to success,” one researcher said.
So, when kids are kids, let them explore different things to determine the ones that they’re truly passionate about. That’s where they’re most likely to become the absolute best in their field.
https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/want-to-raise-successful-kids-science-says-these-5-habits-make-it-happen.html
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WE CRAVE BOTH CONNECTION AND AUTONOMY
Personal autonomy is abundant in the modern world. As a result, many of us get what we want but not what we need
Most of us know people who struggle to be happy despite having it all. I remember visiting my friend Steve after he struck it rich, and being blown away by his cushy existence. As I wandered through his extraordinary home, I told him that his life was over the top. Steve admitted that it seemed that way but then explained to me – with a straight face – that it really wasn’t. While I nibbled on his caviar and brie, I learned that the cook didn’t get along with the maid, he and his wife couldn’t agree on where to go on their next vacation, his daughter was waitlisted at the fancy kindergarten, and the list went on. By the time he finished, I felt so sorry for him that I offered to trade places, if only to sort out this vexing cook/maid problem.
At the time, I marveled at Steve’s inability to see his own good fortune but, later, as I was reading Frank Marlowe’s wonderful book The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania (2010), it occurred to me that I’m just like Steve. And so are you. Anthropological data suggest that we’re no happier (and possibly a lot less happy) than the remaining hunter-gatherers, who eke out a living much like our distant ancestors did. The comforts, safety and ease of modern existence make most of us the equivalent of multimillionaires by comparison with them, but our hunter-gatherer ancestors were probably happier than we are. How could that be?
There’s more than one answer to this question, but an important part of the story lies deep in our history. Based on evolutionary theory and psychological research, I have come to believe that human evolution has led to a pair of competing psychological needs that must be balanced in order for individuals to experience lasting happiness.
These needs reflect two key goals our distant ancestors had to achieve: to bond with others for their mutual protection, and to develop personal skills to make them valuable to their group and potential mates. In service of these goals, our ancestors evolved two corresponding needs that still drive us today: from childhood through to old age, humans have a need for connection and a need for autonomy.
In developments that I recount in my book The Social Leap (2018), after local climate events forced our ancestors out of the trees 6 million years ago, they eventually banded together on the savannah for safety. Their increased cooperation and sociality placed us on a new evolutionary trajectory, which ensured that our most fundamental psychological need was for connection. By connection, I mean cooperating, forming social bonds, establishing long-term romantic relationships, and attaching oneself to a group.
The need for connection played a central role in human evolution, as it enabled us to cooperate to solve problems that we were too small, weak or ignorant to solve on our own. Hunter-gatherers who couldn’t see the need for connection soon became lion chow. As a result, their tendency to go it alone was largely removed from the gene pool, and their remains served as a vivid reminder to the folks back home that survival requires connection. Genes pushed our ancestors to connect, their cultural rules demanded connection, parental socialization reinforced the message, and daily life reminded them that they couldn’t live without it.
Connection was a matter of life or death then, and it remains critical now. Some forms of connection are new (social media), others are as old as the species itself (having a meal with friends), but whether you’re an introvert or extravert, connection is fundamental to life satisfaction. When we work together, offer or seek advice, attend a party, sit side by side with a friend while studying or watching a movie, or even smile when we meet the eye of a stranger, we feel the imperative of connection. When we bask in the comfort and camaraderie of old friends, we’re feeling the product of 6 million years of evolution.
At the same time, the need for connection was supplemented by a need for autonomy. By autonomy I mean self-governance, choosing a path based on your own needs, preferences or skills, and making independent decisions. Connection makes humans effective in their struggles against predators and a harsh environment, but autonomy allows a person to increase their usefulness to others. How does autonomy serve this role? By motivating us to pursue domains in which we have the best prospects.
Humans are unique in the extent of our capacity to envision the future. One of the most important tasks our large brain allows us to do is to imagine what might happen later today, tomorrow or next year, and then prepare for it. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of our preparations is when we change ourselves – when one decides what sort of person one needs to be in the imagined future and then sets about becoming that person.
