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RAINBOW OF FIRE
La Jolla, California
A sunset rainbow like a door of fire
opened the eastern sky.
To the west, fiery clouds
and the ocean with its million mirrors.
But the rainbow was unfinished,
an ascending fragment.
Beyond it, like a faint echo,
another red-shifted arch.
It was California winter,
our season of rain and roses.
When I was a young girl
about to leave my homeland,
I saw a double rainbow
in full splendor, a jeweled gate.
Now I watched a rainbow of fire
divide the darkening sky.
Was the promise of the first
rainbow fulfilled? No. But a greater
dream had been kindled:
unfinished, an ascending fragment.
And I understood
why people burn their diaries.
Who wants to read about oneself
as a victim of passion?
No, something greater — a sunset
rainbow, a covenant of fire
at the end of a thousand years.
My imagination would not let it go.
The dusk deepened. The rainbow
faded. I looked toward
the fading ocean. At last I knew
what the surf was saying. It said
everything, but mainly
amen, amen, amen.
~ Oriana
**
I wrote the poem soon after the "rainbow experience." The image was overwhelming, a kind of "greater sunset" — but it gave me no idea whatever that 9/11 was approaching. In retrospect, yes, a “rainbow of fire” could be seen as apocalyptic. But back then, in unprecedented peace and prosperity, who knew that after the promise of the last decade of the twentieth century, when so much seemed to be opening up for humanity, the twenty-first century would begin with religious wars? I am not sure I would have ended the poem in the same way after 9/11. And yet I cannot think of another ending. We simply can't predict the future, so we must be open and accepting, trying to make a virtue of helplessness.
Need I say that the "greater dream" also got shattered? I had to settle for a more modest level of accomplishment — and for those flashes of great beauty that are perhaps the only grace amid the sorrows and disappointments. Seeing a sunset rainbow was one of those flashes. As Hölderlin said,
Once I lived as the gods.
More is not needed.
*
THE PSYCHOID UNIVERSE: STANISLAW LEM’S SOLARIS
Solaris is a planet orbiting two suns, a red and a blue, whose surface is covered by a single “ocean” that has been the subject of debate in "Solarist studies" for a century. The problem is no less than the question of life and consciousness: if the sea is organic is it conscious and, if so, can it be communicated with and understood? The confrontation with Solaris forces scientists to continually re-evaluate the assumptions that inform their understanding of the universe: first that of the possibility of life on a planet orbiting two suns, for they discover the sea is indeed organic, then the conditions necessary for the development of consciousness and finally the possibility of making contact with and understanding something so utterly different.
Solaris continually defies not only understanding, but analysis. The monsters of this science fiction text are spectacular phenomenon such as the eruption of formations from the sea that, when examined, are revealed to represent in spatial terms complex mathematical equations through the flowering of their architectural structure that illustrates or directly contravenes the laws of physics. Is the ocean aware that it does this? Their efforts to explain these phenomena are continually subject to anthropomorphism, the scientific project imagined not as a march towards understanding but a slower ‘stumbling, one- or two-step progression from our rude, prehistoric, anthropomorphic understanding of the universe around us’.
The planet remains incomprehensible. We learn of Solaris and some of the previous expeditions through several sequences of Kelvin reading and thinking about the scientific works about it. Through this device the sheer bulk of the knowledge of Solaris is ironized by contrast with the little actual knowledge they have of it. Yet despite learning very little about Solaris itself this extended confrontation with the alien reveals to us something about our own humanity. Solaris does what the best of science fiction does well. Through encounters with the undeniably Other we get a glimpse of those characteristics that we hide from ourselves.
When he arrives all is not well. His mentor Gibarian is dead and he is faced with inexplicable behavior from supposedly rational scientists. Tapping into the brooding apprehension that is the Gothic hallmark the breakdown of order and the mystery that permeates the opening of the book reads as if it were a horror story. Snow refuses to explain what has happened and Kelvin begins to question their sanity as he tries to establish the facts behind their situation at the station. The appearance of an apparition forces him to question his own sanity and what follows is an initial triumph whereby Kelvin uses scientific means in order to establish, ironically against hope, that he is indeed sane.
Station Solaris is being visited. These manifestations, dubbed ‘Phi-creatures’ by Snow, manifest as people from the unconscious memories of the scientists’ pasts. Kelvin is visited by a manifestation of Rheya, his young wife who, ten years ago, he drove to commit a desperate suicide. He cannot escape her; she is compelled to follow him and is able to return when sent off the station. Snow and Sartorius are visited by their own ghosts that cause them to isolate themselves from each other in order to deal in their own way with these reminders of what is hinted at as even more tragic pasts. Rationally Kelvin must admit that the Rheya he sees is not the Rheya he knew — is not even human — but this knowledge is under siege by the emotional force attached to his memory of her.
These manifestations are products of the ocean, for what motive no one can say. It becomes clear to the scientists that it can read their minds and create perfect human bodies and, ironically, they begin to suspect that the ocean is using these figures as tools to study them. These phi-creatures are not aware of their creation and believe themselves to be the people they look like, albeit with the memories of the mind that they were created from. It does not take long for Rheya to discover that she is not human and can have no existence independent of the planet Solaris.
What follows is a heartrending sequence of denial and the struggle against her very nature. Kelvin, tormented by the memory of his dead wife, his ejection of the first manifestation of Rheya into orbit in a shuttle around Solaris and the emotional pressure of this manifestation, is plunged into an irrational apathy and becomes detached from reality.
Solaris is a book that examines the fundamentals of our existence and place in the universe. It questions the divergence between the arts and sciences by illustrating the propensity for scientific explanation to rely on an ‘anthropomorphic understanding of the universe around us’ while accepting that, despite the way that objective reality is filtered through the human senses and understanding, it must still bear some relation to that reality. It questions the project of the colonization of the universe through an overarching scientific knowledge, ‘The Myth of the Mission of Mankind’, when the darkness of the individual mind has not yet been adequately examined and faced.
Finally, it asks us to consider how far the scientific urge for contact with an alien Other is the displaced yearning, in religious or poetic terms, for a redemptive meeting with something that transcends the limits of man and could flood human understanding with a knowledge that is properly incommunicable.
Ultimately, the great achievement of Solaris is the way in which, upon finishing the book, all these questions remain juxtaposed and oscillate unanswered while this state of unknowing is held open in a shift from hope, implying a looking backwards to a negation or lack, to expectation, leaving the future somewhat ironically open and expansive to the ambivalent possibilities of a universe of ‘cruel miracles’.
https://www.thereader.org.uk/review-solaris-by-stanislaw-lem/
Oriana:
I remember reading Solaris in my teens, surrounded by the restless ocean of Warsaw. What stayed in my mind was the statement that we can never construct a perfectly happy world because there’d always be the problem of unrequited love
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"SEPARATE IN NAME AND POWER": HOW AMERICA REINVENTED ENGLISH
From "deadline" to "lituation", from "prairie" to "amirite", America's linguistic independence has transformed the English language with a wealth of new words and phrases – shaping its own cultural identity in the process.
Did the founding of the United States of America demand a new way of speaking? President Thomas Jefferson certainly thought so. In August 1813, he wrote an impassioned letter to his friend John Waldo about the blossoming of new terms in fertile terrain of the 37-year-old United States of America.
"So great growing a population, spread over such an extent of country, with such a variety of climates, of productions, of arts, must enlarge their language, to make it answer its purpose of expressing all ideas, the new as well as the old," he claimed. "The new circumstances under which we are placed, call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects."
Let British English remain "stationary", Jefferson argued, while American English gained strength: "Its new character may separate it in name as well as in power, from the mother-tongue."
By this point, the British had long complained about American phrases "contaminating" the purity of the English language – even before Independence. In 1756, the writer Samuel Johnson defined the "American dialect" to mean "a tract [trace] of corruption to which every language widely diffused must always be exposed."
In the 21st Century, the UK and the US remain two countries divided by our common tongue – and on the 250th anniversary of American Independence, there is no better time to examine how American and British English evolved to sound so distinct. From the rise of "soccer" in place of "football" and "fall" in place of "autumn" to the spread of "cooties", the words spoken on either side of the Atlantic have been the product of social undercurrents alternately pushing the two countries apart and pulling them together again – forces that continue to shape our speech today.
The New World Order
The immediate process of colonization would have quickly placed the settlers' language apart from the people they left behind. With a mix of populations from across the British Isles and Europe, most regional differences between individuals' initial accents and vocabulary would have been "leveled off", says Jack Grieve, a (Canadian) linguist from the University of Birmingham in the UK.
When those groups then spread out across the continent, each area would have started to develop their own ways of speaking, resulting in the distinct accents we hear across the continent today. And this natural drift was accompanied by concerted efforts to establish a new voice that was distinct from the King's English.
