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FROM THE NEW WORLD
The slant sword of Orion, three stars,
winter-bright, as though unsheathed
from distance and the dark;
the plumes of palms and eucalypts
against the indigo of night;
and to the south, the trembling white,
yellow and orange lights of Mexico.
And childhood touches me again,
when foreign meant exciting.
I love it, I almost say out loud –
wondering if I could leave it
for a man with a luminous spirit.
Which exile should I choose?
Oh child . . . our tragic flaws
choose for us, to which we are blind.
The lights on the mesa quiver,
and I nod: here is my fortune, chance,
the black plumage of palm trees
my wealth. So many lights!
Some garish and some dim;
some shine on misery, dead dreams
like a body mangled from a leap.
Time the Hunter and his bright Dog
move on. Only we stand still,
immigrants approaching port,
our precious, useless
past in our arms. Ludicrous,
the luggage we take,
the old photographs. The future
will be exile, a new world.
Along the shore of night,
like the spirits of
ancestors, the lights.
~ Oriana
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RALPH WALDO EMERSON: GLAD TO THE BRINK OF FEAR
A new biography reveals how Ralph Waldo Emerson gave Americans a vocabulary to understand themselves in an era even more tempestuous than our own.
Rather than start with Emerson's birth or death, Marcus opens the biography with his disillusionment. The product of seven generations of clergymen, Emerson came of age during the Second Great Awakening, a period rocked by a wave of democratized evangelical energy that fundamentally altered the religious landscape of the United States. Rather than discovering a deeper commitment to his role as a Unitarian minister, however, Emerson began radically retreating from the idea of organized religion altogether. Like his more orthodox contemporaries, Emerson sought an unmediated encounter with the divine—he just believed they were looking for it in the wrong place.
Part of Marcus’ project in this biography is to offer a kind of personal exegesis of some of Emerson’s greatest works. Take, for example, his extended discussion of “Nature,” the 1836 essay that launched Emerson’s career as an essayist along with the founding principles of the transcendentalist movement. After carefully guiding the reader through Emerson's beliefs on what nature reveals about the individual, Marcus energetically distills the revolutionary implications:
“Here is the mighty self, the individual-as-cosmos, the blessing and curse that Waldo bequeathed to America! Here is the thing to read when you feel powerless, helpless….It will momentarily make you feel heroic, and not in a self-deluding way, but in terms of potential. Every human being deserves to feel this way. To grasp this fact, especially in a society organized around covenants and crowd behavior, was a stroke of genius.”
Marcus, who does not consider himself religious, ends his chapter “Nature” by describing his own fascination with watching the televangelist Joel Osteen. Although he cannot relinquish his lack of belief, he admits to envying how easily faith seems to come to Osteen’s congregation. “It’s not easy being a materialist,” he confesses, “You need a miracle. I’m joking, but the unease I’m talking about is deeply sad and unsettling.” Emerson’s manifesto is therefore a welcome revelation. Emerson found little use in the religious belief in miracles because nature itself—manifested into being through the process of human observation—was itself a miracle. It was by walking in the woods, and not by banging on a wooden pulpit, that one could begin “to convert life into truth,” as Emerson put it.
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Conversion is an act of change, and Emerson’s myriad transformations comprise another key theme in Glad to the Brink of Fear. Marcus lingers on “Experience,” an essay from Emerson’s 1844 Second Series that in many ways repudiates the work that garnered him such acclaim a decade earlier. Whereas “Nature”celebrated man’s infinitude and connection to the cosmos, “Experience” details how those same qualities render humans finite and disconnected.
Marcus mobilizes historical research and literary analysis to clarify the meaning in Emerson's beautiful but obfuscatory prose, underscoring the extent to which Emerson’s about-face was due to the death of his firstborn son in 1842. But the best authority that he arguably musters is his own experience. This is clearly an essay about soul-wrenching grief, and Marcus knows this because he is someone who has endured loss himself.
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The language of conversion might be best applied to how Marcus explores Emerson’s evolving attitude toward the antislavery movement. In “Self-Reliance,” Emerson coldly dismissed abolitionists as posers who were more interested in joining a fashionable cause than they were in taking up what he deemed as the nobler fight against mindless conformity. Encounters with leading abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and writings on the history of the Atlantic slave trade began to change his mind.
By the late 1840s Emerson had become a regular on the abolitionist speaking circuit, and the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 sparked some of his fieriest oratory against slavery yet. In what Marcus characterizes as another fascinating turn in his thought, Emerson both lambasted the extent to which the commodification of human beings had infected every American institution and celebrated the collective effort that had sprung up to excise the malady from American life.
Despite this salutary evolution, Marcus makes no bones about the profound discomfort biographers face when staring their subject’s moral failures in the face. “To write about the Transcendentalist prophet and champion sentence-wrangler was pure pleasure,” he admits. But to watch Emerson waste decades wallowing in what one could describe as philosophical myopia at best and naked racism at worst leaves him “squirming.”
More painful still is to know that Emerson’s progress on abolitionism did not entirely extend to his views on race. This is particularly evident in the racial taxonomies he spins out in English Traits, an 1856 account of the tour of Europe he had undertaken two decades prior. Even though Emerson ultimately concludes that no human can perfectly know the full extent of their own identity because we all ultimately contain some measure of undefinable heterogeneity, Marcus is clearly exasperated with the writer who has played such an influential role in his own life. “The good and the bad—the exalted and excruciating—coexisted in Waldo’s mind until the very end,” he sighs.
It’s a good thing, then, that Emerson is not the only character that Marcus studies in Glad to the Brink of Fear. Despite the solipsistic cast of his writing, Emerson’s career was profoundly shaped by his relationships with others—especially with women. Yes, there was his famous (if frenemistic) mentorship of Henry David Thoreau, whom Marcus sharply describes as the “Aristotelian to Waldo’s Platonist.” But it was Emerson’s first wife, the spirited but physically frail Ellen Tucker Emerson, who gave him the financial security to pursue a life as an essayist. The unremitting abolitionism of his second wife, Lydian Jackson Emerson, was key to changing Emerson’s views on the struggle against slavery.
The brilliant journalist Margaret Fuller edited Emerson’s transcendentalist journal (without ever being paid), sparred with him intellectually, and was likely involved with him romantically. And as dementia began to take hold near the end of his life, Emerson’s daughter Ellen Tucker Emerson played an indispensable role in managing his speaking tours; writing his correspondence; and transcribing, editing, and publishing his final works.
Relationships tend to be a powerful solvent for consistency. This may have been why Emerson was also so intent on understanding friendship through the lens of theory. “What is philosophy for, if not to turn our worst anxieties into general principles?” Marcus perceptively asks.
Contemporaries may have satirized Emerson as an ambling eyeball, but the manner in which he alternated between seeking the company of others and recoiling from the possibility of real encounter suggests that envisioning him as a hedgehog might have been a better fit instead.
“Every spirit makes its house; but afterwards the house confines the spirit,” Emerson concluded in his essay “Fate,” published on the eve of the Civil War. The historian of American anti-modernism T. J. Jackson Lears has argued that this Emersonian nugget best captures the tension at the heart of American individualism. It also helps explain what makes Emerson such a fascinating figure not just to Marcus, but to all us moderns.
Emerson’s gift for observation enabled him to preach an uplifting gospel of the illimitable atom. When he was knocked back by the realities of chaos, pain, and mortality, that same gift enabled him, fitfully and imperfectly, to embrace the art of changing course and to find beauty in limitation. Observing that struggle unfold through the experience of a writer such as Emerson can be terribly instructive. You peer deeply enough into the life of a man who thought himself a transparent eyeball and, after a while, you realize that you are meeting your own gaze.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/glad-to-the-brink-of-fear
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EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
The angriest I’ve ever been at an academic seminar was after a paper on how ordinary people in early modern England talked about politics. To the attendees of the seminar in question, more used to elevated discussions of political theories and the history of ideas, this descent into the streets seemed like a shocking affront. One questioner explained to the speakers that this was a seminar which usually considered the ideas of ‘articulate people’, pausing delicately before describing the subjects of that day’s paper as ‘less articulate people’.
The implication was clear: who cares what these people thought, even if we grant that they could think at all? But even the words of the meanest mattered in early modern English society. The language of everyday life was a crucial mechanism by which the social order was expressed and maintained. There was a reason that laborers talking back to their bosses or Quakers refusing to use polite terms of address caused anxiety. The authorities, already busy cleansing Irish, Welsh, Cornish, and these islands’ other languages out of every official environment, lived in fear that the ‘murmurs’ of the population might break out into open revolt, disrupting the ‘quiet’ which was the sign of a well-functioning realm.
For Hillary Taylor, the relationship between language and power was not just articulated in linguistic policies or learned debates: it was worked out in everyday conversations between those at different levels of a rigidly hierarchical society. Taylor unpicks the social and economic contexts that led a 17th-century Norfolk fisherman to call a constable ‘Goodman Turd’, or a group of rowdy drinkers to chase away their stammering parson when he tried to talk them out of the alehouse. It’s an approach which strives to see early modern society as contemporaries understood it: highly socially unequal, and demanding constant awareness of one’s social status and the ability to perform authority or deference as appropriate.
We are lucky to have records that give us a sense of ordinary people’s voices as they spoke words that were heretical, treasonous, blasphemous, seditious, or insulting. The problem is that illicit speech is much more likely to leave an archival trace than everyday, unremarkable talk. The argument runs that these transgressive voices show us the unspoken rules that governed language and behavior for everyone else. The challenge set by Taylor is to find out ‘how the politics of language played out in concrete circumstances’ – how language shaped everyday life and ordinary experience.
Language ideologies expressed the inequalities of early modern English society. Laboring people were commonly caricatured as so inarticulate that they might as well be animals – the yeoman Samuel Butler wrote of the laborer that ‘his perpetual conversation with beasts has rendered him one of them’. The assumption that the poor would happily perjure themselves at the request of their betters was so commonplace as to be ‘part of the cultural groundwater’, even if Taylor has found court records in which ordinary people spoke eloquently about their refusal to lie in court or their regret at having done so.
The ability to speak clearly and comprehensibly was important at every level of society. Even the greatest in the land didn’t escape censure: one London woman called Charles I a ‘stuttering foole’. Where scholars have often leaned on a metaphorical understanding of inarticulacy, Taylor seeks out moments in the archives when people found themselves literally unable to speak effectively. Overawed by the pressures of speaking in court, some people found themselves incapable of speech.