The capacity to transform one’s actual self into an aspirational self is a large part of the reason we evolved a need for autonomy. From early childhood, a person’s sense of self becomes focused on personal attributes that seem to have the best chance of leading to success. Domains in which one stands out in a positive way often become central aspects of one’s self-definition.
When these abilities become central to someone’s self-concept, they start to occupy the person’s mind, they become more fun and interesting, and one is likely to exercise them whenever possible. It is this dedication to one’s craft, born of autonomy and the desire to shape one’s own destiny, that motivates people to put in the hard work necessary to develop their talents.
While forming social bonds with others satisfies the need for connection, it can also constrain a person’s choices by requiring them to consider the consequences of their actions for others. If those constraints are strict, they threaten autonomy. In contrast, prioritizing one’s own goals and preferences without any regard for the needs and desires of others would maximize autonomy, but make one unpalatable as a relationship partner or group member.
So, while connection and autonomy both make us happy, they must be balanced against each other. Many of us today have shifted to lifestyles that emphasize autonomy and downplay social obligations and, in doing so, we have unwittingly sacrificed the connections that keep our life in balance.
Examples of this can be seen in the growing tendency of Americans to live alone, and in reports of people having fewer close friends. Autonomy without sufficient connection – the dynamic that characterizes modern society – creates what I call sad success stories: people whose achievements feel hollow and unsatisfying because they don’t have a tight network of friends to share them with.
Why this modern emphasis on autonomy? Connection used to be more of a necessity, and autonomy more of a luxury. In principle, individuals had an opportunity for autonomy every time the group made a decision they didn’t like but, in reality, people couldn’t just do their own thing. When it came time to break camp, if everyone else wanted to go north and you wanted to go south, you would have almost always gone north because it was too dangerous to strike out on your own. Life for our hunter-gatherer ancestors was necessarily filled with compromise.
In our modern world, opportunities for autonomy are like fat, salt and sugar – we evolved to crave them when they were rare but now they’re ubiquitous. Increasing wealth, urbanization and education, along with dramatic increases in the types of occupations and entertainment a person can choose from, mean that people today not only have choices that our ancestors couldn’t dream of, we also no longer depend on close connections for survival the way we once did. As a result, I argue, the evolved tendency to seek autonomy when one has the chance has become a form of miswanting that has seriously disrupted the balance between these two needs.
Where once people were physically fit and highly connected because they spent their lives hungry and threatened, now many of us are out of shape and highly autonomous because we live in comfort and safety. Just because the modern world allows us to live a certain way doesn’t mean it makes us happy. We may get what we want when we prioritize autonomy, but not what we need.
How do we rebalance? The key is to incorporate connection into our lives in ways that induce the least friction. I started doing this myself with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been easy to maintain, because my new protocol is no harder than my old one and a lot more fun. I simply looked at all my activities and, for each one that was conducted alone, I asked myself how I might make it more social. By way of example, my sister and I both like to do the New York Times crossword puzzles, so we started doing them together even though she lives halfway around the globe. She calls once she’s made her morning coffee, Thursday through Sunday, I put in my earbuds, and we chitchat as we do the puzzle together. I love my sister dearly, but we used to talk only a few times a month because she lives so far away and we’re both so busy. The beauty of our joint-puzzle party is that it doesn’t require any additional time; we do something together that we used to do alone.
In developments that I recount in my book The Social Leap (2018), after local climate events forced our ancestors out of the trees 6 million years ago, they eventually banded together on the savannah for safety. Their increased cooperation and sociality placed us on a new evolutionary trajectory, which ensured that our most fundamental psychological need was for connection. By connection, I mean cooperating, forming social bonds, establishing long-term romantic relationships, and attaching oneself to a group.
When we bask in the camaraderie of old friends, we’re feeling the product of 6 million years of evolution.