The ringleader was the lexicographer Noah Webster. "A national language is a band of national union. Every engine should be employed to render the people of this country national," he wrote 1789. "As an independent nation, our honor [sic] requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government..." It was, he said, essential for their "political harmony".
To do so, he established a series of grammars, spellers and dictionaries. Webster is responsible for omission of the u's in words such as hono[u]r and favo[u]r, the single l in words like "traveled", the conversion of "draught" to "draft", and the reversal of the r and the e in centre ("center").
"It was a long hard struggle for those spellings to change, but they eventually did bed down," says American-British linguist Lynne Murphy at the University of Sussex, UK.
'Tung' and 'lether'?
Not all Webster's suggestions would stand the test of time: he advocated for spelling tongue as "tung", and "leather" as lether, for instance – suggestions that were quickly abandoned by his successors.
Even so, the sales of his American Spelling Book eventually reached an estimated 100 million copies over the following century, comparable only to the bible.
Missing "u": Spelling reform in the US was designed to distance the country’s language from British English
The new dictionaries included vast swathes of vocabulary that would have been unfamiliar to readers in London or Birmingham. Some were taken directly from the indigenous populations to describe the flora and fauna of the world around them. As Murphy notes in her book The Prodigal Tongue, "skunk", "raccoon", "chipmunk", "moose", "opossum", and "caribou" all come from Algonquian languages.
American English would also come to absorb words from the languages of other colonists, including "prairie", which means marshy meadows in French, and "cookie", a variation of the Dutch word for small cake.
Over time, some American coinages started to plant themselves in British soils. The US Civil War gave us the word "deadline", for instance, which originally meant, "a line that couldn't be crossed without the risk of being shot." (Don't tell my editor!)
Surprising Britishisms
Often the early Americans simply settled on old Britishisms that had started to fall out of fashion in the old country. We may think that saying "fall" to mean "autumn" is a typically American feature, but it had been used this way in Britain since the 1500s. We can even see it in the poetry of the English poet John Dryden: "What crowds of patients the town doctor kills, Or how last fall he raised the weekly bills.”
Murphy suspects that the term took off in the US due to the stunning displays of foliage in New England. "Autumn in Britain is relatively drab," she writes in The Prodigal Tongue. "The early English colonists lived in parts of America where leaf-falling is truly spectacular, with red and sugar maples, red oaks, and sassafras exploding into fiery oranges and reds.”
Other British terms that would take on a distinctively American flavor include "bills" for banknotes, "soccer" for football, "mad" for angry, "cooties" for the lurgy, "smart" for clever, "pet" to mean stroke, and "sick" to describe a general state of illness rather than a stomach upset.
Sometimes, it's simply the connotations of the words, and their social value, that have changed. Using the accepted term in the UK can make you sound like a "hick" in the US, Murphy points out. "Saying jug instead of pitcher, for example."
Americans also revived some archaic grammatical structures, such as "gotten". (In Britain, the past participle of "get" is "got".)
The early speakers never lost touch with the Old World, of course. "Early British colonists in America tended to send their children home back to England for schooling," says Grieve – a fashion (for the wealthy, at least) that continued into the 19th Century. That's not to mention economic trade, and cultural ties in the books being read.
The "special relationship", as it would come to be known, between the UK and US may have slowed the divergence of the two tongues, Murphy says.
"If the split in the language had happened 500 years before, then maybe we would be speaking different languages," says Murphy. "But we've got so much contact. Just the fact that the printing press existed when the split happened meant that people were always in touch with the English back in Britain."
The 'un-American dude'
The tensions between the lingering British influence, and the desire to establish a new national language, was evident in public discourse and satire. Ingrid Paulsen, a researcher at the University of Kiel in Germany, recently examined a huge corpus of 78 million newspaper articles spanning the 19th Century, for references to classic examples of Americanization – such as the transition from "trousers" to "pants" and from "luggage" to "baggage". Her aim was to understand how such linguistic changes became imbued with American values and identity – a sociolinguistic process known as "enregisterment".
She found that jokes around the changing language often featured cartoons of the "dude" figure, for instance. The "dude" was an American-born man who failed to embrace his American identity, and instead, aspired to adopt British fashions and language. "He is this very unsuccessful Anglo-maniac who is not [acting like an] American at all," says Paulsen.
Those discussions often centered on his lower garments, and what he called them. "There's a lot about what trousers he wears, how tight his trousers can be, that he has to turn up the trousers so that they don't get wet," Paulsen says. "So trousers, as a term, becomes linked to the dude." The perceived elegance of the word has become an object of ridicule, whereas "pants" comes to be seen as the truly American term.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260630-how-america-reinvented-english
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WHY REPUBLICANS LOST SO BADLY
The Democrats have swept to victory in the US midterm elections, taking control of Congress.
While the incumbent president's party generally tends to have a bad night in these elections, the scale of the Republican defeat is being viewed as a resounding rejection of Donald Trump's two years in the White House.
From angry voters to an unpopular president, here are five reasons why the Republicans lost so many seats.
Soaring cost of living
From coast to coast, voters across the US have been grappling with the soaring cost of essentials. That anger was palpable on the ground in key races.
"Gas prices, grocery prices, everything's going up," one North Carolina voter told the BBC ahead of the elections, adding that she had switched her vote from Republican to Democratic this election.
Prices increased by 3.7% in the year to September, driven higher by fuel and energy prices.
Average US retail diesel prices in early October were just shy of the record of $6.52 (£4.83) per gallon seen in September, according to government data.
Almost eight in 10 voters (79%) said inflation had caused them and their family a severe or moderate hardship in the past year, according to data from voter polls.
And more than six in 10 respondents laid the blame for that at the feet of Trump, saying they thought higher than usual prices were because of the president's policies.
Unpopular Iran war
A major factor in surging prices has been the war with Iran which the US and Israel launched in February.
Fuel prices then shot up after Tehran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation, strangling a key artery for the passage of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG).
US voters have been paying the price at the petrol pump ever since.
The war has proved broadly unpopular with most Americans. For Maga Republicans it also felt like a broken promise in Trump's America First campaign agenda in which he pledged there would be no more wars.
Around six in 10 (63%) of those asked in a voter poll said the US made the wrong decision to take military action against Iran.
Separately, three-quarters of voters (74%) said the conflict was a crucial or major factor in their vote for Congress.
The morning after the election, Trump conceded the war had played a role in the defeat but insisted in an interview on Fox that he had no choice but to intervene to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon.
Disciplined message from Democrats
The scale and breadth of this Democratic wave was made possible by some strong candidates who came across as authentic, especially in traditional Republican heartlands.
They stuck to a disciplined message about the cost of living and healthcare access.
Former teacher James Talarico and pastor Adam Hamilton also talked about their faith in a way that struck a chord in Texas and Kansas respectively.
In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews pulled off a shock upset. A former pediatrician, her focus on health care affordability resonated in a country where many see the system as broken.
Former public health official Abdul El-Sayed, who triumphed in Michigan to keep that seat Democratic, made getting "money out of politics, money in your pocket" a key slogan.
Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, who won re-election in Georgia, made the cost of living and corruption a central message. The 39-year-old's comfortable victory in a state Trump won twice will only fuel rumors of a 2028 presidential run.
Even Trump himself praised the Democrats, telling Fox News they "did a good job".
Conversely, some Republican candidates like Ken Paxton in Texas were criticized for running poor campaigns that were not focused enough on voters' concerns.
Trump's unpopularity a drag on Republicans
Two of the issues voters were most unhappy with — rocketing prices and the Iran War — were directly linked to the president.
His approval ratings had even fallen among Republican voters, which made some of these states which backed him in 2024 especially vulnerable.
He urged voters to imagine he was on the ballot in an effort to galvanize his supporters.
But after more than a decade as the central figure in American politics, some see these results as evidence that the glitz may be wearing off Trump's brand.
Against a backdrop of increasing anger, making himself the focus of the Republican campaign was risky and appears to have backfired.
In the months leading up to the vote, polling indicated that many Americans wanted Trump to focus more on their concerns about rocketing prices.
In his final campaign speech on Monday in Washington DC, he talked at length about his controversial renovation project of the Reflecting Pool behind him.
Hispanic and black voters shift again
Two years ago a move towards Republicans among some Hispanic and black voters helped Trump secure a decisive win. That seems to have reversed in these midterms.
Democrats claimed all three House races in the overwhelmingly Hispanic congressional districts along the Texas-Mexico border.
Majority-Hispanic counties moved more than 22 percentage points against Republican Senate candidates, compared with the 2024 presidential election, according to a New York Times analysis.
The change is more than any other major demographic group in the country, data reporter Jeff Adelson said.
The shift comes amid widespread anger at immigration enforcement, with a majority (56%) of Americans saying they have an unfavorable opinion of ICE, according to the Pew Research Center.
Counties with a black majority also moved significantly towards Democratic candidates in Senate races.
The Senate race is on a knife-edge in Mississippi, which has the largest share of black voters of any US state with around 37%.