In a case like that of John Gaul, accused of highway robbery in 1757, his stammering in court seems to have been an exacerbation of a preexisting speech impediment; a few decades earlier, a man accused of theft at the Old Bailey had presented his defense in writing, ‘pretending a great impediment in his speech’, but undermined his claim by quarreling with a witness in a ‘clear strong voice’. The court’s skepticism may have been a factor in their decision to send him to the gallows.
Early modern authors theorized conversation as an exchange which could benefit both parties. The superior speaker could take pleasure in their inferior’s deference, while the inferior could bask in their superior’s regard. As such, ideas about conversations between people of different status ‘allowed domination to be repackaged as a figurative gift’. This was the logic underpinning the advice offered to those in charge of laborers – plenty of modern managers have clearly imbibed the advice that an effective leader ‘saith not to his servants, Goe yee, but Let us goe’, using ‘we’ rather than ‘ye’ to rank themselves among those doing the work.
Conversationally, England expected everyone to do their bit to maintain an ordered society. But elites viewed with horror the risk of being overfamiliar with their inferiors: as Caleb Trenchfield wrote in 1671, ‘familiarity begets contempt, and contempt breaks the neck of obedience’.
Taylor is dissatisfied with our understanding of how language shaped early modern English society. Just as elevating unrepresentative moments of linguistic rule-breaking risks skewing how we think about social relations, so too does assuming that any instance of silence, shyness, or subjection was cover for ordinary people’s resistance. Not everybody was a rebel, and Taylor challenges historians to consider that ordinary people might have internalized linguistic ideologies, coming to believe what was said about their own inarticulacy, and to accept it as a reason for their subordination.
In this way, ‘the politics of language cumulatively worked to circumscribe poor and laboring individuals’ capacity to develop critiques of their position and the social hierarchy in the first place’. It is an ‘admittedly bleak’ account, which sees ordinary people as commonly condemned to silence in their time and largely inaudible in the archives that survive. Unromantic but urgent, Taylor demands that we rethink how we listen to voices in the archives, and what we hear from them.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/language-and-social-relations-early-modern-england-hillary-taylor-review?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=78f98a7791-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_20_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fceec0de95-78f98a7791-1214148&mc_cid=78f98a7791
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IS RUSSIA PREPARING FOR A FUTURE CONFRONTATION WITH NATO?
Russia’s war machine has become such an integral part of its economic engine that its military industry is likely to keep expanding even after the fighting in Ukraine ends, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"The end of hostilities will not lead to a radical cut-off of military investment," wrote CSIS analysts in a report published on Thursday.
Now in its fourth year, Russia's war with Ukraine continues even as Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration weathers sweeping Western sanctions. And while cracks are starting to show, the Russian economy may still be able to sustain the war effort for several more years, the report said.
Defense spending is set to hit a post-Soviet record of 6.3% of GDP in 2025 and could climb even higher despite mounting signs of economic slowdown or recession.
"Russia's economy appears sustainable for the next few years," the CSIS analysts wrote. They forecast that the Kremlin could maintain its war of attrition through at least 2027.
The CSIS report comes amid renewed scrutiny of Russia's economy.
Manufacturing activity contracted last month, and employment has suffered. GDP growth slowed to 1.4% in the first quarter, down sharply from 4.5% in the previous quarter.
Still, Russia has defied expectations thanks to its growing military-industrial complex.
"Having become the most sanctioned country in the world, it has managed to maneuver around many economic constraints, keeping revenues from energy sales high and its budget balanced, investing in the military and defense industry, ramping up domestic production of weapons and equipment, and boosting economic growth," wrote the think tank analysts.
Crucially, the militarized economy has built a broad base of political and economic stakeholders — from elites to ordinary workers — who benefit from continued conflict. That makes any significant drawdown in military activity politically and economically unlikely.
Even if a ceasefire is reached, Russia may still be able to rebuild and expand its armed forces over the next decade.
"Russia's war-induced socioeconomic changes have been so significant that the process of societal militarization is unlikely to stop even if the war in Ukraine were to end," wrote the CSIS analysts.
The Kremlin's strategic posture hasn't softened either. CSIS suggests Russia is preparing for a long-term confrontation with NATO, using the war to modernize its forces and test Western resolve.
Beyond conventional arms, Russia has ramped up hybrid warfare, including cyberattacks, disinformation, sabotage, political meddling, and strikes on critical infrastructure. These tools allow Moscow to operate aggressively across multiple fronts.
"Despite being inferior to NATO in terms of its conventional capabilities, today's Russia represents a bigger challenge to European security than it did at the start of 2022," the CSIS analysts wrote.
The Kremlin is learning from past failures, adapting quickly, and growing more confident in what it sees as a West unwilling to stop it.
"Moscow's ongoing large-scale military reforms signal that Russia could be preparing for some kind of future confrontation with NATO within roughly the next decade—including even a large-scale conventional war," they wrote.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-military-defense-spending-growing-after-ukraine-war-csis-2025-7?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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RUSSIA’S SHRINKING ECONOMY
Russia's wartime economy may finally be losing steam, fresh data shows.
This was a reversal from the PMI of 50.2 in May, when Russia's manufacturing activity expanded.
"The Russian manufacturing sector signaled a renewed deterioration in operating conditions during June," S&P Global wrote.
The downturn was driven by a contraction in new orders because of weak client demand and the strong ruble, which makes Russian exports more expensive.
As a result, factories cut jobs at the fastest pace since April 2022 and slashed purchasing activity at a rate not seen since March 2022.
The downturn has hit sentiment among Russian goods producers amid concerns about global economic uncertainty, sending business confidence down to its lowest level since October 2022, according to S&P Global.
Sharp slowdown after growth on 'budgetary amphetamines'
The results from the latest S&P Global manufacturing PMI survey are a contrast against the resilience that Russia's economy has been projecting over the past few years.
Russia appears to have avoided an economic collapse since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But many analysts have said its resilience isn't sustainable in the long run as it's fueled by wartime spending.
"It was growth on budgetary amphetamines," Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said at a briefing last month.
He said Russia's massive government spending and changes to budgetary rules had helped the country to largely overcome the "most punishing effects of the sanctions."
By the end of 2023, the economy was running so hot that Russia's top central banker warned that it may overheat. Inflation spiked and interest rates surged. Russia's key interest rate now sits at 20%.
But signs of a sharp slowdown are emerging.
Just last month, Russia's economy minister, Maxim Reshetnikov, warned that the country was "on the brink" of a recession.
Russia's GDP grew 1.4% in the first quarter of the year from a year ago, according to Rosstat, the country's official statistics service. This is a sharp slowdown from the 4.5% growth it posted in the fourth quarter of last year. In 2024, Russia's economy grew 4.3% for the full year.
"Whether it's a managed slowdown or a severe drop, we still don't know," Kolyandr said. “Nevertheless, we see the economy slowing down.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-manufacturing-pmi-warning-signs-recession-war-growth-sanctions-2025-7
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RUSSIA’S LABOR SHORTAGE
Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to boost his country's falling birthrate.
Russia could face a labor shortage of nearly 11 million people by 2030, its labor minister said.
Birth rates have plummeted, and labor shortages have worsened because of the war in Ukraine.
The demographic crisis is threatening the country's long-term economic stability.
Russia is staring down a long-term economic threat that could outlast both the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions: a deepening demographic crisis.
On Tuesday, Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov underscored the scale of the problem during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
"Today, according to our estimates, by 2030 we need to involve 10.9 million people in the economy," Kotyakov told Putin, according to a post from the Kremlin.
Kotyakov said the number is required to replace 10.1 million people who will reach retirement age, and 800,000 new jobs.
Kotyakov warned that if productivity growth falls short of the assumptions built into the current forecast, there could be "an additional shortage of personnel."
The remarks came during a Kremlin meeting focused on demographics and healthcare.
Members of Putin's cabinet discussed efforts to boost birth rates, including financial incentives like cash payouts and tax breaks for large families.
Putin has made population growth a national priority, calling it a matter of "ethnic survival" and encouraging women to have as many as eight children.
In 2024, births in Russia fell to 1.22 million — the lowest level since 1999 — while deaths increased by 3.3% to 1.82 million, according to official data. The country's population was about 146 million last year.
But boosting birth rates isn't Russia's only challenge. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated labor shortages, with battlefield injuries and deaths cutting into the working-age population and a brain drain pulling younger, educated professionals out of the country.
The demographic outlook is so bleak that the country's population could halve by the end of this century, according to a report from the Atlantic Council, a think tank, in August.
Businesses are already feeling the heat. Employers are increasingly turning to retirees and even teenagers to fill roles.
The labor shortage has driven up wages and fueled inflation, adding strain to an economy already distorted by wartime spending.
By the end of 2023, Russia's economy was running so hot that the central bank warned of overheating.
The momentum may be fading.
Just last month, Russia's economy minister, Maxim Reshetnikov, warned that the country was "on the brink" of a recession.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-population-demographic-crisis-labor-shortage-birth-rate-2030-2025-7
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ARE WE SELFISH OR ALTRUISTIC BY NATURE?
Whenever I fly, one line jumps out from the pre-flight safety briefing. Somewhere between "welcome aboard" and "use this whistle for attracting attention", we're reminded to "put on your own oxygen mask before helping others."
This is, essentially, an official instruction to be "selfish". And it is sage advice if there's an emergency at 33,000ft and 550mph (10,000m and (890km/h). If the cabin depressurizes, you won't be able to assist others if you black out from oxygen starvation.
But in a world that often seems to reward narcissism, there could be a risk that that same line speaks to a somewhat troubling life philosophy. The idea that you should always put yourself first – and that selfishness trumps altruism.
Individualism was defined by social psychologist Geert Hofstede as "the extent to which people feel independent, as opposed to being interdependent as members of larger wholes." And in many parts of the world, particularly the West, individualism is not only endemic, but increasingly on trend. The question is whether that's a good thing or not.
Elements of psychology, economics and biology – not least the ideas of selfish genes and neo-Darwinism – have normalized the assumption that competition means humans are intrinsically cruel, ruthless or selfish, says Steve Taylor, a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. But while we clearly can all be selfish – our brain's first job, after all, is arguably to keep us alive – he adds that new research paints a more optimistic picture, challenging the somewhat gloomy notion that we only ever prioritize ourselves.
Take the "bystander effect", which first emerged in the 1960s. This is the widely cited idea that people typically avoid intervening in a crisis when others are nearby. The theory followed outrage over the 1964 New York murder of Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender who was reportedly raped and killed in front of nearly 40 witnesses, none of whom helped.
