NO ONE IS SELF-MADE; ITALIAN AND LATIN; VITAMIN D AND CALCIUM PROVIDE LITTLE TO NO FRACTURE RISK BENEFIT; THE POWER OF LABELS; THE MOST POPULAR BABY NAMES

 

Rouen Cathedral, Rose Window

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SAINT JOAN SPEAKS TO ME 

I’m walking down the cobbled 
streets of Rouen. Cabbage leaves 
blacken in the gutter.


In the square they are burning

Joan of Arc. Her eyes are 
transparent with light. 
She says, Truth is a torch.
but it makes a beautiful blaze.

The crowd is weeping.
Her lips are charred 
doors of light. She says, 
A dead body is only a dead body.

How can we tell ash from soul
unless we too rise, 
a blue heron of smoke 
slanting into flight —

that pulse of a wing so slow, 
so soaring when she says,
We are all burning. 
Be a greater fire.

~ Oriana

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JOHN LE CARRÉ'S SPY NOVELS WERE SHAPED BY HIS CON-MAN FATHER 

The author's childhood was rocked by bankruptcy and deceit. In 2008, he told the BBC that his "hectic background" trained him to be an author – and a spy. 

David Cornwell was steeped in secrecy throughout his life – long before he took on the nom de plume John le Carré, long before his first novel, Call for the Dead, was published in June 1961, and long before he became one of the UK's most critically acclaimed, bestselling spy novelists. He learned deception and self-reliance from an early age, later recalling one particular childhood memory with his older brother, at the start of a day out from school.

"My father told us to wait at the end of the drive at our boarding school in Berkshire. And the reason he didn't want to present himself to the school was that he hadn't paid the bill, but we didn't know that," Le Carré told the BBC in a 2008 interview. "So we waited at the lodge at the end of the school drive with our suitcases. And he never showed up."

Let down by their father Ronnie Cornwell, a con man who was in and out of prison throughout their childhood, the boys did what they could to save face in front of their schoolmates. "We just stayed away for the whole day. We had no food. We had no money. But we wouldn't go back to school. We went back in the evening and pretended we'd had a wonderful day.”

It was the first time he remembered feeling disillusioned about his father – and yet it also taught him something that was to prove useful later. "It's very interesting in espionage terms: the rendezvous collapses. You work out a cover story. You come back and dissemble." 

As a child during World War Two, when other boys at his school were talking about the daring feats of their fathers, Le Carré invented a double life. "He grew up at a time when what your father did in the war was terribly important," his biographer Adam Sisman told the BBC in 2015. "He was embarrassed by his father… [who] was the most shaming of all, he was a spiv [a small-time crook who sells blackmarket goods]. He was profiteering while other boys' fathers were away fighting." To hide this, Le Carré made up stories that Ronnie was a spy.

That complicated relationship with heroics played out in the novels he wrote. His recurring protagonist, George Smiley, was the "anti-James Bond" – someone who is "bureaucratically dowdy, rarely spotted in the field… discreet to the point of self-erasure", according to The Atlantic. He "drops no one-liners, romances no tarot-card readers, roars no speedboats through the Bayou". Le Carré deliberately avoided the fast-car flashiness of Bond in Smiley, telling the BBC that he "made him tubby and physically graceless and a bad dresser".

In novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), Le Carré – who died in 2020 at the age of 89 – focused on the mundane reality of espionage. It was a reality that he knew firsthand, working as a British intelligence officer for MI5 and then MI6 from 1952, after running away from boarding school and ending up in Bern.

A 'psychopath' who loved his sons 

Again, his father directly shaped his career. "If I hadn't had a wildcat dad, I wouldn't have run away," he told the BBC. "If my father hadn't taken me to St Moritz to ski in 1936, Switzerland wouldn't have been imprinted on my memory as a romantic spot to go to, a kind of natural place of exile."

And this complicated relationship with his father continued throughout his life, according to Sisman. "Ronnie had no boundaries – he was in many ways a psychopath. He was a man capable of robbing old ladies of their life savings. At the same time, he clearly loved his sons." 

While Le Carré's mother abandoned him at the age of five, Ronnie stuck around, albeit in a sporadic fashion. "Whenever Ronnie in later life would get in touch with David and say, 'I need bailing out, son', David would reach for his check book and often burst into tears," said Sisman. "So David had this peculiar love-hate thing about his father, this unresolved thing.”

Le Carré recognized that Ronnie not only honed his skills in spycraft, but also shaped the books he wrote, and his ability to create fictional worlds. Coming from a respectable family in Bournemouth, Ronnie first went to prison as a young man, before being sentenced to hard labor. 

"From then on, he lived an extraordinarily flamboyant life," said Le Carré. Constantly reinventing himself, Ronnie "became a racehorse owner. He mixed with younger royals… [with a] chauffeur-driven Bentley and all of that.”

On whether Le Carré was a writer who became a spy for a brief period, or a spy who turned his experiences into novels, he said: "I will never know… But I think actually behind both of them is the great shadow of my father and the duplicitous life that we lived as children, where we knew when we filled up the car with petrol at the local garage that it was never going to be paid for, where we pretended to live like middle-class English boys. 

"We went to school. We didn't talk about our hectic background. So in a sense, we were spies." Although all of his father's family spoke with regional accents, the moment Le Carré got to private school, he adopted the speech of his fellow students. "And I started learning deportment and all the curious ways in which... people of that class communicate with each other. I never felt part of it, but I think very many creative people don't anyway feel integrated in life."

Le Carré's ability to spin fictions – and lead a double life – was in turn influenced by his father's choice to "live a criminal life, but under the guise of orthodoxy". He recalled: "My father's life was one of fantasy, he was a superb con man, and could build castles in the air, invent characters, anything. Since that gift was already an example to me, it was a natural thing to flow into writing fiction." 

'Home was a very dangerous place' 

His upbringing also determined the type of fiction he would write, one populated by morally conflicted characters in which no one could be trusted. "Home was a very dangerous place, as it was for George Smiley, as it is for most of my protagonists in that world," he told the BBC. "Home is where you can be found, home is where they come and arrest you, home is where the bailiffs come and turf out your toys and your clothes." That tension meant that Le Carré said he never felt safe. "Insecurity is a wonderful spark for writing." 

Le Carré created his own genre of spy fiction, one in which his characters questioned themselves and the amoral methods of their agencies. It's a world away from Ian Fleming's 007. "I'm not sure that Bond is a spy," Le Carré told the BBC in a 1966 interview. "He's more some kind of international gangster… he's a man entirely out of the political context." In contrast, Le Carré's novels illuminated the Cold War ideological battleground, the political picture playing as large a role as the espionage. 

They also featured a succession of highly solitary characters, with the author describing The Spy Who came in from the Cold as "a story of loneliness". And Le Carré related to that himself, his own solitariness playing out on the page. "The condition of secrecy was a refuge for me," he said in 2008.

Although Le Carré acknowledged the scars from his unusual upbringing, he recognized the value of what had been hardwired in him from childhood. And despite the trauma of being continually disappointed by his father, Cornwell attributed much of his later success to Ronnie.

"The combination of exotic bouts of life with my father, then the hectic intermissions when he was bankrupt or at Her Majesty's Pleasure somewhere, the range and the scale of experience, in retrospect, was extremely rich. Those things contributed to the way I write, and to the sense of tension which I can never get rid of. I'm grateful for those inheritances. I often quote Graham Greene – 'the credit balance of the writer is his childhood' – and in that sense I was a millionaire.”

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260619-how-john-le-carrs-spy-novels-were-shaped-by-his-con-man-father


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ITALIAN AND LATIN

Say the Italian word for "dear" (caro) with a slightly longer "r" sound, and you've accidentally said "cart" (carro). This phonetic strictness is a surviving ghost of ancient Rome.

While languages like French and Spanish evolved away from their root language in drastic ways, Italian held tightly to several distinct Latin phonetic and grammatical features that its linguistic cousins discarded over the centuries. 

Double Consonants (Gemination)


One of the most prominent features Italian kept is the pronunciation of double consonants. In classical Latin, a double consonant meant the speaker actually held the sound longer, creating a slight rhythmic pause. If a Roman said vacca (cow), they lingered on the "c." Modern Italian preserves this perfectly. The Italian word for cow remains vacca, pronounced with a distinct stop on the double consonant. In contrast, Spanish simplified the phonetics to vaca, and French mutated the word entirely to vache. In Italian, preserving this ancient Latin rhythm remains mandatory today.

Vowel Plurals


Another major divergence is how Italian makes words plural. When the Roman Empire fell, the diverging Romance languages split into two main camps for pluralization. Western Romance languages, like Spanish, French, and Portuguese, built their plurals using the Latin accusative case, which ended in "s" (resulting in plurals like gatos or chats). Italian took a different path. It held onto the Latin nominative case, which relied on vowel changes rather than consonants to indicate plurality. Just as the Latin lupus (wolf) became lupi in the plural, the Italian lupo becomes lupi.

Terminal Vowels


Italian maintains an incredibly high degree of phonetic fidelity to Latin by stubbornly ending almost every word in a vowel. Latin words frequently ended in consonants like "m" or "t" in their formal written forms, but in the vulgar, spoken Latin of the streets, these terminal consonants were often dropped, leaving strong vowel endings. Italian fossilized this spoken reality. The Latin noctem (night) smoothly became notte in Italian, keeping the final vowel sound intact and utilizing the double consonant. Meanwhile, Spanish evolved it to noche, and French stripped the final sounds away entirely to arrive at the clipped nuit. 

By preserving these specific quirks, Italian manages to retain a staccato, musical rhythm that closely mirrors the cadence of antiquity, keeping the architectural bones of spoken Latin alive in the modern era. ~ SepiaGlyphs, Quora

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WHY GREEKS AND ROMANS THOUGHT THE ETRUSCANS WERE IMMORAL

If an ancient Greek saw a modern couple having dinner, he’d assume the woman was a prostitute. This massive cultural misunderstanding is why the Etruscans were branded as immoral.

In classical Athens, respectable women were sequestered in the gynaeceum (women's quarters). They did not own property, and they certainly did not attend symposia (drinking parties). The only women allowed at a Greek banquet were hetairai—courtesans hired for entertainment.

The Etruscans, who dominated central Italy before the rise of Rome, operated on a radically different social model. Etruscan women enjoyed a level of independence almost unheard of in the ancient Mediterranean. They kept their own family names after marriage, owned property, and—most shockingly to their neighbors—reclined on couches to dine and drink wine alongside their husbands in public.

The Sarcophagus of the Spouses (c. 520 BC) depicts an Etruscan husband and wife reclining together on a dining couch as equals.

When Greek writers observed this egalitarian socializing, they interpreted it through the lens of their own rigid patriarchy. The 4th-century BC Greek historian Theopompus of Chios penned a widely circulated, scandalous account of Etruscan society. He claimed that Etruscan women exercised naked with men, dined with any man they pleased, and were so promiscuous that they raised children without knowing who the father was. To Theopompus, a woman who drank wine in the presence of men was, by definition, a woman of loose morals.

The Romans inherited this propaganda and weaponized it. Early Roman society was highly austere, and they viewed the Etruscan affinity for fine clothing, jewelry, and lavish banquets as tryphe—a corrupting, effeminate luxury. Roman historians argued that this decadence made the Etruscans weak and morally bankrupt, conveniently justifying Rome's military conquest of their cities.

Because the Romans fully assimilated Etruria and the Etruscan language died out by the first century AD, the Etruscans left behind no written history to defend themselves. Their cultural legacy was entirely written by the neighbors who misunderstood them, conquered them, and recorded their egalitarian marriages as historical depravity.  ~ SepiaGlyphs, Quora

The famous Roman she-wolf is an Etruscan sculpture. The twin boys, Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, were added later by the Romans.

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THEY QUIT THE WEST FOR RUSSIA'S TRADITIONAL VALUES, BUT IT WASN'T WHAT THEY EXPECTED

When Leo Hare moved to Russia from Texas in late 2023, after being granted asylum, he was convinced he was building a better future for his family.

The father of three threw himself into his new life: sampling dumplings, milking goats on a farm and filming videos about life in Russia for his online followers.

Leo is a devout Christian who had become increasingly disillusioned with everything from political division in the US, to genetically modified food and what he sees as the rise of the LGBTQ movement.

At the time, he believed Russia offered an attractive alternative: a society built on Christian faith and family values – a view heavily promoted by the Russian state.

But over time he has also become increasingly concerned about elements such as restrictions on access to information.

He is part of an unlikely migration. As Russia faces international isolation, a few thousand people from countries including Canada, Britain, the United States and parts of Europe are choosing to move there.

Their view of Russia differs sharply from the one many in the West might be familiar with: a country that invaded Ukraine and occupies large parts of it, jails political opponents, places heavy restrictions on civil liberties and faces a raft of international sanctions.

Many of the would-be migrants are attracted by Russia's Shared Values visa, sometimes called the "anti-woke" visa, which was introduced a month after Leo was granted asylum.

Introduced by President Vladimir Putin in 2024, the visa offers temporary residency for up to three years to citizens of 47 countries Russia considers "unfriendly". 

There is no limit to the number of people who can apply and applicants do not need to pass the usual Russian language, history or law tests.

Instead, they must declare that they share Russia's traditional spiritual and moral values and reject what the Russian government describes as the "destructive neoliberal ideology" of their home countries.

After three years, those on the Shared Values visa must either convert it into a Permanent Residence Permit (PRP) or leave the country. The PRP requires people to sit a language and history exam and more thorough documentation. 

Unlike some immigration programs, the Shared Values visa does not come with housing or financial assistance from the Russian government.