If Scott Colom wins, he would become the first Democrat elected to the Senate in Mississippi since 1982.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/five-reasons-why-republicans-lost-122805455.html
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TRUMP’S BIZARRE FIRST APPEARANCE AFTER ELECTION DISASTER: PSYCHOLOGY & BODY LANGUAGE
President Donald Trump's first public appearance following the devastating 2026 midterm election results was nothing short of bizarre. After Democrats swept control of both the House of Representatives and Senate in a stunning political defeat for Republicans, Trump gathered reporters at the White House on November 4, 2026. But instead of addressing the election disaster, the Democratic blue wave, or the political consequences for his presidency, Trump spent nearly 20 minutes talking about his controversial White House ballroom construction project. Standing at the construction site alongside Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump praised the building's design, boasted about its supposedly bulletproof, drone-proof, and missile-proof features, celebrated the construction workers, and even signed a steel beam with the word "Love!"
In this video, clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. G analyzes Trump's first post-election appearance, examining his body language, communication style, judgment, and remarkably tone-deaf response to one of the biggest political setbacks of his presidency. The timing of Trump's ballroom speech is particularly striking considering the scale of Republican losses in the November 3 midterm elections. Democrats captured both chambers of Congress, including surprising Senate victories in traditionally Republican states such as Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina. Republicans also suffered defeats in Ohio, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina, as voters expressed frustration with rising living costs, the war with Iran, and the direction of the Trump administration.
According to the Associated Press Voter Poll, approximately two-thirds of voters believed Trump was focused on the wrong priorities. Yet, in his first extended public remarks following these results, Trump focused on his massive White House ballroom, additional construction projects, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and his enthusiasm for building. This was especially remarkable after Trump spent weeks holding rallies across the country, repeatedly urging voters to act as though his own name appeared on the ballot. When reporters eventually questioned him about the Republican losses, Trump insisted that he would have won if he had been running and suggested that his personal popularity simply hadn't transferred to Republican candidates.
Dr. G examines the psychological and behavioral significance of Trump's response to the 2026 midterm election defeat. Why would a president facing such a dramatic political rejection devote his first public appearance to celebrating a ballroom? Is this an intentional attempt to redirect attention, an example of political denial and deflection, or a revealing demonstration of Trump's priorities and judgment? Through forensic behavioral analysis, Dr. G explores Trump's tone, nonverbal communication, apparent lack of urgency, and striking disconnect between his remarks and the national political moment. As Democrats prepare to take control of Congress, Republicans confront the consequences of their election losses, and questions intensify about Trump's leadership and political future, his unusual White House ballroom appearance offers a fascinating look at how Donald Trump presents himself in the aftermath of a major defeat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOVsdObxjGc
Dr. G is a clinical and forensic psychologist. He is a published author, entrepreneur, and currently conducts psychotherapy, and couples’ therapy.
Oriana:
This is a must-see video.
*
When asked to renounce the Devil on his deathbed, Voltaire replied: "This is not the time to make enemies ."
*
WHAT $4 BILLION COULD ACCOMPLISH IN THE U.S.
~ President Donald Trump announced that the United States will cut off approximately $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel by the end of 2026, two years ahead of the current 2028 memorandum of understanding. ~
Medical Research & Public Health: $4 billion represents a major boost to federal research agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to combat chronic diseases, mental health crises, or future pandemic readiness.
Public Infrastructure & Transit: $4 billion can build or repair dozens of miles of urban light rail, replace aging bridge infrastructure, or expand rural broadband internet access to unserved communities.
Childhood Nutrition & Safety Nets: $4 billion could significantly expand programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) or fund free school lunch initiatives for millions of students.
Higher Education & Pell Grants: $4 billion could substantially increase the maximum Federal Pell Grant award or cover tuition costs for hundreds of thousands of low-income college students nationwide.
Domestic Defense & Manufacturing: Redirecting funds inward can support domestic semiconductor manufacturing plants, defense supply chain resilience, or veterans' healthcare services through the Department of Veterans Affairs. (Google)
Oriana:
I would add the following:
Reducing the national debt.
More and better job skills programs.
Affordable health care for all — or at least moving in that direction.
Expanding clean energy programs — more tax incentives, for instance.
Cleaner air programs — perhaps including air decarbonizing plants
“Cleaner everything” programs — perhaps starting with cleaning trash from the ocean (the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has to go!!)
Building more water reservoirs and developing better water conservation programs.
*
Of course choices would have to be made, making the country reconsider priorities.
*
WHO BUILT STONEHENGE?
The ancestors of Stonehenge's builders migrated from the territory of modern-day Turkey. But Turks wouldn't arrive there for another 5,000 years.
A major 2019 DNA study analyzed the remains of the Neolithic Britons who erected Stonehenge. It confirmed that these early farmers originated in Anatolia—the peninsula that makes up most of modern Turkey. They moved across the Mediterranean, reached Iberia, and arrived in Britain around 4,000 BC, bringing agriculture and megalith-building with them.
The critical error is calling these ancient Anatolians "Turkish." The Turkic peoples are an ethno-linguistic group whose origins trace back to Central and East Asia, near modern Mongolia and Siberia. The Turkic migration into Anatolia did not begin until the 11th century AD. Claiming Turks built Stonehenge is like saying the Native Americans who built Cahokia were United States citizens; the geography matches, but the people have zero genetic or cultural connection.
Furthermore, these Anatolian farmers were not Britain's original inhabitants. When they arrived in 4,000 BC, they encountered the island's indigenous Western Hunter-Gatherers, a population that had lived there since the end of the last Ice Age. Over a few centuries, the farming immigrants almost completely replaced this hunter-gatherer population.
The monument was built by descendants of early European farmers who began their long migration in the geographical bounds of modern-day Turkey, replacing the true original inhabitants of Britain along the way.
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WHY THE BOLSHEVIKS WON
In 1918, the Bolsheviks were trapped in central Russia, surrounded by rival armies and invaded by Britain, France, Japan, and the US. Four years later, they had defeated them all.
The Bolsheviks’ survival came down to a combination of geographic luck, ruthless organization, and the fatal flaws of their enemies.
Geographically, the Bolsheviks held the Russian heartland, including Petrograd and Moscow. This central position gave them the lion's share of Russia’s heavy industry and the largest population centers, which they used to conscript a massive army.
Crucially, they controlled the central railway network. Operating on internal lines of communication, the Bolsheviks could rapidly shuttle troops and supplies from one front to another to repel whatever threat was most pressing.
The White armies, by contrast, were scattered across the vast peripheries of the former empire—Siberia, the Caucasus, and the Baltic. They had to communicate across thousands of miles of poor infrastructure and could rarely coordinate their offensives.
To capitalize on this geographic advantage, Leon Trotsky transformed the Red Army from a ragtag militia into a disciplined military machine. He drafted over 50,000 former Tsarist officers to provide professional leadership, keeping them loyal by attaching political commissars to their units and sometimes holding their families hostage. Trotsky himself spent the war traveling from front to front in a heavily armed command train, resolving logistical bottlenecks, boosting morale, and enforcing brutal discipline.
Leon Trotsky stands beside his armored train during the Russian Civil War. The train served as a mobile command center, allowing him to rapidly deploy to critical sectors across the vast front.
While the Bolsheviks operated under a unified command with a clear, simple message for the masses, the White movement was crippled by disunity. The Whites were a chaotic coalition of monarchists, liberal democrats, moderate socialists, and independent warlords who shared nothing but a hatred for the Reds.
More importantly, the Whites alienated the peasant majority. When the Bolsheviks seized power, they had legitimized the peasants' spontaneous takeover of noble estates. As White armies advanced, they frequently returned the land to its former aristocratic owners and treated the peasants with disdain. Forced to choose between two harsh factions, the Russian peasantry ultimately preferred the Bolsheviks, who promised they could keep the land, over the Whites, who represented a return to the old order.
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THE DEATH OF STALIN’S ELDEST SON, YAKOV
Shortly after the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, Allied military intelligence agents unearthed a container of top secret files in the garden of a senior German diplomat. One set of microfilmed documents contained a report into the shooting of a Soviet prisoner of war by an SS guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 14 April 1943. The victim was a 36-year-old Red Army artillery lieutenant named Yakov Dzhugashvili.
There was nothing remarkable in the death of a Soviet soldier in Nazi captivity. In the first 12 months of Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, an estimated 2.8 million Red Army prisoners had succumbed to starvation, exposure and disease while in German hands. However, as the SS report made clear, Yakov Dzhugashvili was no ordinary prisoner. He was the eldest son of Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known to the world as Joseph Stalin.
Aware of the significance of the death of such a high-status prisoner in his custody, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler forwarded the report to the foreign minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, on 22 April 1943, claiming that Dzhugashvili had died while trying to escape. Ribbentrop prudently decided not to release the news to the Nazi press and the report was duly filed away. Had it not been removed from Berlin in the final month of war in Europe along with other German state documents, Himmler’s report might never have survived. Once in Allied hands, it was dispatched to London for proper examination.