But the final detail of the story behind the "bystander effect" appears to be an apocryphal one. While, tragically, Genovese really was sexually assaulted and murdered, investigations suggest that reports of there being 38 passive bystanders were inaccurate. One 2007 paper, for example, stated there was no evidence that any people witnessed Genovese's murder and simply did nothing. The story, the researchers surmised, was a "modern parable, the telling of which has served to limit the scope of inquiry into emergency helping.”
Research suggests that people are actually more than willing to prioritize others' safety over their own in many situations. A paper published in 2020, for example, investigated CCTV recordings of violent attacks in the UK, the Netherlands and South Africa. It found that one or more people had tried to assist in nine out of 10 of the attacks – with bigger groups making an intervention more, not less likely.
You might argue that even so-called "have-a-go-heroes" are on some level motivated by self-gratification, perhaps to gain group approval. But a 2014 study about recipients of the Carnegie Hero Medal, awarded to people who have risked their lives for others, found that such extreme altruists, largely described their actions as intuitive rather than deliberative, suggesting their altruism was a reflexive, or "automatic" response. It's something we are when we don't have time to think.
"There is a superficial level at which we can operate selfishly, and we often do," says Taylor whose book, DisConnected, explores how certain human behaviors can cause social problems. "But that's at the level of our ego, or socially constructed identity." Humans also have the capacity to be impulsively altruistic, he adds.
In May 2017, for example, a suicide bomber attacked an Ariana Grande concert in Taylor's home city: Manchester. A total of 22 people were killed and more than a thousand were injured. Despite the ongoing risk to survivors, however, the Kerslake Report, an independent review into the atrocity, highlighted "hundreds if not thousands of acts of individual bravery and selflessness." Similar cases of heroic altruism have been documented during 9/11 and the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks.
There are evolutionary reasons for human altruism, Taylor says. For most of our history, we have lived in tribes as hunter-gatherers – highly cooperative groups.
"There's no reason why early human beings should be competitive or individualistic," says Taylor. "That would not have helped our survival at all. It would have actually endangered our survival."
Some anthropological studies suggest that groups who still live in a similar way to our early ancestors remain egalitarian in how they share resources.
Humans appear to be hardwired to help others despite the increasingly individualistic nature of societies around the world.
Research in children also suggests that we are "born altruistic", says Ching-Yu Huang, director of the Cambridge Alliance of Legal Psychology, a private company, in the UK and chief executive of National Taiwan University Children & Family Research Center.
Some studies have found that even 14- to 18-month-old infants will go out of their way to help others and cooperate in order to achieve a shared goal – specifically by handing over objects others couldn't reach. And young children will do this even if there's no reward on offer. A 2013 review of similar studies, for example, suggested that young children's prosocial behavior is "intrinsically motivated by concern for others' welfare."
Being kind also makes us feel good. Volunteering, for example, has been linked to improved mental health, self-esteem and self-efficacy, and reduced feelings of loneliness. And there are physical benefits, too. Regular volunteers who were assessed as part of a study published in 2013 were 40% less likely to develop high blood pressure than those who didn't frequently volunteer. Altruism of this kind has even been associated with a reduced risk of mortality, though it's not yet clear why.
"There's such a strong association between wellbeing and altruism that it would be foolish not to live altruistically," argues Taylor.
The very structure of our brains might help dictate our predisposition towards altruism. Abigail Marsh, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in the US, and her team have used brain scans to look for differences between people who had donated a kidney to a stranger and those who hadn’t.
The organ-donating altruists had larger right amygdalae (brain regions associated with emotion), than the non-donor control group. The donors also showed increased activity in this region when viewing pictures of fearful facial expressions, perhaps making them more perceptive of and responsive to others' feelings. Indeed, the results from the donor group were the opposite of what you'd expect to see in psychopathic individuals.
Science suggests that most of us have the hardware to be selfless, often extraordinarily so. But that doesn't mean we can – or should – be selfless all the time. Whether we prioritize ourselves or others depends partly on circumstances, our prior experience and our culture.
Tony Milligan is a research fellow in the philosophy of ethics at King's College London. People should acknowledge that the vast majority of us are "morally mediocre," he says. But this isn't as uninspiring as it sounds.
Milligan argues that people tend to overestimate their own moral goodness. And this may have a particular impact when we are making deliberative, rather than automatic, decisions about our priorities. "Almost everyone we know is morally mediocre," he says, adding that it's unrealistic for most of us to try and copy the lives of extremely altruistic figures such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Jesus or Buddha. "We can act in the light of them, but if you're not one of those statistical anomalies, we need to recognize that we really are in the middle."
According to Milligan, overestimating our moral goodness can leave us feeling guilty and disappointed when we inevitably fail to live up to overinflated standards. "The question you need to ask yourself is not 'What would Buddha do?'" he says, "But, 'What am I capable of? Is this within my reach?'"
This, he adds, requires some humility and self-knowledge. Because if we have a realistic appraisal of what we're capable of, we will be better able to consider others when we make decisions.
"You shouldn't be thinking of this in terms of developing something you can show off to other people, as something that will make you admired," says Milligan. "Think of it more as developing a skill. A skill is something that you slowly, incrementally work on improving."
People's altruistic tendencies are likely also greatly influenced by their experiences and culture.
Some countries, such as the UK and US, are more individualistic than others, such as many Asian countries, which are generally considered more collectivist, where people prioritize the good of the wider group over themselves. This impacts not only how selfish or altruistic people tend to be but also the degree to which selfless acts are viewed as being either a choice, or a responsibility.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, researchers found that people living in collectivist cultures were more likely to wear masks than those in individualistic ones. The former group were more inclined to try and protect others. This difference between East and West is one that Huang has experienced personally.
She spent her childhood in Taiwan, which she describes as collectivist, before settling for extended periods in the comparatively individualistic US and UK.
"I was brought up to really put everybody else first," says Huang. "If you're a woman, particularly a young woman, who wants to put yourself first and show your ability, this is actually really looked down on in this culture. They would call you a 'female tiger', the implication being that you're aggressive."
When Huang moved to the US and later the UK, she found it was more acceptable to prioritize herself – but initially held herself back because of her upbringing. Gradually, she found herself able to express her confidence and abilities: "I learned that, actually, I do sometimes need to be a female tiger, especially in the career sense."
Such cultural differences are captured in Huang's own research. She has explored two forms of compliance – "committed compliance" (in which you happily comply with instructions) and "situational compliance" (in which you comply even though you're reluctant to do so) – within three groups: young children from Taiwan; non-immigrant, white English families in the UK; and Chinese immigrant families in the UK.
While all groups showed the same level of committed compliance, the Taiwanese children demonstrated much greater situational compliance because they were more likely to prioritize their parents' instructions over their own desires versus the white English and Chinese immigrant children who had grown up in the more individualistic UK.
In collectivist cultures "we're more likely to comply even if we don't really want to", says Huang.
That doesn't mean there's one right way to do things. While altruism can benefit both ourselves and others, we do need to be mindful of our own needs and how past experiences, context and culture influence our behavior.
"Things become hard in cultures where the expectation always to be altruistic is supercharged," says Huang, "such as in Taiwan when you're a young woman." Essentially, the responsibility to always prioritize others can become overwhelming.
Most of us are capable of extraordinary selflessness and altruism appears to be something that does us good. It has even helped our species to become uniquely successful. But our decisions and behaviors are also influenced by a wide range of factors, from culture to our own "moral mediocrity". In other words, helping others is great – but recognize that it's okay to look after yourself too.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250725-should-you-put-yourself-or-others-first
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HOW LIGHTNING STARTS
Lightning has long terrified and fascinated scientists and non-scientists alike. For something so relatively common, the precise atmospheric events that give rise to a lightning strike have been shrouded in mystery, but new research is offering some tantalizing clues.
A team of engineers and meteorologists believe they’ve cracked the curious case of how lightning forms in the cloudtops, and their solution comes from an increasingly influential contender for cracking climate mysteries: mathematical models. The paper describing the new model, published July 28 in the Journal of Geophysical Research, explains the interiors of lightning-imminent thunderclouds.
Within these clouds, powerful electric fields accelerate electrons, producing a harrowing flux of X-rays, electrons, and high-energy photons that crackle into a giant lightning bolt, the new research suggests. In addition to this groundbreaking theoretical insight, the researchers suggest that the unique mechanism creating lightning could pave the way for new X-ray sources.
For the study, a team of engineers and meteorologists built upon a previous model that simulated the physical conditions that produce lightning. Study senior author Victor Pasko, an electrical engineer at Pennsylvania State University, developed this model in 2023. Next, they compared their upgraded mathematical model with field observations collected by other research groups using ground-based sensors, satellite data, and high-altitude spy planes. In particular, they focused on identifying nearby terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF) events—invisible bursts of X-rays and radiowaves associated with lightning.
They found that electrons inside thunderclouds radiate energetic photons—X-rays—when the electrical field forces them to crash against the nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the air. This initiates an “avalanche” of new hypercharged electrons that transfer their energy to even more electrons, eventually unleashing a burst of photons that we see as a harrowing arc of light crackling across the sky.
“In addition to being produced in very compact volumes, this runaway chain reaction can occur with highly variable strength,” Pasko said in a statement. This variability also may explain the presence of “optically dim and radio silent” TGFs near thunderclouds, as the uneven distribution of these charged-up electrons is often accompanied by “detectable levels of X-rays, while accompanied by very weak optical and radio emissions.”
The new model also presents the “first fully time-dependent simulations” that can be generally applied to “events observed at different altitudes and quantitative comparisons with observations,” according to the paper. This differs from similar previous studies, which typically modeled a limited and localized area of thunderclouds, explained Zaid Pervez, study co-author and doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University.
Sometimes, the mysteries that are the closest to us take the longest time to explain. For me, what’s really neat about these newfound answers is that they’re often predicated on simple-yet-intuitive mathematical ideas. To list one recent example, scientists finally discovered how static electricity works by calculating shear, or how much a material bends when rubbed against another surface.
Of course, the math used in these studies isn’t like anything we’d see in elementary school, but the central concept driving these complex calculations is to work off a simple starting point. So far, this strategy seems to be working rather well.