Applicants must pay an administrative fee of 1,600 roubles (£17 or $22) and pass medical and criminal records checks.

Russia says nearly 3,400 people have applied under the scheme as of spring 2026. However, these figures are difficult to verify independently, and do not reveal how many applications were approved.

The visa reflects a broader effort by the Kremlin to present Russia as a defender of traditional values in opposition to what it sees as the moral decline of the West.

In a 2022 decree, Putin warned that Western ideological influence threatened Russian values including marriage and the traditional family and called for Russia to promote a more positive image of itself abroad. 

Two years later, the Shared Values visa offered a practical expression of that vision.

An online ecosystem of relocation agencies and influencers promote Russia as a place where family values remain strong and everyday life feels safer. 

Ilja Belobragin, general managing partner at Move To Russia, a company which helps foreigners relocate to Russia, says something he frequently hears from his clients is that they "don't recognize the community around me anymore".

Some prospective migrants complain about high immigration in their own countries or what they see as declining living standards, he says.

Russia's war in Ukraine, which has dominated international perceptions of the country since 2022, does not appear to be a decisive factor for many of those making the move.

Some openly support Russia, while others insist their decision is driven by cultural values rather than geopolitics.

Philip Hutchinson, a Moscow-based former Conservative Party candidate from the UK who now helps other Westerners relocate to Russia, says he avoids discussing the war.

"What are my thoughts on it? Look, I don't really get involved in that," he says. "I'm not here as a politician. I'm here to live a nice quiet life with my family."

When asked whether helping Westerners relocate to Russia under the Shared Values visa is itself a political act, Philip disagrees.

"We guide a lot of people towards the Shared Values visa because it's the easiest way to become a full resident here right now. It's not political helping people move to Russia."

Following their move to Russia, Leo's family became one of the most visible examples of Western migration.

Russian state media filmed their asylum ceremony and Leo publicly thanked President Putin for welcoming them. At the time, Leo believed he was helping to pioneer what he calls "an unprecedented piece of immigration legislation".

But the reality proved more difficult than he'd anticipated.

Within weeks of arriving, Leo says they were defrauded of 5 million roubles – about £52,000 ($66,000) – by a contact they trusted, leaving them homeless.  

When I spoke to Leo earlier this year, he was living separately from his wife in the city of Ivanovo, and his older children had returned to the United States.

Asked whether Russia had lived up to his expectations, Leo describes the last two years as the best and worst of his life.

He says he has experienced many sides of Russia: working in an Orthodox monastery, staying in a high-rise apartment and later moving into a small Soviet-era flat. He eventually found work as an English tutor.

He still speaks fondly about ordinary Russians, describing them as generous and welcoming. 

He praises members of his church community who helped the family survive after they lost their savings and recalls one woman who invited his youngest son into her home and taught him Russian free of charge.

"My heart is just full of love for these people," he says.

But he has also become increasingly concerned about the state of Russia's economy and restrictions on access to information. 

Leo is now reconsidering the role he played in promoting Western immigration to Russia. 

"I believed in the propaganda," he tells me, admitting that previously he was "the guy who would've written the script".  

Although he is committed to staying in Russia out of a sense of "destiny", he now says he misses the freedoms that have shaped the American personality. 

"[In] Russia you don't have these human rights values."

Ben doesn't believe Russia is a conservative paradise

Other Westerners who have moved to Russia take issue with how the Shared Values visa itself is being promoted.

Ben — who asked that we use only his first name — moved to Russia in 2023 from Derby in the UK after falling in love with a Russian woman he met through a language exchange website. The couple live in Kursk, near the Ukrainian border.

His family thought he was "a bit insane" for moving to a war zone.

Ben's view of Russia is more nuanced than the one its supporters often portray. 

He praises the friendliness of Russians and says he feels safer day to day. At the same time, he rejects the idea that Russia is some kind of conservative paradise.

Ben cites the prevalence of single-parent households, abortion — which he describes as "very widely accepted" — and "extremely high" divorce rates. 

"Russia isn't some utopia," he says.  He moved to Russia on a private family visa rather than under the Shared Values scheme, but on his YouTube channel he has challenged what he sees as exaggerated claims by some Western influencers who portray Russia as a perfect alternative to the West.

"There are some people with some kind of agenda that they want to push," he says.

Nearly two years after the Shared Values visa was launched, Russia's experiment in attracting ideological migrants remains small in scale.

While it has failed to attract a large wave of "anti-woke" immigration, it has made it easier for some Westerners to build new lives in the country — whether for love, faith or simply a change of direction.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn075j04pnyo


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TEN YEARS ON, THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF BREXIT IS BECOMING CLEAR

Not long after the UK left the EU in 2020, a Bristol-based firm called Eskimo started selling a new kind of high-fashion and energy-efficient electric radiator, based on new technology developed by academics in the city.

They planned to send them around Europe using the Channel Tunnel.

It was a timely product given Europe's green ambitions, and with orders flowing, its Birmingham factory was being kept busy.

The boss Phil Ward tells me his start-up has continued to grow, but that in his view it could have been so much more without what he calls "the Long Brexit effect": in 2020, 40% of his exports went to the European Union, and by 2025 it was just 5%.

The post-Brexit deal agreed with the EU by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in December 2020 guaranteed zero tariffs on exports to the EU, but Ward says that despite this, red tape and paperwork not directly related to tariffs were enough to create delays, costs and the expectation of hassle for prospective customers.

Eskimo did manage to export some goods to agents in France but it stopped selling directly to European consumers entirely. A planned expansion to Germany floundered.

And as Eskimo discovered when it attempted to export towel rails to Australia and New Zealand, both countries abide by international safety standards that are heavily influenced by the EU's CE  mark. (Conformité Européenne = European Conformity)

This matters because one theoretical potential Brexit benefit was that it would allow UK regulators to not follow the EU's safety regulations and take a more pro-innovation, less regulatory approach for high-tech inventions.

Eskimo's experience is one example of a broader trend reflected in export figures. The UK Trade Policy Observatory at Sussex University calculated a rapid 26% reduction in the different types of UK exports by 2023, while a new study from Aston University Business School using five years of more detailed trade data concludes a loss of 53.8% of the type of exports and 31.5% for imports.

These figures for "trade varieties" are falls in the number of products sent to different EU countries.

A decade ago, many economists argued the UK would sustain longer-term economic damage by leaving the EU and many believe that damage has come to pass.

But to make that call you have to compare what did happen with what might otherwise have happened were it not for Brexit and doing that is a matter of method and statistical judgement.

And that judgement has to account for the fact that the period since Brexit has been a time of huge global flux. The pandemic that struck in the spring of 2020, the war in Ukraine that began two years later and, more recently, the energy price shock sparked by the conflict in Iran all have to be accounted for. 

So too does the question of whether a Brexit-free UK would have really kept up with the Silicon Valley tech boom in recent years to the extent Brexit Britain has.

The clear consensus of economists making the calculations say they have factored in the global turmoil when assessing Brexit's impact. Others question their methods and the extent of Brexit's impact. 

Some of the most negative predictions back in 2016, including those that said the UK could experience a Great Depression‑style hit, proved unduly pessimistic. Whatever economic hit there was, it was not sudden enough to cause an instant recession.

But those who believe the UK did sustain longer-term economic damage by leaving the EU say the hit was no less profound.  

"Among economists there is not much debate, but there still is among policy folks. The experts were right. It was, if anything, worse than we thought, but it's taken longer to get there," says Nick Bloom, a British Stanford University professor and author of one of the most prominent recent major studies using Bank of England data. 

His work sits among dozens of academic economics papers that have analyzed vast amounts of data to try to assess what effect Brexit had on the UK's economy.

UK trade with Europe

UK trade with Europe had been on an upward trend before 2016. But official figures show that compared to 2019, 2025 UK exports to the EU were 14% down and imports were down 10%.

And they've been getting worse. Last year, 2025, was the worst year for UK goods export volumes to the EU this century, apart from one year in the depths of the financial crisis.

Think tank Niesr calculates exports were 16.9% lower and imports 16.1% less than what could have been expected based on positive pre-2016 trends. The Center for European Reform uses a different method, trying to take account of what could have happened if the UK had not been excluded from a more recent surge in intra-EU trade, leading to a goods trade hit of 16% to exports and 14% to imports. It's all in the same ballpark and there is other research from European countries that suggest similar drops in their trade with the UK. Again, these calculations rely on selecting a method and statistical judgment.

Most studies conclude similarly, but using raw trade figures, so not accounting for significant inflationary spikes, you see a 4% rise in cash terms since 2019 of UK goods exports to the EU, which some analysts have used to argue there has been minimal impact.

Services trade boom

One area that has performed more strongly since 2016 is services, which make up over 80% of total UK economic output. Services sector exports from the UK to the EU are up 57% over the last decade, driven by a category that includes accountancy, legal services and consultancy. 

Non-EU services exports are up 49%. Imports from the EU are up 35% in the same time, and up 60% from outside the EU.

It is also true that there has been a service boom across the advanced world and some argue Britain might have done even better without Brexit. But either way, financial services clearly remained in healthier shape than the worst projections during the referendum.  

Business investment

Investment by businesses was significantly lower than what might have continued after Brexit, according to two studies. Former Bank of England independent economist Jonathan Haskel calculates a £29bn or 1.3% reduction in the size of the economy from lower investment than would have been expected since 2016.

Business investment flattened in real terms immediately after 2016, and notably underperformed various measures of UK long term-trends and comparisons with other countries. Professor Haskel's latest calculation is a shortfall of 13% against the pre-referendum trend from 1997-2016. 

Using different methods, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and the top US economic research body the NBER find that UK business investment is down 12-13% against where it would have been, compared to a representative basket of advanced economies.  

Much of these findings predate the energy shock in 2022, and attribute the hit to uncertainty in the first years after Brexit. The latest analyses show the UK still behind most of the G7 but having overtaken Germany after the hit to its economy from the 2022 energy crisis. 

The currency

The most visible sign of economic shock was the fall in the value of the pound in the minutes and then years after the referendum. This makes imports and travel more expensive, and makes UK assets worth less in the world.

Pre-referendum, the pound had reached new highs against major currencies. It then fell sharply after the referendum and has since traded lower, particularly against the dollar and the euro. It fell again further at various points of post-Brexit uncertainty and then too during the mini-budget in 2022 when Liz Truss was prime minister. Since then, sterling has broadly strengthened and taken advantage of a weaker dollar and is currently near the top of its post-Brexit range.

The impact of an overall weaker pound has raised prices for imported goods, from fresh foods to manufactured goods. But it has also helped cushion disruption for exporters by making their goods cheaper in international markets. In turn, some food prices have been helped a little by lower tariffs on international imports not produced in the UK.

The new trade deals

One potential Brexit benefit was the UK's ability to sign its own trade deals outside the EU. The UK-India deal stands out as an example of where the UK broke ground well beyond what might have happened within the EU.

The UK also signed the first "deal" to alleviate the impact of President Trump's tariffs. The Government itself calculates that the trade deals Britain has signed will only slightly boost economic growth, by fractions of a percentage point over decades.

It is worth noting that even former Prime Minister Tony Blair, an avowed Remainer who was previously a backer of a second referendum, recently suggested the UK had enjoyed some benefit from being able to have its own AI regulations and that this would have implications for any attempt to rejoin the EU or single market in the future.

But it is also the case that it is not all one way. The EU has signed a deal with South America, the Mercosur deal, which gives access to EU car exporters to Brazil, the world's sixth biggest market, at zero tariffs, versus 35% for the UK.

And while Britain also achieved the first and best deal to alleviate President Trump's tariffs, the EU has since received many of the same benefits. The rate at 10% is better for the UK than the EU at 15%, but there is no quota for EU car exports to the US, and there is one of 100,000 for the UK.

It could be that the quiet competition between London and Brussels prompted by Brexit has motivated dealmaking that might have otherwise taken years. 

The overall hit 

There is a place that is as central to the UK's relations with the EU as the Strait of Hormuz is to global energy markets: the Channel Tunnel. When Britain was in the EU, the tunnel was the living embodiment of frictionless goods trade. 

Back in 2016, 1.64m trucks went through the tunnel. Last year, post Brexit, there were 1.16m. So there are almost half a million missing lorry journeys a year — nearly 30% of this economically critical, high-value cross-Channel traffic has been lost.

Exactly how many trucks there would have been were it not for Brexit is impossible to say, but the hit from the pandemic, for example, would have subsided by now.

An industry participant describes the pattern as "pure Brexit" with small exporters leaving, unable to afford to invest in systems and surviving business models changing from "just in time" to increased stock-holding. HMRC trade data analyzed by LSE also pointed to 16,400 firms — 14% of EU exporters — stopping exporting to the EU between 2019 and 2023 altogether, and that falls in exporting were concentrated among smaller firms.

What has happened in the Channel Tunnel tallies with the academic consensus that the UK economy is smaller now than it would have been based on the trajectory it was on in 2016.  

The numbers range from about 3% to 8%. "The fact that it is harder to trade with the EU is about half the hit, in line with previous forecasts," says lead author of the NBER research, Nick Bloom. 

He attributes the rest to the consequences of what at times felt like near-nightly political meltdown during the Brexit negotiations. "The other half is the uncertainty from the fact the Brexit process itself was such an enormous mess… We can never get that second 4% back."

These calculations are based on modelling how a UK still within the EU could have been expected to perform economically had it still experienced the pandemic and the 2022 energy shock but not Brexit.

The most recent study by the NBER takes account of population growth, and says the UK lost 6-8% of per capita output.

Bloom says he has used a variety of approaches including accounting for distance, economic gravity, the size of the economy and selectively omitting potential outliers.