The need for connection played a central role in human evolution, as it enabled us to cooperate to solve problems that we were too small, weak or ignorant to solve on our own. Hunter-gatherers who couldn’t see the need for connection soon became lion chow. As a result, their tendency to go it alone was largely removed from the gene pool, and their remains served as a vivid reminder to the folks back home that survival requires connection. Genes pushed our ancestors to connect, their cultural rules demanded connection, parental socialization reinforced the message, and daily life reminded them that they couldn’t live without it.
Connection was a matter of life or death then, and it remains critical now. Some forms of connection are new (social media), others are as old as the species itself (having a meal with friends), but whether you’re an introvert or extravert, connection is fundamental to life satisfaction. When we work together, offer or seek advice, attend a party, sit side by side with a friend while studying or watching a movie, or even smile when we meet the eye of a stranger, we feel the imperative of connection. When we bask in the comfort and camaraderie of old friends, we’re feeling the product of 6 million years of evolution.
At the same time, the need for connection was supplemented by a need for autonomy. By autonomy I mean self-governance, choosing a path based on your own needs, preferences or skills, and making independent decisions. Connection makes humans effective in their struggles against predators and a harsh environment, but autonomy allows a person to increase their usefulness to others. How does autonomy serve this role? By motivating us to pursue domains in which we have the best prospects.
Humans are unique in the extent of our capacity to envision the future. One of the most important tasks our large brain allows us to do is to imagine what might happen later today, tomorrow or next year, and then prepare for it. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of our preparations is when we change ourselves – when one decides what sort of person one needs to be in the imagined future and then sets about becoming that person.
The capacity to transform one’s actual self into an aspirational self is a large part of the reason we evolved a need for autonomy. From early childhood, a person’s sense of self becomes focused on personal attributes that seem to have the best chance of leading to success. Domains in which one stands out in a positive way often become central aspects of one’s self-definition.
When these abilities become central to someone’s self-concept, they start to occupy the person’s mind, they become more fun and interesting, and one is likely to exercise them whenever possible. It is this dedication to one’s craft, born of autonomy and the desire to shape one’s own destiny, that motivates people to put in the hard work necessary to develop their talents.
While forming social bonds with others satisfies the need for connection, it can also constrain a person’s choices by requiring them to consider the consequences of their actions for others. If those constraints are strict, they threaten autonomy. In contrast, prioritizing one’s own goals and preferences without any regard for the needs and desires of others would maximize autonomy, but make one unpalatable as a relationship partner or group member.
Connection used to be more of a necessity, and autonomy more of a luxury
So, while connection and autonomy both make us happy, they must be balanced against each other. Many of us today have shifted to lifestyles that emphasize autonomy and downplay social obligations and, in doing so, we have unwittingly sacrificed the connections that keep our life in balance. Examples of this can be seen in the growing tendency of Americans to live alone, and in reports of people having fewer close friends. Autonomy without sufficient connection – the dynamic that characterizes modern society – creates what I call sad success stories: people whose achievements feel hollow and unsatisfying because they don’t have a tight network of friends to share them with.
Why this modern emphasis on autonomy? Connection used to be more of a necessity, and autonomy more of a luxury. In principle, individuals had an opportunity for autonomy every time the group made a decision they didn’t like but, in reality, people couldn’t just do their own thing. When it came time to break camp, if everyone else wanted to go north and you wanted to go south, you would have almost always gone north because it was too dangerous to strike out on your own. Life for our hunter-gatherer ancestors was necessarily filled with compromise.
In our modern world, opportunities for autonomy are like fat, salt and sugar – we evolved to crave them when they were rare but now they’re ubiquitous. Increasing wealth, urbanization and education, along with dramatic increases in the types of occupations and entertainment a person can choose from, mean that people today not only have choices that our ancestors couldn’t dream of, we also no longer depend on close connections for survival the way we once did. As a result, I argue, the evolved tendency to seek autonomy when one has the chance has become a form of mis-wanting that has seriously disrupted the balance between these two needs.