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-unveil-the-shocking-truth-behind-lightnings-mysterious-birth-2000636103?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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SHADE COFFEE AND SUN COFFEE
When managed in the right way, the farms that provide our morning brew can be a refuge for plant and animal biodiversity.
coffee cherries
Up in the highlands of the Ethiopian plateau grows a tree with bright red fruit that came to profoundly shape morning rituals for people all over the world. Those little fruits — also known as cherries — contain seeds that after harvesting, processing and roasting, turn into coffee beans.
In their native land, coffee trees typically grow in the understory of tropical forests. And not surprisingly, people first cultivated the plants in the shade, re-creating their natural environment. That practice persisted even after coffee production spread around the globe, and eventually a mosaic of several production types emerged, with shade featured in all but one.
At one end of the spectrum, “rustic” or “mountain” production planted coffee on the forest floor under existing tree cover — a system adopted by some local communities and Indigenous groups, with minimal use of pesticides.
Traditional, slightly more managed polycultures created “coffee gardens” in the forest by keeping or adding useful plants such as food crops or ones with medicinal value. Commercial polycultures also sprang up, which removed the forest but mimicked it, planting coffee beneath useful canopy trees such as rubber and cedar.
As coffee production intensified, shaded monocultures came on the scene, with one species of tree as the canopy. Finally, by the mid-1980s and 1990s, unshaded monocultures emerged, which operate like many modern agricultural enterprises: intensively managed with plenty of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides.
But in recent decades, with growing concern about steep declines in biodiversity, there has been renewed interest in the value of coffee grown in the shade. The latitudes where coffee is grown host some of the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth. And in shade production systems, especially those that minimize the use of chemical pesticides, coffee has lots of company: The plants are visited by a multitude of creatures from ants and beetles to birds and bats.
Given this biological richness, it’s no surprise that there’s growing interest in studying coffee as an agroecosystem — a dynamic bridge between natural and agricultural systems. Such farming methods have the potential not only to help sustain our caffeine fix, but also to provide a bounty of biological richness. The work of Ivette Perfecto has been central to this shift. An ecologist at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, Perfecto has spent decades studying the diverse assemblage of species that make coffee farms their home, especially some of the smallest farmworkers — the insects.
Historically, biodiversity conservation has focused on the establishment of protected areas like parks and reserves. But agricultural lands, which cover more than twice as much land as such protected areas, can also offer opportunities for conservation. Shaded coffee farms, for example, can serve as refuges that provide quality habitat for wildlife.
Coffee cultivation was heavily influenced by colonial powers. When it was introduced in the 1700s, most of the coffee produced was in the plantation or hacienda style. In some parts of the Americas, large coffee estates were established, and enslaved people from Africa were used for labor. After slavery was abolished, local farmers and former slaves were employed to maintain and harvest the coffee.
Not all coffee farms were monocultures though, and in some regions, coffee was grown under shade trees. Interestingly, in Brazil, it was produced in the sun. Eventually, there was a shift from growing coffee in the shade of trees toward growing it as a monoculture in the sun. As coffee is a very important economic crop for many Central American countries, the idea was to increase and intensify coffee production. So USAID provided a grant to these countries to stimulate conversion to monocultures and substitute old traditional varieties with new, higher-yielding varieties.
Coffee is an understory plant, and does well under shade trees, but if you expose traditional coffee plants to open sun, they don’t do very well. New varieties were developed that could do well in open areas. But it’s a whole technological package. When you eliminate shade, you eliminate, in many cases, nitrogen-fixing trees — like Erythrina in Costa Rica, or Inga in Mexico. By eliminating these trees, you eliminate sources of soil nitrogen and organic matter, so you then need to apply fertilizers. Weeds also move in. So you apply herbicides. And because it’s a monoculture, that leads to a greater probability of pests, so you apply more pesticides.
So during this era, you had increased use of new coffee varieties, but also rising use of agrochemicals.
A coffee plantation in Chiapas, Mexico. Some of the earliest impacts were detected in birds. It had become almost common knowledge among birders that to see birds in Latin or Central America, a good place to go was to coffee farms. It’s easier to see the birds there than it is in the forest. But in the late 1980s to early 1990s, the composition of those coffee farms had begun to change as farmers eliminated shade trees.
In the mid-1990s, I was contacted by Russell Greenberg, then director of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, who has sadly since passed away. He had been studying migratory birds in Central America for many, many years. He and others had grown concerned that at the same time that they were witnessing this transformation of increasing intensification of coffee throughout Central America, there were reports of declines in birds in North America — birds that migrate to Central and South America during the wintertime.
The major pattern that emerged was that with increasing intensification comes a decline in species richness or biodiversity. This is a pattern found in many different organisms sampled, and studies have shown that shade coffee can contribute to supporting plant, insect, spider, lizard, bird, bat and mammal diversity. On one of the coffee farms where I work in Mexico, a couple of years ago we saw a baby margay — a species of wild cat fairly rare in this area — so they also use that habitat.
Coffee farms, especially those that maintain shade trees and use fewer agrochemicals, can support a diversity of creatures.
Biodiversity also contributes ecosystem services to coffee production. For example, in one study conducted in Mexico we built structures to keep birds and bats out — to see what would happen in terms of the numbers of herbivorous insects found on coffee plants. My postdoc at the time, Kimberly Williams-Guillén, demonstrated that both bats and birds contribute to reducing these insect pests. The most profound impacts were seen during the wet season, when birds reduced arthropods by 58 percent and bats reduced them by 84 percent.
Healthy ecosystems surrounding coffee might help with reducing the disease impacts too, like rust fungus, which affects the leaves of coffee plants, causing their loss and reducing their ability to photosynthesize and produce energy for flowers that turn into the cherries that we roast as beans.
More recently, we’ve learned that shade coffee farms cannot do the work of biodiversity conservation alone and that it is important to view coffee farms in the context of a broader landscape. Biodiversity is richer when coffee farms exist within a patchwork that includes intact natural habitats, especially forest.
A student of mine did a study in Mexico, where she had coffee productivity data for different shade levels. She found that the peak of productivity is the intermediate level of shade. With too much shade, production goes down. But too little shade, and the production also goes down. If you’re a small-scale farmer that doesn’t use herbicide — because when you don’t have any shade, the farm gets covered with weeds and vines that are very hard to control — then you need to be there all the time cutting the weeds and vines. So you have a hump-shaped curve for productivity and the peak of productivity is between 40 to 60 percent shade.
Our research shows that planned biodiversity — what the farmer intentionally includes in the system — has a positive relationship with overall biodiversity. The more diversity of organisms or crops you have there, the more diversity of wildlife you’re going to have.
I think a lot about the coffee ecosystem as one that is potentially so diverse that it can help maintain biodiversity at the landscape level.
That’s what I think about: How was this coffee produced?
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-shade-coffee-lends-conservation-a-hand?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KLAXON (CAR HORN)
The electric klaxon horn was a divisive fixture of the urban soundscape in the early automotive era.
Some 110 years ago, an ear-splitting noise ricocheted across North America and Europe. Its sound: “aaaOOgah!!”
That distinctive metallic screech was emitted by a klaxon, a mechanical horn powered by electricity, then a captivating recent innovation. The klaxon filled a niche in the early 1900s, a time when street signage was minimal, driving rules were nascent, and mass adoption of the turn signal was still decades away. Simply by pressing a klaxon’s button, a driver could declare their intention to go right or left, alert pedestrians, or send a warning when approaching a blind curve. Alternatively, they could do it simply for fun.
Inventor and electrical engineer Miller Reese Hutchinson devised the machine, seeking an automotive signal powerful enough to pierce the din of 20th century cities. Entrepreneur F. Hallett Lovell purchased the patent in 1908, vowing to become “a merchant of racket” and giving the klaxon its memorable brand name — derived, he said, from the Greek klaxo, to shriek. Lovell’s firm was sold to General Motors in 1915, and the klaxon and its rivals became standard equipment on new automobiles worldwide.
The Klaxon Company advertised the product as a safety device, but many people saw it as a loathsome creation that frazzled nerves and sullied urban life. After World War I — which saw klaxons used as gas alarms in the trenches of Europe — a growing number of public leaders took their side, passing laws restricting klaxon use and sometimes banning them outright. By the 1940s, the klaxon had been supplanted by other, less aggressive car horns. But the tensions it revealed — between cars and urban livability, and between the freedoms to use new automotive technology and to be protected from its ill effects — still reverberate in debates around autonomous vehicles, noise cameras and what to do about obnoxiously loud drivers.
Pennsylvania State University communications professor Matthew F. Jordan tells the story of the klaxon’s rise and fall in his latest book, Danger Sound Klaxon!: The Horn That Changed History. Its title — which won an award for the oddest in the publishing industry last year — is taken from the signs that were once common on roadways. Jordan writes: “The cultural reaction formation witnessed in relation to the klaxon — the first great technological application that promised to solve the safety problems related to an automobile-centered world — has continued, though the sound it once made is now only a spectral signal slowly fading from memory.”
An
early Edison electric delivery van parked outside a Klaxon Company
store in London in 1912. The horn’s piercing sound inspired one early
slogan: “The X-Ray of Sound.”
Bloomberg CityLab contributor David Zipper spoke with Jordan about this pioneering automotive device, as well as the ongoing conflicts between the preferences of car owners and the well-being of urban residents. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
If we could time travel to a major American city in 1900, the dawn of the automotive era, what would it sound like?
Even without cars, there were plenty of other sounds that always made people complain in cities. It wasn’t quiet by any stretch of the imagination.
The primary vehicles at that time were streetcars along with horses, which had their own signaling devices on them, like carriage bells. Also, the roads were a lot less smooth around the turn of the century, so things were clanging on the pavement. That was an era where there were a lot of steam engines, a lot of urban construction, with industrial noise reaching its apex in the 1920s.
In your book, you note that in the early 1900s many people thought cars would make cities quieter. Today, that seems crazy. Why did it make sense then?
At the time cars didn’t have a consistent sound of their own per se, like a horse-drawn carriage that goes clip-clop or a train where you could hear the engine. Cars were comparatively silent then, which is so anathema to our thinking now.
Traffic lights and street signs were rare in the early 1900s, and cars didn’t have turn signals. So the main ways of signaling were acoustic rather than visual, right?
Yes. When you turned a corner, you would honk your horn. When you backed up, you would honk your horn. When you did anything, you would honk your horn. There was this discipline of having to honk constantly, with the idea being that if you let people know you’re coming, that will cause safety. In many places you would actually get fined if you didn’t honk at an intersection.