There are, however, other figures. The authors, including Bank of England economists, also used a special survey of thousands of firms, accounting for a tenth of private employment, that was created by the Bank in 2016 to track Brexit reaction. The first Brexit analysis based on this survey was only published this year and recently updated, and it shows how prolonged Brexit uncertainty hit commercial decision-making.

This entirely different firm-level method also leads to a conclusion of an economy about 6% smaller than without Brexit. That means an economy that would have otherwise grown about two thirds of a percentage point faster every year over the past decade.

Next ten years of Brexit

The world that post-Brexit Britain entered in 2016 has changed beyond any recognition.
Back in 2016, Brexiteers talked up the prospects of a free trade deal with the US when the reality in 2026 is a US that has put up higher trade barriers and weaponized tariffs. A decade ago, the idea was floated that the EU could collapse — it hasn't, and has introduced protections for its manufacturers. And China is now increasingly assertive.

The questions the above raise about UK global economic strategy are almost entirely different questions to those posed a decade ago. 

It's possible an economically independent UK is well placed to deal with this volatile world. It's also possible that the opposite is true and that UK exporters would benefit from rejoining the EU single market.

What's clear from the data is that many UK goods exporters, especially smaller ones, have not become used to Brexit and that in certain sectors it's not getting any better.

Does the UK align itself with the US and its focus on lightly-regulated tech and in particular AI? Can a closer UK-EU relationship be squared with that? The EU has responded to the new economic nationalism — with "Made in Europe" legislation that may require a certain percentage of parts to be made in Europe. It's unclear if the UK is included or not. An early test will be steel next month, and then a deal to avoid UK-EU electricity car tariffs at the end of the year.

UK officials recently suggested establishing a single market for goods trade with the EU as part of the next phase of a Brexit reset, something the EU says is incompatible with current government red lines around freedom of movement.

Unions have shifted position from wanting to rejoin the customs union, to looking for a Swiss-style deal in the European Economic Area. 

In recent weeks government ministers have begun to quietly say that these red lines are specifically for this Parliament and will be looked at again. What path Sir Keir Starmer's replacement as prime minister decides to go down, we don't yet know. 

Next month's UK-EU summit has now been postponed. Sir Keir had wanted to seal a deal to row back many of the post-Brexit frictions on food and farm trade that have impacted the cross-Channel trade flows. Other political parties have vowed to rip up the government's EU reset or even try to row back on elements of the post-Brexit deal.

Put bluntly, the status quo will not hold. Ten years on, Brexit, and its impacts on the economy, remain very much with us, and the policy debates may be about to return. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv0m164m84o?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

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Has anyone changed their mind on Brexit 10 years on?

It was a vote which split the country, towns and even families more or less down the middle.

Ten years ago I spent months talking to people about the EU Referendum, billed by then Prime Minister David Cameron as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to have a say on the UK's relationship with our nearest neighbors.

On 24 June 2016, people in the UK woke up to learn the nation had voted to leave the EU by 51.9% to 48.1%.

In our region, the results were broadly similar but some areas showed a stronger desire to stay or go than others.

In Doncaster, voters said they wanted to leave the European Union, with 69% backing Brexit. In York 58% of voters backed the Remain campaign. 

A decade on, I've been out in those areas asking people how they feel now.

Doncaster's high street is buzzing with shoppers, market stall holders and people enjoying the sunshine.

I meet retired couple Ann and Ian Fraser — during our conversation it turns out the pair voted in opposite ways.

Ann voted Remain and believes the country is "worse off" as a result of the Leave vote. 

She said "I don't think we've gained a great deal, apart from if you're traveling abroad a lot." 

Husband Ian backed Leave because he "didn't like the way the country was being run".

"We weren't run by England at all. We were run by whatever was happening in Germany, France or anywhere else," he explained.

"I still think that we're better off out of it than we were in it, because I think we can talk for ourselves instead of somebody else doing it for us. 

"I don't think we've realized our potential, it's done us no harm to leave."

Ann is not sure how she would vote today and says she can see "pros and cons" to both sides. 

Both local Labour MPs for Doncaster at the time, Ed Miliband and Caroline Flint, backed staying in the EU which pitted them against the wishes of most voters in their constituencies. 

Jonathan Alice was one of those who voted Leave and, despite the passage of time, still believes he made the right decision. 

He said: "I didn't want unelected Euro bureaucrats dictating to the British public how they should and shouldn't live their lives.

"I was annoyed by the way they dealt with legislation such as health and safety.

"Health and safety are absolutely brilliant, but we were the only people that were playing the game. 

"A lot of the Mediterranean countries didn't play the game at all. And we were just getting penalized continually by the bureaucrats in Strasbourg."

'Play by the rules'

He said he felt that successive governments had let the country down when it came to the implementation of the vote — with the issue of immigration being a particular touchpoint. 

The 63-year-old has worked with asylum seekers for the last couple of years and said he had no problem with people who had a "genuine reason" for seeking safety in the UK. 

However, he said, "the rest of Europe doesn't play by the rules which it set in motion" on the issue. 

Immigration was one of the key issues around the EU Referendum and there was a feeling from some that Britain did not control its borders.

Gabriella Alberti, who is a professor in international labor migration at the University of Leeds Business School, said it was "at the very core of the Brexit campaign and one of the main reasons why eventually the majority of the population in the UK voted to leave the European Union".

She added when Boris Johnson implemented Brexit in 2020, the idea was that by "controlling the borders through the end of free movement of labor, then employers, the state would have a better control in the economy and especially local workers would have access to better jobs — but that did not materialize”. 

During the campaign a lot was written about young people and how this "once-in-a generation" vote would affect them.

*

Data showed that the younger you were, the more likely you were to vote to stay in the EU.

Some studies suggested more than 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds voted Remain, while just under 30% opted to vote Leave.

Max Aveson was 16 in 2016 and so unable to vote — I meet them enjoying a break from working as a barista in the city center. 

"All the adults talking and that, it would make everything better, cheaper, more accessible, and it's not," they recall. 

Summing up their feelings, Max reflects that it was a "terrible decision — it has made everything worse".

"In all honesty looking on it in the future, if we knew what we did now, probably nobody would have voted for it," they said.

"I don't think we would vote to leave especially with my generation now being able to vote. So a lot a lot of us would probably Remain." 

'Utter mess'

In Leeds and Harrogate, voters backed Remain but by narrow margins.

A more decisive victory for the Remain campaign came in York where 58% of voters backed staying in. 

The city's MPs campaigned on opposing sides. 

York Central Labour MP Rachael Maskell wanted to stay in the EU while York Outer Conservative MP Julian Sturdy backed the country leaving.

Just outside of the city walls, Bishopthorpe Road is lined with independent shops and cafes but voters I spoke to here did not want "independence" from Europe. 

Most were happy to share their opinion that Brexit had been "a complete and utter mess". 

Janice Fisher voted to Remain within the EU but had friends who voted Leave, and still cannot understand the choice they made.

She was highly critical of David Cameron, who she believes did not do enough to convince the country to remain within the EU.

The 77-year-old accepted that European institutions may have needed reforming, but added: "You need to be in something to change it and we can't change the EU from the outside." 

Janice was keen that, despite the division the vote caused, conversations should continue —especially focused on whether the nation should rejoin the EU. 

Fellow shopper Barbara Regan, 70, said she remembered feeling "really depressed" when the results came in and it was clear the United Kingdom had voted to leave. 

She described it as "a huge mistake".

"Nothing good has come from it at all.

"Every time you go on holiday you have this huge palaver of queuing up at airports worse off, nothing better about it at all, not one thing." 

While feelings among voters are clearly still as strong and polarizing as they were a decade ago, it doesn't appear the UK government has any appetite for another referendum.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2x3nplnpvo

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AMERICANS HAVE COMPLICATED FEELINGS ABOUT THEIR COUNTRY

 

More than three-quarters of Americans think the country’s founders would be disappointed with the US today, according to a Gallup poll released this week – one of several new surveys spotlighting the public’s complicated feelings about the nation’s legacy as it approaches its 250th anniversary. 

Just 19% of Americans think that the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased by the way the US has turned out, with 77% saying they’d be disappointed. That pessimism is largely bipartisan: while Republicans currently take a slightly less dispirited view than Democrats, one-quarter or fewer across party lines think the founders would be pleased.

More than three-quarters (77%)of Americans think the nation's founders would be disappointed with the US today, versus only 42% in 2003. 

“While it’s hard to know what the founders would make of America today, the poll is in keeping with a generally sour mood among the public today. Polls routinely show widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of the country. 

Presidential historian Tim Naftali, however, thinks that if the signers of the declaration could witness the United States today, they’d mostly be astonished.

“Our language is the same, our principles are the same, but this country is far more powerful, far more diverse, far richer in many respects than I think they could have ever imagined,” he said. “We have surpassed the outer reaches of the most imaginative of them … I’m sure they would just find us rather fascinating.”

The public’s view isn’t all negative. Around 7 in 10 Americans say that, over the past 250 years, the country has had at least a fair amount of success in achieving its founding ideals.

Other findings from recent polls offer insight to how Americans see themselves and their country ahead of the semiquincentennial celebrations.

Americans view the US with a conflicting mix of pride and concern. In a Marquette Law School poll also released Wednesday, 66% of Americans say they’re at least somewhat proud of who we are as a country, but just over half say they’re optimistic about the nation’s future as a democracy. And in a Fox News poll, voters are more likely to consider themselves patriotic than they are to say they’re proud of the country today.

The public is almost universal in calling the right to vote and freedom of speech key to the country’s national identity, per an AP-NORC poll. But just under half – including a majority of Democrats – see that freedom of speech as facing major threats. 

Pessimism about the country’s direction isn’t new, but it may be growing. In a recent NBC survey, just 38% of US adults say they’re confident that the United States’ best years still lie ahead, down from 45% in a 1990 survey. And 78% of US adults say that the American Dream is harder to attain now than it was a generation ago, although that’s not dissimilar from the 72% who said the same in a Roper poll taken more than 30 years ago. 

(Nostalgia for the country’s earliest days isn’t new either – in a 1947 Gallup poll, 13% of Americans said that the signing of the declaration was the US historical event they’d most like to have been present for – the most popular choice and more than tripling the share who’d have preferred to witnessed either the Gettysburg address or the Japanese surrender in World War II.) 

Being an American means different things to different people. In Ipsos polling earlier this year, half of US adults, including most of those age 45 and older, said that being an American is an important part of how they think about themselves. A majority of younger adults, by contrast, said it wasn’t something they thought much about.

Overall, 58% said it was important to discuss the nation’s successes and strengths, with an identical 58% also saying it’s important to discuss the country’s flaws and failures. 

This year’s Independence Day celebrations are more polarizing than in the past. President Donald Trump has put his mark on the country’s 250th birthday plans. Per Marquette, 57% of Americans say they’re at least fairly interested in the commemoration. That’s similar to the share who expressed interest in the festivities in a Roper poll 50 years ago, ahead of the 200th anniversary of the declaration. 

But while there was no real partisan gap in 1976, Republicans today are 33 points likelier than Democrats to say they’re interested.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/25/politics/americans-sentiment-250-celebration-polls

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NO ONE IS SELF-MADE

 

Deeply embedded in the ideals of justice and fairness is the idea that we ought to get what we deserve. Deservingness is thus an intuitively compelling concept, because we want the world to be intelligible. If the good suffer and the wicked flourish, then the world not only becomes a painful place to live in, it also becomes a place of moral chaos. Even if the world is bountifully unjust, it remains a necessary illusion that people get what they deserve. We need to believe our actions matter if we are to generate the necessary motivation to pursue the things we want. 

This is the ideal of meritocracy. At its core, this ideology holds that social and economic differences are justified when they reflect individual effort or talent. It fits well with our neoliberal free-market democracies, which present themselves as open systems of opportunity that reward those who compete successfully. Meritocracy implies that inequality is just and fair. Those who rise deserve to rise; those who fall behind are encouraged to try harder. We must each pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

‘Meritocracy’ itself might be a relatively new word, dating back to Michael Young’s coinage in the 1950s, but long before neoliberalism another, much more ancient, philosophy justified inequality as the well-deserved consequence of individual effort: Confucianism. Examining where Confucianism goes wrong illuminates how we should challenge the powerful ideology of meritocracy.

Confucius (c551-c479 BCE) lived during the late Zhou dynasty, a time of intense political conflict between rival feudal lords. He was a teacher and minor official who moved between courts offering advice. He believed that the violent disorder of his era stemmed from moral failure that was ultimately preventable. So Confucius’s project was practical: through moral education, individuals could refine themselves and, through that refinement, a well-ordered hierarchy could restore stability.

Confucian political philosophy begins from a premise that appears strikingly egalitarian: the equality of opportunity. For Confucius and his successors, human beings are more or less equal in talent at birth. Everyone possesses the capacity for moral cultivation. Education, self-discipline and ethical refinement remain open paths that anyone can undertake, no matter where they’re from. This shared starting point anchors Confucian humanism: you can make it if you try.

His commitment to openness and mobility is born out of a robust conception of moral agency and the power of the human will. Confucians believe that individuals are responsible for what they become. Through sustained efforts such as learning, ritual practice and disciplined self-regulation, people actively shape their character. Individuals therefore stand in a morally significant relation to their outcomes. One’s social position is responsive to agency, despite one’s circumstances.

The Confucian philosopher Mencius (Mengzi) articulated this idea more systematically, which was later called ‘natural equality’: all human beings share the same basic moral capacity. Everyone possesses the potential for goodness. Since everyone has the same equality of opportunity, unequal outcomes and differences in social position follow differences in effort, discipline and development.