Not much was known in the British Foreign Office about Stalin’s eldest child. Dzhugashvili was born in March 1907 to Stalin’s first wife, Ekaterina neé Svanidze. Ekaterina succumbed to tuberculosis when he was only a few months old, leaving him in the care of an aunt in Georgia. Father and son would not meet again until almost four years after the October Revolution in 1917, by which time Stalin was a rising star in the Bolshevik regime.
When he joined his father in Moscow, the 14-year-old Yakov could barely speak a word of Russian. Stalin came to regard his son as a weakling unworthy of his affection or respect. On being told that Yakov had tried to kill himself with a pistol over an unhappy love affair, Stalin scornfully exclaimed, ‘He can’t even shoot straight!’
The one bright spot in Yakov’s life was his father’s second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Yakov regarded Nadezhda, who was only six years older than him, as more like a devoted sister than a stepmother. In November 1932, she killed herself. Some whispered that the cause was her despair over the effect of Stalin’s ruthless policies on the Soviet people; others secretly opined that it was the revulsion she felt for her husband.
With Nadezhda’s death, Yakov lost an important ally in his father’s inner circle as well as a dear friend. He managed to escape Stalin’s bullying several years later by joining the Red Army. The move had fateful consequences. Shortly after the start of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 his artillery unit was annihilated and he was taken prisoner. Having established Yakov’s identity, his captors gleefully announced the news to the world. However, he adamantly resisted all their attempts to get him to denounce his father’s regime.
In early 1943, the Germans offered to swap Yakov for Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, whom the Red Army had captured at Stalingrad. Stalin allegedly turned the offer down, saying: ‘I will not trade a Marshal for a Lieutenant.’ By this time, Dzhugashvili was being held at Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin in a special compound for ‘prominent persons’ and persistent Allied escapees. Here he shared a hut with another Soviet officer, Vassily Kokodin, a nephew of Stalin’s foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, and with four British prisoners of war.
Compared with the conditions endured by the rest of Sachsenhausen’s inmates, their quarters were comfortable. However, the SS report into Yakov’s death mentioned frequent disagreements between the two Soviet prisoners and their reluctant British companions that made him seriously depressed. The final straw seemed to have been the accusation from the Britons that Dzhugashvili and Kokodin had deliberately fouled the communal latrine. Just before nightfall on 14 April 1943 Yakov strode out of his hut towards the surrounding electrified barbed wire fence. According to the SS report, a sentry ordered him to halt. When he refused, the sentry, obeying standing orders, opened fire, killing him instantly. Yakov’s actions were those of a man bent on suicide.
As officials in Whitehall waited for a full translation of the SS report, they discussed with US diplomats the idea of informing Stalin how his son had died. The conference between Stalin, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman at Potsdam in July 1945 seemed to be ideal for this purpose. However, once the complete document had been studied, the Foreign Office quickly abandoned the plan, with one diplomat concluding that he and his colleagues ‘do not think the evidence would give [Stalin] any comfort and it would be naturally distasteful to us to draw attention to the Anglo-Russian quarrels which preceded the death of his son’.
The file on Dzhugashvili was closed and its contents would remain a secret until it was declassified three decades later. Did Stalin ever discover how his son died? In January 1951, The Daily Telegraph ran a report about ‘a curious quest by Russian agents in Germany’ to investigate Yakov’s disappearance, with a reward of one million roubles for a definite lead. No follow-up story ever appeared.
Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, aged 75, leaving behind little evidence to suggest that he lamented the death of his eldest child any more than he had mourned those who had perished while he ruled over the Soviet Union.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/death-stalins-son
Yakov Dzhugashvili, Joseph Stalin’s son, soon after being captured by the Germans on 16 July 1941 during the Battle of Smolensk. He died on 14 April 1943 after Stalin refused offers to exchange him for German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, who had surrendered at Stalingrad.
More about Yakov:
Life with his father was so terrible that he decided to commit suicide as a teenager. One day he went to his apartment and shot himself in the chest. He was found and taken to the hospital where his life was saved.
His father was called to see him. He went into his room and saw that his son was still alive.
The first words that came out of Stalin's mouth were: "Ah. He doesn't even know how to shoot properly."
Yakov was captured by the German Wehrmacht on July 16, 1941. A photograph used for propaganda purposes shows him in the presence of German soldiers.
Stalin, upon hearing the news of the capture, said: "He is too stupid to kill himself."
Stalin imprisoned his daughter-in-law Yulia Dzhugashvili in a state reformatory because Yakov's alleged defection made them politically unreliable.
Justame 13:
Paulus was not one of the best German Generals by far. The odds of Hitler ever putting him back in command were nil, especially after becoming the first Field Marshal to be captured alive in German/Prussian history.
Mikhail_Mensk:
Unpular opinion: Stalin was right in refusing to exchange a field marshal for Yakov. He acted like a leader and not a father, as expected from a head of state. As much as a monster as he was, this one was the right call to make.
Dactyl Morphin:
Just like Stalin said "There are no Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans. Only traitors and we will deal with them after the war.”
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THE NAZI PROGRAM TO GERMANIZE POLISH CHILDREN WHO LOOKED “ARYAN”
In the summer of 1943, Melgorzata Twardecka, a single mother living in Nazi-occupied Poland, was ordered to bring her five-year-old son to her town hall the next morning. Her son, Aloyzy, had blond hair and blue eyes. When his mother refused to obey orders, the SS forcibly seized the child, loaded him onto a train, and took him away.
Years later, when her son returned home thanks to a special reunification program, Melgorzata would discover with horror what had been done to her son: the brainwashing had been so severe that, when Aloyzy saw his father remove the photo of the now deceased and defeated Hitler from the wall, he called him a traitor.
Like her, hundreds of thousands of mothers experienced the same ordeal during the Nazi occupation. It is estimated that in Poland alone approximately 200,000 children were kidnapped, and as many were kidnapped in the rest of Europe, for a total of approximately 400,000 children.
The aim of this insane plan, included in the larger "Master Plan for the East," that is, the master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe, was to kidnap children of Aryan appearance, take them to special re-education centers, and "Germanize" them. In a speech given in October 1943, Heinrich Himmler said, "It is our duty to take their children with us, remove them from their environment, if necessary by kidnapping or stealing them, and send them to Germany.".
Although the Nazis believed Poles to be an inferior race, the large percentage of children with blond hair and blue eyes particularly surprised them. They therefore became convinced that these children were descendants of German blood, and that their kidnapping was therefore necessary and just, to return them to their homeland, where they belonged.
Already in October 1939 Hitler created theReich Commissioner for the Strengthening of GermannessUnder the indirect command of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, the Commissariat had identified 62 physical parameters to classify the children's "Germanness" and place them into 11 categories, from purest to least pure. These parameters included hair and eye color, nose length, lip thickness, posture, skull size, head shape, and even the size of the girls' pelvic area.
Children between 2 and 6 years old considered Aryans, they were sent to the Lebensborn, orphanages where they awaited adoption, especially by high-ranking party officials or SS officers. The children were given false birth certificates attesting to their German origins, and even given new names that concealed their Polish origins. They were also subjected to intensive brainwashing to make them believe they had always been German. Children who failed the racial screening were sent to concentration camps, where they often became guinea pigs for medical experiments.
Children between 6 and 12 years old were sent to Germany, to special schools where they were taught to be good Aryans and loyal Nazis. They were taught German and encouraged to forget their native language, wear uniforms with swastikas, sing military songs, and generally think like true Nazis. These too were then made available for adoption, but, depending on their age, some girls were sent to maternity homes where they were raped and impregnated by members of the SS.
The kidnappings occurred in many ways.The SS preferred deception to the use of force, because it speeded up operations and made them much less problematic. Fake summer vacations were organized, or parents were tricked into gathering their children somewhere for fake ceremonies, or even children were taken directly from schools by the SS, so that the parents were not present and could not offer resistance.
In July 1943, Himmler decreed that all racially relevant children born to women from occupied areas sent to work in factories or farms were automatically the property of the Reich: they were therefore taken as soon as they were born, examined, and those who did not meet the criteria of the Aryan race were immediately eliminated.
The following were also established: Brown Sisters, nurses dedicated to the Nazi cause. They traveled between villages and cities in search of Aryan children. They carried sweets and candy to attract the children, pretended to be their friends, spoke to them to find out if they had brothers or sisters of similar appearance, and finally reported the candidates for kidnapping to the SS.
After the war, the Polish government implemented a special program to reunite the children with their families. The search was extremely difficult, and it seems that only 40,000 children were repatriated of the more than 200,000 that the Nazis had stolen. Unfortunately, many of them disappeared without a trace.