In the early 1900s, companies were still trying to figure out what kind of signaling or warning sound would be representational for cars. There were all these devices that made noise in different ways. The klaxon was marketed as a device that was so loud and distinctive that its “aaOOgah” would cut through the surrounding clamor. And it had new electric technology that provided an instantaneous signal, so you could immediately honk if you wanted to.
You noted that a klaxon in the 1920s reached 100 decibels, which is easily loud enough to cause hearing loss. Was that volume normal for klaxons?
The earlier ones were even louder, with a steel brush instead of a cog wheel on a steel diaphragm. It’s just crazy how loud they were.
There were other kinds of sound devices that were quieter and less expensive, so why did so many drivers buy klaxons?
I think showing off was the main reason, especially at first. You had to be rich to own a car at the time, and people wanted to demonstrate that they had the latest technology. Every time you hit that button, you’re signaling something about yourself, saying to the world “I have a car, and here I come.” It’s sort of like people now riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Vehicle speed was also a factor, because the klaxon could clear a street. There was a sense of “I don’t have to slow down, because I’ve got the biggest horn on the market.”
What did urban residents and pedestrians think about the klaxon?
There was a ton of pushback, especially from anti-noise organizations. That’s why the klaxon manufacturer had to use modern advertising to reframe the noise. Instead of thinking, “Oh, my God, that’s a horrible thing I’m hearing,” they wanted people to think, “That’s what’s going to keep you safe.”
Pre-World War I ads would associate the klaxon with not killing others with your car. So you have a moral choice to make as a consumer of technology: Do you choose this klaxon that may be noisy but saves lives, or do you just run them over? The advertising gives people a rationale and a comfort to fall back on: “I’m not just obnoxious. This is the safest horn on the market.” The klaxon lets you have your cake and eat it too: You can never slow down, and the kids will just clear out so you won’t hit them.
Were the klaxon’s safety claims a kind of fig leaf for self-interest among drivers and car companies?
Yes. It was about trying to reframe the nature of that noise.
That seems consistent with Peter Norton’s book Fighting Traffic, which delves into ways that the auto industry in the 1920s used safety as a justification for building crosswalks, creating the “crime” of jaywalking, and redirecting child play out of streets and into playgrounds — all with the goal of speeding up urban traffic.
Absolutely. The rise of the klaxon helped reengineer cities to be places for cars, rather than shared spaces. Pedestrians are the ones who were supposed to be getting out of the way.
That’s one of the big differences between cities in the 19th century and today. Back then, streets saw all different types of things moving in different ways: People, horses, streetcars and carts had to share that space. Little by little, streets have become reserved for cars. Now, if you’re in the street and you get hit, well, that’s your fault.
The klaxon’s safety-oriented marketing strategy makes me think about today’s autonomous vehicle companies that claim they are motivated by a desire to reduce crashes, even though there are lots of cheaper, more reliable ways to do that.
Sure. Autonomous driving is a technology that nobody really needs, provided with a veneer of safety. Pretty much anything that Elon Musk is trying to sell you, I’d say grab your wallet.
Well, that assumes Tesla offers autonomous driving, which is a whole other question.
True.
Let’s get back to the klaxons. In your book, you described how they became ubiquitous in the 1910s but went into decline after World War I, with many cities banning them. You offer several reasons, including noise sensitivity among shell-shocked veterans, annoyance to urban residents and the emergence of innovations like traffic lights and stop signs that enable visual instead of auditory signaling. Were other cultural factors coming into play, too?
One of the social contracts of everyday life in modernity is that you’re going to go to work nine to five, and then you get to go home and have some leisure time and repose. Governments were desperate to say they supported protecting the citizen’s right to be left alone.
In the 1920s, car horns were singled out as the most obnoxious thing about urban sound, and they became a political issue in campaign after campaign. In New York City, Fiorello La Guardia talked about this all the time. The klaxon became the symbol of noisy modernity and the problem that governments tried to solve. Many places banned them, and car companies stopped installing them.
Even without the klaxon, there still seems to be a tension between the individual and societal impact of horn usage. Where I live in Washington, DC, I hear horns all the time, including when people are greeting one another or trying to tell someone to hurry up. In those situations, the horn-blowing isn’t about safety; it’s about driver convenience. And it can be very annoying to those nearby — or at least to me.
Funny, in the 1920s taxis in New York, Paris and Madrid did exactly that. If you were a cab driver and you came to pick someone up, you started whaling on your horn. There were a whole bunch of laws that came on the books to stop that from happening.
The tensions you describe haven’t gone away, but I think that their extent is less than a century ago. You can listen to old recordings of streetscapes in the 1930s, and drivers in the city are just honking constantly. Now it’s not such a ubiquitous background sound.
I’m curious about car alarms, which are another kind of auditory pollution from cars. Horns can be annoying to those outside the vehicle, but they also benefit them by preventing collisions. With a car alarm, all the upside — assuming there is any — seems to accrue to the vehicle owner who theoretically avoids a theft, while the impact of that alarm on everyone else is entirely negative.
~ Yeah, I agree. It’s actually even worse, because the annoyance of a sound relates to its duration as well as volume, and car alarms can go on and on. A hundred years ago, makers of the klaxon were very interested in the duration of the sound. They were trying to get klaxon owners to use what they called a “tiger growl,” which just a short tap on the device so it sounds like “aa” instead of the full “aaOOgah.”
What should the car horns of the future sound like?
The same as they do now. From a social engineering point of view, you want car sounds to be identifiable as car sounds. Horns haven’t changed much since the late 1920s. I think sticking with what people recognize through cultural training is the most the most logical way to go. Having some new sound would probably confuse people.
Does that apply to car engine sounds too, given that electric cars at low speeds can be nearly silent?
I don’t think we want electric cars to be silent. When I hear a car coming, I look in its direction immediately. That’s what we do when we’re negotiating space and identifying potential threats. That’s kind of how we’re hardwired: You need to hear the tiger coming, even in your sleep, right? So for safety’s sake, I think that silent cars wouldn’t be a good thing. Nor do we want electric cars to sound wacky, with fart noises and such.
A sign urges drivers to avoid honking on a street in Pondicherry, India.
How have we acclimatized ourselves to urban car noises over time?
We have a consumer technology approach to solving the problem of car noise. People can walk around with noise-canceling headphones or buy a quiet car or get special windows that don’t let sound in. It’s a kind of acoustic cocooning. If you have beef with the noise, well, you don’t have the right app or the right product.
Sounds like you think that’s bad. Why?
It’s a consumer technology-driven argument about how to solve a societal problem.
If I’m taking a walk and a car comes up on me that’s roaring, there’s a startle response. It’s hard not to be angry at somebody who is making that imposition. The more we realize that the car sounds we make have an impact on other people, the more ethical we are as people. Having that conversation is a better conversation than just saying, “Well, get a car that keeps out outside noise” or “get double-paned windows.” I’d like to see a discourse where we talk about our relationship to one another, and the fact that we’re part of a community that we want to make more livable.
If someone on the street is crying and I have my headphones on, I don’t have to pay attention to them. I can keep my environment entirely controlled. If we train ourselves to think that it’s unreasonable to hear anybody else’s sound, and that the only proper approach is to mitigate the noise, then we don’t really have to listen to each other. We miss out on learning from one another.
Are you saying that car noises erode civil society?
I think so. If you have a big muscle car or you remove the muffler or install enormous tailpipes, that’s a conscious choice you’re making. You like the fact that you’re calling attention to yourself. It’s analogous to the early days of the klaxon, because you’re saying, “Get out of my way,” as opposed to, “Excuse me.” I’d like there to be more of a conversation about the fact that we have an obligation to avoid offending other people.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-loud-warning-from-the-past-about-living-with-cars?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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THE QUIET POWER OF CAR-FREE NEIGHBORHOODS
One morning on a recent work trip to the German city of Leipzig, I found myself with time to kill, so I left my hotel with no plan beyond meandering through the city center, which dates to medieval times. I turned left or right whenever an intriguing storefront, building or park caught my eye.
There turned out to be plenty to see, including the St. Thomas Church, where Johann Sebastian Bach lies buried, as well as a monument commemorating Leipzig’s role in the peaceful collapse of East Germany in 1989. In one square, a construction crew was setting up for a wine festival; nearby, a bagpipe-playing busker in a kilt drew a crowd of bemused onlookers.
But what I found most striking about Leipzig’s historic core was not a presence, but an absence: There was no car noise at all. Instead of squealing brakes and rumbling engines, I heard café chatter and chiming clock towers.
A website supported by the German government explains why that was the case. In the 1990s, Leipzig’s leaders wanted to do something about its car-clogged city center, which was “almost at a standstill.” The result was a low-traffic plan for the area that diverted vehicles to surrounding roads, giving more street space to people walking and biking.
With cars now nearly absent from Leipzig’s downtown, my stroll was strikingly free of noise — and also delightful, as I enjoyed the thrill of a place that was both vibrant and quiet. I ended up wandering the streets for hours longer than I had planned (and spending more money, too).
Although still rare in North America, car-free and car-light neighborhoods have grown common in Europe, established in cities like Paris, Brussels and Pontevedra, Spain. Boosters often tout the improvements in air quality and road safety when street space is used for sidewalks, bike lanes and outdoor public space instead of transporting and storing motor vehicles.
By comparison, the removal of “the roaring traffic’s boom,” to borrow Cole Porter’s phrase, garners scant attention. But its upside is very real. Apart from an occasional jackhammer, the urbanist adage really is true: Cities aren’t loud, cars are loud.
Don’t just take my word for it. Researchers have found that about half of urban noise is attributable to motor vehicles. In some places the share is higher, such as in Toronto, where traffic produces about 60% of the background din. And silencing that cacophony can lead to flourishing street life — in North America as well as in Europe.
Consider what happened in October 2019, when New York City banned private cars from 14th Street, a major Manhattan thoroughfare, with the goal of speeding up bus services and reducing crashes. The move was hugely controversial at the time, and a group of nearby residents filed numerous lawsuits attempting to block it. They ultimately delayed but did not kill the project.
When the changes to 14th Street finally went into effect, the city’s predictions proved justified. Bus trips did indeed speed up, and crashes fell. (Despite some residents’ fears, the amount of traffic on adjacent streets barely budged.) But few seemed to anticipate what seemed to be the most popular aspect of a transformed 14th Street: the tranquility of a car-free roadway in the midst of the City That Never Sleeps. The New York Times described “a quiet that was almost eerie,” where no one “heard a single honking horn.” Others dubbed it “ The Miracle on 14th Street,” and local officials promised to replicate the policy on other city roadways.