A concept that helps us make sense of this, and that lies at the very heart of Confucian thought, is worthiness (xian, 賢). Xian captures the difference between those who have cultivated themselves and those who have not. This is a difference in ethical standing, as some individuals have developed compassion, righteous judgment and moral restraint more than others. Indeed, some have developed these virtues to a degree that enables them to bear responsibility for collective life. Moral inequality therefore inevitably exists, even though moral capacity is something that is originally equally shared.

This distinction has political significance because Confucianism holds that economic and political inequality are justified when they mirror moral inequality. Authority, influence and material security should fall to those whose cultivated dispositions allow them to wield power in moral and righteous ways. Inequality thus becomes ethically acceptable, even advisable, when it tracks moral worth.

This is all fair, according to the Confucians, because it rests on a further assumption: that moral cultivation is something not everyone chooses to do. As Confucius says in the Analects: ‘there are some sprouts that fail to flower, just as surely as there are some flowers that fail to bear fruit!’ Everyone has the capacity to seek moral education and reshape their character, but only those who actually do so become xian through their own effort.

Furthermore, it is of utmost importance that we distinguish those who are xian from those who are not, such that the worthy ones can be given the authority to govern society. This is the role of the Confucian principle of ‘rectification of names’ (zhengming, 正名). Names function as normative roles. To be named or be given the title of a ruler, a minister or a worthy person is to be assigned obligations, expectations and authority befitting those titles. 

Zhengming translates moral inequality into a coherent social map, ensuring that cultivated capacities align with social positions.

Of course, those who bear greater responsibility require greater resources to fulfill their functions. Political hierarchy then implies economic inequality. Those who are worthy not only need more, they also deserve more. As the Confucian philosopher Xunzi tells us: ‘though one may have as his emolument the whole world, he need not consider it excessive, and though one be only a gatekeeper, receptionist, guard or nightwatchman, he need never think his salary too meager.’ For Xunzi, inequality is not only inevitable, but fitting. 

It is the government’s duty to create a hierarchical environment that provides the infrastructure for people to be worthy, and then distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy. Inequality is the necessary precondition for social order.

This structure was laid out more than two millennia ago, yet it is not difficult to see how it continues to resonate in contemporary appeals to self-improvement and the value of hard work. The vocabulary might shift from virtue to productivity and from cultivation to performance, but the moral grammar is still strikingly similar. Inequality appears deserved because it presents itself as the cumulative result of individual effort within an open system. 

The Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi accepted none of this. Writing roughly a century after Confucius but living in the same hostile and politically fractious world, Zhuangzi adopted a remarkably different stance towards disorder. Little is known about his life, but an anecdote from the 17th chapter of his great work that bears his own name tells us something of the kind of man he was. In the story, Zhuangzi is offered a high office, but he declines. When envoys from the king arrive to recruit him, Zhuangzi points to a sacred turtle shell kept in the royal temple and asks whether the turtle would rather be honored after death or be alive, dragging its tail through the mud. The envoys reply that the turtle would rather be alive than honored. ‘Then go away,’ Zhuangzi says. ‘I too will drag my tail in the mud.’ It is better to remain alive and unranked than to be elevated within a system that exploits vitality as though it’s currency for abstract prestige.

Where Confucianism sees a moral map of the world in which cultivated worth lines up with social authority, Zhuangzi sees a far more fragile and contingent reality. His target is not simply unfairness within the system, but the very idea that moral worth can serve as a stable foundation for hierarchy.

Zhuangzi stages his critique as theater. In one of his most striking parables, he imagines a confrontation between Confucius, the emblem of moral cultivation, and Robber Zhi, a notorious bandit leading a violent gang: the best sort of person facing the worst sort of person. Confucius approaches Zhi, who at that moment happens to be munching on a human liver. Nevertheless, Confucius hopes to reform the wayward cannibal. He speaks the language of virtue, propriety and righteousness, urging Zhi to abandon his criminal life and become a morally cultivated person, becoming xian.

Then Zhuangzi scrambles this moral geometry. Zhi does not appear confused or morally uneducated. He responds with sharp intelligence, turning Confucius’s moral language back on itself. You arbitrarily decide what is right and what is wrong,’ he says, ‘thereby leading astray the princes throughout the kingdom, and making its learned scholars not occupy their thoughts with their proper business.’ He goes on to mock the idea that virtue gives anyone a special claim to rule or to judge others. He accuses Confucius and the rulers he serves of doing on a grand scale what he does at a smaller scale: taking from others. The only difference is that, in Confucius’s case, he does so in the name of lofty ideals.

He treats these ideals as a kind of theft: a way of capturing the world through names, standards and rankings, then using that capture to legitimize authority. Zhuangzi’s literary goal was thus to make the bandit and the sage into mirror images. The difference is merely in technique and social structure rather than an ontological given. Zhi and Confucius are both thieves: one of goods, the other of names.

Through such theatrics Zhuangzi developed a systematic critique of Confucianism’s moral justification of inequality, and the most essential part of that critique is his insistence that moral striving alienates us from life. For Zhuangzi, the drive to become xian invites a person to live for an abstraction, whether it be for reputation, moral purity or a sagely ideal of pursuing ‘the good’. This leads one to treat their own life as raw material for that abstract identity. One’s material body becomes an instrument for something immaterial.

In the Robber’s monologue, he lists celebrated Confucian exemplars: Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who starved themselves rather than serve an unjust ruler; Bi Gan, who remonstrated with King Zhou so forcefully that his heart was cut out; Wu Zixu, whose loyalty to his state, warning his King of a threat, ended with his corpse thrown into a river. These people are praised in Confucianism as exemplars of virtue, yet Zhuangzi treats them as tragic figures ‘trapped in the net of reputation and names’, who met their grisly ends precisely because of their inflexible pursuit of virtue. 

What makes these figures disturbing is that they were consumed by their convictions. A system that ranks people by virtue necessarily creates incentives for self-exploitation. Once virtue becomes something that can be measured, ranked and exchanged for authority, it turns human life into a resource to be spent. In other words, Confucian xian turns cultivation into moral capital, and moral capital demands extraction from the self. Indeed, one can see this kind of self-extraction in our modern neoliberal ‘hustle culture’ even more clearly, where it is trendy to ‘rise and grind’ and forego basic necessities.

One might object that Zhuangzi had an extremely pessimistic view of the meritocratic ideal in Confucianism, which fundamentally deals with morals and values, instead of material wealth. After all, social change requires sacrifice. However, in this system, sacrifice does not function as a response to injustice (even when individual actors understand themselves that way), but as a way of accumulating moral standing. What is being purchased with one’s sacrifice is not the possibility of a better world, but a higher place for yourself or your own family.

For this to work, virtue has to be something that can be measured and ranked. Only then can lives be sorted according to those who deserve more and those who deserve less. The Confucian meritocratic ideal therefore rests on the assumption that values have a stable and reliable measure. Zhuangzi did not think this was true. 

For him, any measurement of value, including the Confucian one, is ultimately flawed because reality is not something we can neatly map onto good and bad. To insist on doing so is, as the Robber puts it, a ‘monopolizing’ of values. In reality, moral distinctions arise within concrete situations. What looks like an act of compassion toward one person can simultaneously harm others; what counts as righteousness in one context can become cruelty in another. ‘From where I see it,’ Zhuangzi writes, ‘all the sproutings of humankindness and responsible conduct, and all the trails of right and wrong, are hopelessly tangled and confused. How could I know how to distinguish and demonstrate any conclusions about them?’

This does not mean that nothing is right and therefore anything goes. Rather, it holds that the evaluations we make never detach themselves from the circumstances that produce them. There is no neutral vantage point from which ‘virtue itself’ can be weighed. Furthermore, Zhuangzi insists that even in idealized situations where values can be straightforward, the idea that hierarchies and institutions can reflect that moral map is a profound misunderstanding of how power actually works. Elsewhere in the Robber Zhi chapter, he notes how ‘a small thief gets arrested; a great thief becomes a ruler.’

We see this play out very often. In 1983, a man from Alabama named Alvin Kennard stole $50.75 from a bakery. He was given a life sentence and released in 2019. Meanwhile, the culprits of the 2008 financial crisis destroyed an estimated $50 trillion in global wealth and drove nearly 10 million American families from their homes. Only one mid-level banker went to prison (for 30 months) for mismarking securities. This is how power tips the scales of accountability. In Zhuangzi’s terms, the great thief is simply the thief with enough power that his taking sets the rules for everyone else.

Now, as in Zhuangzi’s time, luck, circumstance and privilege do far more to determine who ends up in power than moral cultivation ever could. In the Zhuangzi, Confucius also offers to rehabilitate the Robber’s reputation and frame him as a conqueror rather than a menace to society. The point is that, for Zhuangzi, once someone has prevailed, their position is often retroactively framed as deserved. Their dominance becomes evidence of their virtue, and their victory becomes proof of their worth.

Whereas Confucianism treats worth as something that can be recognized before authority is assigned, Zhuangzi suggests just the opposite: that authority determines who gets counted as worthy. Power, therefore, often does not reflect virtue, but instead has the ability to produce the appearance of virtue. This is how hierarchy manufactures its own moral narrative. Those who rule come to be called righteous. 

This idea is echoed in the modern concepts of ‘hegemony’ as developed by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, and what the anthropologist David Graeber calls the ‘false coin of our own dreams’. The point is that power works not only by commanding bodies but by determining what counts as valuable, and presenting it as natural or inevitable when in reality it is shaped by contingent social arrangements and power relations. 

The attraction of this ideological commitment to the meritocratic ideal is not only moral but psychological. Once we have poured years of work into becoming better, questioning the framework that evaluates us becomes costly. To doubt that effort pays off is to risk admitting that much of what we have invested may never yield returns. It is far easier to believe that we will be the exception than to confront the possibility that the system itself depends on many people never succeeding. Its staying power lies not merely in convenience for elites, but in its capacity to organize hope. It offers a narrative in which suffering is temporary, sacrifice is rational, and the future will vindicate the present.

Yet moral evaluation and its social and political mappability always presupposes a subject who could have done otherwise. For meritocracy to function and for inequality to appear deserved, people must be imagined as the authors of their own success and failure. However, the very capacities that make agency possible (such as education, health, time, stability, personal networks) are unevenly distributed before any cultivation can even begin. These conditions shape what effort and excellence look like, which means that ‘virtue’ can only ever be defined by those who have already succeeded.

Ultimately, Zhuangzi questions the idea that the individual could have done otherwise.
For him, action does not originate in an isolated will. It arises through circumstances. Character forms through relationships, habits, language, institutions, needs, fears and opportunities. What might look like individual agency is always co-produced. Zhuangzi’s concept for this is ziran (自然). It is often translated as ‘naturalness’, but better understood as the ‘so-of-itself’. Events and actions arise from the situation, and not from a sovereign self who imposes their will on the world. The self does not stand outside its conditions, but is a node within them. To act is to be moved as much as to move.

In the first chapter of the Zhuangzi, we are introduced to the mythical philosopher Liezi, who is able to ride the wind. He glides effortlessly through the air, appearing to move with complete freedom. Yet Zhuangzi points out that Liezi still depends on something: the wind. His motion, however graceful, remains conditional. The image offers a parable of human achievement. What looks like self-propelled success is always carried by social, material and historical currents that have no individual author. The meritocratic subject mistakes a favorable wind for personal flight.

Zhuangzi then contrasts Liezi with the person who rides ‘upon what is true, both to heaven and to earth … atop the back-and-forth of the six atmospheric breaths’ (ie, all things everywhere). This figure does not depend on any single wind because they no longer imagine themselves as a separate rider. Instead of depending on just one or few fixed conditions, they depend on everything and converge completely with everything. Their action flows with the whole field of conditions, with control and ownership mostly disappearing.

This figure embodies a distinctively Daoist ideal of agency. Where individuals of the meritocratic framework understand themselves as one who accumulates achievement through effort and thereby earns reward, the Daoist sage relinquishes ownership of action altogether. They do not see success as something authored by the self, nor failure as something that properly belongs to it. What happens happens through the convergence of conditions. Agency is instead responsiveness rather than imposition. 

To say ‘I deserve this’ is to say: I authored the action that produced it. Zhuangzi’s world gives every such claim an invisible plural. Effort arises through upbringing, pedagogy, institutional pathways, emotional and material support, health, luck and the ordinary labor of others that makes any striving possible. ‘Merit’ is in large part a social product. The ways in which our characters and personalities are shaped are themselves a social product.

Understanding agency in this manner, therefore, makes the idea of ‘equality of opportunity’ questionable, because opportunity is never really a neutral starting line. Such ‘equality’ is always already a field of conditions that shapes the very capacities by which people strive. Moral agency can never be cleanly separated out and credited or blamed. As such, moral inequality loses its footing, because differences in cultivation express differences in circumstance as much as differences in will. Without a self that can fully own its outcomes, social and political inequality loses its moral engine. 

Zhuangzi’s critique therefore targets the very grammar that makes inequality look deserved. A society can say ‘those who rise deserve to rise’ only after it has imagined a self that authors itself in isolation and then owns the result as personal property. Yet for Zhuangzi, selves are porous, responsive and entangled, moving with the grain of their situations rather than standing above them. In a world of ziran, no one is a self-made success. And if no one is self-made, then inequality has no foundation.

Ultimately, Zhuangzi unsettles the hope that inequality can be justified. That hope runs deep. It promises that effort matters, that sacrifice will be recognized, and that one’s position in the world reflects something meaningful about who one is. It asks people to keep striving, to keep improving, to keep investing in themselves, even when the rewards remain out of reach, forever deferred.