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A NEW LOOK AT THE QUR’AN (2022 by Bombardier Books; 560 pages)
~ [We now have] Robert Spencer's new book, "The Critical Qur'an: Explained from Key Islamic Commentaries and Contemporary Historical Research." "The Critical Qur'an" is an essential book that every thinking person would benefit from reading. About one in four humans is a Muslim. Given child marriage, polygyny, and women's low status, Muslims have high fertility rates and the percentage of the world's population that is Muslim is predicted to increase till Islam is the world's majority religion in 2075.
While it is true that the Qur'an is often not read or understood by most Muslims, Muslims do revere the Qur'an. Muslims may have little idea what the book contains, but they are ready to kill over it. When, in 2005, Newsweek circulated false rumors that Americans were flushing the book down the toilet – which is of course impossible – at least seventeen people were killed in ensuing violence and "a council of more than 300 mullahs … threatened to declare holy war."
Islam teaches that the Qur'an was never written by anyone. It is uncreated. Like God himself, the Qur'an has always existed and will always exist. There are numerous rules for handling the Qur'an. Kufar – Non-Muslims – should never touch the Qur'an in Arabic, but may touch "interpretations" in other languages.
One must say "interpretation" because the Qur'an exists only in Arabic, the language of Allah. Muslims must perform ablutions before reading the Qur'an. The Qur'an must be stored in a specially designated place, and never be put on the floor or taken into a bathroom.
To say that the Qur'an was created, as opposed to eternally existing, is a death penalty offense. Even Western scholars have hesitated to explore the Qur'an's origins. For example, scholar Christoph Luxenberg must hide behind a pseudonym to protect his life. The Qur'an "leaves no room for dispute"; see also Qur'an 33:36. Indeed, the Qur'an suggests that even a second of doubt will lead to an eternity in hell (e.g. 49:15). Thus, rather than debating or discussing the meaning of the Qur'an, Islam places emphasis on memorization. A Muslim once said to Robert Spencer that he had memorized the entire Qur'an, and one day he was going to find out what it says. The hafiz, or Qur'an memorizer, did not speak Arabic, and had no idea of the meaning of the sounds he had memorized.
Mohammed Hijab, an Islamic apologist, demonstrated Muslim beliefs about the magic powers of the Qur'an in a November 10, 2021, YouTube discussion with Dr. Jordan Peterson. Hijab began to recite in Arabic, in the voice prescribed for reading the Qur'an. That prescribed voice is a singsong, nasal drone, with drawn out vowels. Peterson asked what Hijab's point was. Why recite Arabic to me, a non-Arabic speaker? Hijab said, "We believe that the Qur'an has divine qualities itself. We believe it is a physical cure." Just exposing Peterson to the sounds of the Qur'an might cause Peterson to convert to Islam. Ibn Kathir, an important exegete, claimed that recitation of Sura 2 causes Satan to fart. It can be argued that Islam treats the Qur'an as if it were a "divine, conscious agent."
Muslim history claims that Islam was founded by an orphaned, illiterate, seventh-century Meccan caravan driver named Muhammad who was visited by the angel Jibril (from the Biblical Gabriel) who ordered him to recite. Muhammad's followers wrote down his recitations and compiled them into the Qur'an. Textual criticism suggests that the Qur'an is a compilation of heavily edited, pre-existing material. Recent scholarship theorizes that, during the Arab Conquest, conquerors decided that their new, Arab empire, no less than the Christian Byzantine and Zoroastrian Persian empires, required a state religion. These Arab conquerors took bits and pieces of Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian and Pagan material and compiled them into the Qur'an.
Muslims express [highest] praise for the Qur'an. For example, Ibn Kathir said, "The Arabic language is the most eloquent, plain, deep and expressive of the meanings that might arise in one's mind. Therefore, the most honorable Book was revealed in the most honorable language, to the most honorable Prophet and Messenger, delivered by the most honorable angel, in the most honorable land on earth, and its revelation started during the most honorable month of the year, Ramadan. Therefore, the Qur'an is perfect in every respect."
Scholar Gerd Puin estimates that twenty percent of the Qur'an is unclear to anyone. This lack of clarity is thanks in part to words, often of non-Arabic derivation, like "jibt," "sijill," "ghislin," "abb," "as-sakhkhah," "sijjin," "illiyyin," "tasnim," "saqar," and many others, whose meanings are uncertain. The Qur'an acknowledges its own lack of clarity in 3:7, in which Allah states that he alone knows the meaning of some verses. Which verses? He never says. Readers can only guess which verses they are understanding correctly and which verses whose meaning is beyond their grasp.
Jihad is one of main themes of the Qur'an. The Qur'an makes abundantly clear that jihad is warfare for the sake of expanding Islam's worldly power, not an interior struggle to, say, remain on a diet, a message promoted by a 2013 CAIR public relations campaign. The Qur'an says, multiple times, that believers should strike the necks of kufar, kill them wherever the Muslims find them, etc.
Spencer's new "Critical Qur'an" doesn't offer only an accurate and accessible translation. It offers commentary by canonical Islamic experts, including Ibn Kathir, a fourteenth century exegete, and Syed Abul Ala Maududi, a twentieth-century author. Thus, the reader knows not just what the Qur'an says, but how influential Muslims understand it. Spencer's footnotes also draw the reader's attention to variations in the Qur'an. These variations are of a utmost importance, as it is a tenet of Islam that the Qur'an is a perfect, eternal, unchanging and unchanged document that exists in Heaven. Variations in the text [contradict] this tenet.
Spencer's footnotes describe Islamic traditions designed to justify changes in the Qur'an, a book that Islam teaches is perfect, unchanging, and unchangeable. Again, one current theory is that the Qur'an was not written as one document, the product of one man, Muhammad. Rather, many scholars now think that the Qur'an was pieced together from pre-existing materials, materials that were then heavily edited to meet the needs of Arab conquerors. These changes occurred over time. Some early Muslims might have witnessed, and questioned, such changes. Traditions were invented to explain away the changes. For example, Muhammad's child bride Aisha is made to say that sheep ate some Qur'an verses that previously existed but then went missing. ~
Oriana:
These are excerpts from a post by Danusha Goska, author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery, and other books. This review was published on Facebook and in Front Page Magazine.
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A REVERSAL OF THE RELIGIOUS GENDER GAP
A new Gallup survey reveals increasing religiosity among young American men. It also has found that young American women report the least religiosity among all groups Gallup surveyed.
It may come as a surprise to learn that, in the same couple of weeks in which the U.S. Secretary of Defense repeatedly used religious language to describe the actions of the U.S. military in Iran; the U.S. President posted an AI-generated image of himself on Truth Social that resembled pictures of Jesus (an image which at least one prominent American Christian labeled “blasphemous”); the U.S. Vice President (a recent convert to Catholicism) advised Pope Leo to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology”; and a marathon public reading of the entire Hebrew and Protestant Bibles by various notable figures, including the President, is slated, there were much more arresting developments concerning religion in America—at least for scholars of American religions.
They would surely reserve that distinction, instead, for some startling new findings from a recent Gallup survey about religiosity among adults in America.
The Importance of Religion in the Lives of Young Adult Males in America
Focusing on what columnist Christine Emba, in a piece for the New York Times, describes as “highly networked urban areas... and Ivy League campuses,” various journalists have speculated that religiosity appears to be on the rise recently in America. Emba notes, however, that although conversions may be up in those settings, overall, the long-term trends have not changed. Polls and surveys have tracked a many-decades-long, gradual decline in self-reported religiosity and attendance at religious services among Americans.
It is precisely because of those long-standing trends that the results of this recent Gallup survey have piqued scholars’ interest. Although they do not indicate any reversal of those patterns, they did reveal two unanticipated developments.
The first was a comparatively sudden leap in the percentage of young adult males (ages 18 to 29), from 28 percent in 2023 to 42 percent in 2025, who reported that religion was “very important” in their lives. The survey also found, within that same demographic group, an increase (from 33 percent to 40 percent) in Gallup’s principal behavioral measure of religiosity, namely, attendance at religious services once or more each month.
These findings raise two obvious questions:
Is this a temporary blip or does it signal some new alignment in the making?
What explains this change of heart (whether a blip or a new alignment) among young male adults in America?
Is the Religion Gender Gap Reversing?
Such a surge in religiosity among young American men is certainly noteworthy, but it is the second unexpected finding in the Gallup survey that is even more attention-grabbing. It is young American women (again, ages 18-29) who are now the least likely demographic group that the Gallup survey measured to say that religion is important in their lives, and these same young women (39 percent) now report attending religious services less often than do males (40 percent) of the same age.
These findings reverse what is, perhaps, the best-known pattern in all of social scientific research on religions. In most cultures and most religions, females are more likely than males to affirm the importance of religion in their lives and more likely to pray daily. Women are also more likely to attend religious services. The only exceptions to that pattern of attendance arise among religious groups, for example, Muslims and Orthodox Jews, that restrict (at least some) public expressions of religiosity to males.