Where once people were physically fit and highly connected because they spent their lives hungry and threatened, now many of us are out of shape and highly autonomous because we live in comfort and safety. Just because the modern world allows us to live a certain way doesn’t mean it makes us happy. We may get what we want when we prioritize autonomy, but not what we need.
How do we rebalance? The key is to incorporate connection into our lives in ways that induce the least friction. I started doing this myself with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been easy to maintain, because my new protocol is no harder than my old one and a lot more fun. I simply looked at all my activities and, for each one that was conducted alone, I asked myself how I might make it more social.
By way of example, my sister and I both like to do the New York Times crossword puzzles, so we started doing them together even though she lives halfway around the globe. She calls once she’s made her morning coffee, Thursday through Sunday, I put in my earbuds, and we chitchat as we do the puzzle together. I love my sister dearly, but we used to talk only a few times a month because she lives so far away and we’re both so busy. The beauty of our joint-puzzle party is that it doesn’t require any additional time; we do something together that we used to do alone.
A change like this might be easy to make, but that doesn’t mean it will endure. So you have to make your new routine habitual. If you need to plan every time you want to socialize, you’ll find that you only occasionally spend your free time with others. But if you make connecting a habit, it takes no more effort than brushing your teeth. The best way to establish new habits is to form implementation intentions. By this I mean creating plans that are contingent on something else happening, such as: ‘When my morning coffee is ready, I’ll call my brother to do the crossword.’ Or: ‘When I’m finished eating dinner, I’ll call my old high-school friend so we can chat on the phone as we both clean up the dishes.’
Of course, there are many ways to solve the aloneness problem. For example, most of us have lifestyle goals we’re struggling to achieve. They might be exercise goals like going for a twice-weekly run, they might be tidiness goals like picking up the toddler’s toys every afternoon, or they might be self-improvement goals like taking an online course or learning to play an instrument. These are ideal activities to do with others, in person or while chatting on the phone, because friends with the same interests help encourage you to stick with it when you might otherwise give up. By blending your connection goals with your lifestyle goals, you can increase the chance that you’ll achieve both – fulfilling autonomy and connection needs at the same time.
These fixes might not seem like much, but that’s the whole point. They’re small changes in your daily existence that ramp up connections with virtually no added effort or burden. Those are the changes that stick.
Oriana:
I grew up in a highly connected society, and then moved to a country that struck me as synonymous with loneliness. I need to emphasize that it simply was my personal experience, as an immigrant who left behind my astonishingly (by my current standards) large extended family. But part of my strangeness was that I loved living alone. My dream had been to live alone in a large house, with lush trees in the garden — and, to my astonishment, that dream has come true, though rather late in my adult life. You could say that “better late than never” is my personal anthem.
I never tire of meditating about this strange reality. I had a rather unhappy youth (and I came from a culture which regarded youth as the happiest time of one’s life, so I felt like a failure). As I grew older I saw my dream come true: my small self in a large house with a large garden, and no one to boss me around or needing constant care. That may not be the "American dream" as defined by most people, but my own version suits me perfectly. Thank you, America, and I mean it: the ability to live alone is the greatest gift that I've ever received.
I, who used to weep over how unlucky I felt I was, can hardly believe how good my later life has been to me (fingers crossed; I'm well aware that poor health would be a great threat to independent living).
I realize that a lot of women end up as caretakers, with their own needs not attended to because the needs of others always come first. Female servility isn’t what it used to be, but I still sense the hidden message conveyed to wives and mothers: your needs are less important. You are here to serve others.
If you are told you are selfish to be taking that acting class, or that stained-glass workshop, don't be intimidated. The answer is simple: as you develop your knowledge and your skills, you become able to give greater gifts to others. Being able to be generous to people, even strangers, is very rewarding. (Yes, of course you have to draw boundaries, and understand that most charities are a scam, but that's another topic. Person-to-person kindness is much more satisfying than contributing to charities.)