Zhuangzi invites us to resist this story, because a better world is possible. What would such a world look like? For starters, our worth would not be defined by our achievements, whether economic or moral. Such a world would be oriented by ziran, and instead of sorting individuals according to the amount of flourishing they’ve achieved, we would attend to the conditions that make flourishing possible. Institutional support and care, as well as the removal of structural disadvantages, would be primary concerns. 

Ultimately, abandoning our modern obsession with deserving would pave the way for a more dynamic understanding of human beings, one that recognizes we are nodes in a vast network of conditions that co-produce who we are and what we do. We would be rid of the cruel fantasy that a person’s place in the world is a reliable valuation of their worth as a human being.

https://aeon.co/essays/zhuangzi-and-the-case-against-meritocracy?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c9c1dc5361-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_05_15_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-49ad69cbc2-838110632

Martin Tschermer:
What struck me is that Zhuangzi’s critique of meritocracy converges with a question that also emerges from evolutionary psychology: how much of who we become is genuinely ours? Neither intelligence, temperament, perseverance, nor ambition emerge in isolation. They are shaped by genes, developmental environments, culture, institutions and countless contingencies beyond individual control. The image of the completely self-made individual becomes difficult to sustain. Yet I am not convinced that the alternative is to abandon responsibility or competence. Societies still need to distinguish between those who can fly aircraft, perform surgery or design bridges and those who cannot. 

The deeper issue is the temptation to mistake achievement for character. To assume that success proves superiority and failure reveals deficiency. Here I am reminded of Bernard Williams’s work on moral luck. We often judge people as though outcomes were entirely their own, even when fortune plays a decisive role. Two people may display similar virtues, make comparable efforts and exercise similar judgment yet arrive at very different destinations because circumstances intervene. 

This suggests the need for what might be called an ethics of uncertainty. We rarely know enough about another person’s inheritance, upbringing, constraints or luck to confidently determine how much credit or blame they truly deserve. That uncertainty should not eliminate responsibility but it should make us more cautious in assigning praise or blame. 

In this respect both Zhuangzi and the Stoics point toward a similar virtue: humility. Not because human beings lack agency but because agency always operates within conditions that none of us fully chose and none of us fully understand. The challenge is therefore not to choose between merit and luck or between responsibility and circumstance. It is to hold both truths at once. Character matters. Circumstance matters. Ignoring either leads us into illusion.

Oriana: NIETZSCHE AND “A THOUSAND HANDS”:
Though Nietzsche is often seen as an apostle of extreme individualism, he is also the thinker who pointed out that it “takes a thousand hands for a work of genius to emerge.” He also acknowledged the role of women in doing the humble work without which civilization would not be possible. 
 
Arun Nair:
The idea that success is solely determined by power dynamics or external conditions may overlook the genuine role of individual effort, personal responsibility, and moral development in shaping outcomes. Moreover, concepts emphasizing natural emergence or interconnectedness risk being interpreted as promoting passivity or fatalism, potentially undermining motivation for social progress and accountability. It is also worth noting that meritocratic systems can incentivize innovation and productivity, contributing to overall societal advancement despite their imperfections. 

At the same time, critiques highlighting structural barriers and unequal starting points provide valuable insights into the limitations of purely merit-based approaches. However, dismissing efforts to improve equality of opportunity or reframe worth beyond achievements might inadvertently devalue individual excellence and ambition. Balancing recognition of systemic influences with appreciation for personal agency remains a complex challenge. Ultimately, any philosophical perspective benefits from careful distinction between normative ideals and empirical realities to foster constructive dialogue about justice, fairness, and social organization without disregarding the diverse values different societies hold dear.

Pentareddy:
What I appreciated most about this essay is that it does not simply attack meritocracy; it questions the assumptions that often accompany it. The strongest takeaway for me was not that effort is meaningless, but that effort is never isolated.

The essay’s use of Zhuangzi highlights something that modern discussions of success often overlook: every achievement exists within a web of circumstances. Family, education, health, timing, social conditions, and luck all contribute to outcomes in ways that are difficult to separate from individual effort. Recognizing this does not require us to abandon praise, achievement, or ambition. Rather, it invites us to hold them with greater humility.

What resonated with me most was the distinction between understanding success and diminishing it. Acknowledging the role of circumstances does not mean that nobody deserves credit. It means that success should inspire gratitude as much as pride. The self-made individual may not be a complete myth, but the idea that anyone succeeds entirely on their own certainly is.

The essay left me wondering whether the opposite of arrogance is not humility alone, but gratitude: the recognition that while our actions matter, we are never the sole authors of our lives.


*
FRANCE IS DIVIDED OVER AIR-CONDITIONING

Only about 25% of homes in France have an air-con unit

With temperatures soaring, France is being forced to re-think its longstanding reservations about one possible answer to climate change: air-con. 

This week debate about 'la clim' (climatization) has once again burst out, with Marine Le Pen on the populist right urging a mass subsidized roll-out and traditionally hostile Greens conceding that some air-conditioning may now be inevitable. 

Currently the country has a low take-up, with only 25% of households equipped with an air-con unit. In Spain and Italy the figure is 50%, and in the US and Japan 90%

French hospitals and schools are also only rarely equipped. Thousands of schools have had to shut this week, and medical and nursing staff complain of conditions fast becoming intolerable. 

But with temperatures nudging 40C — Tuesday was France's hottest day on record — there has been a rush to buy portable air-conditioning appliances, just to let children enjoy a few hours in class, or for suffocating apartment-dwellers to make it through the night. 

And more and more, it seems, long-standing opponents of air-conditioning — mainly on the environmentalist left — recognize that it is bound to be part of the country's response to global warming. 

This week the head of the Ecologists party Marie Tondelier broke something of a taboo when she said that air-conditioning would be needed in schools and hospitals. "There are places where we just can't do without it now," she said. 

Her break with what she called "anti-clim dogma" is significant because until now the Green movement in France has regarded air-conditioning as the worst of solutions to climate change. 

Far from attacking the root causes of global-warming, activists said, recourse to la clim was merely attenuating the effects of global-warming.

And by making those effects more bearable, it distracted from the essential fight against the causes.

Not only that, but air-conditioning is often criticized by environmentalists for aggravating climate change.

This is because it requires electricity to run — and though most of France's electricity comes from nuclear power, elsewhere it means more fossil-fuels being burned.

There is also the question of the refrigerant gases used in air-conditioning, which are greenhouse gases and often leak.

And there is the urban heating effect, caused by the expulsion of hot air onto the street. 

Arguments rage, but some studies suggest this can raise city temperatures by two or three degrees. 

Suspicion of air-conditioning has also infiltrated government policy.

New building and renovation norms focus quite naturally on insulation, greenery and hi-tech methods for air-circulation — with the express aim of making air-conditioning unnecessary.

A giant new hospital being built in the Brittany city of Nantes for example will have air-conditioning in only half its rooms, provoking the wrath of medical trade unions.

"In the environmental context, we should have la clim everywhere," said Olivier Terrien of the CGT union. 

According to Valerie Pécresse, the conservative president of the Paris regional council, "The state operates under an anti-clim ideology. But air-conditioning has got to be brought into the picture, along with other methods for creating cool."

Pécresse, who controls Paris regional transport, hopes to have all buses and trains equipped with aircon by 2032, and she castigates her Socialist predecessor for failing to see its importance.

The political right has always been more pro-clim than the left — and none more so than the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen.

This week she has been calling for a nationwide "plan clim" to equip all schools and hospitals with air-conditioning. 

According to RN spokesman Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the plan would also include government-backed interest-free loans worth €20bn ($22.7bn; £17.2bn) to allow 30 to 40 million householders to install cooling units.

Critics denounced the RN plan as opportunistic and expensive. They say the populist right was the last to recognize the reality of climate change, so it has little credibility today when it talks about its effects.

But the truth is that with temperatures approaching danger levels in France, with lives at stake and schools and hospitals at risk of breakdown — everyone is coming to the same conclusion: that more clim is inevitable. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gyqldl3p5o

*
ABORTION AFTER THE OVERTURN OF ROE VS WADE

It's been four years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion.

"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health majority opinion on June 24, 2022. "And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey have inflamed debate and deepened division." 

Reversing Roe didn't calm debate or heal division. A confusing patchwork of state laws began to take shape hours after the Supreme Court ruled — which was, perhaps, predictable. States had passed "trigger laws," ready to restrict abortion as soon as the high court allowed.

But other developments have been surprising, including the role of the internet and the mail in increasing access to abortion, even in those very same states. This year, voters will again consider ballot measures to protect or restrict abortion access across the country. Dramatic stories of medical care denied to pregnant patients continue to unfold across the country. 

Here are four things to know about the state of abortion access in America today. 

1. The number of abortions continues to rise 

You might have guessed that when more than a dozen states banned abortion, there would be fewer abortions happening in those states and that the overall number of abortions would go down.That's not what has happened. The number of abortions nationally has increased each year since the national right to abortion was overturned. 

Part of the reason is that access has become easier in states that support abortion. Policy changes have allowed more residents of those states to have abortion access without barriers like waiting periods or parental permission requirements. These lowered barriers have helped people who live in restrictive states to travel for care.

"Shield laws" have also emerged as a major force in the abortion access landscape. States that support abortion access have created legal shields to allow clinicians to provide abortion to residents in states with bans, even without patients traveling. Clinicians can prescribe medication abortion via telemedicine — online or over the phone. Pills can then be mailed or picked up at local pharmacies. 

That's led to the surprising fact that the number of abortions in states with bans have actually increased in recent years, as telemedicine abortion has grown. And this has not escaped Justice Alito's notice. 

"What is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs," Alito wrote in a recent dissent related to abortion pills, "which restored the right of each state to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders."

2. Anti-abortion politics have gotten complicated 

President Trump is pulled in two directions on the issue of abortion. His appointees to the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, a huge victory for conservatives, but he and his administration have become notably quiet on the issue in this midterm year. Why? The coalition that elected Trump in 2024 included independent voters, who support abortion rights. 

Meanwhile, anti-abortion politicians and activists want to see more action to restrict abortion, like reviving the Comstock Act. That's the 19th century law that says you can't use the mail to send "obscene" materials including pornography and "every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion." If enforced, it could create a de facto national abortion ban without requiring Congress to pass a new law. 

Last month, Justice Clarence Thomas asserted in his dissent to the abortion pill case that the Comstock Act was in force and that drug companies manufacturing and distributing FDA approved medications were therefore engaged in a "criminal enterprise." 

And states are also actively pursuing more restrictions, including bills that would charge women who get abortions with homicide. Texas passed a law that allows private citizens to sue out-of-state prescribers of abortion pills for $100,000. Louisiana scheduled mifepristone and misoprostol, the two medications used for abortion, as controlled substances.

Louisiana also is suing the Food and Drug Administration, aiming to force the agency to roll back the rules change that allowed telemedicine access to mifepristone. That case is likely headed for the Supreme Court. If the justices decide the case in Louisiana's favor then mifepristone would no longer be available via telemedicine nationally. Other lawsuits against mifepristone are also pending.

3. Supporters say abortion pills are "unstoppable"

Abortion rights advocates are pushing beyond the status quo, too. 

Researchers at University of California San Francisco recently published a study examining the feasibility of making abortion medication available over-the-counter in the U.S., no doctor's appointment or prescription needed. A Planned Parenthood affiliate started offering abortion medication to patients who aren't pregnant, to keep at home in case they need it. And telemedicine abortion providers have contingency plans to be able to continue sending misoprostol alone through the mail even if access to mifepristone is restricted.

The post-Roe era has seen some closures of brick-and-mortar reproductive clinics that offer abortion, in part because Republicans in Congress withheld millions of dollars for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide abortion in 2025. Efforts to maintain access to in-person abortion care include training more primary care physicians to offer abortion, and turning to health facilities like urgent care clinics to fill in gaps. 

In the meantime, the use of medication abortion continues to grow. "Abortion pills are everywhere, they're safe, they're effective, and they're pretty much unstoppable," Elisa Wells of Plan C, a website about medication abortion, told NPR last month. "The genie is out of the bottle." 

4. Privacy and stigma around abortion are evolving rapidly

Abortion was legal for nearly 50 years under a right to privacy based in the constitution. In the first trimester, according to the majority opinion in Roe, "the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician." 

Ironically, since that right has been revoked, women can have abortions in far more privacy than was possible under Roe. Patients can fill out an online form and have abortion pills delivered to their homes, avoiding protesters that still gather outside some reproductive health clinics. At the same time, people embrace talking freely about the experience, eschewing shame, with hashtags like #ShoutYourAbortion.

Some women who have shared their own painful stories about being denied medically necessary abortion and miscarriage care have become public figures. Samantha Casiano, whose story was first reported by NPR, was pregnant for months knowing that her baby wasn't going to survive, and went on to testify in court and be featured in a documentary about the consequences of Texas' abortion ban.

As more and more people have shared their stories, that's had a snowball effect — it empowers more people to speak out. Kate Cox appealed to the Texas Supreme Court for access to abortion while pregnant. Her picture was in the news as she was living through a pregnancy complication and seeking help. In the end, Texas denied her request, and she traveled out of state for an abortion.

Still, the increasingly online experience of seeking abortion also opens up new privacy issues. 

Just months after the Dobbs decision, police in Nebraska used Facebook messages to bring felony charges in a successful case against a woman who gave her teenage daughter abortion pills. And many Americans track their periods in apps that have raised concerns among privacy experts.

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/25/nx-s1-5869560/abortion-dobbs-roe-rights-restrictions-anniversary-update

Oriana:
My favorite pro-choice argument is: The question is not whether a fetus is a person, but whether a woman is.