The Gallup finding about declining religiosity among young American women is all the more striking because all of these gender gaps—about prayer, attendance, and the importance of religion—have generally proven more pronounced among Christians, compared with other major religions (and of course, Christians remain the largest religious group in the U.S.).
Even more telling, perhaps: All of these gender gaps (until now!) have generally proven more pronounced among American Christians, in particular, compared with Christians in other developed countries, such as Canada and the United Kingdom.
Theoretical proposals for explaining the familiar gender gap in religiosity have appealed to various biological, psychological, familial, social, and economic variables or to combinations of some or all of the variables to which these theories point. This new gender gap reversal in America poses an explanatory challenge for them all.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-religion-is-natural-and-science-is-not/202605/a-reversal-of-the-religious-gender-gap
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WHAT WOMEN SAY THEY WANT FROM MEN
“Listen.” It was only one word, but it represents one of the most striking themes that emerged in my survey of women who were asked what they need most from the men in their lives.
Women focused not on status, grand gestures, or wealth but on characteristics that run deeper than these things. They want partners who are emotionally available, respectful, trustworthy, and willing to communicate openly.
These insights came from my online survey that grew out of a 2018 Psychology Today post exploring what women want from men in romantic relationships. Between 2018 and 2023, 108 women completed the survey, sharing their perspectives on the qualities they value most in a partner. Although the respondents do not represent a scientific sample of all women, their responses offer a revealing glimpse into the characteristics many associate with healthy, satisfying relationships.
We all know that a charming smile, an adorable dog, and a well-placed bestselling book can make for an appealing dating profile. But while those things may capture someone's attention, they’re unlikely to build a lasting connection. Women in this survey were far more likely to talk about trust, respect, emotional support, and partnership than profile-perfect accessories. The consistency of these responses suggests that many qualities women value most have less to do with impressing them and more to do with understanding them.
Listening to the Data
In reviewing responses from women about what they most need from men, I was struck by the consistency of their answers. While women are certainly not a monolith, the themes that surfaced overwhelmingly touched on emotionally healthy relationships characterized by respect, trust, support, communication, and genuine partnership.
Women Want Emotional Support
“Understanding and empathetic listening without trying to fix things”
One of the strongest themes reflected a desire for emotional connection and support. Women repeatedly described wanting partners who are understanding, compassionate, empathetic, and emotionally available. They wanted someone who would listen, offer comfort during challenging times, and provide reassurance when life becomes challenging.
Interestingly, many respondents did not simply ask for love. They asked to be understood.
There is an important distinction between those two things. Love can be spoken; understanding must be demonstrated. Feeling understood creates emotional safety, and emotional safety is often the foundation upon which intimacy and trust are built.
Women Want Respect
“To feel heard and respected”
If there was one word that appeared again and again throughout the responses, it was respect. Women described wanting to be respected for who they are, for their choices, their opinions, their goals, and their individuality. They wanted to be treated as equals rather than as people whose role is simply to support someone else's needs.
Women Want Trust and Honesty
"Women most need loyalty, honesty, and accountability."
Trust was another recurring theme. Women frequently identified honesty, loyalty, accountability, and integrity as essential relationship qualities. They wanted partners whose words and actions aligned and whose behavior created confidence rather than uncertainty.
Women Want Communication
"The ability to talk freely about feelings both good and bad and to be heard"
Communication was also mentioned repeatedly. Many respondents specifically referenced listening, open dialogue, honest conversations, and the ability to discuss feelings. They wanted partners who could communicate clearly and who were willing to engage in meaningful conversations rather than avoid them.
Women Want Love, Affection, and Intimacy
“Love and affection and acceptance”
Women frequently described a desire for both emotional and physical expressions of love. Affection, romance, intimacy, and feeling cherished were mentioned as experiences that help relationships stay emotionally close and satisfying over time.
Women Want Safety
“We need to feel safe in our own homes”
Another frequently mentioned theme was safety. This included physical safety, emotional safety, stability, consistency, and security within the relationship. Women need partners who offer a sense of safety and support.
Women Want Partnership
“To work together as a team”
A particularly strong theme was the desire for true, egalitarian partnerships. Relationships aren’t easy, and women want a partner who shares responsibilities, decision-making, and emotional labor. They don’t simply want someone who can provide; they want someone who will participate. They want a true partner who contributes emotionally to the relationship, supports their goals, and helps carry the practical work of everyday life.
Women Want Friendship
“Acceptance, support, friendship, love”
Many respondents shared their desire for a partner who is also a friend. Beyond romance, they valued companionship, one of the foundations of lasting relationships. They want someone with whom they can share their day-to-day lives and the bigger challenges in life. Friendship may sound like a tame ask of a partner, but genuine friendship is the glue that holds relationships together over the decades.
Women Want Authenticity
“An opportunity to be ourselves (participate in activities we enjoy, try those things we’ve always wanted to try) without being judged or held back because of a preconceived idea of what we should be doing.”
Women expressed the desire to feel accepted for who they are, not pressured to become someone else. They valued relationships in which they felt free to pursue their own interests, speak their minds, and grow as individuals without criticism or judgment. Authenticity allows partners to flourish when they are safe enough to be their true selves in the relationship.
Although the themes emerged separately, they point toward the same underlying need:
Women want relationships in which they can feel safe, supported, valued, and fully themselves.
What Women Rarely Mentioned
Very few women emphasized wealth, status, prestige, social influence, or physical attractiveness as their primary needs in a relationship. Those may be nice to have, but they are not going to be enough on their own. Relationships take work, and if someone doesn’t seem ready or willing to share the labor, the “nice-to-have’s” won’t suffice.
The Bigger Takeaway
Perhaps the most revealing finding was not what women said, but what they rarely mentioned.
Wealth, prestige, status, and physical appearance appeared only occasionally. Instead, women consistently described wanting partners who can be emotionally present, trustworthy, respectful, supportive, and willing to share life's burdens and joys. They want partners in the full sense of the word.
While women are certainly not a monolith, these responses point to a surprisingly simple truth: Women are not looking for perfection. They're looking for connection, respect, and partnership. And those may be the very qualities that sustain healthy relationships for everyone.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lifetime-connections/202610/what-women-say-they-actually-want-from-men-may-surprise-you
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CROCODILES DON’T DIE OF OLD AGE
Technically, a crocodile will not die of old age. Instead of aging, they grow physically as they get older.
But that doesn't mean they're immortal. Crocodiles will continue to die for some reason, but not of old age.
To understand this, you need to know about "Senescence".
Senescence is a term used to indicate the gradual deterioration of the body's physical appearance with age. More simply, you can call it "aging."
Aging is generally characterized by muscle weakness, decreased mobility, worsening sensory acuity, and age-related diseases. You can clearly see the effects of aging in humans.
The weakest and most defenseless must become larger. And of course, this increases the risk of death.
But this is not the case for some species, such as crocodiles, turtles, sea urchins, lobsters, clams, and others. They show almost no signs of aging; one could say they are "biologically" immortal.
Species like this only die from diseases, accidents, disasters, or predators.
That's why there's a giant tortoise that reached the age of 255 and died in 2006 at the Kolkata Zoo in India. Or there are also shells on the coast of Iceland that are 507 years old.
Broken senescence clearly shows why crocodiles don't die of old age. Therefore, a 70-year-old crocodile is not very different (in terms of physical strength and agility) from a 6-year-old crocodile.
Although they cannot die of old age, nature has a way of killing them. Crocodiles mostly die from starvation or disease.
They will continue to grow as they age and need more food. When food supplies do not meet their needs, they may starve to death.
Therefore, crocodiles will not die of old age because the senescence system in their bodies is not functioning.
Scientific American, submitted by Elena Green to Quora
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CENTENARIAN GENES
Diet and exercise can get you to eighty, but hitting 100 is an inheritance. Your family likely carries rare genetic variants that actively override the diseases of aging.
Researchers from the New England Centenarian Study found that the siblings of centenarians are consistently more likely to reach age 100 than the general population. For instance, the FOXO3 gene is strongly associated with extreme longevity. Certain variations of this gene improve the body’s ability to repair damaged DNA, manage cellular stress, and regulate metabolism.
Other protective genes, like the APOE2 allele, actively lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's. Instead of possessing a flawless set of genes, centenarians often carry the same disease-predisposing genes as the rest of the population, but their protective variants neutralize the threat.
The clearest examples of this genetic concentration occur in geographically isolated areas. In the remote Gennargentu mountains of Sardinia, extreme longevity clusters densely within specific families. The steep, rugged terrain kept these villages culturally and genetically isolated for centuries.
A limited gene pool meant that beneficial, life-extending variants were passed down and concentrated among the inhabitants. When paired with a rigorous pastoral lifestyle that demanded daily physical exertion and a plant-heavy diet, the environment allowed these genetic advantages to reach their full potential.