And your special skills may actually earn income. Living alone is expensive, especially in the desirable places. You either develop lucrative skills, or you may get lucky in other ways. My autonomy is relatively recent. Every day I marvel at my luck.
Now and then — but only for brief moments — I wish I had a live-in companion, mainly for utilitarian reasons. “She cooks and does the laundry; he lifts heavy objects and opens tight lids” is how I’d put it in simplest terms. (This reminds me of an old joke: A woman says, "I'd like two men: one cooks, the other one cleans.") Over the years, I have hired a series of handymen, my current one being the best yet. Like all solutions, it comes with its problems, but compared with the problems of marriage those are trivial.
But I’d be the first to admit that my need for solitude if much greater than average — anyone engaged in creative work understands this. At the same time, there are friends whom I greatly appreciate — in limited doses. But sometimes I yearn for more connection, only to find out that my friends are too busy with their lives to take the time to meet in person, but luckily can carve out some time for a phone conversation. Still, it's quality over quantity, and I can't complain.
As the article emphasizes, it’s all a matter of balance.
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WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN — BUT NOT IN MEDICINE
Everybody knows that women live longer than men—in the U.S., nearly 5.4 years longer. In our new study, however, we and our colleagues found that doctors might be an exception.
Using newly available data linking death records of anonymous Americans to their occupations, we studied mortality rates within our own profession: medicine. While in the general population and in high-income occupations, women have significantly lower mortality than men, we were surprised to find that among doctors, that wasn't the case. In medicine—by this morbid measure, at least—women and men are on an even playing field.
In the overall population, men’s higher mortality rates are driven by a few key conditions: unintentional injuries, diabetes, suicide, homicide, heart disease, and more recently, COVID-19. Women, meanwhile, are more likely to die from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease—conditions associated with the increased age that women are more likely to reach.
But our analysis found that in medicine, women are missing out on this benefit.
For example, among all workers with high incomes in the U.S., we found that women were 40% less likely to die in a given year than men. But for physicians, there was a statistically insignificant difference between the sexes.
What could explain this mortality puzzle?
Mortality rates are influenced by many different factors, and the data don’t point us to a specific cause. Normally, income and education are frequent culprits and good starting points when trying to explain mortality differences between groups. But education and income are largely similar between men and women doctors and therefore can’t explain our findings. In addition, in high-education, high-income professions like law and engineering, women did have lower mortality than men.
There are other possibilities, however. Mortality has been linked to stress at work and in life. For example, a study including more than 68,000 adults in England found that people who reported higher levels of psychological stress tended to die sooner than their peers.
Medicine’s stressful work environment could have unique health impacts on women. A study by one of us (Jena) and two University of Kansas economists, Lilly Springer and David Slusky, showed that after restrictions on the number of hours resident physicians could work were implemented in 2011, women resident physicians in Texas had better birth outcomes—a finding that was driven by women surgeons, who often have particularly unforgiving schedules and stressful work lives.
Then there are issues of bias—subconscious or overt—in the workplace. Although women now make up 38% of practicing physicians and more than half of U.S. medical students, studies show that they are promoted more slowly and paid less than men for similar work. Women doctors are also viewed as less career-oriented and report high rates of burnout and workplace sexual harassment from colleagues and patients alike. Women in physician practices comprised of predominantly men also earn less than their female peers in practices with more balanced numbers of men and women doctors. Despite these issues, studies suggest women achieve similar or better outcomes for their patients.
But many other occupations are more stressful for women than men — yet women in those fields still live longer than the men. What else could be going on?
People’s health, of course, is also affected by what happens outside of the workplace. Practicing medicine can be demanding on physicians’ time, energy, and wellbeing. The worst of this is during residency, where 80-plus hour work weeks, 24-plus hour shifts, and difficult on-call schedules are the norm. Although these hours improve after training, some version of this grueling calendar persists over the course of doctors’ careers.
At the end of those long days, physicians come home to the same household responsibilities as anyone else — responsibilities that only increase when physicians start a family.