Once in a while you hear the quotation, “If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” (I think it’s Gloria Steinem who said it.) The last time I quoted it, a man replied, “If only men got pregnant, some women would try to force them to give birth against their will” — i.e. the gender doesn’t matter; there’d always be some people who’d see the rights of the fetus as more important than the rights of the potential parent.

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THE MOST DANGEROUS WORDS MIGHT BE YOUR OWN

The brain actively seeks evidence that confirms the identities we assign ourselves.

Most people believe that success, happiness, and personal growth are primarily determined by intelligence, talent, opportunity, or hard work. While these factors undoubtedly matter, psychology suggests that something far more subtle may shape our lives every day: the labels we attach to ourselves. 

Think about how often people describe themselves using fixed identities. Some say, "I am bad with money." Others insist, "I am not a confident person," "I am terrible at relationships," or "I am not leadership material." These statements often sound like simple observations. In reality, they may be acting as psychological instructions that influence future behavior. 

The labels we repeatedly assign to ourselves do not merely describe who we are. Over time, they can shape how we think, how we behave, and ultimately who we become. What begins as a passing thought can gradually develop into an identity, and identities are remarkably powerful forces in human behavior.

How Identities Become Ingrained 

The origins of this idea can be traced to labeling theory, which proposes that individuals often begin to behave in accordance with the labels assigned to them by society or by themselves (Becker, 1963). While the theory was initially developed to explain social behavior, its implications extend far beyond sociology. In everyday life, people constantly create labels that influence their own self-concept. Once these labels become embedded within identity, they can affect decision-making, confidence, motivation, and performance.

The danger lies in the fact that the human mind seeks consistency. Once we adopt a particular identity, we unconsciously begin looking for evidence that supports it. A person who believes they are socially awkward might notice every uncomfortable interaction while overlooking successful conversations. Someone who believes they are unlucky could remember every setback while discounting moments of good fortune. This tendency is known as confirmation bias, whereby individuals seek information that reinforces their existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence. 

As a result, labels often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Merton (1948) described how beliefs can influence behavior in ways that ultimately make those beliefs appear true. A student who believes they are poor at mathematics may avoid studying, participate less in class, and approach examinations with anxiety. Unsurprisingly, their performance suffers. The poor result then appears to validate the original belief, even though the belief itself contributed to creating the outcome.

This phenomenon can be observed throughout life. Employees who believe they are capable are more likely to seek promotions, volunteer for challenging projects, and persevere when difficulties arise. Those who view themselves as inadequate may hesitate, withdraw, or avoid opportunities altogether. The difference is often not intelligence or talent but the expectations individuals hold about themselves.

Why "Winners Keep Winning": How Expectations Influence Action

One of the most fascinating examples of the power of expectations comes from Rosenthal and Jacobson's famous Pygmalion study. Teachers were informed that certain students were expected to show exceptional intellectual growth. Although these students had been randomly selected, they subsequently demonstrated greater academic improvement. The expectations of others subtly influenced behavior, creating conditions that helped produce the anticipated outcome. If the expectations of others can shape our behavior, it is reasonable to assume that our own expectations may have an even stronger influence. 

This may help explain a phenomenon often described as "winners keep winning." Success rarely produces only external rewards. It also changes how individuals perceive themselves. Each achievement becomes evidence that they are capable, competent, and effective. These beliefs contribute to greater confidence, which encourages further action. As a result, success often generates psychological momentum. 

Albert Bandura's (1977) concept of self-efficacy helps explain why some people continue to succeed despite challenges. Individuals who believe they can influence outcomes are more likely to persevere, recover from setbacks, and pursue opportunities. Over time, these behaviors increase the likelihood of success. 

The opposite can also occur. Repeated failures or negative experiences may lead to learned helplessness, where people stop trying because they no longer believe their actions matter (Seligman, 1975). This can create a downward spiral, as individuals repeatedly label themselves as incapable or unsuccessful. Over time, these self-beliefs begin to shape their behavior. 

This is why positive self-talk matters. It is not about ignoring reality but about choosing language that encourages growth rather than limitation. Research suggests that constructive self-talk can improve motivation, performance, and resilience (Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011). 

Unfortunately, many people speak to themselves far more harshly than they would ever speak to a friend, gradually turning temporary setbacks into permanent identities. 

The popular phrase "fake it till you make it" may contain more psychological truth than many realize. According to self-perception theory, people often develop beliefs about themselves by observing their own behavior (Bem, 1972). In other words, acting confidently can help create confidence. When someone speaks up despite feeling nervous or pursues an opportunity despite self-doubt, they are not necessarily pretending; they are practicing a future version of themselves. 

A similar principle underlies visualization. Research shows that mentally rehearsing an activity activates many of the same neural pathways involved in performing it (Driskell et al., 1994). 

Before a building is constructed, it exists as a blueprint; before a business is launched, it exists as an idea. Likewise, personal growth often begins with imagining a different version of oneself. Long before people become confident leaders, successful entrepreneurs, or accomplished professionals, they frequently envision that possibility.

This idea aligns with Carol Dweck's (2006) work on growth mindset. People who view their abilities as capable of development tend to achieve more than those who see their traits as fixed. The difference often lies in the labels they choose. Saying "I am bad at this" closes the door to growth, whereas saying "I am learning" keeps it open. 

Ultimately, the labels we carry are rarely as permanent as we imagine. Many were formed years ago through criticism, failure, or difficult experiences, yet they continue to influence behavior long after the original event has passed. The question is not simply who you are today, but who you repeatedly tell yourself you are. Your brain is always listening, and the identities you reinforce are often the identities you become.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-architecture-of-desire/202606/why-the-most-dangerous-words-might-be-your-own

*


FOSSIL REVEALS CLUES ABOUT MAMMAL ANCESTORS



Eggs are a powerful symbol of new life. They also have a surprising amount to teach scientists about the depths of the past.
 
Fossilized eggshells have provided clues about the behavior of dinosaurs, revealed past changes in climate, and shed light on how prehistoric human relatives lived and communicated.



Now, a remarkable discovery has cracked open a mystery from around 250 million years ago.



A handful of mammal species living today lay eggs rather than give birth to live young. Known as monotremes, this bunch of oddballs includes the platypus and the echidna.
 
A fascinating specimen unearthed in South Africa has shown that the earliest mammal ancestors also laid eggs.

The fossil belonged to a tightly curled embryo of a Lystrosaurus, a mammal ancestor famous for surviving an extinction event 252 million years ago known as the “Great Dying.”



Paleontologists identified a specific trait that proved the  had been cocooned inside an egg when it died.
 

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/FMfcgzQgLPTMbVRCfWBLDTBrDlXrptdF




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THE MOST POPULAR BABY NAMES NOW



The Social Security Administration’s annual list of the most popular baby names in the United States doesn’t include many truly shocking choices. In recent years, we’ve seen the familiar favorites like Liam, Olivia, Noah and Emma at the top.

But take a closer look at the agency’s broader data and you’ll notice some very interesting ― and often unexpected ― trends. From the rise of less traditional names like Icelynn and Genesis to the fall of old classics like Patrick and Kimberly, here are 15 baby name statistics from the latest SSA data that might surprise you. 

Nova is more popular than Grace. 

According to the most recent SSA data, 5,044 baby girls were named Nova, making it the 39th most popular female name. Meanwhile, Grace ranked 40th, with 5,002 newborns given that name.

Icelynn is one of the fastest-rising names for girls. The name Icelynn rose 209 places from 2023 to 2024 to reach No. 922, breaking into the top 1,000 for the first time. This jump likely reflects the popularity of names ending in -lynn in recent years, as seen with Oaklynn, Raelynn, Lakelynn and more.



Maverick is more popular than Thomas. 

Maverick is a top 50 name, with 6,615 baby boys (and 85 girls) named Maverick in 2024. The name currently ranks at No. 36, three spots above Thomas at No. 39. Last year, 6,576 baby boys were named Thomas.

Ezekiel is one of the top names for boys in New Mexico. 

The top names on a national level ― like Liam, Noah and Oliver ― tend to dominate on the state level, but there are some outliers. Ezekiel, for instance, ranked 54th nationally but was the third-most-popular name for newborn boys in New Mexico.



Genesis is more popular than Sophie. 

In 2024, 3,835 baby girls were named Genesis, putting it at No. 55 for girls. 

But Sophie was lower down at No. 60, as there were just 3,574 newborn Sophies.

Truce is the fastest-rising name for boys.

In light of all the wars making news in recent years, parents seem drawn to the opposite sentiment. The name Truce broke into the top 1,000 for the first time in 2024 ― rising 11,118 places from No. 12,109 to No. 991.

Messiah is more popular than Patrick.

Despite its long history and cultural familiarity, the name Patrick no longer ranks among the top 100 names for boys. Instead, it sits down at No. 221, with 1,622 boys named Patrick in 2024. Meanwhile, the somewhat controversial name Messiah is No. 203 and went to 1,734 newborn boys.

Lainey is a top name for girls in Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia.

Although Lainey is the 38th most popular name for girls in the U.S. as a whole, it actually cracked the top three in multiple states. In Montana, it’s the No. 1 most popular choice, while it sits at No. 2 in West Virginia and No. 3 in Kentucky and both Dakotas.

Khloe is more popular than Kimberly. [Oriana: I'm used to the CHLOE spelling ― as in chlorophyll.] 

Kimberly Kardashian might have a bigger social media following than her little sister Khloe, but the younger sibling’s name wins in the popularity rankings these days. While Kimberly is No. 246, Khloe sits at No. 232 in the latest SSA data. 

Lorenzo is more popular than Nicholas.

It’s no secret Americans love to visit Italy, and it seems many parents are bringing a touch of Italian culture home with their baby-naming choices. A record 3,044 baby boys born in 2024 were named Lorenzo, making it the 116th most popular choice for boys. Meanwhile, Nicholas ranked at No. 118, with 3,025 newborn baby Nicholases.

Honey is one of the fastest-rising names for girls.

Honey is more than just a term of endearment. In 2024, the name rose 236 spots to No. 935 on the list of the most popular names for girls, with 282 newborn Honeys.

Kinsley is more popular than Sarah.

In 2024, 2,929 baby girls were named Kinsley, making it the 85th most popular choice. At the same time, the once-ubiquitous Sarah (which peaked at No. 3 in 1993) has slipped to No. 95, with 2,697 newborns given the name.

Mary is one of the most popular names for girls in Mississippi.

Mary may feel like a relic of past generations on a national level, ranking just No. 132 for girls in the U.S. overall. But the classic name seems to still hold strong regional appeal. In Mississippi, Mary is the fifth most popular name for baby girls. 

Sincere is more popular than Donald.

The name Donald may dominate headlines these days, but it does not have the same presence on birth certificates. The latest SSA data put Donald at No. 672 as 405 baby boys were given that name. Meanwhile the virtue name Sincere has reached No. 604, with 471 newborns called Sincere.

Halo is one of the fastest-rising names for boys.

Never underestimate the power of celestial and spiritual names. In 2024, Halo jumped 466 spots on the boys’ list, rising from No. 1,460 to No. 994 ― enough to break into the top 1,000 for boys for the first time. 

(Alas, I lost the link to this article.)

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CAN SMARTPHONE EXPLAIN THE DROP IN BIRTHRATES?



Economist Caitlin Myers has a striking explanation for why women are having fewer babies: It's the smartphones. 

Myers and other researchers have been searching for what's behind the sharp drop in fertility over the last two decades. Birth rates in the U.S. have fallen by 22% since 2007.

At first, economists assumed that the Great Recession was to blame but that births would soon rebound, as they'd done after previous downturns.
But then the economy recovered — and birth rates just kept falling.

If the recession wasn't responsible for the baby bust, what was? 

"Whatever it is, it must be big, and it needs to coincide with about 2007 because that's when we see all the births go down," says Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury College in Vermont.

That happens to be the year that Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, declaring, "Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.”

Maybe even birth rates.

In a provocative new working paper titled "Is the iPhone Birth Control?" Myers argues that the spread of smartphones could explain between a third and a half of the decline in birth rates during that period.
 

Births fell more in places where you could get an iPhone in the early years
, To test that theory, she makes clever use of an accident of history that creates a kind of natural experiment. When iPhones first came out, they worked only with AT&T.

"In some areas of the country, AT&T had broadband coverage and you could get an iPhone, and in other areas, including where I live in Vermont, that coverage was much more limited," Myers recalls. "And what you can see in this simplest of comparisons, births start to fall in the places where you can get one, and they're not falling nearly as much in the places where you can’t."

One might argue the results are skewed because smartphones spread faster in urban areas or wealthier communities. But the results hold up even when Myers controlled for variables like population density and local economics.

*

"You're probably not going to get pregnant if you're not interacting with people in person"

The drop in birth rates has affected women of all ages, but it's most pronounced among teenagers. That sounds plausible to Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University.

In books like Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents, Twenge has documented the profound behavioral changes that accompanied smartphones, especially among young people.

"The smartphone fundamentally changed the way adolescents spent their time outside of school," Twenge told NPR. "They started spending a lot more time online and on their phones and a lot less time hanging out with their friends in person and driving around in a car or going to the mall or just hanging out."

Myers says it's not a stretch to think that this would result in fewer babies.

"If there's one thing I learned in abstinence-only sex ed in the '90s in Georgia growing up, it's that you're probably not going to get pregnant if you're not interacting with people in person — if you're not having sex," Myers says.

In the paper, co-authored with her 24-year-old stepson, Ezekiel Hooper, Myers suggests smartphones also placed access to information about contraceptives and abortion in the palm of users' hands.

The devices also might have depressed birth rates by making it easier for people to find pornography.