Perhaps because it happened just before the Covid-19 pandemic brought a far more unnerving and widespread spell of urban silence, that success story has now been largely memory-holed. But the unexpected jubilation that followed the removal of 14th Street’s cars suggests an American inability to even conceive of the pleasures of quiet streets. At least on this side of the Atlantic, car noise is an immutable urban fixture, something almost impossible to imagine being without, a bit like David Foster Wallace’s classic joke about the fish that grow flummoxed when asked “How’s the water?”
It takes truly extraordinary sonic assaults to make drivers draw enough attention to warrant official sanction. Think of the “Belltown Hellcat,” the 21-year-old Seattleite who managed to infuriate an entire city by gunning his modified Dodge through late-night streets and then posting videos of his exploits on social media, in defiance of law enforcement, city officials and frazzled neighbors. (The driver was arrested and barred from posting on his social media accounts.) Left unpunished are the instigators of more commonplace irritants — decibel-blasting motorists who bombard neighborhoods with revving engines, explosive exhausts and sound systems that go to 11.
Recognizing the social costs imposed by obnoxiously loud machinery, London and Paris now deploy automatic noise cameras that snap pictures of vehicles when they break maximum decibel thresholds, with a ticket mailed to their registered owners. The idea has started to catch on in the US, too, with New York City and Knoxville, Tennessee, experimenting with it.
But noise cameras address only the most egregiously amplified cars and trucks; they do nothing about the background babel that is ever present in urban America, the kind that requires people to raise their voice when chatting on the sidewalk. Nor can such devices mitigate the relentless clamor endured by those living adjacent to arterials and freeways. As far back as 1981, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that nearly 100 million Americans were regularly exposed to traffic noise of at least 55 decibels, enough to cause health problems.
Such ongoing noise exposure can have deadly consequences, such as increased risk of stroke, hypertension and heart attacks. A growing body of research has separated the health effects of car noise from vehicle emissions, and its findings are ominous. According to the World Health Organization, excessive noise from motor vehicles “can disturb sleep; cause adverse cardiovascular, metabolic, psychophysiological and birth outcomes; [and] lead to cognitive and hearing impairment.” A 2022 United Nations report concurred, saying that traffic noise of 60 decibels "is enough to raise heart rate and blood pressure and cause a loss of concentration and sleep.” In Denmark, a multiyear study of 2 million people aged 60 and over found that fully 11% of dementia diagnoses could be attributed to roadway noise.
As with so many other environmental hazards, those living in low-income communities across the US are at particular risk, with background noise typically two decibels higher than in more affluent areas, according to a 2017 study . This is by design, as planners have sited countless highways, airports and other high-volume infrastructure in disinvested neighborhoods. A paper from last year found that urban neighborhoods that were subjected to racially discriminatory redlining practices decades ago still experience louder noise today.
Looking to the future, the ascendance of electric vehicles offers a partial solution to noise pollution — but with an emphasis on “partial.” EV motors are quieter than gas engines, but at speeds over 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour) car noise comes largely from friction between tires and pavement, which electrification does not mitigate. (And then there are the battery-powered performance vehicles designed to broadcast fake engine noises just as deafening as their gas-powered predecessors, which is a whole other issue.)
Cars drive past a noise barrier beside the highway in the Zuffenhausen district of Germany in 2022.
There are technical ways to dampen background vehicle noise, such as erecting highway barriers that block sound and using asphalt designed to muffle tires rolling over it. Policies can also mitigate specific aspects of car cacophony. Lima enacted laws against unnecessary honking in an effort to silence the Peruvian capital’s famously exuberant drivers; Israel banned loud car alarms. But the foolproof fix for urban vehicle noise is a simple one: Do as Leipzig has done, and limit, or eliminate, the cars.
To be fair, in many US neighborhoods, car noise is probably there to stay. Decades of car-centric planning have made it difficult to imagine many urban neighborhoods — or even streets — in the South or Southwest ever banning private cars, as has become common in Europe. But there are still plenty of neighborhoods in older cities of the Midwest, West Coast and Northeast that predate the automobile, where one could realistically imagine oases of car-free calm.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-quiet-power-of-car-free-neighborhoods
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MORE THAN NINETY PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S FUNGAL HOTSPOTS ARE NOT PROTECTED
Mycorrhizal fungi play an essential role in climate regulation and ecosystem health, and researchers have used A.I. to predict the locations that host a high diversity of these underground organisms
Researchers collect soil samples in Tierra del Fuego, Chile
When you think of biodiversity, what comes to mind first? Perhaps you imagine the lush tropical rainforests of the Amazon or Madagascar, teeming with tens of thousands of unique animal and plant species.
But the Earth’s biodiversity is not limited to above-ground habitats. It also includes mycorrhizal fungal communities that live below the ground. A new study published in the journal Nature on July 23 is helping the world visualize this long-ignored piece of global biodiversity, while calling attention to the need to better protect these critical ecosystems.
“For centuries, we’ve mapped mountains, forests and oceans,” study co-author Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist at the Free University of Amsterdam and co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), says in a statement. “But these fungi have remained in the dark, despite the extraordinary ways they sustain life on land.”
Mycorrhizal fungi form vast networks that are essential to the health of ecosystems. The fungi make their homes in and around the roots of plants—with more than 80 percent of plants forming a symbiotic relationship to them, reports the New York Times’ Emily Anthes.
Historically, fungi have not been well-studied, but scientists have found that they play important roles in cycling nutrients, creating soil and regenerating forests. These fungal communities aid in the storage of more than 13 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in the ground—equivalent to about one-third of global emissions from fossil fuels.
What are mycorrhizal fungi?
Mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with plant roots. Since the fungi can’t photosynthesize, they get sugars from the plants, and in return, they offer plants nutrients from the soil.
According to the researchers, disruptions to mycorrhizal fungal networks might accelerate climate change, decrease crop productivity and harm overall biodiversity.
“Given the impact of these fungal symbioses on the health and functioning of Earth’s ecosystems, continuing to ignore them could be a hugely missed opportunity,” lead author Michael van Nuland, an evolutionary biologist at SPUN, tells the Guardian’s Taro Kaneko.
To uncover the hidden biodiversity of mycorrhizal fungi, an international team of researchers—in partnership with SPUN—used machine learning models to analyze more than 2.8 billion fungal DNA sequences from nearly 25,000 soil samples extracted across 130 different countries.
Using this fungal data alongside analyses of each site’s climate and elevation, the models then made predictions of where fungal biodiversity hotspots would be located. These predictions were transferred to an online tool called “Underground Atlas”—an interactive fungal biodiversity map.
Based on the model’s predictions, more than 90 percent of the world’s most diverse communities of mycorrhizal fungi—or fungal biodiversity hotspots—are located in areas that are not under environmental protection.
According to the New York Times, the scientists also found that many of the fungal biodiversity hotspots predicted were not located where most people would assume them to be. For example, the model predicted diverse communities of fungi in the Alaskan tundra and the Mediterranean scrublands, rather than the Amazon rainforest.
The model pointed to the Ghanaian coast as a huge global hotspot for mycorrhizal biodiversity—sounding an alarm about the area’s rapidly eroding coastline, which is crumbling at a rate of roughly two meters per year.
Kiers notes to the Guardian that land use is another huge factor in the degradation of mycorrhizal ecosystems. Scientists hope the work will inform conservation policy and international biodiversity laws, per the statement.
“This paper is wildly exciting,” Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at the World Wildlife Fund who was not involved in the study, tells the New York Times. “We’ve been studying above-ground biodiversity and its functioning for things that we care about—like water retention, carbon sequestration, productivity—for five decades. But we’ve made very little progress doing the same thing for below-ground biodiversity.”
Scientists say more work needs to be done in order to verify the model’s predictions, the New York Times reports. SPUN and its international partners are now working to sample remote fungal ecosystems in areas like Mongolia, Ukraine and Pakistan.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/more-than-90-percent-of-the-worlds-fungal-hotspots-are-not-protected-new-study-suggests-180987045/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GOSPELS
There are many “irreconcilable differences” in the christian bible’s four gospels.
Why?
The Occam’s Razor is that the authors of the gospels and their redactors were making things up, as christian beliefs changed and the “big fish” got bigger and bigger, fishier and fishier.
According to Matthew, Jesus was born prior to the death of Herod the Great, who died around 4 BC.
According to Luke, Jesus was born during a Roman census in 6 AD.
That’s a ten-year difference, and Matthew and Luke disagree on many other “facts” about Jesus’s birth and childhood.
Matthew and Luke both contain fake genealogies for Jesus and the fake genealogies are irreconcilable.
Someone was lying, but in all probability they both were.
Then the author of John or one of his redactors claimed that Jesus was the Greek LOGOS (“Word”). I have called this the invention of Silver Surfer Jesus.
If Jesus was the creator of the universe, why didn’t the authors of Matthew, Mark and Luke know this amazing “fact”?
In the gospels and christian theology we clearly see Jesus evolving before our eyes:
Jesus is fully human in the first-written gospel, Mark, and was adopted as a human “son of god” at his baptism by John the Baptist.
Jesus is “born of a virgin” in Matthew and Luke but the accounts are completely incompatible.
Jesus is the LOGOS in the gospel of John. The LOGOS was a second god who was inferior and subject to the supreme, transcendent god in Greek theology.
Jesus did not become “of the same substance” as god until 325 AD.
The “trinity” including the holy ghost did not become official church dogma until 381 AD.
What a long, strange trip it’s been, from a human Jesus to a third of god.
Really, nothing about the gospels makes any sense, if Jesus was a real person.
Was Joseph the father of Jesus, as the fake genealogies claim?
If Jesus was “born of a virgin” why create fake genealogies?
If Jesus was not born at all, but preexisted the universe which he created, why the loopy “virgin birth” narratives?
If the holy ghost is a “person” and a member of the “trinity,” why did it take four centuries for christian theology to catch on?
It seems apparent to me that the authors and redactors of the new testament were making things up and they were too far apart in geography to keep their wild lies straight.
~ Michael R. Burch, Quora
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THE WORTH OF AN ANGRY GOD
A god who knows everything, is everywhere, and wields impossible power, is a potent fantasy. Allegiance to it animates the lives of billions worldwide. But this “Big God,” as psychologists and anthropologists refer to it, wasn’t dreamt from scratch but pieced together, over thousands of years, paralleling humanity’s move from small- to large-scale societies. One burning question researchers want to answer is: Did humans need belief in a God-like being—someone who can punish every immorality we might commit—to have the big societies we have today, where we live relatively peaceably among strangers we could easily exploit?