Studies have repeatedly shown that women doctors tend to be the ones managing the majority of household responsibilities like grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and childcare – coming home to the so-called “second shift” of work. This is true even in households where both spouses work as physicians. In one study, 31% of women physicians were married to a physician compared with 17% of men physicians, which may place unique household pressures on women physicians since their spouses are more likely to have similarly demanding occupations.
But again, the “second shift” isn’t unique to women in medicine. It’s true for women in every profession. There’s another possible explanation for our findings—that has nothing to do with women, but instead has to do with men. Both men and women doctors generally have significantly lower mortality rates than other high-income occupations. Perhaps men who are doctors take particularly good care of themselves compared to men in other high-income, high-education occupations.
A different data point in our study suggests, however, that physicians’ medical knowledge and access to care may not be enough. We found that physicians who were black women had higher mortality rates than white women in the general population – suggesting that the medical knowledge and better access to care that physicians enjoy does not wipe away differences in mortality rates among black women in particular.
Not one of these explanations alone fully explains why women in medicine don’t experience the mortality benefit they do in the rest of society, leaving us to presume the explanation lies in some combination of these factors—or others we haven’t mentioned or considered. The contributors to mortality are numerous, spanning far beyond gender, occupation, income, education, or race, and the interplay between these factors is complex.
But if the professionals dedicated to helping people live longer, healthier lives are defying broad mortality patterns across the country, we must ask why—even if there’s no easy or obvious answer to the question.
https://time.com/7261514/female-doctors-longevity-gap/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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HAVING KIDS CAN SLOW DOWN BRAIN AGING
New research finds that parents tend to show higher brain connectivity later in life, connecting raising kids with long-term cognitive benefits.
This new report, which studied 19,964 females and 17,607 males from the UK Biobank, found that parents who raised children experienced better protection against functional brain aging later in life—and that parenting a higher number of children was associated with higher levels of neuro-connectivity.
“These results are striking, but not necessarily surprising,” Edwina R. Orchard, the lead researcher on this study, told Parents. “There is a growing literature in humans and animals that is consistent with these results, suggesting benefits to the structure and function of the brain in parents with more children.”
Does this mean parents are the smartest people? Not necessarily.
Dr. Hannah Homafar, a Board-certified Neurologist, says this study does not establish causation—only a correlation between parenthood and brain function later in life. So, it’s not clear if parenthood, in particular, improves brain health, or if the benefit is found in the enriching activities that parenthood encourages.
“Engaging in meaningful relationships, staying socially connected, and continuously challenging the brain—whether through caregiving, mentorship, or other complex activities—are all factors that may contribute to cognitive longevity,” Dr. Homafar says.
Still, this study brings promising news for parents—and anyone interested in bettering their cognitive health.
“Understanding these nuances could provide valuable insights for brain health at large, including strategies for preserving cognitive function in aging populations,” she says.
WHY IS PARENTHOOD ASSOCIATED WITH BETTER BRAIN FUNCTION?
In this study, protection against functional brain aging was seen in both females and males, suggesting the common parenting environment, rather than pregnancy alone, affects brain function.
Ryan Glatt, a Medical Exercise Specialist and Brain Health Coach, notes that this study doesn’t set out to prove how the parenting environment may help brain function, just that there is a connection. Still, experts have some hypotheses on how parenting could improve brain health.
For one thing, Glatt says the subjects’ higher functioning brain connectivity in old age may be thanks to the many mental challenges that come with parenting. From planning family schedules to helping kids with homework, being a parent is often mentally challenging.
Dr. Homafar agrees: “Parenting is an inherently complex and cognitively demanding role—it requires emotional regulation, long-term planning, problem-solving, and constant learning. These are all activities that engage and strengthen brain networks,” she says.
She adds that this aligns with what we already know about brain health: “Experiences that challenge the brain, particularly those involving social and cognitive engagement, can contribute to maintaining brain function as we age.”