"When I talk to my students at Middlebury College, this is the first one they actually bring up," Myers says. "Pornography was proving to be a substitute for in-person relationships.”

Apple didn't respond to an inquiry about Myers' paper.

Eventually, copycat phones came along that could be used on other networks, and today smartphones are ubiquitous. Myers says that this raises the question of whether birth rates will level off now or continue to fall.

"I think it's possible that we'll continue to see effects of phones on behavior and outcomes like fertility for years to come," she says. "But we'll just have to keep watching.”

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/12/nx-s1-5851795/iphone-birth-rate-drop



*


HUNGARY’S EXPERIMENT TRYING TO RAISE THE BIRTH RATE



Hungary's Houses of Parliament 

Sitting on a park bench in the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen, Barbara Elek is nervously refreshing her emails. She and her husband Levi are waiting to find out if Barbara is pregnant, after their third round of IVF 10 days ago.

"If it doesn't succeed, then obviously I'll be devastated, and then the last resort will be trying to make sure that, at least financially, we don't lose everything," she tells BBC Global Women. 

Like many other young Hungarian couples Barbara, 33, a social worker and Levi, 34, a chef, were eligible for tens of thousands of pounds in interest-free loans and subsidies when they promised to have two children. But they've struggled to get pregnant naturally and if they can't prove they have a child on the way by 1 November then it is possible they may have to pay back those loans with penalty interest.

The couple took out a 10 million‑forint (£25,000) loan on the promise of having two children. 

Under rules introduced by Hungary's previous government, they could be asked to repay penalty interest of between 1.5 and 3.5 million forint (£3,700-£8,600), something they say they can't afford. They also receive a mortgage subsidy with similar terms.

In 2010, then prime minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán embarked on some of the most ambitious pronatalist policies in the world — paying people to have, or promise to have, children. Hungary's fertility is well below the replacement level of 2.1 babies per woman needed to keep the native-born population steady — a number that accounts for those children who don't survive to adulthood. And on top of that, there have been high levels of emigration and low immigration.

It's not just a Hungarian issue. Across Europe, fertility rates have been below the level needed to keep the population stable without immigration since the 1980s. Today, the same is true in more than half of all countries, home to around two‑thirds of the world's population.

When Orbán was re‑elected in 2010, Hungary's fertility rate was among the lowest in Europe. (current rate: 1.31)

His party, Fidesz, promised to tackle population decline. "In the West, the answer to this is immigration. You bring in as many as you're missing. Hungarians think differently. We don't need numbers, we need Hungarian children." 

 Lake Balaton

Orbán, who was voted out of office in April this year, rolled out extensive tax breaks, interest-free loans and mortgage subsidies to young couples who promised to have children. There are also subsidies to buy a bigger car or renovate your home. The incentives were only available to married, heterosexual couples and those in the formal job market. 

At one point, it seemed all of this was pushing Hungarians to reproduce. The fertility rate rose from 1.25 in 2010 to 1.59 by 2020.

Hungary, for a time, was hailed as a great success story by some — especially US conservatives. But then the fertility rate began to drop and in 2025 it had fallen to 1.31, not much higher than when these incentives first launched.

"Judged by the aims of the policies, this is clearly a failure," says Tomas Sobotka, from the Vienna Institute of Demography.

So why did Hungary's pronatalist approach deliver an early rise in births only then to fall back? And what lessons does it offer to other countries desperate to lift fertility?

Pronatalist policies in Hungary

One view is that Hungary's statistics point to a success. With fertility falling across Europe over the past decade, they argue the country's policies may have staved off even greater decline. 

Fruzsina Skrabski, of the pro-family NGO Three Princes, Three Princesses, believes without these policies "there would be hundreds of thousands of fewer children". She is "certain it led to more children being born, just not enough to reverse the trend”.

Maté, 43, and Agi Gorondy, 37, who live in the suburbs of Budapest, wholeheartedly agree. They have five children all under 10 years old — and say they may have more — and they credit Hungary's family-friendly environment. The couple took advantage of generous maternity pay, interest-free baby loans and subsidies to help renovate their house and buy a bigger car. Maté, a freelance business developer, benefits from tax cuts. And as a mother of more than two children, Agi will pay no income tax at all if she returns to work. 

"I think there's been a change in the past 16 years. In this neighborhood… four- or five-child families are no longer rare," Maté says. Statistically there was an increase in families with three or more children in Hungary in the 2010s, peaking in 2020 at 146,000. By 2024 that was down to 125,000.


Timothy P Carney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who has written several books on fertility decline, believes one of Orbán's successes was that he put family, and supporting families, at the center of the political narrative. He points to the "Family-Friendly Hungary" messaging, emblazoned in the arrivals hall at Budapest airport. 

Others say the benefits landed unevenly. Prof János Tóth, a philosopher studying demographic issues at Hungary's University of Szeged, believes the incentives worked especially well for one particular group - the lower middle class in the countryside. But in the cities, where fertility is lowest, the money just doesn't go as far. He believes the "baby-expecting loan" of 10 million forint (£25,000) did initially help many young couples to start a family, but soaring inflation has eroded its value.

"Every country has this problem of low fertility in cities," he says. In his view, Hungary has to do more to help people to have their first child, rather than focusing on persuading those who already have children to have more — “the first child is the most important". 

Eva Fodor, co-director of the Democracy Institute at the Central European University, questions how much difference the policies made. 

"It seems that these policies were effective for a little while, like most pronatalist policies are," she says. She believes they prompted a cohort of people to have children they would have had anyway, just a little earlier than planned. "So the fertility rate went up for a while, for a year or two, and then it started falling again.”

But Hungary's rise and fall in fertility may have had little to do with its policies at all, and simply mirrored wider trends across eastern Europe. The Czech Republic, for example, did not introduce such expansive pronatalist measures yet saw a similar boost and then a similar decline.

More than finances 

For many parents, the real barrier may not be finances but the basic services they depend on. Antonia Miskolczi, a 29-year-old mother in Budapest, says her concern over Hungary's healthcare system mattered far more to her decision‑making than any financial incentive. 

"I was actually terrified of childbirth," Antonia says. She watched TikTok videos warning expectant mothers to bring their own toilet paper and disinfectant to the hospital and says several relatives had a terrible experience. She had her son at a private hospital. 

Antonia and her husband Marton used several benefits to have their first child, but says it hasn't changed their plan to have only one more. "I don't think big promises are needed. Just fix the fundamentals and the willingness to have children will increase," she says. "Improving education and healthcare should be the very first step if people are going to feel comfortable having children.” 

In 2019, Eva Fodor interviewed 21 well-educated middle-class Hungarian women, who work in professional jobs in state administration, to determine if government support prompted them to have a child. She found most saw it "as a one-time payment, not as a long-term investment into raising children." 

"What they really need is institutions and health care systems and childcare, which they deemed insufficient," she says. Though Hungary did expand access to childcare and invested in healthcare, Fodor says many women still felt it wasn't enough. 

Hungary was far from alone in trying to reverse falling birth rates. South Korea, for example, had a fertility rate of 1.19 in 2008 - one of the lowest in the world. Since then, it has spent more than £215bn trying to get its population to have more babies. Parents get an upfront "baby bonus" of £20,000-£30,000 when their child is born, as well as generous child benefit allowances each month. They also get vouchers to help with private childcare.

But South Korea's total fertility rate continued to decline in that time, reaching 0.8 in 2025.

Fertility has fallen in most countries since the pandemic, a shift many experts believe is driven by more than economics. Demographer Tomas Sobotka argues that lockdowns, vaccination campaigns that may have prompted women to delay pregnancy and a general sense of instability all worked to put people off having children. "Fertility tends to decline because people don't have confidence in the future," he says.

The war in Ukraine and a global surge in inflation created new shocks, and Sobotka notes that the countries closest to the conflict have seen the sharpest fertility declines. Globally, Sobotka argues: "People still feel insecure, uncertain about the future because there are all these crises unfolding and the political environment is very toxic”. 

Shifting culture 

In the 2000s, Sweden and some of its Nordic neighbors introduced a series of policies that boosted fertility — though that wasn't their explicit intention. Shared parental leave, affordable childcare and universal pre-school helped to create conditions that made it easier to combine work and family life. Over the next decade fertility rates in Sweden increased — from 1.5 to 2.0.

Many scholars thought Sweden had solved the conflict between feminism and fertility by making it easier for both parents to work and raise a family. Then in the 2010s fertility dropped again, leaving researchers perplexed.

But Sobotka thinks these policies insulated Nordic countries from the depths of fertility decline seen in East Asia. "At some level, every country needs at least the Nordic policy package and maybe better," he argues. He believes countries that make it easier for men and women to share work and care are far better protected against deep fertility decline.

Fodor says that for its part, Hungary has "strengthened this idea that women are the primary caretakers of the family".

"Gender roles have become more rigid."

And it may be that culture matters more than cash. "Part of the problem is we overestimate how much finances work," says Carney. Israel, the only country in the OECD with a fertility rate that is comfortably above replacement, doesn't have particularly high levels of government spending on family benefits. But it does have a strong cultural and ideological focus on having children — informed partly by the desire to rebuild the Jewish population after the horror of the Holocaust.

"But the government's ability to shift culture is very limited," Carney warns, "And part of the peril of the government weighing in on the culture is it could politicize it." 

In some countries, that backlash is already visible. In South Korea, for example, survey research has found many young women resisting marriage and family as a protest against what they see as patriarchal ideas of a traditional family. 

France, by contrast, has resisted some of Europe's fertility decline. Its rate of 1.6 is among the highest in the EU. It has comparatively high public spending and a greater focus on work-life balance than many of its neighbors.

South Korea does not have that flexibility. "For men there is this kind of traditional notion of breadwinners, so they often come from home very late at night," says Sobotka. "This is punishing for both women and men, but also for family life."  

Child-rearing is left to women. Women also face "anticipatory discrimination", he adds, "often women are either withdrawing from the labor market or getting into part-time or unstable jobs around the time when they have kids."

Similarly, flexibility at work is not present in Hungary. "Even state-owned companies are not flexible, they do not take into account the fact that men and women both may have responsibilities outside of the labour market," says Fodor. 

The Orbán government spent around 5% of GDP on its family-friendly initiatives and they were seemingly popular enough that Hungary's new leader Peter Magyar didn't campaign on changing them. 

"We are living in societies where parenthood is extremely expensive. So whatever different countries can do to support parents and support families is a good policy," says Sobotka.

Fodor takes a different view: "If that money had been spent on social institutions and… gender equality and promoting men's role in domestic work, I think a similar increase in the fertility rate could have been achieved." 

Barbara and Levi's situation is not unique. The Hungarian National Bank reports that one in five couples who took the loans five years ago didn't end up having children. The new Hungarian government said it was reviewing these policies and looking at what should happen when people take out loans but don't have the children they said they intended to have.

Barbara's email finally came through. The embryo they had implanted hadn't survived. 

"It's horrible, just horrible," her husband Levi said, holding his wife.


In family‑friendly Hungary, the couple are caught in a system that promised support, but now find themselves without the family they hoped for and facing the prospect of their financial stability falling apart.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yzdr4ygdno

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EUROPE’S AIR CONDITIONING CRISIS

Brutal heat waves are coming more frequently in Europe, leaving millions of people struggling to adapt to punishing, record-breaking temperatures. 

There is little respite. Air conditioning is very rare in European homes. Many residents ride out the searing heat with the help of electric fans, ice packs and cold showers. 

But Europe hasn’t approached heat in the same way as the historically hotter United States. 

While nearly 90% of US homes have air conditioning, in Europe it’s around 20%.

As climate change drives more severe and prolonged heat waves, which arrive earlier and earlier, some are questioning why wealthy European countries have been seemingly reluctant to adopt air conditioning — especially as the heat takes an increasingly deadly toll.

A big part of the reason is many European countries historically had little need for cooling, especially in the north. Heat waves have always happened but rarely reached the prolonged high temperatures Europe now regularly endures. 

“In Europe… we simply don’t have the tradition of air conditioning… because up to relatively recently, it hasn’t been a major need,” said Brian Motherway, head of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Inclusive Transitions at the International Energy Agency. 

This meant AC has traditionally been seen as a luxury rather than a necessity, especially as installing and running it can be expensive. Energy costs in many European countries are higher than in the US, while incomes tend to be lower. 

The cost of powering an AC unit may still be out of reach for many Europeans.

Then there’s the architecture.

Some buildings in hotter, southern European countries were built for the heat. They have thick walls, small windows that keep the sun from beaming inside and are designed to maximize air flow. This has helped keep them cooler and lessened the perceived need for artificial cooling. 

In other parts of Europe, however, homes have not been designed with heat in mind. 

“We haven’t been in the habit … of thinking about how we stay cool in the summer. It really is a relatively recent phenomenon,” said Motherway.

Buildings on the continent tend to be older, built before AC technology became mainstream. In England, which has just endured its hottest June on record, one in six homes were built before 1900. 

It can be harder to outfit older homes with central cooling systems, although far from impossible, Motherway said.

Sometimes a bigger problem is red tape, said Richard Salmon, the director of the Air Conditioning Company based in the UK.

UK authorities will often reject applications to install AC “on the basis of the visual appearance of the outdoor condenser unit, especially in conservation areas or on listed buildings,” he said. 

There is also a policy angle. Europe has pledged to become “climate neutral” by 2050 and a sharp increase in air conditioners will make climate commitments even harder to reach.

Not only are air conditioners energy guzzlers, but they also push heat outside. A study looking at AC use in Paris found they could increase the outside temperature between about 2 and 4 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 Fahrenheit). This impact is especially severe in Europe’s generally dense cities.