Harvey Whitehouse, the director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, doesn’t think so. “Complex societies,” he and his colleagues declared in a March 2019 Nature paper, “precede moralizing gods throughout world history.” They relied on a massive historical database, called Seshat, which over a decade attracted contributions from over a hundred scholars.
With the database “finally ready for analysis,” Whitehouse and his colleagues wrote in The Conversation, “we are poised to test a long list of theories about global history,” particularly “whether morally concerned deities drove the rise of complex societies,” some hallmarks of which are more economic integration and division of labor, more political hierarchy, the emergence of classes, and dependence on more complex technology and pre-specialists.
Whitehouse concluded that those deities did no such driving. As he told Nautilus in a 2014 interview, as societies became more agricultural, what researchers see “in the archeological record is increasing frequency of collective rituals. This changes things psychologically and leads to more doctrinal kinds of religious systems, which are more recognizable when we look at world religions today.”
Joseph Henrich, chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, sees it differently. He contends that moralizing gods spurred societal complexity because belief in moralizing gods leads to success in intergroup competition. It increased trust and cooperation among a growing population of relative strangers, he said, and buttressed traits like bravery in warfare. “The word ‘moralizing’ is not a useful term,” though, he added. “People use it casually, because people are interested in morality, but the theory specifies this very specific set of things that increase your success in intergroup competition. Most people want to call greater cooperation, helping strangers, things like that, moral. That’s just a Western preoccupation.”
I caught up with Henrich earlier this month to discuss the anthropological chicken-and-egg problem of whether gods or complex societies came first. He was gracious in defending his position that gods were the bonds that allowed societies to gain strength and grow.
When it comes to studying religion, says Joseph Henrich (above), “I’m in the tradition of cultural evolution, where we build mathematical models, study the details of how children learn. There’s some relation to memes. Imagine memes, but with lots of science.”
How did gods help build societies?
The way to think about it is that there’s lots of different groups coming to different beliefs about their gods. You find gods that care about what kind of foods you eat, who you have sex with, how you have sex, how you treat your neighbors, how you treat strangers, and some of these things help societies to expand and grow. Some just appeal to various aspects of our psychology so they can stick around because they fit human psychology well. These beliefs are favored by some groups and lead to competition with others. And these religious beliefs, including rituals, have allowed society to scale up.
Does that help explain why certain religions have merged into the ones that we see today? For example, in the Bible, you can see traces of beings that existed in Mesopotamian myths.
Exactly. In Mesopotamia, there’s this rich exchange of different supernatural beliefs. The Jewish god is changing through time. Robert Wright has a nice book on this, The Evolution of God, showing how you go from this kind of desert war god into the god of Christianity today.
What is driving that transformation?
Things like a belief in a contingent afterlife, and a belief in free will, got picked out because they helped societies expand the sphere of social interaction. They did things like galvanize trade and incentivize bravery and warfare.
People who believe in gods that are more punishing, or more moralizing, are more generous.
If moralizing or punishing gods didn’t emerge from complex societies, what did they emerge from?
Gods that do some degree of punishing can be found across diverse societies, including among hunter-gatherers. Essentially, many gods in small-scale societies are like people, but with some extra, though limited, powers. People are punishing, sometimes, so naturally the gods are too. Intergroup competition essentially “picked out” and recombined the gods that helped societies succeed, whether by inducing cooperation or bravery in war. This meant, over time, gods became more powerful, knowing, and punishing as societies scaled up.
How do you know that small-scale societies had a moralizing god?
We have extensive ethnographic evidence from anthropological fieldwork as well as from the reports of travelers, missionaries, and others. One compilation of such evidence is called the Ethnographic Atlas, which is a compilation of 1,200 societies that anthropologists have studied. They have differing degrees of social complexity, and they have some information about the supernatural agents that people believe in. Various projects in different times and places have tried to say something about those gods, and tried to code them as moralizing or high gods or different kinds of things like that. Just from looking at that, you can get a rough sense that even by stringent criteria, these societies, that are about chiefdom level, not hunter-gatherers, will have some of these kinds of moralizing gods. Of course, there are problem with this source, so we look across many different sources.
How did competing religious beliefs spur societies to expand?
The idea is you can be more competitive against other societies. Instead of cooperating with just members of your clan, cooperate with the whole village, or some collection of villages. We’ve done experiments, where we had people divide sums of money between themselves or a member of their own village, and someone else in a more distant community. What we find is people who believe in gods that are more punishing, or more moralizing, are more equitable in how they allocate money between themselves or a member of their village in these more distant communities.
Why does a moralizing god cause people to be more equitable?
The data shows that people’s beliefs, specifically about the god’s power to punish and monitor them, is associated with their expanded pro-sociality. This suggests that at some level they don’t want to get punished.
Whitehouse and his colleagues write that social complexity precedes the advent of “moralizing gods” and hinges on an analysis of the Seshat database. In May, you published a response, “Corrected analyses show that moralizing gods precede complex societies but serious data concerns remain.” What was the problem?
Well, we show in our paper, if you look at the original data, it’s mostly not available, all the way up until God suddenly bursts into existence, which is super highly correlated with the emergence of writing. It’s kind of like society gets ready, and they write down that they have these gods, and suddenly it gets recorded in Seshat as having moralizing gods.
Whitehouse and his colleagues re-coded the missing data as zeroes. They turned an absence of evidence into evidence of absence.
What do you mean when you say, in your paper, that Whitehouse’s analysis suffered from “forward bias,” and how did you correct for that?
Forward bias is the idea that any time you look back in time to estimate the first appearance of a trait—when you have evidence of that trait—you say that the trait is actually older. For example, if we find evidence that humans had fire 200,000 years ago, we can be sure that, as a statistical fact, unless we think we found the actual first time anyone ever made a fire, that we’re finding it later than it actually appeared. So dates in archeology and history are always forward biased, at least statistically. One of the analyses we did was just to minimally correct for forward bias by moving back the smallest amount of time possible in the Seshat database, which is one century. When you push things back one century, it reverses the results. So rather than social complexity preceding moralizing gods, you get moralizing gods before the big increase in social complexity.
How did religious rituals help expand cooperation in a community?
In a couple of ways. In smaller communities, high intensity rituals create solidarity with their synchronous movement, music, and dancing. To create larger imagined communities, there are doctrinal rituals where you get a group of people who repeat the same thing. As that religion expands, congregations are repeating the same words. They’re getting the same doctrine, the same beliefs. That’s guaranteeing a uniformity of beliefs. So the ritual does a lot of work in increasing people’s sociality.
There’s also doctrinal rituals about how people engage in costly sacrifice. It could be donating money, it could be sacrificing an animal, it could be just giving up your time. All of these things help persuade the next generation that these things are worth believing in. We call them “credibility enhancing displays.”
So rituals evolve to standardize the beliefs. They do things like saying words in unison, they put the words into mouths of prestigious individuals. All of this increases the cultural transition across generations. It helps the next generation believe deeply in the supernatural agent, and that’s what creates the bonds in a community.
Does this cultural transition lead to a genetic transition?
Sure, you can draw an analogy to a kind of cultural fitness. That would lead to success and intergroup competition because the norms are more successful. It also appeals to aspects of our psychology and leads to having more babies. So cultural evolution can be affected by reproduction, as well as genetic evolution. One of the things that is clearly going on is that early Christians, say third century, and Mormons in the 19th century, were having many more babies than the than people around them.
Do you think that trend is happening now?
Yes, that’s still true about Evangelical Protestantism.
What about intergroup competition? Do you see that playing out among religious beliefs today?
I think you see that ISIS was a religious mutation that tried to spread, and was moderately successful in spreading for a period. It eventually got put down by secular institutions. But it’s the classic thing that in the past, sometimes they spread and die, and sometimes they take over. You can tell that story about the spread of lots of religions. Early Islam spread very rapidly over a big space of area. So I think this continues to happen.
A recent Gallup poll reported that 60 percent of Americans would now consider voting for an atheist. What do you make of declining religious belief or, at least the de-stigmatization of public atheism given the apparent role belief in moralizing gods plays in supporting cooperation amongst strangers?
The acceptance of atheists is the trailing figure on a bunch of trends, right? That same stack can be applied, for example, to having female and gay politicians—atheists are actually the lowest on that grouping. It seems clear that with the rise of strong secular institutions, representative governments, Western-style judicial processes, religion has become less and less important. And, in fact, one of the things our research shows is that it’s belief in a kind of punishing god that does a lot of the work of keeping people in line and policing people. What many Christians have today is a belief in this loving, kind God, who’s not much of a punisher. In fact, belief in Hell is on the decline. Ara Norenzayan has work showing that, if you believe God’s punishing and loving, you’re actually more likely to cheat. It’s the belief in Hell that seemed to do a lot of the work of keeping people in line.
Does research suggest that effective secular institutions can keep people in line?
Let’s say we give people a chance to allocate money between themselves and a stranger. If you prime them with God unconsciously and they’re a religious person, like a Christian or Muslim, then you get a big increase in the amount that they give. If you prime an atheist with that, you don’t get any effect. But if you prime an atheist with courts and constables and police, you also get an increase—and you get that with a religious person. So it seems like effective secular institutions can take the place of God. But this doesn’t work in places without effective secular institutions. If the police are corrupt and nobody trusts the police, priming people with the police doesn’t help.
Does this mean we don’t need to return to Judeo-Christian values for secular institutions to function well?
Right. The argument would be the Danish or the Dutch. These are places where there are high levels of atheism, very little belief in traditional religion, but super well-functioning societies. It could be like climbing a ladder: Once we build these things, then we don’t need religion anymore. But we never could have built these secular institutions without religion in the first place.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-worth-of-an-angry-god
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WHY SOME PEOPLE DEAL BETTER WITH THE COLD
Plunging into ice baths post-workout might be how some professional athletes choose to recover, but anyone trying to keep fit in the winter will know that the cold can be as harsh as it is rejuvenating.
For Matilda Hay, a recreational swimmer, there's no choice between a heated pool or cold-water wild swimming. While the latter has been lauded for its health benefits, it's not for everyone. "When I've tried wild swimming, I can't stay in for long – I lasted maybe a few minutes before I came running out," says Hay. "My sister is able to stay in much longer than me for some reason. I just think we handle the cold differently."