Emotional bonding can also help
Meanwhile, Dr. Homafar says that brain benefits can stem from the deep emotional bonds and sense of love that often come with raising children. She explains, “Love and emotional connection are powerful drivers of brain health, activating reward pathways, reducing stress hormones, and fostering resilience.”
Social engagement could play a role
Further, Dr. Homafar also notes there may be a social factor. She points out that raising children fosters social engagement, a well-known protective factor for brain health. “Research has consistently shown that strong social connections are linked to a lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline,” she says. Furthermore, social contact provides a "protective effect" against both.
What about “Mom brain”?
This study is exciting for those hoping for healthy brain function in later life, but may be confusing for the parents who, in the thick of child-rearing, feel their brain function isn’t working as it used to.
Glatt explains that “pregnancy brain,” or "parent brain" are most often due to short-term parental exhaustion and likely stem from sleep deprivation and stress. Orchard’s study, on the other hand, examines long-term functional connectivity.
“The data suggest a net benefit [of brain health] over time, but this does not negate the cognitive strain of parenting in daily life,” Glatt says.
Dr. Homafar agrees that the cognitive demands of parenting may help build resilience in the brain and describes the effects with a metaphor about how exercise can leave muscles feeling fatigued in the short term—but stronger over time. “Similarly, the continuous problem-solving and emotional engagement of parenting might contribute to greater brain connectivity and function as we age,” she says. Studies have shown that board games, for example, improve mental function and quality of life as we age.
To ease these symptoms, Dr. Homafar stresses the importance of self-care, such as adequate sleep, stress management, prioritizing mental wellness, and social support.
What does this mean for people without children?
While this study found that parenting multiple children was associated with higher long-term cognitive benefits, Orchard points out that those with no children, or only one child, aren’t necessarily destined for lower cognitive abilities in later years.
In fact, there are many ways to create stimulation and complexity in life without parenting multiple children, she says.
“It is important for brain health in later life to be more socially engaged, physically active, and mentally stimulated, and these are not experiences that are limited to parents,” she says. Studies show that exercise improved cognitive function among older adults no matter their mental state.
Dr. Homafar says that activities like mentorship, teaching, caregiving for relatives, strong friendships, volunteering, and even pet ownership can, like parenthood, enrich and stimulate the brain, encouraging problem-solving and continuous learning—ultimately contributing to maintaining brain function.
In addition, she explains that parenthood alone is not a guaranteed safeguard against cognitive decline. “Plenty of individuals who develop Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias have been parents,” she says.” Brain health is a complex, multifaceted issue.”
The Bottom Line
The results from this study are exciting for those interested in brain health but the findings still leave many questions unanswered.
Glatt notes that the study doesn’t account for lifestyle, socioeconomic, and environmental factors, which may contribute to the observed effects. It also doesn’t explore why parents experienced better brain connectivity later in life.
Still, the findings are valuable. Dr. Homafar adds that future research will be “essential” to learn more about how parenthood and the brain are connected. She says, “Understanding these nuances could provide valuable insights for brain health at large, including strategies for preserving cognitive function.”
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OZEMPIC’S UNEXPECTED SIDE BENEFITS
We all know that Ozempic, a GLP-1 receptor agonist medication, also called semaglutide, causes weight loss. On average, high-dose semaglutides, like Wegovy, cause people to lose somewhere around 15 percent of their body weight. Obviously, this has important benefits for things like diabetes, which is the main condition semaglutide was originally created to treat, and it unsurprisingly is useful for cardiovascular disease as well, which can be exacerbated by high blood sugar and excess weight. It was something of a surprise, but perhaps not completely unexpected, when researchers found that semaglutide reduced the risk of heart disease for people even if they did not have diabetes.
But the newest study that has gone viral is an even more impressive outcome. Headlines are claiming that researchers have shown that semaglutide causes people with alcohol use disorder to feel fewer cravings and actually drink less booze. If true, this could have massive implications for how we treat—and even view—that disease.