Some countries have imposed measures to limit air conditioning. In 2022, Spain introduced rules stipulating AC in public places should be set no lower than 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) to save energy.

Attitudes and concerns around AC in Europe are changing, however, as the continent becomes a climate hotspot, warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. 

The continent faces a dilemma: embrace energy-intensive air conditioning, with the negative climate impacts it brings, or find alternative ways to cope with its ever-hotter future.

“Our homes need to be resilient not just to the cold, but to the increasingly brutal heat,” said Yetunde Abdul, director at UK Green Building Council.

There are already clear signs uptake is increasing in Europe, as in many parts of the world. An IEA report found the number of air conditioning units in the EU is likely to rise to 275 million by 2050 — more than double the 2019 figure. 

The Air Conditioning Company’s Salmon says he has seen demand for air conditioning skyrocket. “Over the last five years, residential inquiries have more than tripled. This heatwave in particular has sent things through the roof… People just can’t function when they’re boiling at 3 a.m.”

But experts warn AC may be a quick reprieve from scorching temperatures but it gobbles up energy, most of which still comes from planet-heating fossil fuels.

Using fossil fuel-powered AC increases planet-heating pollution, which in turn increases temperatures, fueling “a vicious cycle of worsening climate change,” said Radhika Khosla, an associate professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. 

The reality is mindsets around AC are undoubtedly going to change in Europe, as extreme heat — and its health impacts — increases, IEA’s Motherway said.

The challenge will be making sure countries have strong regulations around the efficiency of cooling systems to reduce their potentially huge climate impact.

“Because every air conditioner sold today locks in energy use and emissions for the next decade or two decades. So it’s important we get this right first time.”

https://www.cnn.com/climate/europe-heat-air-conditioning

Oriana:
Ideally, everyone should have access to AC. The use of renewable energy (e.g. solar, which is abundant during summer) might solve the problem of how to enjoy AC without causing further damage to the climate.

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BIOELECTRONIC MEDICINE — TOWARD A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF INFLAMMATION

Dr. Kevin Tracey dedicated his life to studying the role of inflammation in the body ­— and how best to treat it. He has since become one of the world’s preeminent neurosurgeons pioneering an entirely new category of care: bioelectronic medicine, revolutionizing care for patients around the world.

“My personal philosophy is to ask questions that can be studied scientifically in order to forge a path to inventing new therapies,” he said. “That’s what I’ve focused on doing for 40 years.”

Tracey’s enthusiasm is infectious. When he speaks about how patients benefit from scientific breakthroughs, he lights up. His voice picks up a notch or two. Other times, he becomes emotional, the rare doctor willing to share his vulnerabilities. 

“Some people think science is about honor societies and prizes; some people think it’s about money,” he said. “I think it’s about patients. When you meet people who are benefiting from the work that your lab does, there is no better feeling in the world.”

Tracey reached the pinnacle of his career last year when he and his team turned decades of laboratory science into a device approved by the US Food and Drug Administration that uses electrical signals to shut down harmful inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Earlier this year, TIME named him to its list of top 100 innovators in health.

In Tracey’s view, he’s just getting started. If the device works to tame inflammation in rheumatoid patients, he ponders, why won’t it work for patients suffering from other inflammatory diseases? 

The SetPoint System stimulates the vagus nerve to activate the body's "inflammatory reflex," signaling the brain to reduce immune activity and lower inflammatory protein production.

“Imagine if we can stop inflammation in its tracks or stop inflammation from ever contributing to the onset of cancer or heart disease,” he said. “What would that do to the health span of (people on) the planet Earth?”

The device shares a story unto itself — born out of an accidental discovery in his lab and a hand-drawn sketch on a napkin. It would take relentless dedication, rigorous research, and decades of patience to see it through. 

“I never imagined in 1998 that it would take until 2025 for it to be FDA-approved,” Tracey told CNN. 

FDA approves the SetPoint System

About 1.5 million adult Americans live with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a chronic disease that causes the immune system to mistakenly attack the lining of joints, leading to painful swelling, stiffness and chronic fatigue. Another 18 million are estimated to live with the condition worldwide, according to a 2019 report by the World Health Organization.

It can affect people of any age, but typically it strikes those in their 50s. Women are about three times more likely to develop RA than men. RA can spread inflammation beyond joints to the heart, lungs, skin, eyes and blood vessels. There is no cure. 

It can be difficult to get a proper diagnosis. Symptoms come and go, flaring up, causing extreme pain. Anti-inflammatory medications like ibuprofen can provide relief, but over time the inflammation can become overwhelming.

Patients taking corticosteroids or more advanced biologics complain of brain fog and dizziness. Those meds also can weaken the immune system, making patients vulnerable to infection, too. 

What Tracey and his team created is called the SetPoint System, a device about the size of a multivitamin that is implanted in the neck on the vagus nerve, the main conduit for the body’s inflammatory immune response to disease, bacteria and viruses.

The SetPoint System implant delivers precise electrical stimulation for one minute per day without needing continuous connection to an external device.

The device helps control the immune system in a more consistent way than medications. The FDA approved the device in July 2025 after a 242-patient randomized, double-blind trial demonstrated the SetPoint System was safe and effective — and provided relief to RA patients who were essentially out of traditional treatment options. 

It delivers a daily, one-minute stimulation to the vagus nerve with the aim of taming inflammation in patients.

‘A brand new person’ 

Jessica Hancock suffered from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis for more than a dozen years, beginning in her mid-30s. Pain shot through her body for simple tasks, like getting out of bed in the morning. “It’s frustrating when you’re so young and you’re like, ‘Why do I feel like I’m 90 years old?’” 

She’d tried an array of medications, including three biologics and chemotherapy. The relief was temporary. The pain always roared back. 

When a staffer at Northwell informed her about the FDA-approved device, Hancock cut her off: “Before she was even done, I was like: ‘Sign me up!’”

She didn’t have any issues with insurance coverage, she said, because her husband works at Northwell. Her device was implanted in October. By January, she no longer needed any medications. Her pain was gone. “I was feeling fantastic with the stimulation. I had more energy. I didn’t hurt. I wasn’t cracking. I wasn’t swollen,” said Hancock, now 49.

She added: “I feel like a brand-new person. I have not felt this good in 20 years.”

Tracey’s message for health insurers

About 30,000 patients tried to sign up for the device’s trial, Tracey said, showing how desperate patients are for relief when medications fail.

But with FDA approval, Tracey said, an unexpected problem emerged. He said he’s hearing from doctors and hospitals across the country of persistent denials of coverage by health insurance companies. 

Tracey has a stern warning for them: Get on board. “You have 30,000 people who wanted this thing when there were 250 spots when it was still an experiment,” he said. “And you have the insurance company saying, ‘No, we’re not paying because it’s too new.’” 

He’s determined to make sure patients get covered by advocating for them and doing whatever he can to put pressure on insurers. 

The concept of the new FDA device, he said, first came about in the 1990s by “accident” in the lab. Researchers were studying the brains of mice with a stroke. When a lab tech injected an anti-inflammatory drug into the brain of a mouse, Tracey said, it “turned off the inflammation in the body of the mouse.” 

“This was a true WTF moment,” said Tracey. “I had no intention in that experiment of looking at inflammation of the body of the mouse.”

It was his “aha” moment — when he realized the vagus nerve was a key to controlling inflammation. At a dinner, he drew a sketch on a napkin for his then-board chairman, explaining his belief. “That means that the nerve,” Tracey told him, “is acting like an anti-inflammatory signal.”

Vagus nerve wanders around the body. The word "vagus" comes from the Latin word meaning "wandering." The vagus nerve is the longest and most widely distributed cranial nerve in the body. It is a crucial component of the parasympathetic nervous system (often called the "rest and digest" system) and serves several primary functions.

He penned a book in 2025, “The Great Nerve,” further detailing why he believes the vagus nerve is key to health and vitality.

For inventors, for scientists, for patients, Tracey’s message is one of optimism. “We’re on the cusp of launching an era where the science will become very, very useful,” he said. “And that means people are going to feel better — and that makes me very happy.” 

https://www.cnn.com/health/a-baby-died-in-this-neurosurgeons-arms-what-happened-next-changed-everything-we-know-about-inflammation-spc

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VITAMIN D AND CALCIUM PROVIDE LITTLE TO NO FRACTURE RISK BENEFIT

For this study, researchers analyzed data from 69 previously conducted clinical trials, encompassing a total of almost 154,000 adults.

These studies all examined how calcium supplements, vitamin D supplements, or a combination of both impacted fall or fracture risk compared to a placebo or no treatment.

At the study’s conclusion, scientists found little to no decline in overall fracture risk from either supplement by itself or taken together. Additionally, they reported little to no benefit in preventing specific fractures, such as hip fractures, or in reducing fall risk.

Bones need a variety of nutrients

Medical News Today spoke with Dung Trinh, MD, internist for MemorialCare Medical Group and chief medical officer of Healthy Brain.

Clinic in Irvine, CA, who was not involved in this study, commented that while this study is important, readers should find it clarifying rather than alarming.

“Calcium and vitamin D are important nutrients, but the BMJ review reinforces that supplements alone are not a meaningful fall- or fracture-prevention strategy for most older adults,” Trinh explained.

“I would not want patients to interpret this as ‘my bones are doomed’ or ‘I should stop everything my doctor prescribed.’ The real takeaway is that bone health requires an individualized, comprehensive approach, especially for people with osteoporosis, vitamin D deficiency, very low calcium intake, malabsorption, kidney disease, or other medical conditions,” he said. 

MNT also spoke with Jocelyn Wittstein, MD, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina and co-author of the book The Complete Bone and Joint Health Plan: Help Prevent and Treat Osteoporosis and Arthritis, who emphasized that diet is just one part of fracture prevention. 

“It has long been understood that calcium supplementation alone does not improve bone density or reduce fracture risk, and it is also known that calcium supplementation combined with vitamin D primarily benefits those with a vitamin D deficiency,” Wittstein, who was also not involved in this study, explained.

“I have always recommended getting calcium from food-based sources due to the known benefits of food synergy and the overall food matrix,” she said.

While calcium and vitamin D are important micronutrients for bone health, Wittstein said there are other micronutrients that are also important, such as:

Magnesium — a necessary co-factor for vitamin D, also part of the structure of bone, and helps regulate parathyroid hormone (PTH)

Vitamin C — helps with collagen cross-linking

Vitamin K2 — activates osteocalcin and helps with bone mineralization

“Additionally, macronutrients like adequate protein and dietary fiber are important aspects of bone health,” she continued. “Adequate dietary fiber results (in) production of short chain fatty acids (SCFA) by gut microbacteria, and SCFA inhibits some of the processes that increase bone resorption. Food components act synergistically to improve bone health, and taking extra calcium or vitamins in the absence of chronic deficiency is not going to reduce fracture risk in the normal population.”

If calcium and vitamin D don’t protect bone health effectively as we age, then what does? Trinh said the best fall and fracture prevention plan goes beyond supplements. 

“It includes strength and balance training, regular physical activity, home safety improvements, medication review, vision and hearing checks, adequate protein and nutrition, osteoporosis screening when appropriate, and using assistive devices without stigma when needed,” he details.

“Falls often happen because of multiple overlapping risks, including muscle weakness, dizziness, poor vision, unsafe home environments, and underlying bone loss. For many older adults, building strength, improving balance, reducing hazards, and identifying osteoporosis are more effective than relying on a supplement bottle,” he explained.

And Wittstein said that exercise interventions are key to improving bone mineral density in people with osteopenia and osteoporosis, and to preventing these conditions and falls. 

She recommended strength training two to three days a week, as well as impact exercises a few days a week if tolerated.

“Key components to maintaining and improving bone mineral density are resistance training — primarily increases lumbar spine bone density more than hip — and impact exercises, (which) primarily benefits the hip region. For those who can’t tolerate jumping exercises, less intense options like heel drops or moderate intensity stomping can create impact,” Wittstein said.

“Impact causes something called mechanotransduction, which stimulates bone formation,” Wittstein continued. “For people who have osteoporosis, strength training and any form of impact often needs to be gradually introduced — beginning with core strengthening, posture work, and lighter resistance training and then progressing.” 

Wittstein said that even walking regularly can help slow bone density loss and help reduce both fall and hip fracture risk. And balance training, agility training, and mobility exercises are also key to reducing fall risk, and multiple studies have shown that adding these interventions can reduce fall and fracture risk. 

“Better bone mineral density reduces risk of fracture, but reducing all risk is equally as important because the fall on the outstretched hand is what causes the wrist fracture, or the fall on your side with loss of balance is what breaks the hip,” Wittstein said. 

“Aside from exercises to make falls less likely, common sense interventions like having your vision checked, removing throw rugs, and use of night lights can help reduce falls,” she added. 

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/calcium-vitamin-d-supplements-little-no-benefit-aging-bones-fractures-falls-study#Tips-for-healthy-bones-and-lower-fracture-risk


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ending on beauty:

ROSE WINDOWS

Sunsets surpass us in their dying —
clouds smolder to fiery wings.
We leave in colors of forgetting,
so we can be remembered in one phrase —

unlike the hundred-petaled
rose windows of cathedrals, 
their everlasting sunset
of violet-purple flames.

Purple flames, viridian 
blossoms — let me not 
be afraid of that final exile, 
that country of no return.

A rose window confesses
how we yearn to be ravished, 
consumed by the fires 
of merciless love.

But saints tell us God hides
in a small, still voice, 
like the ocean 
whispering in a seashell — 

a voice we hear, or do not 
hear, when we wake 
in pain, in the dark, 
and far from day.

~ Oriana