Your great-grandfather and his father likely passed down a similar combination of protective alleles. A defining characteristic of these genetic variants is that they do not just stretch out old age; they compress morbidity. People with this inheritance typically remain independent and free of chronic illnesses like cancer or heart disease until the very last years of their lives, sidestepping the prolonged decline that affects most of the aging population.
Only a fraction of the population (roughly one-third or specific genetic subsets depending on the population) carries specific, protective longevity-associated variants of FOXO3 that are strongly linked to living past 90 or 100 years old
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THE EVOLUTION OF HANDEDNESS
Across the world, 90% of people are right-handed but the evolution of handedness is not well understood.
Across all cultures and all countries of the world, many more people are right-handed than left-handed. There is not a single country in the world in which more people are left-handed than right-handed. On average, about 90% of people are right-handed. While non-human animals often also show handedness (or maybe rather "pawedness"), their rates of right-sided preferences are typically much lower than 90%. Why humans show such a strong preference for the right hand all over the planet that is not found in any non-human animal remains an enduring scientific mystery.
While many studies on the evolution of handedness have tried to solve this question by just looking at psychological research on handedness in humans, a recent study published in the scientific journal PLoS Biology took a different approach (Püschel and co-workers, 2026).
In the study, the research team led by scientist Thomas A. Püschel from the University of Oxford, used a so-called comparative approach, in which handedness data from human volunteers were compared to handedness data from 41 different ape species. Overall, data from more than 2000 individuals across all species were included in the study.
While handedness in humans is often assessed using questionnaires, this approach can, of course, not be used in animals. Therefore, the scientists analyzed data from the so-called tube task. In the tube task, peanut butter or another type of food is placed into a rigid plastic tube. The animal (or human) must stabilize the tube with one hand and then use the fingers of the other hand to get the food out of the tube. Typically, a right-handed ape or human would use the right hand to retrieve the food and the left to stabilize the tube. Based on the result of the tube task from many previous studies in apes and humans, the scientists conducted a so-called Bayesian phylogenetic comparative meta-analysis, a highly advanced statistical method, to assess patterns of handedness across all species included in the dataset. They assessed two main handedness variables:
1. Handedness direction: Indicates whether a species on average shows a left- or right-sided preference, or no preference at all.
2. Handedness strength: Indicates how strong average hand preference is within a species, but ignores the direction of the preference in individuals
To assess which factors have driven the evolution of handedness, the scientists also included information on several different variables that could potentially affect handedness based on scientific theories on the evolution of handedness.
These included:
Body mass
Brain size
Percentage of fruits in the diet
Percentage of fruits and animals in the diet
Intermembral index: the ratio between the length of the forelimbs (like arms) and the hindlimbs (like legs). Bipedal organisms that walk upright on two feet (like humans) typically have longer legs than arms.
Body mass sexual dimorphism: Differences in body mass between male and female animals
Tool use
Substrate preference: information about whether the species lives in the trees or on the ground
Social system: information about whether the species is solitary or lives in pairs or groups
Intra-sexual competition level: Information on whether the species shows competition between male individuals with each other or female individuals with each other
Extractive foraging: Information on whether the species forages difficult-to-access foods, such as termites in mounds
Social learning: Information about whether individuals of the species learn skills from each other
Results of the study: Human handedness is an evolutionary outlier
For handedness direction, there was no statistically significant preference to one side across all investigated species. As was to be expected, the strongest preference of all was observed in humans, who, in contrast to most other species, showed a clear rightward preference. A few ape species, like chimpanzees and gorillas, also showed weak right-sided preferences, but not as strongly as in humans.
Interestingly, some species, like the brown spider monkey, showed weak leftward preferences. Thus, humans were a clear evolutionary outlier. When the scientists included the factors that could potentially affect the evolution of handedness, an interesting pattern emerged. Two factors were especially relevant: Brain size and walking on two feet. For the strength of handedness, humans showed one of the strongest preferences of all species that were included in the study. Again, brain size and walking on two feet showed up as key factors for the evolution of human handedness.
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The results of the study showed that two factors that distinguish humans from apes are likely drivers for the evolution of handedness: The bigger brains of humans and the fact that we walk on two feet.
Why are these factors relevant for handedness?
Handedness is a form of brain asymmetry, e.g., left-right differences between the two halves of the brain. It has been argued that brain size is a crucial factor for the emergence of brain asymmetries. The bigger a brain is, the longer it takes to exchange information between the two halves of the brain. Therefore, an animal with a bigger brain benefits more from strong hemispheric asymmetries. If a brain function can be conducted by networks in one hemisphere due to strong hemispheric asymmetries, even a big-brained organism can react fast to the environment, since not much time-consuming transfer of information is needed.
This explains why humans, as the species with the biggest brains in the study, also have the strongest hand preference. In addition, walking on two and not on four feet may be a basic prerequisite to develop strong handedness, as it allows for sophisticated tool, given that the hands are not needed for movement.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-asymmetric-brain/202610/evolution-of-handedness-brain-size-and-bipedalism-were-key
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NEW STUDY ON REVERSING DIABETES WITH DIET AND EXERCISE
While an estimated 38 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, the condition is increasingly being diagnosed in younger adults. Without treatment, they face decades of elevated risk for complications like heart disease and kidney failure.
A recent study published October 1 in the journal The Lancet Regional Health – Americas investigated whether a combination of intensive weight loss and structured exercise could put early-onset type 2 diabetes into remission.
While an estimated 38 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, the condition is increasingly being diagnosed in younger adults. Without treatment, they face decades of elevated risk for complications like heart disease and kidney failure.
A recent study published October 1 in the journal The Lancet Regional Health – Americas investigated whether a combination of intensive weight loss and structured exercise could put early-onset type 2 diabetes into remission.
To help understand the findings and what they mean for diabetes treatment, I spoke with CNN wellness expert Dr. Leana Wen. Wen is an emergency physician and clinical associate professor at George Washington University. She previously was Baltimore’s health commissioner.
CNN: Why is early-onset type 2 diabetes particularly concerning?
Dr. Leana Wen: Early-onset type 2 diabetes refers to diabetes diagnosed by age 45. It tends to progress more rapidly than diabetes diagnosed later in life, with faster progression and a higher risk of complications.
Someone diagnosed at age 30 could live with diabetes for decades. Over that time, elevated blood sugar can damage blood vessels, nerves, kidneys and eyes. Younger adults with type 2 diabetes also face an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death.
Substantial weight loss can put type 2 diabetes into remission, previous research has shown, but most of these trials have focused on older adults. In this study, the researchers wanted to know whether this approach could work for younger patients, whose disease can be more aggressive. The team also wanted to test whether adding supervised exercise that included strength training could preserve muscle during rapid weight loss.
CNN: What did the study find?
Wen: Participants were randomly assigned to either an intensive diet and exercise program or their usual medical care, meaning they continued treatment with their healthcare provider. After six months, 54% of participants in the intervention group achieved diabetes remission, compared with just 4% receiving usual care.
Remission was defined as a hemoglobin A1c level below 6.5%, the threshold for diagnosing diabetes, without glucose-lowering medication for at least three months. (Hemoglobin A1c reflects average blood sugar measurement over a period of time and is a standard measure of diabetes diagnosis and treatment effectiveness.)
The intervention group’s participants also experienced substantial reductions in body fat, losing approximately 16.5 pounds (7.5 kilograms) more compared with those receiving usual care. They also increased their cardiorespiratory fitness, demonstrating lower resting heart rate and improved exercise capacity.
During the first 12 weeks, those in the intervention group followed a supervised diet that restricted calorie intake to 800 to 900 calories daily. For the first two weeks, these individuals consumed only meal replacements, then incorporated one regular meal daily while maintaining the calorie target. Beginning in the third week, the intervention group’s participants attended two exercise sessions weekly that combined aerobic activity with resistance training using weights or exercise machines. They also completed a third aerobic exercise session independently each week.
During the final 12 weeks, participants gradually returned to regular food with the goal of maintaining weight loss. They continued to work out independently and received ongoing support from dietitians and exercise specialists. Physicians monitored the participants’ blood sugar and blood pressure throughout the program and adjusted medications as needed.
People looking to replicate these results must understand how intensive the intervention was. The calorie limitation was severe and would be difficult for many people to follow safely. The exercise sessions were also demanding, and only 40% of participants met all the study’s criteria for adherence to the program.
The study took place at three specialized centers with regular support from physicians, dietitians and exercise specialists. We do not know whether similar results could be achieved in routine clinical practice, where people may not have access to these resources.
CNN: What should people with type 2 diabetes do if they want to try reversing diabetes with diet and exercise?
Wen: I would start with a conversation with your clinician about whether remission is a realistic goal and what approach would be safe.