Does the study hold up to the hype? I think this is one of the rare cases where I’m almost as optimistic as the media reports.
The new study was a randomized clinical trial. The researchers divided people into two groups, one that got semaglutide in the standard doses, and another who got a placebo. The participants then spent 10 weeks taking their assigned medication, with the researchers looking at both self-reported and laboratory-controlled drinking during the study.
The results are impressive. The primary outcome measure was laboratory self-administration. This is a type of test where people come into a lab and are given specific amounts of alcohol in controlled settings and allowed to drink until they want to stop (or, for safety, when they reach a set blood alcohol concentration). In these settings, people taking semaglutide drank 30 grams less alcohol on average, which is around three shots of vodka.
At a glance, this seems quite impressive. There are currently three approved treatments for alcohol use disorder, and they come with a variety of trade-offs. Adding a fourth treatment that also has proven benefits for the heart and kidneys would be a pretty big win.
Of course, there are drawbacks to this study. The sample size was extremely small: The researchers tested the treatment in just 48 people. The study didn’t have enough people to accurately measure the drug’s ability to help with abstinence from alcohol, which is one of the most important outcomes when it comes to substance use disorders. It was also too short to have much certainty of the long-term impacts of semaglutide.
The new study is fascinating, but it may not be replicated in larger pieces of research. I don’t want to overstate the findings; this is still a very preliminary paper which may not stand up to larger samples on more focused outcomes. Semaglutide also has well-known downsides which have to be taken into account whenever anyone uses the medication. There’s always some bad to go along with the good when it comes to health care interventions.
That being said, the findings are still remarkable because there just doesn’t seem to be anything that semaglutide doesn’t treat. It’s not any one study that makes semaglutide appear to be a silver bullet—it’s an entire constellation of research showing various ways in which it might help. It even reduces all-cause mortality for people who are obese but don’t have diabetes. I’ve recently worked with a team on a study showing that it may reduce blindness and other eye problems even in people who don’t have diabetes. And no, I didn’t receive money from a drug company for that work, or to say all this nice stuff.
We don’t know exactly why semaglutide would reduce alcohol cravings, much like we aren’t entirely sure why it stops people without diabetes from dying. It’s possible this is related to the complex interplay of the hormones that semaglutide and similar drugs act on. It’s also possible—perhaps even likely—that all of this is simply the result of weight loss. We know that drinking alcohol is associated with weight gain in a complex way, and it’s possible that simply losing weight could be helping people with their alcohol use. And again, it’s possible that this finding simply goes away when a larger pool of people are studied.
But it does seem like semaglutide is a pretty amazing medication that helps us in ways beyond weight loss that we are still figuring out. I still have to issue a big caveat: All of the promising data on those extra benefits may be noise. I may have to one day eat my words—that’s always true, to some extent, in science. But at the moment it looks like semaglutide—and related medications like tirzepatide and retatrutide— have some really cool benefits for people who take it.
https://slate.com/technology/2025/03/weight-loss-alcohol-cravings-semaglutide-fact-check.html?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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ending on beauty:
Mom
I dreamt I was with you again last night.
It was in the old house in Chicago,
the first one I remember the number for.
You planted flowers
where there had never been flowers,
watered them with the pure water that fell from the sky.
You washed my hair with that water too.
Said it would keep me young and help me grow.
Autumn came and the rain fell harder,
and there was snow, and you put it
in a dishpan and melted it and washed my hair with it.
You said the water that came from snow
was as pure as the water from rain.
Years later in your last house in Arizona,
the one I still remember the number for,
I washed your hair with water from the sink.
There was no rain in the desert, no snow either.
You told me stories you never told me before,
about your sister and the time she visited Lvov,
the candy she found on the seat of the train,
about your pet pig Carolina
and how much you loved sitting with her
in the forest and watching the leaves fall
in the coolness that followed summer.
I listened and when you asked me
where the water came from,
I told you that I had collected it from the clouds.
~ John Guzlowski
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