Evidence for some of the mental health benefits of cold-water swimming cited in the media is a little thin, too. It's largely based on the case study of one 24-year-old woman. So why has it proven so popular? And is Hay right, are some people just better at handling the cold than others?
The weather takes the cutting edge off our performance levels. In the cold our muscles slow, reducing our ability to both burst into action and the total amount of power generated (though this can be mitigated with a good warm-up beforehand).
The reasons for this decrease in performance in cold weather are a little complex, not least because our tolerance of the cold depends on our genetics, subcutaneous fat levels – the fat just beneath our skin – and body size. One suggestion is that when our bodies cool, the rate at which we release energy in our muscle cells decreases.
But exercising in the cold has also been linked to better cardiac health, a stronger immune system and converting white fat cells to brown, contributing to more weight loss. So, if done safely, it could bring serious health benefits.
Some of us might have an advantage when it comes to working out in cold weather. One in five people lack the muscle fiber protein α-actinin-3. This mutation reveals a little bit about our evolutionary history and explains why some modern athletes succeed in the cold, while others remain frozen to the start line.
Sometimes called the "gene for speed", α-actinin-3 gives athletes a competitive advantage when it comes to powerful bursts of energy and muscle recovery, but it might be less useful in other situations.
All of our skeletal muscles are made up of a combination of two types of fiber: slow-twitch muscle fibers and fast-twitch muscle fibers.
"Muscles have fibers of both types, but the percentages of each may differ from muscle to muscle and person to person," says Courtenay Dunn-Lewis, a physiologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
Slow-twitch muscle fibers are responsible for slower, aerobic actions. These fibers keep us standing upright, they keep our head from falling forward, our jaw from slackening open, and they propel us through gentler forms of exercise like walking and jogging. If you have ever tried yoga or meditation and have been directed to consciously relax all the muscles in your body, you might be familiar with how many muscles are subconsciously engaged in the background. This isn't muscle "tightness"; it is a normal bodily function called tonus – the slow-twitch muscle fibers' way of stopping us flopping around.
Fast-twitch muscle fibers, on the other hand, respire anaerobically and can contract in quick bursts, but fatigue more easily. These fibers are only engaged when we need to lift something, jump, sprint or any of the other explosive movements that might be needed in anaerobic exercise. The protein α-actinin-3 is found only in these fast-twitch muscle fibers.
"About 80% of an elite athlete's muscle fibers are either fast-twitch, if they are a power athlete, or slow-twitch, if they are endurance athletes," says Dunn-Lewis. "Consider the long, slender physique of a marathon runner, whose predominantly slow-twitch muscle fibers may be small but are resistant to fatigue and provide lasting energy kilometer after kilometer. This person is also burning less energy in a given unit of time. By comparison, an American football player or hockey player has predominantly large fast-twitch muscle fibers, moves with power and speed, but fatigues quite quickly. Athletes with 80% of one fiber type are simply born lucky. For the rest of us, the percentages are closer to 50% fast-twitch and 50% slow twitch, and that percentage is determined at birth. Fiber type is determined strictly by the nervous system, and for that reason cannot be changed with exercise.”
Only top athletes have high concentrations of either fast- or slow-twitch muscle fibers, depending on their specialty
One way to picture the difference between these two types of fiber is to think about chicken.
Chicken leg meat is dark because it is denser in slow-twitch muscle fibers and myoglobin (a protein that binds with oxygen, delivering it to the muscles as part of aerobic respiration). Because myoglobin is rich in iron (a bit like blood), it gives muscles a dark, reddish color.
In fact, when you cut through a steak, the red stuff that comes out is myoglobin not blood, which gets its red color from the related hemoglobin.
Breast meat is light in color because it is denser in fast-twitch muscle fibers and so less dense in myoglobin. Chicken breast muscles are only needed for short, sharp, anaerobic bursts of activity when the birds beat their wings, whereas their legs are more consistently being used.
In humans, the difference is less obvious. Our muscles are made up of a combination of these two fibers in lesser and greater amounts.
These fibers also play an important role in keeping us warm. When cold, our fast-twitch muscle fibers contract repeatedly and quickly – this is what shivering is. Each tiny, speedy contraction warms us up a little bit as energy is released. It's an energy-intensive way to keep warm, but it is quick and effective.
"One of the most effective methods for increasing body heat is muscle contraction," says Dunn-Lewis. "In fact, during exercise, 70-80% of calories burned result in heat."
Meanwhile our slow-twitch muscle fibers are always subtly engaged as part of tonus, producing efficient heat.
The protein α-actinin-3 is missing completely in about 1.5 billion people globally. While they still have fast-twitch muscle fibers, their muscles are less explosive and instead are denser in slow-twitch fibers, meaning they rarely succeed in sports requiring strength and explosiveness, but they do succeed in endurance sports, according to the paper's authors. While they might be less capable at anaerobic movements, they can use energy more efficiently.
A mutation in the gene that encodes for α-actinin-3 resulted in the ancestors of humans who migrated from Africa into Europe 50,000 years ago losing the protein. This gene mutation might have helped European's ancestors to cope with the colder climate by wasting less energy shivering, instead relying on the efficient heat of their tonus.
Long distance runners might fare better in colder conditions
"[This genotype] tends to be seen less frequently in ethnic groups associated with warmer climates – 1% in Kenyans and Nigerians, 11% in Ethiopians, 18% in Caucasians, 25% in Asians," says Dunn-Lewis. "According to the out-of-Africa model, this suggests that this genetic polymorphism increased as people migrated to cooler climates."
People lacking α-actinin-3 are better at keeping warm and, energy-wise, are able to endure a tougher climate.
Another aspect of our genetics might determine how we handle the cold: our fat. Just as we have two major types of skeletal muscle fibers, we have two types of fat – white fat and brown fat – one of which is important to keeping us warm.
Kristin Stanford, a cell biologist, and her co-authors at Ohio State University conducted a review of published research on the role of brown adipose tissue (brown fat) in regulating our heat. Brown fat is thermogenic, meaning it, like our slow-twitch muscle fibers, heats us up without needing to shiver. Just being exposed to the cold is enough to activate our brown fat, which can lead to weight loss. Stanford suggests this could be an area of investigation for treating obesity.
However, exercise appears to have a conflicting effect on our brown fat. It appears that exercising inhibits this activity – perhaps because when exercising we are generating enough heat through other mechanisms – though the authors stress that research is inconclusive at this stage.
While cold weather might prevent burning brown fat and our muscles can have slower nerve conduction speeds and poorer sports performance, "in practice, if an individual warms up properly... their body warms itself up quite readily", says Dunn-Lewis. It's no reason not to exercise in the cold.
"In fact, the best marathon times tend to be in cold weather, as the cold helps to better dissipate the heat generated during exercise," she says. "If not for the cold weather, the body would have to redirect resources away from muscle performance during endurance exercise to get rid of heat."
Not all top athletes fare better in the cold, however. Cold weather exacerbates exercise-induced asthma, which affects more than 35% of winter Olympic athletes. Colder air is less humid, as water vapor in the air freezes. It’s thought that the dry air initiates an inflammatory response in the lungs causing bronchial constriction.
So, there are genetic reasons why some of us find it harder than others. The slight advantage afforded to some people with the α-actinin-3 mutation might explain their desire to wake up at dawn to swim in open water while others struggle to get out of the house for a run. For Matilda Hay, the heated public lido near her home will suffice for now.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-some-people-can-deal-with-the-cold?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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EXERCISE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN DIET IN PREVENTING ALZHEIMER’S
Key Takeaways:
Middle-aged adults with higher cardiorespiratory fitness levels had lower dementia risk in a new study.
Cardiorespiratory fitness, or exercise capacity, involves the body’s ability to supply muscles with oxygen during physical exertion.
Exercise capacity may have a bigger influence on dementia risk than food choices.
Middle-aged adults who want to reduce their risk of dementia as they get older may want to focus more on their exercise capacity than their eating habits, a new study suggests.
For the study, researchers examined diet and exercise data for about 9,000 adults who were 51 years old on average and had no history of dementia. Participants performed treadmill tests to assess what’s known as cardiorespiratory fitness, or how easily the circulatory and respiratory systems can supply oxygen to muscles during physical exertion. Scientists used a standard measurement known as metabolic equivalents (METs) which reflects how much oxygen is consumed during physical activity.
Study participants also completed food questionnaires detailing what they ate on three days within one week. Scientists then rated their eating habits based on how closely people followed two diets that can promote both heart and brain health: the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet and the Mediterranean diet.
Over an average follow-up period of about nine years, about 1,500 people developed dementia. Following a DASH or Mediterranean diet didn’t appear to impact dementia risk, according to findings published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.
However, each 1-MET increase in exercise capacity demonstrated during treadmill tests was associated with a 5 to 6 percent lower risk of developing dementia.
“This study confirms the results of prior studies that suggest nothing is more important to reduce one’s risk of dementia than aerobic exercise,” says Andrew Budson, MD, a professor and associate director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, at Boston University, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
The Study Had Some Limitations
The new study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how exercise or eating habits might directly impact brain health. One limitation of the study is that researchers only looked at eating habits over a three days, and only looked at exercise capacity at a single moment in time. It’s possible that participants’ habits shifted over time in ways that weren’t measured in the study and impacted their dementia risk.
Another drawback of the study is that researchers relied on participants to accurately recall and report on the foods they consumed, making it possible that people may have provided inaccurate or incomplete results. By contrast, scientists objectively measured exercise capacity using treadmill tests.
The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends both a Mediterranean-style diet and a DASH diet for promoting brain health. Both diets are rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean cuts of fish and poultry.
Any Amount of Exercise Benefits the Brain
The new study findings add to the evidence suggesting that exercise may be one of the most important things to focus on when it comes to promoting brain health as you age, says Mika Kivimaki, PhD, a professor and chair of social epidemiology at University College London in England, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
“The biggest drop in dementia risk happens when people move from being completely sedentary to engaging in some form of physical activity,” Dr. Kivimaki says. “Studies that track physical activity levels from midlife into old age show clear benefits of staying active over time. However, being active at any age seems to have a positive impact on cognitive health, so it’s never too late to start.”
https://www.everydayhealth.com/neurological-disorders/which-does-more-to-prevent-dementia-diet-or-exercise/
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ending on beauty:
DECONSTRUCTION
I think the sirens in The Odyssey sang The Odyssey, for there is nothing more seductive, more terrible, than the story of our own life, the one we do not want to hear and will do anything to listen to. ~ Mary Ruefle