In particular, the low-calorie diet used in this study should not be attempted without very close medical supervision. People taking insulin or oral medications called sulfonylureas can develop dangerously low blood sugar when they sharply reduce food intake. Clinicians may need to adjust these and other prescription medications if someone changes their calorie intake.
A less restrictive approach can still produce significant improvements. People can work with a dietitian to eat a more nutritious diet, for instance by reducing sugary beverages and refined carbohydrates and prioritizing vegetables and fiber- and protein-rich foods.
For physical activity, work toward the recommended 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise weekly. Add resistance training at least twice weekly, with exercises targeting major muscle groups. Such changes can slow the progression of diabetes and prevent complications, even if they do not reverse it.
CNN: Why did the researchers emphasize strength training?
Wen: Muscle plays a major role in regulating blood sugar. After we eat, insulin helps move glucose from the bloodstream into muscle cells, where it can be used for energy or stored. In people with type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance makes this process less effective. Exercise helps muscles take up glucose and improves their sensitivity to insulin, which can lead to better regulation of blood sugar levels.
A consistent strength training routine has another important benefit: The activity helps preserve muscle during weight loss. When people lose substantial amounts of weight, they typically lose both fat and muscle. This loss of muscle mass may pose particular problems for people with type 2 diabetes, who are already at increased risk of impaired muscle function and premature frailty. Preserving muscle can help maintain physical strength and metabolic health.
In this study, participants in the intervention group lost substantial amounts of fat without significantly greater loss of muscle mass compared with those receiving usual care.
Another notable finding is that those in the intensive intervention group improved their grip strength by approximately 8%, suggesting that their muscles became stronger even as they lost weight. These findings support recommendations to incorporate resistance training alongside aerobic exercise, especially when there is such rapid weight loss.
CNN: What are other limitations of this study?
Wen: First, this was a relatively small trial — and the participants were all younger adults with obesity and relatively recent diabetes diagnoses. Notably, researchers excluded people receiving insulin treatment and those with certain medical complications, including cardiovascular disease and significant kidney disease. We cannot assume that the same remission rates would apply to older adults, people who have lived with diabetes for decades or those with more advanced disease.
Second, the study compared a combined diet and exercise program with usual care but did not include a group that followed the same diet without supervised exercise. We therefore cannot determine how much additional benefit came from exercise, or whether the remission rate would have been similar with dietary changes alone. Participants in the intervention group also received substantially more attention from health professionals than those receiving usual care, which could have influenced their results.
Finally, researchers followed participants for only six months. Remission as measured during this period does not mean diabetes has been reversed permanently and cured. Blood sugar can rise again, particularly if someone regains weight or their pancreas loses more of its ability to produce insulin. Longer-term research is needed to determine how many participants can maintain remission over several years.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/06/health/type-2-diabetes-remission-diet-exercise-wellness
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WHY CANCER USUALLY COMES BACK
If chemotherapy kills 99.9% of a tumor, the patient goes into remission. But that surviving 0.1% emerges with a terrifying advantage: it is often highly resistant to the original drug.
Evolutionary resistance is just one reason a seemingly eradicated disease can suddenly return years later. Cancer is not a single, uniform lump; it is a microscopic invader made of millions of cells. Even when surgery removes a mass with clear margins, tiny clusters of cells—micro-metastases—can escape into the bloodstream or lymphatic system. These stragglers are too small to be detected on an MRI or PET scan. They lodge in tissues like the liver, lungs, or bones and go dormant, sometimes for years, until a biological trigger prompts them to start dividing again.
Not all cancer cells are equally susceptible to treatment. Within a tumor, a small fraction acts like stem cells. Chemotherapy and radiation target rapidly dividing cells, which make up the bulk of the mass. Cancer stem cells divide very slowly, allowing them to survive the toxic barrage by "playing dead" and seeding a new tumor later.
While oncologists cannot guarantee a tumor will never return, specific strategies minimize the risk. Adjuvant therapy—chemotherapy or radiation administered after a successful surgery—acts as a "mop-up" operation to hunt down invisible micro-metastases before they establish a foothold.
Maintenance therapy keeps dormant cells asleep; patients with estrogen-fueled breast cancer may take hormone-blocking drugs like tamoxifen for up to ten years to starve any remaining cells. Regular surveillance scans ensure that if a secondary tumor does form, it is caught when it is smallest and most treatable. ~ VitalSign, Quora
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WHY VEGETARIANS LIVE ON AVERAGE 7 YEARS LONGER
Vegetarians really do live seven years longer than the average meat-eater. But researchers found this massive longevity gap has almost nothing to do with actually skipping meat.
The seven-year statistic originates from a very specific place: Loma Linda, California. This city is heavily populated by Seventh-day Adventists, a religious group whose tenets encourage a vegetarian diet. Major research initiatives studying this community found that its vegetarian members lived significantly longer than the average Californian.
Epidemiologists attribute much of this gap to a phenomenon called the "healthy user bias."
People who make the deliberate choice to adopt a vegetarian diet usually make other health-conscious choices simultaneously. On average, vegetarians are significantly less likely to smoke, drink heavy amounts of alcohol, or be physically inactive. They also tend to have higher socioeconomic status and better access to healthcare.
When researchers control for these lifestyle factors, the longevity gap shrinks dramatically.
Large-scale research, such as the EPIC-Oxford study in the United Kingdom, compared vegetarians to meat-eaters who shared similar health-conscious habits—like exercising regularly, eating plenty of produce, and avoiding tobacco. In these adjusted comparisons, overall life expectancy between the two groups is nearly identical.
However, a strict plant-based diet still alters specific physiological risks. Because vegetarian diets are typically richer in fiber and lower in saturated fat, they reliably lower body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, and LDL cholesterol. Even when compared to health-conscious meat-eaters, vegetarians consistently demonstrate a 20 to 30 percent lower risk of developing ischemic heart disease, meaning the diet itself provides distinct cardiovascular protection, even if it does not guarantee a longer total lifespan. ~ VitalSign Quora
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TOO MUCH RUNNING TIED TO LOWER LIFE EXPECTANCY
Running regularly has long been linked to a host of health benefits, including weight control, stress reduction, better blood pressure and cholesterol.
However, recent research suggests there may a point of diminishing returns with running.
A number of studies have suggested that a "moderate" running regimen — a total of two to three hours per week, according to one expert — appears best for longevity, refuting the typical "more is better" mantra for physical activity.
The researchers behind the newest study on the issue say people who get either no exercise or high-mileage runners both tend to have shorter lifespans than moderate runners. But the reasons why remain unclear, they added.
The new study seems to rule out cardiac risk or the use of certain medications as factors.
"Our study didn't find any differences that could explain these longevity differences," said Dr. Martin Matsumura, co-director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa.
Matsumura presented the findings Sunday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Studies presented at medical meetings are typically viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Matsumura and his colleagues evaluated data from more than 3,800 men and women runners, average age 46. They were involved in the Masters Running Study, a web-based study of training and health information on runners aged 35 and above. Nearly 70 percent reported running more than 20 miles a week.
The runners supplied information on their use of common painkillers called NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen and naproxen/Aleve), which have been linked with heart problems, as well as aspirin, known to be heart-protective. The runners also reported on known heart risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, family history of heart disease and smoking history.
None of these factors explained the shorter lives of high-mileage runners, the researchers said. Use of NSAIDs was actually more common in runners who ran less than 20 miles weekly, Matsumura's team noted. "The study negates the theory that excessive use of NSAIDs may be causing this loss of longevity among high-mileage runners," Matsumura said.
So what's the advice to fitness-oriented Americans?
"I certainly don't tell patients 'Don't run,' " Matsumura said. But, he does tell high-mileage runners to stay informed about new research into the mileage-lifespan link as more becomes known.
"What we still don't understand is defining the optimal dose of running for health and longevity," he said.
Even though the heart disease risk factors couldn't explain the shorter longevity of high-mileage runners, there do seem to be potentially life-shortening ill effects from that amount of running, said Dr. James O'Keefe, director of preventive cardiology at the Mid-American Heart Institute in Kansas City.
O'Keefe, who reviewed the findings, believes there may simply be "too much wear and tear" on the bodies of high-mileage runners. He has researched the issue and is an advocate of moderate running for the best health benefits. Chronic extreme exercise, O'Keefe said, may induce a "remodeling" of the heart, and that could undermine some of the benefits that moderate activity provides.
In O'Keefe's view, the "sweet spot" for jogging for health benefits is a slow to moderate pace, about two or three times per week, for a total of one to 2.5 hours.
"If you want to run a marathon," he said, "run one and cross it off your bucket list." But as a general rule, O'Keefe advises runners to avoid strenuous exercise for more than an hour at a time.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-much-running-tied-to-shorter-lifespan-studies-find/
ending on beauty:
THE REGION NOVEMBER
And human nature, pensively seated
On the waste throne of his own wilderness.
Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,
The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying.
~ Wallace Stevens
